Help me pick my next free DVD

[divemaster13]

You've got some wonderful stuff on the way. Even what I would call stinkers like Bittersweet Life and I Saw the Devil, will be fun and good to watch. A lot of folks liked them and it's good to have them under your belt.

I love I Saw the Devil (which is NOT a stinker!!!!) and thought it was a masterpiece. I was impressed by Lee Byung-hun's performance in it so I made a follow-up with A Bittersweet Life but did not meet the standards.

I've actually seen both of these. I mentioned before that I thought A Bittersweet Life was "just ok" but I'm a sucker for Korean SE DVDs with special features, and I liked it enough for a re-watch. I rated I Saw the Devil higher (4/5), which is not quite "masterpiece" territory, but pretty damn good.

If you wanted to arrange for an ol' timey group watch, Woman in the Dunes is one of those films I never watched but wish I had. Are you just upgrading to the Criterion or have you not seen it?

I've seen it on a rental and enjoyed it (another 4 star effort). But Criterion does such a great job with the special features and commentaries on these "old-timey" Japanese films, for $18 I could not pass it up. My Japanese Criterion shelf gets a lot of re-watches from me. I love being able to pick, say, Ikiru, off the shelf and watch it and then listen to the commentary again. Both film and discussion are amazing.

What is this "Going Out" movie? I can't find any info on it

Ha. I had never heard of it either, but YesAsia had it in one of their "HK cheapie" grab bags, so I picked it out based on the cover art and description:

A kind and pattern wife. She goes out to meet her first love.

Young and beautiful woman Shinhye is a pattern of a wife who only knows her husband and housework. But recently she has a worry – her marital relations get worse because husband denies having sex.

One day Shinhye attends an alumni reunion for a change and she meets her first love. He became a surprisingly nice guy and now she cannot help being attracted to him.

With a description like that, how could I possibly go wrong? LOL LOL

 

[divemaster13]

Bittersweet Life, A - a bit of style over substance but I like it a lot
Cold Eyes - very fun
Dance With The Wind - did not like it; I thought it was badly written
Girl at My Door, A - very good
Going Out - not seen, but I want to
Hard Day, A - very good
Handmaiden, The - solid
Han Gong-ju - awesome but quite disturbing
House of the Disappeared - boring
I Saw the Devil - a bit of style over substance but I like it a lot
Love Clinic - not seen
M - good
Miss Granny - good
My Brilliant Life - bleh; too sappy and too damn long
Office - very good slow-burn; I think it's under-appreciated
Quiet Dream, A - very good
Secretly, Greatly - watchable fluff
Silenced (2011) - awesome but quite disturbing
Sori: Voice from the Heart - not seen
Sweet Sex And Love, The - not seen
Venus Talk - very good

Thanks very much for your comments. It looks like I've got a good haul coming my way. Aside from A Bittersweet Life and I Saw the Devil, (which I already discussed), and The Sweet Sex and Love (which is a re-buy for me b/c my current DVD crapped out), the rest are all blind buys.

But I read through the reviews on Darcy's site and/or some other things I've read here or on IMDb to pick out movies I think I would like. Or, in the case of Love Clinic and similar, movies I at least have a chance on my wife watching with me (she will only watch romantic fluff). So, while they are "blind" buys, they are not totally uninformed buys. But it's not rare for me to watch a movie that everyone else seems to really like and I end up not. Not a big deal to me.