283. Meloholic 멜로홀릭 (2017) Korean

Jung Yoon Ho, Kyung Soo Jin, Choi Dae Chul

Drama Rating: 4/10     Neck Score: A+

This is one of those dramas that I'm not sure why I actually watched, except for Yoon Ho. The things I do for my idol boys, tsk tsk tsk. This show was outright embarrassing to watch at times. Especially the first half of the show which was full of needless sexy time. I swear Choi Dae Chul's character was there just to hook up with women. That whole Clara the sexy lunch lady thing was ridiculous. It was like three different dramas rolled into one. One drama about the main couple, a boy with powers and a girl with a split personality, one was about a serial killer, and one was about Choi Dae Chul getting some. Yeah, pretty ridiculous. Then there were the college friends who were there for the first half of the drama, but we forgot they existed by the ending of it. Basically it was a mess and all over the place. Whew.

Some of those plots I listed above were fun. I actually really enjoyed watching Kyung Soo Jin play multiple personalities. She did it really well. I liked both of her characters, and I thought that they handled it very well. It was pretty refreshing to see the girl get to be the one with the DID. Of course Yoon Ho also had his powers which allowed him to read girl's minds. I did appreciate that that only gave him confidence, but that he was still a huge nerd on the inside. That was adorable. I loved that when it came right down to it, it was about a pair of nerds falling in love, who happened to have confident alter egos that came through special circumstances, such as a mental disorder or random powers.

The psychopath plot line was ridiculous. Especially the ending of it. It was all over the place and especially draggy at the ending. It also felt really slap dash, like they were just throwing everything together last minute. This is a prime example of all the currently popular tropes, as well as past tropes, thrown together into one ridiculous romcom, which has too much sexy time. I'm not sure who they were trying to appeal to there with all the boob shots. No more rice scooping demos, Clara, please! They had the DID, which was popular a couple years back, the psychopath in the romcom, which was last year's trope, and they even had to throw amnesia in there right at the end. Wonderful! Just what we always wanted (gagging noises)! So yeah, it was pretty dumb, and I'm embarrassed that Yoon Ho was able to make me watch it, but sometimes you gotta watch bad dramas and laugh, and even if it was cheesy beyond all reason, Yoon Ho was cute and Soo Jin was awesome. I liked that OTP. So the result is embarrassed but not regretful.

Korean Movie Night: One Line 원라인 (2017) Korean

Im Siwan, Jin Goo, Park Byung Eun, Lee Dong Hwi, Kim Sun Young

Movie rating: 7/10     Neck score: A

We had another Korean Movie Night this last weekend to, it was part of our end of the Olympics party. Since we had some new viewers who maybe had never seen much before, we tried to pick one for a more general audience, so we ended up with One Line, a classic conman heist type movie. It's very Italian Job in spots, but all heist movies are fundamentally the same. This one actually had a lot of differences plot-wise. At least at the start.

We have Jin Goo who is a conman who helps people get loans- loan fraud. However he has principles, and he stays away from "dirty loans." He runs into Siwan, a college student and raw conman talent. He gets scouted and quickly climbs up the ladder. However, there is no trust and loyalty among conmen, and things get a bit crazy in the back stabbing department.

Korean Movie Night: Friend 2 친구 2 (2013) Korean

Yu Oh Seong, Kim Woo Bin, Joo Jin Mo, Jung Ho Bin

Movie rating: 6/10     Neck score: A

The last movie during our marathon weekend was Chingu 2. Compared to Chingu, it was a lot easier to follow in the sense of it being more modern and closer to what we were used to, but Chingu was a much better movie. While Chingu 1 was about friendship, this one was just a gangster movie. It only had a few actor from the original, the gangster Joon Suk (Yu Oh Seong) and his gang member Eun Ki, who has progressed in the gang since getting out of prison, and everyone else was just added to this plot. This leaves it feeling a lot more shallow, since there is less depth of character and a lot less emotion to it. Also, we miss the rich character development. The story also jumps around a lot as it is telling not only the story of the present, but also a year or so ago, the original movie timeline, and the past of Joon Suk's father, who started the gang back in the 1960s. All that jumping around makes it a bit confusing at times.

