Reviews

Unfortunately, it was not up to expectations... boring

This South-Korean supernatural thriller is a surprising addition to the Tallinn Black Nights First Feature Competition. Directed by novelist and screenwriter Kim Jin-young as her feature debut, the film plays out like a formulaic thriller borrowing tropes from East Asian cinema as well as from Hollywood. Fast-paced to the point of being unable to deliver any character depth, it twists and turns with energy, but loses control under the weight of its own relentless movement. It presents us with the muddied narrative of a mother’s guilt over the loss of her paraplegic son, Han-byul. The father, a Reverend in an unspecified Christian church, blames the mother for having fallen asleep while her four children (including Han-byul) were playing near a lake after a picnic. When she awoke, Han-byul’s wheel-chair was empty and his body was floating in the water. Was she fully asleep? Could it be that she willfully turned a deaf ear to her own child’s cries before death? After the child is buried, the Reverend is convinced that the mother’s sins will be pardoned if they adopt an orphan, as a good deed to repent. They soon start taking the steps necessary to adopt the visually-impaired Isaac, but, once formalities are over, the young child finds it difficult to settle in the Reverend’s house, finding the behaviour of the three other children especially inauspicious.
The Other Child plays with an intriguing array of themes – the Christian faith in South-Korea, the guilt-complex of a mother after the loss of a paraplegic son, the ways in which religious texts can be interpreted by indoctrinated children. But the narrative never takes the leap necessary to explore any of these themes to any satisfactory level. It briskly glides over the surface of its best ideas, resulting in a film only interested in existing as a pure exercise in terror. It is regrettable, then, that the film should also fail from a purely stylistic standpoint. Indeed, its technical qualities are extremely shaky: the cinematography is glossed over with a lush filter which exaggerates all colours, removing all actions from reality. The visual effects sporadically appearing in the horror sequences are also of very poor quality. The story-telling is convoluted and unfocused, with characters appearing out of the blue to reveal vital plot elements, while our protagonists act in ways that seem to defy all existing motivations. The viewer struggles to navigate a world where all that is set up in the beginning turns into something else entirely.

The director Kim Jin-young should be praised for her work with the young child actors who all deliver very accomplished performances, especially given the faults of the screenplay. While the cinematography suffers in general from looking too inauthentic, the scenes at the lake are especially well-photographed, giving the film its only memorable images. These scenes also present us with a gorgeous selection of costumes worn by the three children, who look particularly eerie when singing near the blue backdrop of the lake. These shots will stay firmly fixed onto the viewers’ retina. It is unfortunate that the quality shown during these scenes is not sustained throughout the rest of the film, for, overall, The Other Child is a very disappointing genre film, which brings together themes, characters and events that seem to constantly elude its grasp.

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Father Is Too H*rny To Notice What His Son Needs

Premise is interesting about time travelling so the father can save his son from the impending suicide.

Let's go with the negative first. While it is an eye-opener about teenagers having suicide and the lack of parent's understanding of their child, I don't get the point of the father using sex as a tool to save his son. He had sex with all the guys in the story, except his son and the man who controls time. Sure he is desperate, and did everything in his power, but I think too much time travelling made him a whore. In one of the timelines, in the attempt to save his son, the son even sees his own father having sex with his boyfriend like WTF. Talk about a mental damage on the son's part.

Some scenes cringed me with the sub-par acting. Although the actor who plays the father, son, and time man did okay. The others? Drowned to oblivion. They are like reading the script while the camera is rolling.

Now the positive side of the drama, acting is good, and the overall message of the series is great! However, I think the conflict can be solved quickly and the drama can be cut in less-than an hour, if only the father investigate first the source of his son's suicide instead of jumping to conclusions.

Music is repetitive and dull. They use the same sounds in the sex scenes and the suicide scenes. Oh, did I mention that it is flat, mundane. and prosaic? Yes I know I use words with almost the same meaning, which makes me more creative than the repetitious music that they used.

Overall, it's not a horrible film. The muddled execution is the problem why it didn't achieve it's potential. Take this with a grain of salt, watch it and be your own judge.

