301/302: What Really Counts for Women

It's hard not to imagine that scenarist Lee Suh-goon's 301/302 was inspired by a found box of papers by a now-dead radical feminist from the 1970s. The central thesis plays out between two single women who reside across the hall from each other and who conveniently represent diametrically opposed aspects of stifled personhood. In apartment 301 lives a divorcee (Bang Eun-jin) who loves to cook, eat, screw, scream, and be complimented. You'd say she was a carefree spirit if she hadn't cooked the family dog then fed it to her husband in a flashback. In apartment 302 lives an anorexic intellectual (Hwang Sin-hye) who hates sausage, was molested by her stepdad the butcher, and could probably resolve all that inner turmoil if her editor let her write in the first person for goodness sake. I kid you not. Eventually, the two become one as the food-fetishist makes a stew out of the grim-faced bulimic. I kept waiting for someone to say, "Eat me." No such luck. A little lesbianism would have gone a long way amid the psycho-symbolism. The closest we get is having the surviving tenant steal the starving tenant's smart bob of a hairstyle posthumously. Women can be so vindictive! Down with the patriarchy.

Phone: Dial "M" for Misbehavior

Adultery. Incest. Murder. There's a decent number of heinous crimes committed in Phone but the worst is not returning calls or text messages from loved ones. In Ahn Byeong-ki's technophobic ghost story, a spurned succubus exacts revenge on anyone unlucky enough to be assigned her cellphone number by delivering "calls for their death." What final utterance she relates into the ear piece is never made clear but it must be pretty terrible since a car crash, a ruined manicure, and an eye-gouging result. Eventually, she has the decency to concentrate her anger on those who actually led to her untimely demise but not before she's driven a sex-crimes reporter (Ha Ji-won) to the brink. Ha, a scream queen in Asia, is certainly believable as the next slated victim who doesn't change her number because she wants to get to the root of the story and demystify her hallucinogenic visions, yet Phone's real star is Eun Seo-woo as the little girl possessed by the avenging spirit. Eun is one of those creepy little kids who can look downright evil one second then sweet and charming the next. You're never sure whether you should feel bad for her or whether someone should hit her over the head with a brick. It's your call.

The Brotherhood of War: Boy's Life

I never considered that the love that dares not speak its name could be that between two brothers but such is the supposition of The Brotherhood of War, Kang Je-gyu's wacky war pic about two siblings drafted into service (and a weird battle of wills) during the Korean War. The opening sequence has the two young men feeding each other, sharing a popsicle, and fetishizing shoes. What with the string section in the background, you almost expect to see a class-usurping gay romance unfold before your disbelieving eyes. Instead, amid the prettily photographed explosions and hand-to-hand combat, what transpires is the making of a warrior—and a ruthless, bloodthirsty, wild-eyed one at that. Naturally, the younger, prettier sibling (Won Bin) is the conscience of the movie and the hunkier older one (Jang Dong-kun) is the fearless fighter. But the baby brother cries so much and seems so unappreciative of the butch one's self-sacrifices, perverse and self-aggrandizing as they might end up being, that you feel disappointed that the moralizer's head isn't blown off in some artful fashion with snow coming down from above and grenade-propelled dirt rising up from below. Can't blame communism for that.

Champion: The Man Who Wears Gloves

If you've ever seen a championship boxing match, then you know that while the lightweights certainly can't beat the heavyweights, they're nevertheless a hell of a lot scrappier, tougher, even scarier since they haven't got an ounce of fat to cushion any of the furiously thrown blows. Champion, Kwak Kyung-taek's biopic on South Korea's world-class contender Kim Deuk-gu, doesn't tell one fighter's rags to riches story, or traffic in his poetic inarticulacies of rage, though it could have done either given its subject matter. Instead, the flick relates the ascent of a fairly likable, none-too-bright pugilist who seems motivated by cultural imperatives and grounded by the respect that accompanies accomplishments which garner you a big fat wreath and a bloody nose. It's hard to tell whether actor Yu Oh-seong is doing a bad job or a solid one as he represents a man with little depth, not much smarts, and a boy's undeveloped philosophies. There's a lot of blank stares and looks of incomprehension. That might be the brutal truth. Ultimately, he's easy on the eyes and his tightie whities are always spotless. While the actual matches could've gone on much longer, his flashbacks are kept to a minimum. Kindly so.

The Ghost: Ring-a-ding-ding

What's the most influential horror movie ever? Psycho? Halloween? Frankenstein? In recent history, at least in Asia, the answer would definitely be The Ring. And for The Ghost, writer-director Kim Tae-kyeong trots out his own facsimile of that landmark movie's creepy dead girl. Why is the image of a silent young woman with straight, dirty black hair hanging in front of her face so unsettling? Even now, after having seen various incarnations of this demon-spawn in a half-dozen flicks, she's still got a certain undeniable power. Maybe it's the idea of a battered woman or an abused child who refuses to be beaten coming back from the dead to right wrongs. (The catch is she's got so much justifiable anger that she's a little out of control.) Woman as victim becomes woman as vengeance. Having the spirit inhabit different bodies, as Kim does here, just makes her transformation that much more universal. Like any decent fright flick, The Ghost also throws out a number of existential questions like if our memories were erased would we become someone else or who is responsible for an accidental death? I think I like amnesiacs! They're so open.

Shiri: She-bang She-bang

Shiri, Kang Je-gyu's enjoyable political thriller, has a riveting opener: With barely a word of dialogue, an extended montage of shooting, stabbing, screaming, running in the rain, and eating slop introduces us to the dehumanization undergone by a North Korean rebel military outfit. Yet the star pupil of this factional force isn't Pyongyang's answer to Sylvester Stallone; it's Kim Yunjin, the same lovely actress who made a splash stateside with her role in the cult series Lost. To call her character in this film a femme fatale strikes me as missing the point. Such an assertion just cheapens her antiauthoritarian convictions...or the effectiveness of the brainwashing. (That's your call.) But as she kill, kill, kills, she's destined to break as many hearts as she shoots because she can't shed her convictions as easily as her disguising wig. Though this flick has some slow sections before the big shoot-em-up in the stadium, it's also got some unexpected treats like a makeout scene in an aquarium and an excerpt from a Korean production of Guys and Dolls. The light military protection of a newly discovered, scent-free liquid bomb is an improbable plot point but from the looks of the resultant explosions perhaps that material was overhyped.

A Tale of Two Sisters: Lights! Camera! Inaction!

As far as symbolist family sagas involving ghostly multiple personalities go, I suppose A Tale of Two Sisters is one of the less hermetic ones. By the end of this atmospheric mystery (which is another way of saying that it's not that suspenseful), everything except for the creepy critters has pretty much been explained. Frankly, I would have preferred a bit more head scratching. I like the lizard creatures, the child crawling out of the woman's crotch, and the big bloody bag. Who cares what's in it? That's scary! But most of the time Kim Ji-woon's film has you watching anticipatory tableaus cheapened by the nagging question is this happening in the stepmom's head, the daughter's head, or the little sister's head. Why none of the characters chose to bash in the father's head may be the greatest mystery of all. Though he's somewhat peripheral to the action, his very coolness is so inappropriate that I kept hoping he'd turn out to be a modern version of Ted Bundy or Dr. Frankenstein. No such luck. Lots of nice haircuts shot so the face is somewhat obscured like in The Ring. But not nearly as riveting.