Insadong Scandal: Beyond the Bechdel Test

The art-forgery caper Insadong Scandal definitely doesn't pass the Bechdel test. Not only are there no conversations between two women that don't have to do with men. There aren't any conversations between two women at all. But the movie does have three fun female characters — a ruthless gallerist (Eom Jeong-hwa), an unrelenting police detective (Hong Soo-hyun) and a leather-clad gangster (Choi Song-hyeon) — that in another movie, would easily have been cast as men. For that I thank writer-director Park Hee-kon. He's at least creating strong roles for women. I'm less appreciative of his writing for men and his casting of the actors who play them.

As the duplicitous master restorer who turns everyone's life upside down, Kim Rae-won looks like he's modeling clothes when he's supposedly copying famous paintings. He's the type of performer who feels most natural when he's singing karaoke and who's most likable when he's getting slugged. Jeong Jin plays an auctioneer with a perm that looks like a joke that can't get a single laugh. As to journeyman actors Kim Byung-ok and Kim Jeong-tae — as sidekicks of good and evil — they're both on automatic pilot. You can bet they spent their time in their trailers reading scripts for other projects with more lines and less cliches. The best of the guys is probably Lim Ha-ryong, a bad-guy-turned-good who has a long monologue on the art of forgery that is definitely the most educational part of the movie.

Not that you'll leave Insadong Scandal truly informed about anything. The one thing I learned after viewing the movie is that Insadong is actually the gallery district of Seoul — the Soho of yore, the Chelsea of now. It in no way felt like a modern day Williamsburg. Eom's high-end wardrobe is a Fashion Week runway of clingy pleasures and there's not a single hipster in sight.

Bloody Tie: When the B in B-Movie Means Best

Dirty cops. Dirty crooks. Dirty government officials. Dirty whores. Dirty family members. Dirty, dirty, dirty. Everyone is dirty in Choi Ho's splendidly sordid, little thriller Bloody Tie. Shee-yit, even the settings are dirty — the tawdry karaoke bars, the barren underground parking lots, the ramshackle, low-rent housing, the waterfront's rotting docks... And amid this miasma, a nastily sycophantic relationship emerges between a not-as-bright-as-he-thinks-he-is police lieutenant (Hwang Jeong-min) and a sometimes-clueless, sometimes-crafty drug dealer (Ryu Seung-beom) on the make. They're both trying to screw each other while promising to help each other so you know they're bound to hurt each other but who knew their pain could be so intoxicating?

With its blaxploitation soundtrack, random hyper-violence, and chopped-up, socked-up camerawork, Bloody Tie feels like a B-movie defiantly harkening back to its low-budget roots; it's a movie that raises its fist for the disillusioned fuck-ups, the lost causes and the stay-true ethic above all. You'll root for the corrupt cop and the messed up meth dealer as well as the frenemy uncle (Kim Hee-ra) and the broken-hearted addict (Chu Ja-hyeon). Each of them is fighting unbeatable odds. Each of them is a loser you'd like to see win. Just once. But they can't all win. So the question is will any of them?

The material is pulpy. The acting, hammy. Both Hwan and Ryu give stares that could burn through steel and erupt in laughs that could get them committed to the psych ward. If you're craving subtler work by either actor, you can find it elsewhere. I recommend that you take a moment and appreciate that they put the realism aside and just acted the HELL out of this script. I named this blog Korean Grindhouse for a reason. I adore movies and performances like this! And you can sense that the performers are enjoying it, too.

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.

Mr. Idol: K-Pop K-Good

How you react to Ra Hee-chan's Mr. Idol will be determined entirely by how you feel about K-pop. For those ready to hear the same sweet sounds of a cotton candy ballad ("Summer Dream") sung over and over to the same synchronized dance moves, great pleasure awaits. For those enervated by prefab harmonizing and mushy lyrics, there's torture ahead. Personally, I couldn't have been happier.

The up-and-coming boy band busting moves and breaking hearts is Mr. Children, a strangely-named quartet that's been reunited (and recast) in the aftermath of their lead singer's lovelorn suicide. The new front man (played by Ji Hyun-woo of the band The Nuts) is more indie grunge than girl-inducing screams but Mr. Children's cougar-manager (Park Yeh-jin) sees potential in him, although you'd never guess that from her poker face.