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where is the whole movie?

description says that the movie has 10 segments, but it only has 6:
"Tick Tock Tick Tock" - isn't in the movie
"Resident-only Fitness Center" - basic horror stuff 6/10
"Rehabilitation" - nice reveal at the end 9/10
"Delivery Complete" - isn't in the movie
"Ding Dong Challenge" - first short in the movie, a bit confusing 7/10
"Hey, Marmons" - isn't in the movie
"Four-legged Beast" - student becomes brutal very fast 7/10
"Gold Tooth" - isn't in the movie
"Jackpot" - interesting blend of triller and horror 8/10
"Gluttony" - depressing 8/10

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Not a bad adaptation

As someone who follows the anime, I think this movie accomplishes what Jigoku Shoujo ought to have. Although this version has better and darker plots than the 2006 series, there are a few key points that are missing, such as the tattoo and the boat scene, that make the movie slightly unsatisfactory. Overall, it's not a bad adaptation. Tamashiro Tina did a good job of delivering the similarity of the Enma Ai eerie vibe from the anime version. The supporting characters - Hone Onna, Ichimoku Ren, and Wanyoudo, could have more engaging plots than simply being the assistants with little dialogue.

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"우리집은 진짜 왜 이렇지?"

Just as I expected, The House of Us by Yoon Ga Eun is far more mature than it's ressentimental predecessor The World of Us, and far more skillfully written and shot. The kids in the story are left parenting themselves, feeling obliged to care for their parents and their wellbeing. And they actually try to deal with all those problems they face, everyone in their different ways, and they discover something unique as a result of their journey.

"언니가 계속 우리 언니 있을 거지?"

This is such a great progress from the director and amazing acting from the kids. I hope we soon see her first post-pandemic movie, because currently this one is the latest released.

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So realistic

This is my first time writing a review so I wanna say about the story is, this is so realistic and this movie shows the reality of the world. Also how the people accept when they found out that someone who is gay.
Also the ending is somehow similar to weak hero class not the same thing but it's giving that vibe.
For me this is a must watch movie.
This is not a about sweet love between two people but this is about how society accept them and treat them.
Although I've watched many kind of realistic movies far from the fantasy this movie gave me another kind of experience. hatred, anger, passion, care this one is mixed with these kind of emotions.
Anyways for me it's worth watching this.

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The world servers talk about friends, not brothers, and IMDb doesn't say anything like that either. Many close friends, friends, often refer to themselves as "brothers", after all, one of them was referred to as "the brother from the neighborhood" in the film. I also miss the reactions in the world of "incest moralists" who always swarm with these types of brotherly love.
For me, the film is a pleasant above average, to which it was pulled by the processing and the sound, I was particularly interested in Mon from both characters, both acting and appearance, and the best was the music.


Světové servery hovoří o přátelích, ne o bratrech, ani IMDb nic takového neuvádí. Mnozí blízcí přátelé, kamarádi, se často označují jako "bráchové", vždyť jeden z nich byl ve filmu označen jako "bratr ze sousedství". Také mi u reakcí ve světě chybí "incestní moralisté", kteří se vždy u těchto typů bratrské lásky vyrojí.
Film je pro mě příjemným nadprůměrem, do kterého jej vytáhlo zpracování a zvuk, z obou postav mě zaujal především Mon, a to jak herecky, tak zjevem a nejlepší byla hudba.

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Masterpiece cast in silky noir.

The ultra-violence of the revenge trilogy feels distant when the Korean visionary Park Chan Wook serves delicious romance of the absolute highest class.

The irresistible scent of classic noir hangs like a dense fog over Park Chan Wook's latest opus. Decision to Leave (2022) undeniably has films like Double Indemnity (1944) and Vertigo (1958) to thank, but at the same time, Park Chan Wook is refreshingly unique in his filmmaking and voice as usual. It is not long before what is initially very "Hitchcockian" and familiar is taken in completely unexpected directions.

The story begins in an accident investigation led by the chronically melancholic police officer Jang Hae Joon (Park Hae Il). A middle-aged climber appears to have fallen from the mountain he was climbing and died instantly when he hit the ground. Most of Hae Joon's colleagues shrug their shoulders and want to shrug it off as quickly as possible, while he himself begins to turn the magnifying glass on the deceased's mysterious widow, Chinese Song Seo Rae (Tang Wei). Her cold nonchalance about what happened and her murky background means that Hae Joon is no longer so sure that her fate was an accident. The instant chemistry that develops between the two further complicates the case.

