Happy End: Daddy Needs a Life More Than a Job

When actor Choi Min-sik is good, he's very, very good (Oldboy, Crying Fist, I Saw the Devil). But when he's bad, he's actually pretty bad. Happy End may show Choi at his worst. Playing a blubbering househusband unwilling to assume the household duties after he loses his job, and his wife (Jeon Do-yeon) becomes the family checkbook, Choi's Seo Min-ki is the embodiment of male prerogative. He believes, he has every right to spend his days reading romances at the local bookstore then jabbering about a soap opera with a lady neighbor all night long on the phone, even when the baby's crying, the kettle's boiling and his wife's catching up on paperwork. He doesn't care if the Mrs. is overextended. He's too busy feeling sorry for himself.

You can imagine Mr. Sulky-pants is going to get a lot sulkier when he learns that his wife isn't just clocking extra hours at the job. She's also working off some stress in the bed of a former beau (Ju Jin-mo) who as she says herself, her nails digging into his back and butt, "You've got a fantastic body." (Or something like that.) She may be living a life of deception but truer words were never spoken. Plus, since this hottie is the director of the website where she works, we know the dude's got computer skills, too. Is divorce an irrational next step?

That's not the story that writer-director Jung Ji-woo has scripted, though. You see, Mrs. Seo is committed both to her marriage and getting banged. Even if that means doping her baby to go on a bender. Maybe that's what happens for the respectable bourgeoisie who hold family above all. But if respect is the be-all, end-all, then Mr. Seo is going to end-all to be-all in the end. The murderous plot he concocts to do this has registered with one viewer as completely implausible and unlikely to fool a trained detective. But said viewer wanted to see Mr. Seo put away for life for the crime of whining. Surely, there must be some country that outlaws self-pity.

Gabi: Russian Coffee: A Half-Empty Cup

One man sees coffee as love.
Another man sees coffee as the dream of an Empire.

I like a cuppa joe as much as the next guy but Chang Youn-hyun's historical thriller Gabi: Russian Coffee imbues the beverage with a potency that staggers the mind. Evidently, coffee can make you fall madly in love. It can save you from being murdered. It can get you insider access to a paranoid king. And it can inspire that same king to build a cafe in your dead father's honor as a way to restore status to the family name. I always thought it was enough that coffee could help you stay awake when you got sleepy. Boy, was I wrong.

Tanya (Kim So-yeon), the court barista, knows better than me, too. She knows that the coffee-making method taught to her by her lover Illych (Ju Jin-mo) produces a brew capable of seducing — by way of its floral scent and bitter taste — even the currently in-hiding Emperor (Park Hee-soon) of Korea. Furthermore, she knows which type of cup to use, how to fold a filter, and the right way to pour. She also enjoys the philosophical small talk that can make sipping the hot beverage so enjoyable for master and servant alike.

What she doesn't know, or at least hasn't yet to come to learn, is that you don't assassinate someone just to save your own skin and you can't trust your torturers, especially when one of them — a fellow spy (Yoo Sun) — is also in love with your self-sacrificing boyfriend. Perhaps too much caffeine has clouded her judgment.

As such, Gabi: Russian Coffee is a silly movie. You can understand why actress Lee Da-hae dropped out of the production less than two weeks before the shoot began. She must have read the script and thought, "Hell, I'd rather be a barista in real life."

A Better Tomorrow: The Beauty of Not Being Original

Art movements have their renaissances, theaters have their revivals, neighborhoods have their rebirths. But movies, movies have their remakes. As re-creations go, this is certainly the least glamorous of terms. And after watching Song Hae-sung's A Better Tomorrow, the Korean remake of John Woo's landmark film of the same name, it got me to wondering: Why do movie remakes -- also called rehashes -- get immediately stigmatized? It certainly isn't as if we generally leave most movies, commenting "How original!" Isn't it enough to come away from a movie saying, "How excellent!" That's how I felt after watching Song's A Better Tomorrow. But then I'd never seen the original.

