Showing posts with label kwak jae-young. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kwak jae-young. Show all posts

Saturday, August 6, 2011

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!

Saturday, February 27, 2010

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!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

My Mighty Princess: She's Even Cuter When She's Kicking Your Butt


A martial arts teen romantic comedy with a dash of evil sorcery? Yes, that's right. Kwak Jae-young's My Mighty Princess is just the mash-up that you've been waiting for. But boy, is it complicated. So-hwi (Shin Min-a) wants to hook up with cutie Jun-mo (Yu Geon) from the school hockey team but she's constantly distracted by a family legacy which involves recapturing The Green Destiny Sword and mastering The Lightning Stroke technique perfected by her mother, now dead. She's also got stiff competition for her man by way of a no-nonsense lady cop who her prospective boyfriend is obsessed with. And then there's that pretty-boy childhood friend (On Ju-wan) who says he loves So-hwi but is really more enamored of getting a Kawasaki motorcycle. Will she ever be able to get a kiss from the dude with a mother complex? Will she stop being a brat long enough to learn the sword fighting skills dictated by her dying mother to her telepathic dad? One of the pleasures of My Mighty Princess is how the story keeps incorporating more and complications without ever letting them slow the momentum. Another is Shin's performance which is effortless adorableness even after she's drawn on a mustache to fight incognito to save her man.