So far it feels like movies I've seen before but every minute of playtime me further away from them. What could steer towards a conventional investigative thriller instead becomes something far more dreamy and sublime. What generally results in something cold and hard instead turns into something warm and silky. With each passing scene, it becomes increasingly clear that the murder mystery and its "whodunit" question is completely subordinate to the central relationship and that it is a love story unfolding on the big screen, albeit a strange one. The corpses that keep turning up are just icing on a cake of passion and longing. Park Chan Wook's transformation into bloody romantic (something already noticed in 2016's The Handmaiden) is total, and I love it.

Given that's the direction Park Chan Wook chooses, it's Tang Wei and Park Hae Il that everything hinges on, because if you don't buy their almost Phantom Thread twisted romance, everything else falls like a house of cards. Fortunately, there are sparks about them from the first frame they share and it is with ease that one capitulates to their restrained "courtship" of each other. Hae Il's portrayal of someone stuck on autopilot in career and marriage only to gently thaw back to life is utterly devastating, and Tang Wei's multi-layered, vulnerable and utterly unique femme fatale interpretation will carry with me for a long time.

As always with Park Chan Wook's filmmaking, he maximizes the visual potential of every frame. Here he is more playful than in his previous works and allows everything from smartphones to GPSs to merge with the visual language and the result feels as hypermodern as it does classic. Aesthetically, he continues on the trail he opened with 2018's The Little Drummer Girl, allowing both set design and costuming to rise far beyond realism. There are strong reds, strong blues and strong greens, almost to the point that Pedro Almodóvar feels like a possible source of inspiration. Few filmmakers can pull off a visual feast of this breathtaking caliber.

When the incredible finale (incidentally the obvious peak of a film that conquers the epithet masterpiece in every scene) is over and the credits roll, I can't help but think of Michael Gambon's narration in the Coen brothers' Hail, Caesar! (2016) and how he describes a film- "A potion of balm for the ache of a toiling mankind". That's exactly what Decision to Leave is, a soft and healing balm for the heart, brain and soul.

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Beautiful vegetarian propaganda.

A grand fantasy adventure that is fantastically entertaining and beautiful. Okja is a charming, funny and thought-provoking family film which, however, is not directly suitable for the youngest, but will amuse many others.

The fact that the Netflix-produced film Okja competed in Cannes raised a few eyebrows among the traditionalists. However, you have to think outside the box when you turn 70, and that's what the festival did in 2017.

The South Korean Bong Joon Ho, the man behind films like The Host and Snowpiercer, has written and directed this cute and visually spectacular fairy tale, with very dark tones between the lines.
The film is not easy to categorize as within its framework there is about as much comedy and farce as deep-seated drama and action. It is precisely this that gives the film extra points for innovative thinking, but at the same time risks making it somewhat difficult to grasp for parts of the audience, and above all it becomes difficult to say who its intended target group actually is.

The film is a kind of platonic love story between a girl and her pet.
Okja is one of all genetically engineered superpigs larger than a hippopotamus and has grown up with Mija, a little girl who lives up in the Korean mountains with her grandfather. Mija and Okja are best friends and really stick together through thick and thin. One day, however, everything changes when the Mirando Corporation, which once created Okja to become cheap food for the people, comes to bring her "home". But Mija is not one to give up on her friend so easily and encouraged by an animal rights group, she travels to the other side of the globe to save her life partner.

Essentially, then, the film is about unlikely but oh-so-strong friendship and takes place with the corrupt and sleazy (on more than one level) meat industry as a background. At the same time, the film conveys important messages about how the resources on earth should be distributed and urges us consumers to think. This is unusual in a film for younger people but all the more important for us all to take part.

A pale and easygoing Tilda Swinton plays the cool and calculating Lucy Mirando who is the CEO of the heartless company intent on mass producing cheap meat. And of course she is perfect in the role. Her colleague, the eccentric zoologist Dr. Johnny Wilcox is played by an energetic Jake Gyllenhaal who is quite funny, although perhaps not as convincing. Admittedly, it's a lot of fun to see him doing slapstick and rampaging around like I've never seen him do before, but it's grossly overplayed and not always justified. To some extent, it is certainly forgivable to stretch the expressions, as both his and Tilda Swinton's characters are caricatures, although it feels like Jake Gyllenhaal is sometimes almost having a little too much fun himself, at the expense of a lot of credibility.
Other roles include the always-watchable Paul Dano, Steven Yeun and Lily Collins. Young talent Ahn Seo-Hyun plays Mija and succeeds in an unexpectedly convincing way in creating a relationship with a giant animal that is mostly computer-animated.

