Korean Movie Night: Life Risking Romance 목숨 건 연애 (2016) Korean

Ha Ji Won, Chun Jung Myung, Chen Bolin

Movie rating: 5/10      Neck score: A

CAMPY!!! We were looking for a comedy, but we might have picked the campiest one of our selection. Not that the others might not have been any good either. But in my experience, Korean movies in the romantic comedy genre tend to be on the campy side. Anyway, it was also really fun and a bit of a troll. It was about a mystery writer in a slump (Ha Ji Won) whose imagination keeps her creating situations where she's making false calls to 911, etc. She's constantly bailed out by her best friend who is a cop (Chun Jung Myung). But that same imagination also connects her to the mysterious and handsome man who just moved in upstairs (Chen Bolin).

Maybe another reason we thought the show was extra campy was because it was probably 75% in English, because Chen Bolin was playing a Chinese American FBI analyst. Not that he and Ha Ji Won weren't doing a very good job acting in English, but it was still not natural sounding, since it they were speaking slowly and annunciating everything to make sure they pronounced everything correctly and clearly, etc. Also, the English dialog was weird sounding because it wasn't written by a native speaker either, just to add to the campiness.

But since this is a rom-com mystery thriller, it definitely had its share of twists, but rather than being unpredictable, they trolled us all the time, so that we weren't sure who the murderer was, because they kept trolling us by making it "possible" to be anyone, even if it wasn't logically possible. There was also the trolling of us not knowing what was her imagination vs reality, because she was constantly daydreaming and letting her imagination run wild.

But for all that, it was still really funny, especially with a bulk of the comedic relief being handled by Oh Jung Sae and Kim Won Hae, who are pretty genius in that department. In fact, I absolutely loved Oh Jung Sae's character so much, he might have saved the show completely for me. I loved him and his little ponytails. So, no regrets, but yes, it was bad. The last impressions as it ended were: what the heck 😂. But really, I think that's what they were going for, so.... good job?

Korean Movie Night: Little Forest 리틀 포레스트 (2018) Korean

Kim Tae Ri, Ryu Jun Yeol, Moon So Ri, Jin Ki Joo

Movie rating: 8/10      Neck score: A

An art house film filled with food. I was expecting it to be artsy, but I wasn't expecting it to be 75% her cooking food from scratch as a coping mechanism. Food prep as therapy taken to a whole new level, and I loved it. It made me want to move out to the middle of nowhere and just live off the land like that too. It is a way to go back to her roots and find comfort in the "little forest" that her mother had left for her in her hometown. But it did make me very hungry. I wanted to eat all the food.

Everyone did a really good job. Especially in the art house movies, where there is very little dialog and little to no background music, and it is essentially showing and not telling to the extreme, this is very important. I could tell they were friends from childhood, and they had their own struggles, and it was beautiful.

As confirmed members of team Ryu Jun Yeol, we were bound to love it no matter what, but it was also just really good. It was slow moving and quiet, but we were never bored. It was so visually appealing, it kept us interested the whole time. We were curious about each food she made, and learned more about her and what she was dealing with with each recipe. It was wholesome and comforting. It wasn't dramatic or even full of conflict. It was just healing- and lots of it. It was beautiful. Now I'm hungry again. I'm going to look up those recipes.