Chilling Romance
Chilling Romance
aka 오싹한 연애 aka Ossakhan Yeonae aka Spellbound
2011
Written and directed by Hwang In-ho
Seeing dead people is not just a job for kids who will grow up to have DUIs, but also women in Korea! Yeo-ri has isolated herself from her family and her life because she’s tormented by continual visits from the recently deceased, especially the visits of a particular ghost, her former best friend, Joo-hee. Joo-hee blames Yeo-ri for her death, and constantly harasses Yeo-ri’s family and friends have forced the drastic measures. But can such a woman find love? Because Chilling Romance isn’t just a horror film, it’s a romantic comedy! Yes, two genres that shouldn’t go together at all suddenly pull a peanut butter and chocolate moment for Chilling Romance.
The ghosts aspects are a mishmash of Sixth Sense and the long-hair ghost films. Some of the Sixth Sense imagery is copied directly, from the dead wanting help to the tent scene. The tone of the scenes are stark and depressing, a lot of quiet standing around and pointing, or looking at people in pain or sorrow. But when Joo-hee is around, the tone changes to more shock jumpcuts, almost as if the movie knew it had to become something different for the different type of ghosts…
To counter all of that, we got a bunch of magician things going on. The razzle dazzle of the spectacle is a complete contrast to the morose Yeo-ri. Jo-goo makes his living from being charismatic and a showman, the opposite of the quiet and reserved Yeo-ri, who doesn’t want to attract attention from people who will end up ultimately hurt. Jo-goo originally wants her to join his troupe because he finds her interesting, but as they spend more time together their chemistry grows, much to the annoyance of the ghost Joo-hee and Jo-goo’s girlfriend.
Chilling Romance was also released as Spellbound. Director Hwang In-ho wrote the script, and this is his first feature film.
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Categories: Bad, Movies Tags: Hwang In-ho, Hwang Seung-eon, Kim Hyun-sook, Korea, Lee Mi-do, Lee Min-ki, Son Ye-jin
The Man From Nowhere
The Man From Nowhere
aka 아저씨 aka Ajeossi
2010
Written and directed by Lee Jeong-beom
Korea embarks on a tale of kidnapping and revenge, as a former special ops officer hunts down the men who kidnapped his young neighbor, the only person left he has a connection with. The travel embarks on a quest through the Korean underworld, dealing with organ trafficking, child slave labor, drug dealing, and identity theft. In the grand Korean tradition, things are non-compromising, with a bleak and desperate situation getting increasingly both as time goes on.
The Man From Nowhere is a good film to throw on for everyone disappointed with Taken 2. It takes the similar style of the original Taken (and also Man on Fire) and ramps it up. Cha Tae-sik becomes mixed up not only in the kidnapping, but with a turf war between different gangsters and the police who are trying to take everyone down. While the police often get in the way, they realize quicker than the arrogant gangsters that Cha Tae-sik is someone more dangerous than he appears.
The fights become increasingly more awesome and brutal. At first, all you see is breaking windows and an unconscious goon. Then you begin to see Tae-sik beating up small numbers of people. By the end, there is one of the best knife fights I have ever seen in a movie, and Tae-sik becomes a savage force of nature carving his way through the criminal empire.
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Categories: Bad, Movies Tags: Baek Soo-ryun, Kim Hee-won, Kim Hyo-seo, Kim Sae-ron, Kim Sung-oh, Kim Tae-hoon, Korea, Lee Jeong-beom, Thanayong Wongtrakul, Won Bin
You Pet
You Pet
aka 너는 펫 aka Neo-neun Pet
2011
Directed by Kim Byeong-gon
It’s time once again to dip our toes into the water that is Korean romantic comedies. You Pet has a slight twist, in that it is a Korean film but is based on a Japanese manga (Yayoi Ogawa’s Kimi wa Petto, which was also the basis for the Japanese tv series of the same name.) The translation into a distinctly Korean film is handled pretty well, you definitely will know the country of origin. Playing the lead is TarsTarkas.NET favorite Kim Ha-neul, who somehow always manages to be in entertaining romantic comedies. It’s like she was created in a lab after decades of testing, sort of how Disney produces their child stars. Playing opposite is Jang Geun-seok, who is one of the biggest studmuffins in all of Asia. You’ve probably heard of him, and his whole Prince of Asia designation, so I won’t go into much detail. Their individual charisma and chemistry together help elevate You Pet into a great piece of film. And that’s the most important thing, because the concept behind You Pet requires the leads work well together to keep it from becoming very disturbing.
