Recently Seen, Part 40 (June 2020)

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
Well now. Since volleyball's been cancelled, I've dipped a bit more back into movies. I log 'em all over at letterboxd. It's a nice place to log movies, and it's been great for getting tips once I found the players to trust. But it's not a place to talk about movies. You guys remember I like to talk about movies, right :)

Here's a movie that has floored me. It's what our dear angel @plsletitrain would call a "sitenoise movie". Big time.

DECEMBER
Dir: Jeong-hoon Park (debut)
Starring nobody
73699/5

Thirty minutes into the film I was compelled to review it:

I want to hug this movie. I'm only 30 minutes into it and I want to hug it so much.

"Do you have a girlfriend"?
"Nope"
"Do you want to hold hands"?

later ...

"I didn't want to awkwardize the date ..." -- yep that was the subtitle.

I'm dying here. If this film fucks up and does something stupid I''ll be super pissed -- and change my rating, but the 30 minutes I've watched so far is worth 5 stars.
I didn't want plot to rear it's ugly head, ya know.

When it was over:

I'm stunned. This might be one of the most devastating and adorable films I've ever seen.

Disclaimer: This is precisely the kind of movie that right-minded people would turn off five minutes in. Nothing happens, no acting, no budget, a snail's pace ... but the two chord minimal acoustic guitar soundtrack is nice and at one point had me pumping my fist in the air (figuratively speaking).

The film follows the awkward interactions between a girl and the aloof guy she wants--a convenient store clerk. It fades to black, often. I love how the girl, during one breath seems incapable of even speaking, then blurts out truth, softly.

I think the film benefits from kind-of-bad subtitles. Not google translate bad, but definitely ESL. They lend to the awkwardness of the proceedings.

Films have to end at some point and I think this one tried to have an ending, to say something. Not sure I got it or approved of it but 71 out of 72 minutes of pure genius ... I'm not going to quibble.

This isn't really a movie, though. It comes down to whether or not you find the girl real, interesting, cute?, adorably awkward ... I dunno. But it's NOT a vehicle flick. There's another girl suitor who fades in and out and the main girl could have done the same at any time.

I love movies like this. They don't aim at 100, they aim at 20 or 30 and hit it with a sledgehammer.

I'm dead. I'm happy.
I know where I would have ended the film. About five times before the actual ending. Fact is, I didn't really get the last scene--what it was saying. The scene right before it is devastating and should have ended the film. AND the scene before that one was off-the-charts OMG and could have ended the film. AND the scene before that one was killer ouch. And ....

The film is just one painful scene after another. Except for the last one.

Funny thing is: it's a really cute, really Korean, adorable film you want to hug. Really. I swear.
 

clayton-12

Member: Rank 4
Here's a movie that has floored me. It's what our dear angel @plsletitrain would call a "sitenoise movie". Big time.

DECEMBER
Dir: Jeong-hoon Park (debut)
Starring nobody
73699/5
Sounds like something that would be awesome or awful. Adding to intrigue is an imdb entry listing the genre as "Documentary, Comedy". Lol.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
Sounds like something that would be awesome or awful. Adding to intrigue is an imdb entry listing the genre as "Documentary, Comedy". Lol.
I noticed the genre malfunction as well. I dunno. And yeah, "awesome or awful" is what it is. It does the indie/art thing of ... not necessarily prolonging scenes beyond their expiration date (most of them end abruptly), but lets them take a nap in the middle. :)

But it is Korean so it's very well done and smart.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
Speaking of Movie Trailers and why they should be outlawed, the trailer for DECEMBER over at hancinema has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. There is only a split-second shot that's actually from the move. All the rest of it must be from the Documentary.
 

clayton-12

Member: Rank 4
Speaking of Movie Trailers and why they should be outlawed, the trailer for DECEMBER over at hancinema has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. There is only a split-second shot that's actually from the move. All the rest of it must be from the Documentary.
Or the Comedy.

I'm actually a fan of trailers - at their best, they can be an art form in their own right. In my formative years, watching the trailer reel was an essential part of the whole cinema experience - things like the trailer for Brian de Palma's Obsession etched themselves into a nine-year-old clayton's brain as much as whatever the main Disney feature did.

