Monday, November 27, 2017

Korean Movie Night: The Unjust 부당거래 (2010) Korean

Hwang Jung Min, Ryoo Seung Bum, Yu Hae Jin, Ma Dong Seok, Cheon Ho Jin

Movie rating: 7/10      Neck score: A

I'll admit, I 100% watched this because of Hwang Jung Min and Ryoo Seung Bum.  Also a little bit for the premise.  I like twisted, gritty crime movies.  I'm not sure that by little brother liked it as much as me, but he didn't hate it either.  It's hard to like it 100% though, because it's about a bunch of bad guys.  Literally.  We have a cop who is coerced into being corrupt, part blackmail and part promise of promotion, who joins forces with a gangster, and a prosecutor who is all about bribes and saving face.  Their paths get twisted as the prosecutor accepts bribes from the business man the cop was trying to catch.  The cop, who is always passed up for promotions because he is not a police academy graduate, is offered a promotion deal if he frames someone for an unsolved serial murder case to make the police look good.  He does so with the help of a gangster, who is a direct rival of the bribing business man.  The prosecutor is on the case of the framed man, but with the meddling gangster getting after the briber, it turns into a messy power play.  The cop gets into more dirty water than he can handle, and we end up not knowing who to root for, if anyone.  The cop was being blackmailed to do it, but he ended up doing some pretty bad stuff, while the prosecutor only accepted bribes and let people go (which is bad enough), but was wholly unrepentant and selfish about it.  It it literally about a bunch of really unjust law people.  It has some harsh language and some violence, but really it wasn't too bad.  I guess the language might push it to a harsher rating, but I'm glad I'm not in charge of deciding that.  It was a good movie, but not one that leaves you feeling happy or even satisfied.  Maybe a little pissed or disgusted though.

Friday, November 24, 2017

282. Go Back Couple 고백부부 (2017) Korean

Jang Na Ra, Son Ho Jun, Heo Jeong Min, Han Bo Reum, Chang Ki Yong, Ko Bo Gyeol

Drama Rating: 8/10     Neck Score: A+

I was expecting more humor with this, with everything the ahjussi/ajhumma back in a 20 year old's body plot could bring.  I was expecting all the pain and tears that this would bring.  Seriously, every time they would do the happy family/cute baby montage with their kid Seo Jin, I would lose it.  So would they.  I'd lose it with the mom stuff too.  This was a beautiful show about family and making your marriage work.  It was less about the romance because of that.  Our couple was already in love, we were just watching them realize what it was that was keeping them from that.

Before I started this, I heard a bunch of people who said they hated Son Ho Jun's character.  I may be biased, but I never saw that.  Yeah, he was acting less smart at times.  They were a couple who were pretty much divorced, you can't expect either of them to be not petty at first when given this opportunity.  But this is a show about people who made less good choices getting a second chance so they could make the right choice.  It was about words too long unsaid, or words that should have never been said.  It was about healing and growing.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

281. While You Were Sleeping 당신이 잠든 사이에 (2017) Korean

Lee Jong Suk, Bae Suzy, Lee Sang Yeob, Ko Sung Hee, Jung Hae In

Drama Rating: 7/10     Neck Score: A+


I went into this one with less expectations, because I haven't been super impressed with Suzy in the past, and I was not sold on the plot.  Still, I kept hearing good things, and I will pretty much watch anything for Lee Jong Suk, so I started it.  That probably helped me love it way more than if I had gone in with way high expectations.  I would still have liked it regardless though.  I loved that everyone has dreams, and not just Suzy.  It gave it a lot more of a dynamic.  I loved how it brought up the question of fate and can we change the future, and what consequences of that change are, good or bad.  I really loved how the romance developed and progressed as well.  It seemed a bit more organic than expected for a couple who had dreams about each other.  Especially when they would have a dream where they would progress faster, and they would not, because they would get scared or something.  It was great.  I loved the bromances, all the bromances.  The literal brothers, the cop and prosecutor, the senior and junior prosecutors.  I was actually super impressed in the lack of ridiculous love triangles.  Yeah, we did have a bitty one with Woo Tak, which was cute and sad, but I loved the friendship between all three of them more, since it stayed good.  But what I especially appreciated was how the "2nd female lead" wasn't really a thing.  She was never a thing in the whole triangle business.  I really didn't want a bitca in the mix, and she wasn't ever a problem.  It was actually kind of funny how petty and vain she was.  Then there was how the real second male lead was the bad guy, who I called Handsome Sseuregi/saekki, because Lee Sang Yeob is a very handsome man, but his character was the worst.  In fact, every time Lizabreff came in while I was watching she'd be like: "Who dat?" and I would say: "A gae saekki."  "But he's so handsome!"  "Yes, yes he is."  Plus he had the best clothes.  He did a really good job of being bad, but justifying himself thinking he was ok, but secretly loathing himself.  He was a good, complicated bad guy.  So all around I have nothing but good things to say.  I really enjoyed it, and I thought it stayed pretty consistently good too, although I'm not saying it didn't have issues and things it could have done better, it did, but it was still good and extremely watchable.

