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Reviews
Ikinari sensei ni natta boku ga kanojo ni koi wo shita (2016)
Thoroughly enjoyed this movie
Young-Un is a 29 year old young South Korean guy whose life suddenly runs off the tracks. (How is it that folks over there always look ten years younger than their age?) His gold digger girlfriend dumps him, and while he's on a business trip to Japan, his company back in South Korea gets shut down for selling fake ginseng. He's in Japan, freshly unemployed and without a shoulder to cry on. He tries to get hold of his girlfriend in case she might have reconsidered but she texts him back a picture of herself and her new boyfriend embracing. She's done with him for sure.
(A sub-plot of the story is that Young-Un's father runs a big company and he would like his son to follow in his footsteps, but the two are not on the best of terms and Young-Un has chosen to make his own way elsewhere. Was there ever a better name for a son than 'Young-Un'?)
As he hits a low point - unemployed, dumped by his girlfriend, alone, Young-Un meets a man and his wife who run a school teaching foreign languages. They see him blowing up by himself at the park after getting his ex girlfriend's texted picture and they note that he speaks Korean - just what they need for their school. At first, they take him out for supper to console him but after quite a few drinks, Young-Un agrees to teach Korean to the Japanese-speaking students in their school. Reluctantly he agrees (after sobering up the next morning) and begins his new job as a teacher. In the class he teaches, he meets the lovely Sakura, a single Japanese mom who is going through some rough spots in life herself and needs to learn Korean quickly to keep her job.
I don't want to give away too much of the story but both Young-Un and Sakura are well-played and appealing characters you care about. (If I don't care about the characters I won't stay interested in a movie.)
A couple of little Easter Eggs in the story: when the owner of the school and his wife take Young-Un out for supper and drinks, we're treated to his Karaoke performance of a song that shows he actually can sing pretty well - and, later in the film, we get a brief sample of his dance moves. Neither are key to the story really but they're fun to see and add a little dimension to his character. I was not aware when watching the movie that this guy has been a famous member of boy bands and other things in S. Korea - so that is where he gets his 'chops'.
You'll note some interesting cultural differences in Korean movie-making, such as the occasional use of cartoonish sound effects (i.e. 'boinggg!') and the piano background music sounds like something from a silent movie. These don't harm anything though. Anyhow - it's a very enjoyable movie and I'm glad I watched it. I watched this one to the end and never once thought of bailing out.
Edge of Winter (2016)
Could have been so much better than 'meh'
I checked 'contains spoilers' just to be safe.
The acting in this movie was okay but it's a shame the actors had so little to work with. While Percy Hynes White as the younger brother (Caleb) may not be as well known as Tom Holland (who plays his older brother Brad) I actually think he was the better actor of the two in this film. Holland's basic mood and expression for 3/4 of the movie was dour, sullen, and grumpy, while the younger brother character seemed much more like a real kid.
The problem I have with this movie is that the plot just kind of moves along til it ends, with no resolution. The boys drive away in a truck while leaving their emotionally-troubled (and dangerous) father behind in a snowy forest while the cabin they had been staying in burns to the ground. So where will dad go to get out of the weather? Will anyone come back for him? Or does he deserve to die and freeze in the cold snowy forest?
Who knows? We sure don't. The movie ends without any sort of resolution. I would have liked to have SOME outcome to it all, whether I liked it or not. But at the point where that situation could have been handled in another few minutes of story, the closing credits came onto the screen.
Degrassi Junior High (1987)
This is only my first episode of this show...
Hmm, I guess I am not quite as enamored of this show as other reviewers are. Maybe the stories are a bit better than I'm detecting, and hey it takes place barely a dozen years after my own high school days, but one thing about this show creeps me out and I can't get past it.
It's that 'Stephanie Kaye' (played by Nicole Stoffman). She might be a fairly OK actress but WHY did they cast a 15 year old girl (who is supposed to be hot stuff apparently) who has a tooth obviously missing from her upper right side of her mouth? It seems like they purposely photo her from this side over, and over, and over... a 15 year old ought to be past all their baby teeth so for whatever reason that big missing tooth gap is there, they should have addressed that before shooting. I cringe every time they show her face from the right side. There it is, this big hole where a young person with healthy teeth SHOULD have a tooth!
This is the most blatant screw-up I've seen in filming something since the movie from the early 60's where Debbie Reynolds takes in a bunch of homeless kids who have been living in a garden shed... and the oldest boy is wearing a flashy gold ring through most of the film despite being homeless and poor. Can't believe the director didn't say 'CUT' and tell him 'take off the ring, kid'.
Whoever filmed this should have put the whole thing on timeout while they fixed that girl's missing tooth. Geez.
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
Stiff acting but still a great slice of atmosphere - and my favorite quote
I enjoy this movie - it's funny but while the acting is really stiff - very little really comes across as other than line-reading- in everything else the movie rings pretty true. If the actors didn't open their mouths you could get the idea that you were watching film of a few real people. Warren Oates plays his role low-key but he does come across better in the acting department. Frankly I can't quite get why anyone in the movie would have been attracted to that hitchhiker babe; even Oates was having fantasies about settling down with her and building them a house. Why on earth? She seemed like a total downer.
I'll let everyone else provide the balance of the reviews and I'll just add my favorite quote: GTO (Warren Oates) is talking up the two guys with the 55 and their car, with a guy in a small-town diner. There's a bit of antagonism going on. When GTO leaves, the other guy in the diner says, "Sure did talk to ya." GTO says "Sure did see ya." About the coolest two way slam possible....