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mauryvan13
Reviews
Ohayô (1959)
A wet fart of a movie
This is my second Ozu movie. After having seen An Autumn Afternoon I was drawn in by his minimalism and simplicity telling stories of ordinary people.
But in no way shape or form is this a good movie. It's boring, tedious, tells no story that has any meaning, other than even in the 1950s Japanese kids were turning into as big a brats as American baby boomers.
Just because a restaurant has a great chef doesn't mean every dish tastes good, especially when it's all about technique and nothing else. The same applies for Cinema and auteurs.
I read that Ozu called this a slapstick comedy. Uh huh - I bet he was just a barrel of laughs at parties. He can't do comedy. He can bea little humorous, but being funny is hard.
I'll watch the other movies and I think I'll probably enjoy them although Filming every shot from the floor at the end of a hallway becomes less innovative after 30 films. It must've taken him all of six days to film his movies.
I do find that the musical score sounds a lot like Jacques Tati or other European films from the 1950s. That bouncy little European style seems to be all the rage in France and Italy and even Japan postwar.
Welkeomtu Samdal-ri (2023)
Yet another poorly written Kdrama
I agree with many of the reviewers who gave this a lower rating. We watch it for the stars and are then are disappointed when we hang on for episode after episode hoping it will payoff but it never does.
Yes it looks like Hometown Cha Cha Cha - and most of us tuned in because we loved Shin Hye-sun in Mr. Queen (haven't watched 19th LIfe yet). The ML Ji Chang-wook, is a boy-next-door type who I can't get too excited about - he's just kinda 'meh' but that's OK. (I hear they're dating in real life - that's neat, we always like it when our Kdrama couples become a real couple - we like to forget they're acting.
But their characters are so poorly written, especially Hye-sun's, that this really isn't very good. I know with romantic comedies you can't be hyper realistic, but at least can give not only the leads, but the supporting cast some depth. Have them behave more or less like real humans and not just a two-dimensional caricature. Maybe they have to act too cute sometimes (which we like) but at least give them logical reasons for their actions. Don't have them behave in a way that no one else ever would.
As others have already stated Cho Sam-dal does not behave consistently and only does what the immediate scene needs her to do whether it's logical and real or not. Her two sisters are real people and their stories are infinitely more interesting. Although to be fair, the older sister would never fall in love with the spineless buffoon played by Yang Kyun-won from Crash Landing and Vincenzo. You could have made him a real person and not just a clown.
As some reviewers wrote, Yong-pil's father is awful. No reason is given why he blames Sam-dal's mother for the death of his wife. Given what we know about them, their is no way his grief could turn into this kind of hatred that lasts twenty years.
I do disagree with those who liked the character of Sam-dal's mother. I did not like her one bit. First of all she is played by Kim Mi-Kyung who has literally played one of the lead's mother in 75% of Kdramas for the past 10 years. It's almost comical. Give someone else a job for crying out loud. And her character is always crochety and often, especially in this case, a real bully. She stubbornly refuses to take care of herself without considering how devastated her family would be if she wasn't there to yell and hit them over and over.
The rest of the cast are not developed at all - even Mr. Lonely Heart - the guy in the gang who longs for Sam-dal but has absolutely no chance of being with her - another guy who should have moved on.
Other than the sisters there are only two other positives: 1) they didn't throw in a serial killer like everyone else does 2) it wasn't as bad as My Demon - which is a much more poorly written show than this, if you can believe it.
Zui Dong Ting De Shi (2019)
2 Zhao Lusi reviews in one
I'm going to do something different and review 2 of the first 3 Cdramas I have ever watched. Both these starred Zhao Lusi. I saw a snippet of Gen Z on YouTube, in which she also stars, so I looked her up and found #HiddenLove and #IHearYou on Netflix.
I started with Hidden Love and could not have been more enthralled. As fans of Cdramas probably know aleady, ZL is probably the cutest thing you can kind find on Netflix:) and that's saying something. I think she was about 24/25 in real life, playing first a 16 then a 19-year-old, which she does easily.
And setting aside the 16y year-old having a crush on a 21 year-old slight uncomfortable thing, this is the cutest story of a beautiful young woman and her crush and then love on a friend of her brother, who is the nicest, sweetest, kindness, handsomest boy/young man in the world (her crush not her brother). It was sweet and beautifully done for the reasons others have outlined - including the relationship between ZL and her big brother. The supporting cast was also excellent.
