The Taste of Money: Horny Rich People Doing Terrible Things

It's easy to imagine a Marketing Director branding Im Sang-soo's The Taste of Money "an erotic thriller." The plot involves a family of avaricious backstabbers who commit multiple murders and enjoy fairly graphic sex lives in front of your very eyes. Yet none of it feels particularly erotic or thrilling. Sure, the family is loaded -- they've got a warehouse full of dollars bills. They're in cahoots with an American corporate sleazeball (played by Koreanfilm.org's Darcy Paquet!). And just to add a touch of street cred, the family heir (On Ju-wan) goes in and out of jail with some regularity. The greatest mystery may be why the Filipino housemaid (Maui Taylor) dies in the pool without her bikini top. Or maybe it's how an old suicide can sit in a bathtub of his own blood without losing any of his vitality.

So what's a Marketing Director to do? Bill this as sexploitative social commentary? Here too the movie doesn't meet the demands of the genre since the carnal scenes are super short. A Bacchanal with a half-dozen bare-breasted women doesn't even culminate in a proper orgy. The family patriarch (Baek Yun-shik) goes down on a household servant then the door is shut! The longest sex scene comes when the amoral matriarch (a deliciously evil Yoon Yeo-jung) coerces the suited houseboy (Kim Kang-woo and his corrugated midsection) into her bed where she yells "Harder! Deeper!" repeatedly. But afterwards, when the boy toy soaks in the tub -- and does shots and eats limes presumably to get her taste out of his mouth, you're more likely to laugh than get titillated. The final Mile High Club rendezvous between Kim's character and the family's pretty daughter (Kim Hyo-jin) is so contrived you'll scream "Faster! Faster" until the credits appear.

In terms of finding an appropriate film genre to apply to The Taste of Money, this Marketing Director is screwed. Which isn't to say he's doomed: The dialogue does provide a memorable tag line: "The money's easy, the fucking's great. Korea's a fantastic country."

The Old Garden: Incompatible Politics

I'm trying to remember if I've ever seen a Korean movie that left me feeling as shut out as this one simply because I hadn't read Korean history, outside of Pearl S. Buck's novel The Living Reed, and Cullen Thomas's Brother One Cell, an expat prison memoir. That said, I do remember seeing The President's Last Bang, Im Sang-soo's cinematic retelling of the assassination of President Park Chung-hee (brilliant) and at least three movies about the courtesan Chunhyang (all good) without feeling gravely uninformed. But The Old Garden -- also by Im -- left me out in the cold.

I eventually figured out that this movie has to do with a bloody student uprising and a fascist president but Im's film spends a lot of time referring to political upheavals, not depicting them. That means, you hear about the psychic damage but generally don't see what caused it. By the time the brutal conflict between students and cops hits the screen, it just feels like another generation's daily news report. Even when one character self-immolates herself, The Old Garden feels pretty tame somehow. Listen as the students softly sing a few verses of "We Shall Overcome" and try not to get bored.

Furthermore, The Old Garden suffers from a narrative that mines its conflict from the inability of one woman (Yum Jung-ah) to understand the sacrifices her radical lover (Ji Jin-hee) is making for the cause. "I hide you, put you up and feed you, and even let you fuck me. Why would you leave?" Clearly, either he hasn't been educating her on the necessity of the movement or she hasn't been listening.

It might also be that he's a secret masochist. Maybe he doesn't really have to turn himself in and get tortured by wearing a leather mask that won't let him spit properly. Maybe he could've gone with her and shacked up in the mountains, hiding from authorities, and making babies. Maybe governments naturally go through dictatorial and democratic phases and it's silly of any of us to think we can change, prevent or overthrow any regime. I'd call that a hopeless viewpoint. But don't be sad. These characters are sad enough without you joining them. They cry when they eat black noodles. They cry when they hug goodbye. They cry when they get thrown in the hole. (The extended sobbing during an on-screen blackout for that last part proved a bit much for my taste.)

The Housemaid: A Camp Classic Gets Reinvented for the Better

I'm not a big fan of the original version of The Housemaid, Kim Ki-young's 1960 camp melodrama about a psycho servant usurping control in a middle-class household. Im Sang-soo's update, which shows a richer family's new nanny getting abused instead of abusing, seems infinitely more plausible, and for the first half of the film, Jeon Do-yeon gives such a transfixing performance as a good-natured naif willing to roll with the punches, that you'll be feeling as though you're watching a purported classic being transformed into an actual one. But then the story kind of plateaus. Jeon, who's done such a heartbreaking job at conveying a variety of vulnerabilities, doesn't relate the same level of intensity when she's realizing how she's getting the short end of the stick or devising her revenge. The movie doesn't tank, exactly, but it does go from being great to good. At one point, I wondered if the story was going to shift to the other, older housemaid (Yun Yeo-jong) who has more than enough bitter memories to incite a glorious revenge on the narcissistic woman-of-the-house (Seo Woo) or her bj-loving husband (Lee Jung-jae). No such luck.

The President's Last Bang: Contemporary History as a Lark

If you're looking for story, The President's Last Bang isn't for you. (No matter that it's a retelling of the 1979 assassination of South Korean President Park Chung-hee.) If you're looking for over-the-top violence, Im Sang-soo's movie probably isn't for you either. (Only the climax with killers shooting dead and live bodies alike will please you.) But if you're looking for great cinematography, Kim Woo-hyung's glossy de Palma images will delight you. Wait a sec. Does anyone love cinematography that much? It took me a week to sit through this with its snippets of absurdist dialogue, beautiful camerawork of hallways and conference rooms, quirky slapstick moments that improbably make it seem more real, and of course the impeccable menswear. If this had been a web-based series doled out in five minute increments, I would have loved it. Could you force me to sit through 102 minutes straight in a theater? Sure. The Last Bang would work better bigger. I'm guessing that if you knew the history here a priori it would benefit your experience too. There's a certain nothing's-happening-here early on that indicates that we should already know what's transpired. Think of this as a stylishly projected form of Cliff's Notes.