To get her potential heartthrob and his dancing, rapping band mates where they need to be, the stone-faced overlord puts a demanding training process in place: These boys will need to run, box and most of all master the handstand if they're going to emerge as competitive song stylists in their own right. She's very serious about this last part. Hand stands are not an extra, they're a staple! She's also serious about her drinking, which might explain why she's maxed out her credit cards or forgotten to play the electric bill. Whatever the cause, when the lights go out mid-practice one night, she tells her underlings: "Don't just look at the stars. Be one!" Anyone else sense that this woman has a lyric-writing career ahead of her?

And she shouldn't confine herself to writing songs for Mr. Children either. She could easily craft a solo career for backup dancer Ji-oh (Jay Park) whose Korean-American heritage could make him a trans-Pacific sensation.

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 Brand New Life: Who's Your Daddy

I, for one, felt uncomfortable watching Ounie Lecomte's semi-autobiographical A Brand New Life because far from feeling sympathetic for Jin-hee, the young orphan girl (Kim Sae-ron) who's been abandoned by her father (Sol Kyung-gu), I felt sorry for the parents that would eventually adopt her. I got that this kid is depressed because she's been ditched and that she's acting out when she throws her food on the floor or rips apart another girl's doll but since she a bit off-kilter even before daddy dumps her at the church-run "child placement agency," I couldn't help but think she was in need of intensive therapy more than a new family.

Why doesn't the doctor (Mun Seong-kun) at the institution do more one-on-one sessions with Jin-hee before he puts her on a plane to Paris? And why wouldn't he give a ticket abroad to one of Jin-hee's infinitely less morose playmates when an opening for adoption came up? Is Lecomte exposing the export of damaged Korean children abroad? Or is she of the camp that believes that Korean orphanages have become baby catalogues for Westerners? Is the zany, Anglo puppeteer who performs half in drag part of an insidious plot to convince young Korean children that white folk are the funniest people around?

I'm guessing Lecomte sees her protagonist'a fate as Tragic with a capital "T." Disagreeing with her feels mean-spirited and uncharitable. But it's also hard to rally around a self-pity party, even if the writer-director's complaints are valid. And maybe my heart would've gone out to Jin-hee had a different young actress been cast in the role. Kim feels incredibly self-conscious and affected. Her fish-eyed stares feel false and the final freeze frame, a cheap reference to The 400 Blows , lands with all the force of a singular thud. I'm not writing off Kim, mind you. Her subsequent film The Man From Nowhere was marvelous. Better luck next time as they say.

Rough Cut: Fighting Realism

Today. Here in my apartment. In Brooklyn. The year 2015. I wonder... Is the general consensus that the only life worth living is the one that's broadcast to the world? Are we all secretly aspiring to Kardashian levels of fame? Is it only through the media -- be it the web or TV -- that we prove ourselves as successful individuals — whatever "success" means — and should we write off the rest of the populace as "extras" or raw material to be converted into soylent green?

Directed by Jang Hun from a stinging screenplay by that great gadfly Kim Ki-duk, Rough Cut prompts these questions and more as it looks at the madness that follows when an action star (Kang Ji-hwan) with entitlement issues enlists a fan who's also a mobster (So Ji-seob) to be his costar because no one else will. As quickly as you can sign a contract in blood, the line between reality and fantasy is destroyed: The gangster has agreed with one stipulation; all fight scenes must be for real. Isn't acting "being," after all? Radiating jock cockiness and pretty boy conceit, So is good at both "real fake" (see how he treats his girlfriend) and "fake real" (watch the scene where he gets repeatedly slapped...if you can). Clearly, his mastery of dissembling has made him a superstar and a total louse. Now that attitude is going to earn him some bruises.

Kang, for his part, just feels real. And because of that, more sympathetic. Underplaying the hell out of everything, Kang's conflicted crook seduces quietly. So what if he's amoral, violent, desperate, lost. At least he's facing life head on without self-deception. Or is he? After all, Kang's gangster can't heed the advice he's doled out to Jo's prima donna. He too is playing to the camera and looking for validation from the big screen.

Is any actor really real when being real is just an act? And, in the world of Rough Cut, are you looking for honesty or just another sensational fight scene? (The slugfest in the mud near the end is FANTASTIC!) For that matter, why do the fight scenes, despite being staged, feel somehow more intensely true? Do acts of brutality register more viscerally because they're actions, not words? Is crime more honest than art? Is everything ultimately a sham?

There's a great line by the movie-within-a-movie's ingenue (Song Soo-hyun) who tells her new leading man something to the effect of "I thought I was good at understanding all types of people when I was young. But I've lost confidence as I've gotten older." In a society in which everyone is playing a public version of themselves, the ability to actually know anyone becomes seriously impaired. Egads, has our society degenerated into a pack of self-deluding liars? And is mine sympathetic?