And perhaps, like other viewers, I came to this after becoming addicted to Kdramas over the COVID and have watched umpteen of them. To get a sense of my basic taste, I like the sweeter romantic comedies, but the two best I have ever seen so far are My Mister and My Liberation Notes. And I'd like to write about the differences that you notice between Cdramas and Kdramas, which you all can see. But I will do that at a later time. The one thing Cdramas do that I like is that they do not feel the need to insert a serial killer into a sweet romantic comedy.
But as for Hidden Love, I love it for the same reasons other mention, but do give it a 9 instead of 10, because just as someone noted, it does drag and has too many episodes. After watching only 3 Cdramas I can universally proclaim that you can always skip episodes 11-15 in Cdramas and you won't miss a thing. It's all just an unnecessarily long build up to the first declaration of love by ML and FL. If there's something you feel like you're missing you can hop back and find out after that fact.
Now on to ZL's second title, I Hear You. In this she was 19 playing a 24 year-old. And it showed both physically and in her acting ability. The writing was not as good and paired her with a handsome male lead, who is only 2 years older in real life, but seemed 10 years older, because he played that type of male lead you see who is a complete introvert and callous, who is swayed by the sweetness and genuiness of the FL and they fall in love.
But the ML's character was poorly developed - there is no way a guy like him could have come from two beautiful outgoing parents like he has, and all these beautiful women throw themselves at him even though he's the world's biggest jerk. You can see he has a good heart, but there's no reason for him to act the way he does. And there was no reason for him to get involved in the reality show which is where he meets the FL played by ZL.
But I stayed with it because I like ZL, and the other actors were good (I Iiked ZL's friend but did not like her friend's initial love interest nor her sudden choice of husband.). And like I mentioned earlier, I skipped complete sections with the 2nd FL and the Italian guy because who cares. This was all the fault of the writers. And the last 10 minutes were probably the worst way to end a series that I've ever seen.
But I hope Gen Z gets out there someplace where I can watch it, because it looked good.
PS The other Cdrama I've watched is Put Your Head on My Shoulder which I give a 10. Thanks for reading.
Mai Demon (2023)
Worn out plot
After four episodes, I'm surprised very many people are hanging with this Kdrama. Everything in it has been done to death.
1. Orphaned (female) lead. South Korea must lead the world in both (loving) parents dying in a tragic accident while their children are still young.
2. Chaebol adopts, orphan, which evidently happens to orphans in Korea almost as often as parents get killed in a car crash.
3. Chaebol family is horrible.
4. There's a demon. Happens all the time. The demon usually either has a boss who tells him/her the rules of being a demon, or in this case, has an instruction manual.
5. There's a psycho killer. Because every romantic comedy needs a psycho killer. But the psycho killer only makes random appearances as necessary to create opportunities for the male lead to rescue the female lead.
6. Orphan becomes the only nice person in the chaebol family and is incredibly successful.
7. executives in the orphan's company are a bunch of silly idiots. Because evidently it's very common to have a brilliant CEO supported by dimwits who are department managers or vice presidents. As successful as she is, I guess she wasn't able to hire all the brilliant graduates of Seoul National University.
8. Demon has silly sidekicks too.
9. The demon i.e. Male lead is a jerk at first but who wants to bet that he's going to learn something from the human and what do you think is gonna happen in the end?
We all know where this is going we all know where this has been. I assume that Kim yoo-jung will be able to star in K dramas for another 20 years. She deserves better than this.
The ratings in Korea have been low. I don't know why this has been receiving the high IMDB reviews that it has.
Turn this off and watch Because This is My First Life again.
Doona! (2023)
This one's a big fat no.
I'm going to rush to judgment here, I have seen episode one and 10 minutes of episode two can't figure out why anyone would want to watch anymore of it.
So Bae Suzy is a former K-pop idol who I'm sure has some used and abused backstory that we're going to find out over the course of the show, and for some unknown reason she's living in the first floor of fairly rundown student housing with the male cast of Hello My Twenties living above her.