Korean Movie Night: Friend 친구 (2001) Korean

Yu Oh Seong, Jang Dong Gun, Seo Tae Hwa, Jung Woon Taek

Movie rating: 7/10     Neck score: A

I don't really remember what sparked my desire to watch Chingu, but it was probably my obsession for Jang Dong Gun after watching A Gentleman's Dignity. But it became a thing where my brother and I would say that we were going to watch Chingu, and then put it off because we knew it had a sad ending where Jang Dong Gun dies. Spoilers! Well if you had heard anything at all about Chingu 2 you would just already know it. So we determined that this president's day weekend, we would have a Chingu Marathon. So we did. We went all out and ordered Korean food at this new place in our town that actually delivers and has the most delicious fried garlic chicken. It was so good! Then we watched and ate and it was fun.

Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior องค์บาก (2003) Thai

Tony Jaa, Petchtai Wongkamlao, Pumwaree Yodkamol, Chattapong Pantana-Angkul

Movie rating: 8/10     Neck score: A

I don't remember why I watched Ong Bak 2 before the first one, but I think it had something to do with my little brother thinking the first one might be too violent for me... and then we watched Ahjussi together, haha. I actually liked Ong Bak better because it was easier to follow and had some really great fight scenes. It is about a righteous village dude who goes to Bangkok to get the head of Ong Bak, the village's Buddha statue, back after it gets stolen by some thug from a gang. All he wants is Ong Bak's head, but naturally it becomes something much bigger than that, requiring him to use his awesome Muay Thai skills to defeat all the gang members.

293. Just Between Lovers 그냥 사랑하는 사이 (2017) Korean

Lee Joon Ho, Won Jin Ah, Lee Ki Woo, Kang Han Na

Drama Rating: 8/10     Neck Score: A+

I wasn't going to watch this at first, but I kept seeing spoilers that made me want to watch it. Plus, I wanted to see Joon Ho act more, because he really impressed me in Chief Kim. It was definitely worth it. I burned through the whole show in about a week. But the one thing that you have to remember before starting this show is that it is a melodrama. Straight up tragedy, really. It is about a bunch of people whose lives were ruined because of a mall collapse back in 2005.  You know you are getting old when the past scenes in a drama were after you'd already started college. All of our leads have a traumatic past because of this event, some of them have it worse than others because they were trapped in the mall and almost died.

I do like the character development of most people. I like how we slowly started learning things about what happened in the past. It unfolded nicely and helped the character development. I loved how no one was really a horrible person, and even that gae baby had a story and reasons, even though I still called him "gae baby" cause he deserves it. The person whose character got the least development was Lee Ki Woo, who had a lame second male lead plot development, while the second female lead was bae.

I thought that Won Jin Ah did a great job.  Joon Ho was decent too. They definitely kept me coming back even when I thought it was going to be too hard or dramatic. It was a bit of both, but it was also enjoyable and worth it. I did get a bit mad about how the previews strung me along making me keep watching as they lied about what episode the cute scenes were actually going to be in. I had to wait like three episodes for that back hug scene, thanks a lot.

287. Mad Dog 매드독 (2017) Korean

Yoo Ji Tae, Woo Do Hwan, Ryu Hwa Young, Jo Jae Yun, Kim Hye Seong, Choi Won Young

Drama Rating: 6/10     Neck Score: A++

I think that this one was more about who was in it than the actual plot, or quality of the show.  Lizabreff and I already had noona crushes on Woo Do Hwan, and Curdy is in love with Yoo Ji Tae, plus it's a con man mystery plot, which is also her favorite, and I will watch anything for Choi Won Young, so we had to watch it.  However, it wasn't necessarily amazing, but the characters at least were very compelling.  The villains were all over the top bad.  Like all of them.  They would all take turns trying to out do each other, or take turns who was going to be the "good" bad guy, or the person who was the most humane and decent at the time.  It got annoying how overly powerful all the villains were, backstabbing and ridiculously evil.  Wow, no wonder everyone would pause to over react to the next evil plot, or passionately scream at how evil their deeds were.  It was like crazy cheesy at times, but it was also good.  I loved it, even when the dramatic reactions made me laugh.