Monday, November 20, 2017

Korean Movie Night: Flu 감기 (2013) Korean

Jang Hyuk, Soo Ae, Park Min Ha, Yu Hae Jin, Ma Dong Seok, Lee Hee Joon

Movie rating: 8/10     Neck score: A

This one came highly recommended by my little brother, who had previously watched it.  He said he got so into it that he was jumping up and down and shouting at the screen, which is common practice for me while watching movies and dramas, but he doesn't typically do.  He totally has mad respect for Jang Hyuk now.  He loved the chemistry between the leads.  He really had been looking forward to showing us this movie, so we decide to have a movie night and watch it.  The problem is, if it made him shout and scream, who does it, what would it do to us, who always shout and scream.  Haha.  He was worried we didn't like it, but we did.  I loved it, but that didn't mean that I hated what was going on during some parts.

It's very shocking on the visuals, and it tries to shock you.  There are some moments that are just gross and make you feel a bit sick, physically and morally/emotionally.  We have a flu virus that is passed on airborne and there is a really gross coughing montage that was designed to make you paranoid and wear a mask always.  Then there was "The Claw" scene that was pure shock factor that was meant to horrify.  It did that well.  There were many times when we were screaming so loud and dramatically that he was worried that we hated the show.  But it was so intense!  Especially where cute little girls are concerned!  Plus medical thrillers about viruses are crazy, with the panic and selfishness.  There were so many evil, selfish idiots who were basically villians, plus mass panic.  It's just a show where the stakes are high and you get so into it that you are yelling at the bad guys and ferociously cheering the heros.  It's VERY engaging and both fun and exhaustin to watch. I do recommend it, especially of you love Jang Hyuk and/or Soo Ae.  They are both great in it.

Friday, November 10, 2017

272. Attention, Love 稍息立正我愛你 (2017) Taiwanese

Joanne Tseng, Prince Chiu, Kuo Shu Yao, Riley Wang

Drama Rating: 6/10     Neck Score: A+

I both loved and hated this one, because it was cute and fun, and it also drove me nuts.  How many excuses can they give to make a couple clearly in love not be together?  That is basically the plot of the show, a twist on Mischievous Kiss, really.  Two kids who were basically betrothed at birth meet again in high school and fall in love, then anything that could possibly keep them apart keeps them apart.  Like he's running away from his feelings the whole time because it was hard enough for him to just accept her as his best friend and family, so taking it to the next level was too much.  Then everything getting in the way in between, it was pretty unreal.  But most of the characters were so lovable that it was fine wading through all the frustrating "you like each other, why aren't you together yet?" if you just sat back and enjoyed the ride.  Mind you, for me that was difficult to do, but it made it easier.  It also had a trolling habit of making you think things were going to be much more extreme.  Like everything will be ruined next week, or they're going to finally get together, or he's going to be even more of a psychopath, etc.  None of it ever really happened, which was part good and part frustrating.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Women Who Make Me Watch Dramas Against My Will: Goddess Edition

Time for another collection of lovely ladies.  This time I grouped them by the category "Goddess."  You know when your actress just has it all and they are so awesome that this might be the only appropriate way to refer to them?  They are gorgeous, great at acting, and full of personality.  I could probably put all my ladies on this list, but the purpose of these groups was to create decent sized posts.


These are the women who the first thing you think of when trying to describe them is: She's a freaking goddess.  Hashtag woman crush for days.

Monday, November 6, 2017

Korean Movie Night: The Host 괴물 (2006) Korean

Song Kang Ho, Byun Hee Bong, Park Hae Il, Bae Doona, Go Ah Sung

Movie rating: 7/10     Neck score: A

We watched this one because besides being famous, it was the week of Halloween and we wanted to watch a scary movie... this movie is not scary.  I would not count it as horror, more of just a monster movie- a baby on the scale of Gojira (Godzilla), but the same kind.  In fact, when I found out that it was based on a real life event, when a Korean mortician working for the U.S. military dumped a bunch of formaldehyde down the drain and substantially into the Han River.  This turns it, like Gojira , into an anti-American film, as it focuses more on the effects of American involvement and attitude.  It is a political statement, not a horror movie.  I would even say that the real monsters in the movie are not the actual monster, but the U.S. Military and how they handled the situation.  The fact that they spread a mass virus hysteria because one of their soldiers died fighting the monster, while off duty, and that they would willfully turn Korean citizens into lab rats to cover their tracks just reinforces the theory.  Then there is the obvious stab with the thinly veiled reference to Agent Orange, renamed Agent Yellow, as the bio weapon used to combat the creature.

The monster itself is just not scary because this movie is old and I was super underwhelmed at the CGI.  It was meant to look like a giant mutated salamander or some other kind of amphibian, and it actually made me giggle when it first came out and went on a rampage.  But this was 2006, so try not to judge it too harshly.  I feel like the CGI budget was used up on the scenes where the monster would swing on the bridges in the sewers to travel, and climb up the the walls down to the pit where it would spit out it's victims.  It had moments of coolness, but was still an early example of CGI monsters at best... or maybe worst.

Friday, November 3, 2017

Kpop Running Playlist

About a year ago I decided I hated that I sucked at running.  I didn't want running to defeat me.  So I started training for a 5k, and then later a 10k, and then I started slacking so I'm back at the 5k level... but that's ok.  I'm still doing it.  And one of the reasons that I love it now is because I've got a pretty sweet Kpop Running Playlist.  When I'm less motivated to go, I just think of the lovely music I get to listen to, and that helps motivate me.


So does the lovely fall weather that we have right now, and the early summer mornings, and the start of spring... I am a sissy, though, and I don't run outside after Christmas.... It just gets too cold.