It is important to note that like all romantic comedies, You Pet and Korean romantic comedies in general exist in an idealized world, where relationships fall into more easily defined categories and people don’t carry baggage associated with just living a life. Very attractive people will be alone for years and years because of the tiniest of flaws making the repellant to everyone of the opposite sex, and unattractive people just don’t exist (except for the occasional wacky character). Heck, even the extras in You Pet are almost all young professionals who look straight out of a talent agency. Even Eun-I’s parents look younger than they are, and appear ever-fleeting, less they age up the film.
You Pet does buck a bit of the trends by taking the established order of things and bending it on its ear. Instead of presenting the traditional want of landing a rich man and living happily ever after, You Pet‘s master/pet relationship between Eun-I and In-ho subverts things, but in a family-friendly way. Now, Korea may be modern and filled with people rapidly keeping up with today’s fast movie world, but it is also a land full of traditions. And these start to collide with the modern thinking when it comes to two people of the opposite sex living together while not in a relationship. Just having a male-female relationship that isn’t lovers and isn’t best friends can muddy the waters, and things get very cloudy very quickly, but a good cloudy. And while a safe outside the box approach to old traditions vs. modern life isn’t the most risky thing in the world, it does help reflect times changing, and I applaud films that try to do interesting things as opposed to playing it safe and boring. While many of Korea’s romantic comedies are sugar-coated fluff, some of them do confront relationship expectations in their own friendly-faced way, you just won’t get things like Happy End.
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Categories: Good, Movies Tags: Jang Geun-seok, Kim Byeong-gon, Kim Ha-neul, Korea, Romantic Comedy, Yayoi Ogawa, Yoo Tae-joon
Alien Lightning Dragon
Alien Lightning Dragon
aka 외계 번개용 aka Oegye beongye yong aka Alien Thunder Dragon 2
1988
Written and directed by Bang Sun-deok
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You can smell the toxic fumes decades later…
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It’s Wacky Korean Kiddie Flick Time! Today’s installment is the fabulous alien rock star women kidnapping children to turn into frozen popsicle dinners. Alien Lightning Dragon is filled with the usual Korean kiddie film tropes: “funny” fat guys, animated tokusatsu action sequences, annoying children, copyright infringement, and ridiculous costumes.
At TarsTarkas.NET, we know what we’re getting into when we delve into a Korean kiddie flick. And we also know that these films are barely watched by anyone, and deservedly so. But they are fun to gawk at, even if they are one of the worst cinematic genres on the planet.
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Oh, honey, that’s not how you put on eyeshadow…
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Gangs of space goons lead by rejects from the Jem and the Holograms cartoon invade various schoolyards and day care centers, kidnapping children and creepy adults who are playing children. The kids are destined to become dinner, and no one seems to care except a rag tag group of heroes and relatives of kidnapped children. Luckily, they also find a good Jem reject and her Alien Lightning Dragon megazord/costume/robot/whatever that can fight these space cases and save the day.
If this is a direct rip off of an actual property, then I feel sorry for whatever property it originally is. But what we get looks so generic and bad that I wouldn’t be surprised if this was all original and written just to reuse sets and costumes that are churned out on a production line, as there are literally dozens and dozens of these kid flicks.
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The town had insulted Spider and Renegade, so they had to pay. Berry lead the charge, as always, and by sunrise every home was a burnt out cinder. Maple Falls never recovered.
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Alien Lightning Dragon is an in name only sequel to Alien Thunder Dragon, made one year after the original. It looks like the only thing that made it to the sequel was the dragon costume and the animation. Like many of these films, there were cheap toy tie-ins and other merchandise, though most of it (except for a Making Of book) looks like it is based on the original film. The first film features a cadre of evil space ladies, and this sequel also features evil space ladies, so they at least aped the formula.
Wait a second…. This film has a secret underground compound where children are kidnapped? Is this a North Korean allegory? Do the wild flashy costumes of the evil space women mirror Kim Jong-il’s love of flashy Hollywood? Is Alien Lightning Dragon something larger than it appears at first? Probably not, but you never know…
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Forget the Jem jokes, it’s time for some Go-Bot jokes!