But should I have? Would I have enjoyed the film more? And are remakes made simply as byproducts to compare to their progenitors? Is it wrong to re-make a movie because a director thinks the material might speak to a different generation or to a different culture or have something in it that now has something new to say? Should you chastise that director for not optioning a wholly new script, and instead choosing a really good story dying to be retold? When you look at the parts of the first A Better Tomorrow, it's not as if they're pioneering ideas either. We're all familiar with the story of two conflicted brothers -- one a cop (Kim Kang-woo), the other a criminal (Ju Jin-mo). We've all heard the one about the sleazy backstabber (Jo Han-sun) who rises to the top of the mob through nefarious means. We've also cheered on the anti-hero (Song Seung-heon) whose luck runs dry as he goes out in a blaze of well-amunitioned glory. Woo's script -- from which I'm assuming this draws heavily since Woo is credited as both producer and co-screenwriter -- isn't good because it's got new ideas. It's good because it's well-constructed. It makes sense to use it again.

Song's pic updates the recipe somewhat. (How much, I neither know nor care so I'll just make educated guesses.) Now the two brothers are North Korean defectors; their tough-love aunty figure (Kim Ji-yeong) runs one of those eatery tents that I've never seen outside Korean movies and scifi pics with an apocalyptic bent. Let traditionalists deride Song's remake as a retread and those who prefer this A Better Tomorrow celebrate it as a snazzy re-invention. For me, it's just a really good mafia movie tackling all the expected themes of family, betrayal, devotion, greed, redemption and respect amid a deliciously bloody fantasy of gunfire. You watch the one-man vigilantism of the righteous partner or the high-adrenaline final shootout between the self-chastising brother and the thug who's trying to kill his younger brother then tell me whether you care whether it's ever been done before. I sure don't. More likely, you'll be repeating what I wrote earlier: "Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!"

Dance, Dance: Out of Step With the Pleasures of Its Convention

Dance, Dance adheres to a number of formulaic dance-movie conventions... up to a point. So while you'll find the seeds of the classic story of one innocent and eager newcomer (Ju Jin-mo) who starts off as the rehearsal studio's laughing stock only to discover that he's got real talent -- and an unexpected passion -- for dance, what doesn't follow is the triumphant emergence of a breakout star who has climbed from the very bottom of the ranks. Far from it, this newbie instead causes his ragtag troupe to lose a major gig on broadcast television before dropping out so he can continue his medical studies. Who saw that coming? Not me! Equally deflating is the mishandling of that beloved cliche about the quotidian struggles of dancers/best-friends who love, fight, perform, disband and reunite as they strive for success and fame. This time, the scrappy troupe neither wins the big competition nor overthrows the undermining TV producer who won't let them rehearse for their music video. Instead, these guys spend an inordinate amount of time and energy putting up posters for a b-boy revue in which they will play a fairly lame part. Again, true-to-life but why? Couldn't we lie for the sake of pleasure?

As to the romance that could've salvaged Dance, Dance, let's just say that the spark-less relationship between the dance diva (Hwang In-yeong) and her shy protege (Yang, as mentioned above) is a platonic one that probably won't outlast the credits. What draws them together? She's respectful of his having a career outside dance and tickled by his enthusiasm for the form. As to her attractions for him, outside of a killer waistline, she's really representing the artist's way more than she's inspiring love or lust or longing for the unattainable. He's not so much infatuated with her as he is fantasizing about being her, about being a dancer, an artist, someone not so square as he so helplessly, hopelessly is. I wouldn't go so far as to say his character is gay but if he is, he's the kind of quietly repressed gay who's so out-of-touch with his inner life that he probably won't realize his sexual orientation until he's 40 and then only after he's taken a dance class for nostalgia's sake at the community center. In summation, Dance, Dance has no inspiring journey of self-discovery, no good guys vs. bad guys drama, no sappy love story, no knock-your-socks off dance routines -- unless you count a brief clip of a trio of guys spinning on their heads. Which I won't.