Our semi handsome, and naturally, super sweet male lead appears as a new roommate, and for some incredibly unknown reason, she becomes completely over the top infatuated with him. Oh and by the way, even though she is outside smoking cigarettes 15 times a day, nobody recognizes that it's a superstar sitting outside smoking cigarettes 15 times a day. Yeah right. If IU had jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap on and was sitting outside, smoking cigarettes 15 times a day people would catch on that it's IU. And if Bae Suzy was sitting outside, smoking cigarettes 15 times a day somebody with almost immediately say hey, that's Bae Suzy. But nobody gets it. Oh, and even though he has several male roommates, we don't see them ever for the rest of the episode.
And that's it. Almost all kdramas starts a little slow as they set the stage. But there is no reason to continue to watch this that I can think of even though I like Bae Suzy.
Hibhage (2023)
Absolute garbage.
Do not watch this, if you are fans of Han Ji-min and Lee Min-ki. To think that their previous credits were Our Blues and My Liberation Notes respectively leaves me dumbfounded. How could they have chosen to do this piece of filth.
When you get to the final two or three episodes, when it turns into just murder, torture, terror, and blood you realize you have spent weeks wasting your time.
But it's not just that, that makes this garbage. We all realize that the major plot device, psychic powers by touching peoples butts,was ridiculous, but we were willing to put up with it because we love the two main leads, and also some of the supporting actors.
But it gradually went from goofy comedy to just bloody crime garbage.
There was absolutely no character development of anyone not the leads, the second leads, the supporting characters, nothing. No reason was given for why the female leads grandfather really hated her guts her whole life. The sub plot of the female leads aunt and the police detective started cute and then completely disappeared as did the sub plot of the female leads quirky, best friend and the goofy schoolteacher, which completely disappeared. No character development for the second lead.
This was written by an absolute amateur. It's one thing to keep your career moving by continuing to do K dramas that are light and frivolous but to do something this stupid and rotten speaks very poorly of two of my absolute most favorite actors in K drama. The only reason it could've gotten good ratings, which it did in Korea, was because of these two stars. If the two leads were relative nobodies, nobody would've watched this.
I would think that many of the people who thought this was a 10 when it started now realize it was a zero.
Seulgiroun Euisasaenghal (2020)
Too repetitive. Too perfect.
I originally liked the drama very much but as it began to move into season two it became so repetitive and the doctors continued to be so perfect that it brought down my rating by at least two points.
The acting is top notch, and there are a myriad of characters outside of the main five doctors. Many are recognizable faces, and it's fun to see them allowed to have space to do their thing. Some fairly famous faces like the couple from Reply 1988. Cha Chung-hwa, who, counting Hometown cha-cha cha has now lost two young daughters in the hospital. Bad luck that.
But as one reviewer said earlier, the doctors are perfect. They never make a mistake. Several of them are almost Saint-like with a jester thrown in.
And their interaction with their patients becomes exactly the same only a short way into season 1 ie how many liver transplants can one guy do? Does everyone in Korea need a new liver? The heart surgeon does a heart transplant over and over and over. The brain surgeon is the best brain surgeon in the world. The pediatric specialist is a Buddha. And the obstetrician saves baby after baby - almost. They do this once per episode each and it's always the same just different faces on the patient and family. And by the way, all the patients are relatively young. But most hospitals are filled with the elderly, not the young. I also got a kick out of whenever they had a baby patient. It was always a very lifelike doll. Which I can understand, but still kind of funny anyway.
I also "love" their intro with what I assume is CGI. Because I have been to major hospitals in Chicago, and they never looked like O'Hare at Christmas. With literally hundreds of people scurrying about. Patients stay in their rooms. Doctors and nurses stay in their offices and their workstations or the patients rooms, and visitors stay in the waiting area or the patients rooms. They don't scurry about like Costco before the Fourth of July. But maybe Korea is different because again, half the population is evidently getting a liver transplant.
I love K dramas and I've seen more than my fair share like most of you I'm sure. But since I'm not from Korea, I don't know the music and completely skipped every song at the end of the episode because I have no interest in watching them fake play and fake sing a song I'm not familiar with. Although the way they inter cut pieces of the story at the end with the song, is a nice touch.
So this was a good piece of work, but I don't think it deserved the super high ratings that people give it that put it up there with the best of K drama. By the 15th episode, I was just rushing through to see how the final romantic relationships would play out so that my heart would be happy at the end. As I said, I love the actors but the story just got too repetitive and boring.