The Thieves: Evidently, There Is an Oceans 14 in Asia

Although I've never seen Oceans 11, 12 or 13, Choi Dong-hoon's The Thieves strikes me as very similar to those glitzy, impeccably dressed star-studded caper pics. How much you like the movie has as much to do with how much you like the actors as you do the heist that's brought them all together. Here, you've got Kim Yun-seok (The Chaser) as a mastermind thief who assembles a crackerjack crew including Kim Hye-su (Tazza: The High Rollers) as his safe-cracker and Jun Gianna (My Sassy Girl) as a wire-walker who can break into any building. I'm less sure why he's hired Lee Jung-jae (Il Mare) as comic relief and wish he'd entrusted Kim Hae-suk (Thirst) with more to do but at least the movie has plenty of female power instead of one Julia Roberts or Catherina Zeta-Jones.

Joined by a half-dozen other shady types, these movie stars -- I mean crooks -- pool their talents in hopes of stealing the Tear of the Sun, a yellow diamond of enormous size and even greater value. (Black market estimates put its worth at around twenty million dollars.) As you can imagine, the jewel is very well-protected and given the checkered histories and double-crossing tendencies of all the criminals involved, pulling off this crime of the century isn't going to be so easy, especially when one of your partners is an undercover cop.

They also have to deal with an evil, bloodthirsty buyer (Ki Guk-seo) who seems an odd person to peddle your wares to given that he's been known to shoot the seller in order to get a better deal. But when you're trafficking in stolen goods, beggars can't be choosers. Nor can thieves. No matter how famous they are.

Postscript: I especially enjoyed seeing Shin Ha-kyun (Save the Green Planet) in the small role of the rich art collector who's always on the make with the ladies.

The Berlin File: The Bourne Identity by Way of Korea - North, South and Abroad

Ryu Seung-wan's The Berlin File feels aspirational. The goal? To break into the American movie multiplex. With more than enough English to excerpt for a mass-market trailer intended to dupe unsuspecting Yanks into buying tickets, this Bourne Identity with a North Korean slant hopes to appease its misinformed foreign audience with plenty of gunfire, big explosions, hand-to-hand combat and international politics (with a minimum number of subtitles). Yet while a savvy marketing strategy may fill The Berlin File's stateside seats on opening weekend, the word of mouth in any language is unlikely to do so thereafter.

Where does The Berlin File go wrong? Part of the problem may be that the star lineup is so lopsided. Despite its bilingual dreams, the only familiar faces (to someone who knows both Korean and American cinema) are the Korean ones. So while you've got Ha Jung-woo (The Chaser), Jun Gianna (My Sassy Girl) and Han Suk-kyu (Green Fish) on one side, the Europeans and Americans populating this Berlin are all no-namers. Personally, I think the addition of a Skeet Ulrich or a Joe Morton would've gone a long way to generate international appeal.

Especially when you consider the stilted delivery of the English dialogue by most of the Koreans here. Lines are uttered like memorized sounds, not words — never mind sentences. And let's face it: A convoluted plot about terrorism needs to be said with conviction. With the exception of Ryu Seung-beom (who appears to be relishing his role as a villain after years of playing comic cutie), the other Korean actors only appear at ease when speaking their native tongue. (That might be a problem for that aforementioned trailer!)

That said, I respect The Berlin File's aim. How crazy is it that despite Korea being a powerhouse in world cinema for a decade, it still has yet to garner a single Oscar nomination for best foreign film. What needs to happen to generate that level of respect? Kim Ki-duk's Pieta snagged the top prize at Venice in 2012. Let's hope American laurels lie ahead.

Daisy: She Loves Him Even Though He's Not Really Him

Are director Lau Wa-keung and his trio of screenwriters aspiring for super-heightened-naturalism with his romance-turned-spy-caper Daisy? Their movie sure takes the old maxim "Truth is stranger than fiction" at face value. For with nary an ironic wink or a melodramatic scream, this one keeps getting stranger and stranger as its story gets more and more complex. How did this happen? On their own, the characters are plausible if incompatible.

First up is Hye-young (Jun Gianna), a street artist who paints daisies as her humble homage to Van Gogh's Sunflowers. She lives with her grandfather at an antique shop in Amsterdam, favors the knit hat and layered clothing that proclaims "Bohemian," and sketches charcoal portraits in the town square despite having access to an enormous warehouse for painting oils and a date set for her (first?) solo gallery exhibit. If she lived in Paris, she'd smoke Gauloises; if she lived in NYC, she'd have needle-marks. You know the type.

Next up is Jeong-woo (Lee Seung-jae), an Interpol cop who's committed to busting crime rings at any cost. He's what you might call a noble opportunist. And so he uses Hye-young as a cover for monitoring drug trafficking. Then he seizes his chance to seduce her when she mistakes him for someone else. He's not a cad per se. But it feels as though he's in an espionage pic, not a romance, even after he confesses all after she's lost her voice from a gun shot wound that he blames on himself. (Since she can't speak, it's hard to say whether she accepts his apology.)

Finally, there's the assassin (Jung Woo-sung): Jeong-woo would love to catch him; Hye-young would love to marry him. Except for one thing... He's neither the target of Jeong-woo's investigation nor the lover of Hye-young's dreams. He's one of those stalker-boyfriend-criminal types, the guy who watches his prey clandestinely, courts her secretively, coerces her into a relationship by making her get into his car when she's mute, then ends up causing her death inadvertently. An ideal he is not. And then there's his profession: killing people. Need we say more?