Okja is a different and very nice film that absolutely deserves its audience. It's a bit uneven between turns and I sometimes feel that the humor should have been turned up a bit, only to suddenly feel that it could have been toned down. This ambivalence is a little disruptive to the overall experience and I would have liked Bong Joon Ho to decide to take it either way.

In the end, despite some flaws, this is a very lovely and heartwarming film that I undoubtedly enjoy very much.

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It bids You

This movie is a piece of art. Following the Ryuta a guy who is working as a personal gym trainer by the day and selling himself for so he could support his mother. As the movie proceeds you feel different emotions throughout, you will feel butterflies, you will smile, you will laugh and you will cry your heart out.
Music was fine.
Actors have done a very good job for portraying the characters, they brought the characters alive. The handsome and stunning Ryuta. Muscular but feminine Kosuke.
You should defiantly watch this movie if you like good story. But there is a drawback as we never get to know why Ryuta died.
There are a fair amount of R rated scene so if you are not into watching it please avoid watching the movie.

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It’s Ok, but the series was better

The movie/series: Although the storyline is basic, the script was well executed. It was not overly dramatic and gave a more realistic viewpoint about the LGBTQ+ community. The actors did a wonderful job portraying their characters. The cinematography and graphics were great. The series wisely used all of its screen time. The opening and closing credits for the series was very cute and fun to watch.

The movie: On the positive side, they did add a few new scenes. Overall, the move version was not as good as the series. This is why editing is very important. They did a decent job editing it into a cohesive movie. However, they made poor editing choices. The main problem for me was key scenes were cut from the series. I’m assuming this was done for timing purposes, but I felt most of the cut scenes helped with the relationship and story progression. There was also many scene placements that was changed throughout the movie which didn’t help.

Random Notes:
The series was another BL office romance from 2023 that a really enjoyed watching. I just wish the movie version retained the same magic the series had.

I strongly recommend watching the series version. The added scenes were cute, but does not compensate for all of the cut scenes. As for my rewatch value, the 1 is for the movie version. The series is definitely a 10 value.

The movie didn’t clearly mark the college flashback scene which was 4 years ago.

The colors are not as vibrant in the movie version. The picture appears dull.

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The new employee movie flows better than the series

If you've watched the series then you will enjoy this. It's nice to see it all at once and is one of those dramas that works well as a film.

Seung Hyun and Kim Jong Chan are both loveable characters and the actors are well cast. It was lovely to see them again after so long and whilst there have been a number of workplace BLs in 2022/23 this is one of the stronger, more consistent ones. It's well acted and the story works. It's based on a webtoon which was better in my opinion but this is a decent adaptation. This was definitely worth the nearly 2 hours of watch time. It may have been nice to see more on the lesbian support characters.

I've copied the description from Viki for those who aren't sure of the story.

Enjoy!

Chelsea Black

In his late twenties, Seung Hyun (Moon Ji Yong) has yet to settle into what most would consider an “adult” life. Something of a late bloomer, Seung Hyun has had about as much experience in his professional career as he has in his personal life. Which is to say, he hasn’t had much experience in either. But everything changes when he finally manages to land the internship of his dreams.

Excited to be interning at such a successful advertising company, Seung Hyun’s enthusiasm is curbed almost immediately when he runs into an incredibly handsome, yet unbelievably cold man on his first day of work. Thrown off by his encounter with this frigid adonis, Seung Hyun’s first day is a memorable one, to be sure; but becomes even more so when he realizes the man he ran into was none other than his boss, Kim Jong Chan (Kwon Hyuk).

Unable to shake the feelings that stir inside him as he recalls this first encounter, Seung Hyun tries his best to avoid making the same mistake. But it seems no matter how hard he tries, he can’t escape Jong Chan’s presence. As if drawn together by some unseen force, will either of these men be able to avoid the fate that seems determined to bring them together?

Adapted from the webtoon of the same name by Moscareto, “The New Employee” is a 2022 South Korean romance film directed by Kim Jho Kwang Soo.

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