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Here at TarsTarkas.NET, we don’t need no stinking subtitles, and it’s not like knowing what the heck is going on would have made this film any less stupid. So enjoy the made up names, they’re probably better than the real ones. Even reading a synopsis I found only answers some questions:
Aliens are kidnapping the children of earth to use as frozen food. Kyung-ah and Hyung-cho use the Spirit Robots to go rescue them. Kyung-ah’s team finds the children, Hun and Young-mi, who are toys for the alien princess. But the alien queen finds out and is furious. She ends up capturing Kyung-ah’s team as well. At this, Prof. Min, Princess Aran, Yong, and Dung-bo recharge Lightening Dragon’s energy and go to rescue the children. A fight between the Dragon and the queen’s men is inevitable. Just as Lightening Dragon is nearly conquered, Dung-bo and the children blow their harmonicas. The queen who wanted to conquer earth is touched by the music and she repents all her past evil deeds.
The synopsis seems to think some minor characters are the real stars, and the main characters are barely mentioned.
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We’re gonna track down Jerrica Benton and take her out!
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Looks like these films have a bigger body count than I thought!
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Shadowless Sword
Shadowless Sword
aka 무영검 aka Muyeong geom
2005
Written by Kim Tae-kwan and Sin Joon-hee
Directed by Kim Young-Jun
A stylized action flick overly heavy on outside influences, Shadowless Sword delivers some good wirework action, but not enough heart or story to put it beyond popcorn fare. The fact that Shadowless Sword is a Korean flick does transform some of the usual wuxia tropes into new forms, giving Shadowless Sword a uniqueness, but that’s not enough to satisfy.
A period piece filmed in China, Shadowless Swords gets it story from the ancient Korean kingdom of Balhae and is very very loosely based on reality. Balhae was conquered by the Kitans in 926, and the royal family was killed and the kingdom turned into a puppet state that was eventually absorbed. But the last crown prince Dae Gwang-hyeon escaped with around 300 followers, arriving in Goryeo (the Kingdom from which modern Korea sprang) and causing occasional trouble for the Kitan. From reading up, the actual Dae Guang-hyeon history sounds much more interesting than the story used here. (If you are confused by the Dae Guang-hyeon/Dae Jeong-Hyun being the same person that, welcome to the wonderful world of different translation schemes colliding!)
Shadowless Sword‘s action sequences are heavily invested with wirework, and at times almost too choreographed. You start to notice a pattern and then predict when there will be a cut as the actor flips to suddenly fly in the air. But the choreography not bad, in particular the duel between Yeon So-Ha and Mae Young-Ok in the marketplace is very nice.
There is a heavy emphasis on qigong energy type moves, attacks cause the walls and pillars to explode in ridiculous fashion when people are thrown into them. In physical attack, bodies can explode violently, sometimes much later than the physical attack itself.
This expands with a sort of sword energy mythology – Shadowless Sword tries to include including philosophy of sword debates, can swords become noble or evil, or is it up to the user to decide what the sword is. Can a sword become evil? Where does the morality of killing come from? Another major point is two swords that are brothers, the swords being connected and also the people using the swords are connected
One neat thing is the energy attacks also work underwater, this is the only film I can recall seeing where energy is blasted back and forth underwater causing the energy pushing the water to be used as a weapon (The Last Airbender doesn’t count!) There is also lots and lots of shuriken. At one point bad guys throw like 100s of shuriken into the water likes they are machine guns, which is sort of bad. It crosses into ridiculous territory and takes you out of the film.
Shadowless Sword does borrow a lot of visuals from other films, Crouching Tiger gives us flying rooftop chases, a Korean gang has everyone dressed up like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean (if this is accurate historical costuming, then we’re though a rabbit hole now, people!), the energy stuff sounds like it’s from a billion manga comics, fields of flags see straight from Kurosawa, and the end scene is very recognizable as well. If Shadowless Sword can’t be bothered to be less obvious in what it steals, then I can’t be bothered to care too much.
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Categories: Movies, Ugly Tags: Kim Tae-kwan, Kim Young-Jun, Korea, Lee Ki-Yong, Lee Seo-jin, martial arts, Shin Hyun-jun, Sin Joon-hee, Yoon So-yi