For a good long while, Hye-young believes Jeong-woo is the secret admirer who's actually the assassin then she thinks that her lover-assassin has killed her lover-impostor. She's wrong on both counts. If she hadn't forfeited learning sign language and opted to spend the rest of her life communicating through index cards with common phrases on them, maybe she would've figured out her reality faster. Maybe she wouldn't be dead. And Jeong-woo wouldn't be dead. Maybe the assassin wouldn't be single either and left with a painting now splattered with his loved one's blood.

White Valentine: When a Love Story Isn't About Love at All

I find Yang Yun-ho's White Valentine incredibly frustrating. And not just because Lee Eun-kyeong's meandering screenplay has its characters needlessly talking in code or telling each other "Don't tell me!" when the hidden truths don't even seem that earth-shattering. I won't even blame the twee hypersensitivity so execrably conveyed by Jun Gianna as a female high school dropout with a passion for drawing and Park Shin-yang as a widowed pet store owner obsessed with damaged pigeons. I've seen poorly written screenplays poorly acted before. They tend to bore more than irritate me as a rule. What truly sucks about White Valentine, however, is the way it keeps pretending to be this sentimental love story about two drifting rejects who can't find a way to set sail together, because they're too timid to reveal their true selves.

They meet in a park. They write each other anonymous notes sent via carrier pigeon. He keeps pining for her even as she stalks him. He can't see the obvious and she won't announce her identity — maybe because she can't comprehend why he can't pull together all the freaking clues she puts in his way. After awhile, you get the feeling in White Valentine, that this morose duo isn't unlucky so much as they're unsure. Sure, they're stunted beings unlikely to take big risks. But maybe, just maybe, they're also circumspect cynics who are looking at each other and thinking, "Hmm, maybe this one isn't what I"m looking for." On that count, they may both be right. She's able to turn her inner frustration into a piece of kiddie lit. He turns his angst into a coffee table book of bird photographs. Can you really fault love lost when it gives you each a book deal? And when, years later, he discovers the children's book that she's illustrated and recognizes the cover artwork (and the truth that comes with it: It was HER after all!), does he race to find his secret sweetheart? No. He moseys over to the store that her just-as-evasive grandfather (Jeon Mu-song) once ran then shuffles outside the train station where she's about to embark to other climes. When suddenly he makes a mad dash for the tracks, I, for one, was left fantasizing that he'd thrown himself on the tracks. I can't imagine eternal bliss for these two. I see a house filled with melancholia. Boo-hoo and then boo.

Windstruck: He Died Then Went to Heaven on a Breeze

When you watch movies via websites like Mysoju, Todou or YouTube, they're often broken up into chapters, which alters your viewing experience for better or worse. With Windstruck, writer-director Kwak Jae-young's 2004 romance, serialization works in its favor. Here are eight mini-reviews encouraging you to view this feature as a web series.

Episode 1: First Encounter
Kooky cop Kyung-jin (Jun Gianna) mistakes Myung-woo (Jang Hyuk) for purse-snatcher then hauls him to station to charm coworkers by sketching portraits. Kyung-jin's clobbers Myung-woo then schoolkids. Love blooms

Episode 2: Hand in Hand
Handcuffed, Kyung-jin and Myung-woo land in middle of huge shootout. Back at the police station, Myung-woo goes ballistic, pretending to be crazed criminal to save Kyung-jin's rep. Love to the rescue!

Episode 3: Sudden Changes
Kyung-jin and Myung-woo become boyfriend and girlfriend while carrying groceries upstairs. While playing house, she reveals that she's an identical twin and her sister is dead. Meals are shared. Love deepens.

Episode 4: Drive
Myung-woo gets a jeep so they can bond to oldies music. Kyung-jin relates origination story of the pinky swear. An avalanche sends jeep into deep waters where Myung-woo drowns and Kyung-jin cries. Love's tragic.

Episode 5: Baby, Come Back
By pounding (in frustration) on his chest, Kyung-jin revives Myung-woo. When he's shot again as she's chasing bad guy Chang-soo (Jeong Ho-bin), Myung-woo dies again. Kyung-jin considers suicide. Love defies death.

Episode 6: Punk to the Rescue
Two runaways convince Kyung-jin to treat them to pizza instead of killing herself. She tries suicide afterward by jumping off a building yet survives. A paper airplane announces Myung-woo's soul. Love knows no boundaries.

Episode 7: A Second Chance
Kyung-jin tracks down Chang-soo then gets shot. Myung-woo's ghost re-appears minus one lung. He instructs her to go on without him. She agrees because she believes in reincarnation. Will love be reborn?

Episode 8: Wind
In a house filled with pinwheels, Kyung-jin and Myung-woo's ghost say good-bye so she can meet a new cutie (Cha Tae-hyun) on a subway platform. Love, baby, love!

My Sassy Girl: She's Tough to Love in a Good Way

"I want to meet a girl like the ones in romantic comic books."

There's plenty of guys out there who fantasize about that sentiment, about the hot chick who's gonna kick their ass with the promise of sweet love afterward. In Kwak Jae-young's My Sassy Girl, that adolescent dream is exactly what draws the self-effacing Kyun-woo (Cha Tae-hyun) to bossy Jun Ji-hyun (Jun Gianna), a hard-drinking, emotionally unstable young woman who likes to slap him around and bark out preposterous orders. Otherwise, he'd never put up with her irrational demands which include wearing her high heels and carrying her piggy-back to yet another hotel after yet another night of binge-drinking. That these two cuties are destined for each other seems inevitable at first but is it? My Sassy Girl teeters between romantic comedy and tearjerker because you're never quite sure if he's going to be her permanent boy pal or if she's harboring a secret that could drive them apart. Naturally, they'll survive the deranged army guy who's gone AWOL but whether they'll find true love with each other is another matter. Until you find out, you'll be treated to quite a few highly effective sight gags based on vomiting. I'll drink to that!