A Frozen Flower: This Love Triangle Is a Fading Pink

My heart goes out to this King (Ju Jin-mo). He needs to sire an heir to protect his kingdom but he can't get it up for the Queen (Song Ji-hyo) or his concubines. My heart also goes out to Hong Lim (Jo In-seong), the King's male lover and bodyguard. After being enlisted to impregnate the Queen, he fatally discovers that he's got a taste for the ladies -- as one 69 scene graphically illustrates. And because I've got a big heart, my heart also goes out to the Queen. Horny and unhappy, she's trying to make the best of a bad situation. Which, for a time, she does. (After being pimped out by her Lord and Master, she falls head over heels for the royal sperm donor and demands that they do it again and again in as many different positions as possible.) As love triangles go, Yu Ha's costume-drama/softcore-melodrama is ingenious in how it inverts a familiar forbidden love setup by having the straight couple sneak around while the gay man gets bitchy and suspicious. If A Frozen Flower might seem to side with the straights, it also illustrates that whether you're hot for men or women, everyone loves to kiss with a lot of tongue.

200 Pounds of Beauty: Blubbering Over Love, Your Looks, and Your Life in General

Have you ever noticed how skinny people made to look fat in the movies bear a disturbing resemblance to old people who have extreme plastic surgery in real life? There's something similarly fake-looking about both types of reconstructions. So Kim Yong-hwa's 200 Pounds of Beauty is really turning reality on its head by having the fake chubby chick turn into a real non-fake beauty through a full-body makeover with additional facial refinements. The porker turned pretty is poor overweight Han-na (Kim Ah-jung). She's kind of lost in life, dubbing the voice of pop star Am-my while pining for their cute producer (Ju Jin-mo); her crazy dad (Lim Hyeon-shik) is in the nuthouse; and she's making extra money on the side as a phone sex operator. (Now that's a versatile voice!) Lucky for her, one of her clients is a plastic surgeon (Lee Han-wi) who she can blackmail into giving her a complete overhaul. Reborn as a real looker, Han-na goes by "Jenny" and is out to get herself a man, a career and a new identity by singing covers of Belinda Carlisle, Blondie and Michael Jackson. As one girl, fat and thin, Kim has you hoping she'll find love in either incarnation. But then that's the name of her dog too. Which may be the true love she finds in the end. Woof! Woof!

Musa - The Warriors: Once Upon a Time in 1375 A.D.

You can call it an historical epic, a period war movie, a Medieval costume drama, or an Oriental homage to Peckinpah. You could also call it a horror flick in disguise. How's that? Well, Kim Sung-su's suspenseful Musa - The Warriors can go bucket for bucket with many a slasher film plus its combat scenes are filmed in today's reigning jittery style. Heads fly off when you least expect it; red sprays from throats, bellies, backs, eye sockets, severed limbs and mouths wrenched in pain. More thrilling than chilling, Musa - The Warriors furthermore follows a typical genre thread by connecting all carnage by way of psychotic pursuers. The runaway princess (Zhang Ziyi) rescued by Korean envoys disrespected by the Ming dynasty to which she belongs are stalked, hunted, and taunted by various bloodthirsty Mongols ready to resort to any means necessary to get the girl. Too bad for the bad guys, the general (Ju Jin-mo) has eyes for the noblewoman. Too bad for the general, so does a slave (Jung Woo-sung). By the time these two reconcile their differences, any hope for survival has been obliterated. Like any good fright flick, the one warrior to get out alive (Ahn Sung-kee) sails out alone in the shadow of hopelessness. Genius!

Real Fiction: No Real Friction From Kim Ki-duk

Real Fiction is the kind of movie that makes you realize that “student film” is a classifiable genre that has nothing to do with being an undergraduate, under 21, or even a beginner. I don’t care whether director Kim Ki-duk was 18 or 80 when he made this fatuous flick, but his little piece of experimentalism has all the signature marks of student filmism. To wit: 1. A largely mute lead (Ju Jin-mo) who acts as both Everyman and cipher. 2. Plenty of handheld camerawork justified by the inclusion of a videographer in the storyline. 3. Pseudo-profound lines like “Real suffering is not something that hurts physically” proclaimed while someone is being physically tortured. The irony! 4. A man-against-the-world attitude without any real oppression or a real believable world. 5. The occasional sex scene that has more to with with peeking at women’s bodies than it does with illustrating a point. 6. A truckload of symbolism: the scar, the snakes, the flowers... 7. The big reveal that declares: Hey, it's only a movie! Those murders we just watched were metaphoric. If the absence of body humor jokes and literary references prevent Real Fiction from being a purist's student artfilm, its leaden pace does suggest the need for a sophomoric drinking game.