Nowadays, I try to avoid trailers before seeing the film, but almost always watch them after. I did give into temptation and wander over to hancinema to see what you were talking about - I did wonder whether, if it was subtitled, it would fit in with the film (although, of course, I am coming from a position of ignorance, having never seen the film!). Though your comment about only having a split-second shot that's actually from the movie did remind me of one of the best trailers I've ever seen - a brilliant UK trailer for Pen-ek Ratanaruang's film Ploy that I can't find again on youtube for the life of me. Little grabs from the film, mixed in with scenes shot from different angles from those shown in film, scenes from the film but occurring in different locations, snippets of conversations between characters that would have occurred had they not walked away from each other in the film, and finally some stuff they made up - it was a 150 second mini-film in its own right, a perfect companion piece that expanded and amplified the themes of the main feature.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
I agree Movie Trailers can be an art form in their own right. I've seen many. But as a method of determining what the film is like and if you might want to watch it based on watching the trailer -- not so much. I remember Jon Favreau, on his show "Dinner for Five" talking about pitching a movie to the studios. He said the first thing you need is a trailer. That's why there are so many movies with explosions or buildings on fire.

So I made a trailer for December HAHA. It's actually just one scene from the movie with a few minutes cut out of the middle. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to get the subs to work, but you don't really need them. I'll include a screenshot of what she says at the very end. Just so you know.

"I bought this for you"


December.jpg

Painful

btw - this is the only shot from the hancinema trailer that's in the movie:

December trailer.jpg

Straight out of Su-ki-da!
 
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clayton-12

Member: Rank 4
So I made a trailer for December ... It's actually just one scene from the movie with a few minutes cut out of the middle.
Your earlier description gave me the impression of a Zhang Lu A Quiet Dream vibe ... your trailer reminds me of something akin to early Lee Yoon-ki ala This Charming Girl.

He said the first thing you need is a trailer. That's why there are so many movies with explosions or buildings on fire.
There's an amusing part in Machete Maidens Unleashed, a doco on Roger Corman and New World Pictures' move into film production in the Philippines, where they talk about what their golden rule for trailers was - there must always be an exploding helicopter in the trailer. It didn't matter whether there were any helicopters in the actual movie, as long as the trailer showed one blowing up.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
Available on Amazon

december.jpg

The poster has nothing to do with the film either. I don't think that girl is even in the movie. It's all a giant conspiracy I'll never get to the bottom of, sadly.
 

divemaster13

Member: Rank 4
Here's a movie that has floored me. It's what our dear angel @plsletitrain would call a "sitenoise movie". Big time.

DECEMBER
Dir: Jeong-hoon Park (debut)
Starring nobody
73699/5

Thirty minutes into the film I was compelled to review it
Reading the above, I absolutely want to see this. However...

Your earlier description gave me the impression of a Zhang Lu A Quiet Dream vibe ... your trailer reminds me of something akin to early Lee Yoon-ki ala This Charming Girl.
A Quiet Dream did little for me (2 stars), and This Charming Girl was even more mind-numbingly boring (1.5 stars). So...what to do? I don't want to watch any trailers, as I like going into movies pretty much cold. Should I give December a go?
 

divemaster13

Member: Rank 4
Crash Landing on You (2019-2020) Korean romance/comedy/drama TV series (16 eps., about 70-75 minutes each)

My wife started raving about this about the same time I saw it recommended in the Washington Post. I've never seen the WP tout a Korean TV show before, but Crash Landing on You made the WP's "top-10 quarantine binge recommendation" list, so it must have caught some sort of international attention.

Basic story is that a young lady chaebol mogul (the unappreciated stepchild of an even larger chaebol family) engages in a paragliding stunt to promote her new sportswear line. However, a sudden tornado carries her across the DMZ and she crash lands in N. Korea territory and into the lives of several soldiers. Over the course of the series she and the lead soldier of course fall for each other. Comedy and drama ensue as the well-meaning squad tries to hide her; tries to smuggle her out of N. Korea; tries to evade suspicious N. Korean Secret Police and, later, when the show shifts to South Korea, they all try to keep things out of the eyes of the authorities, newspapers, and the ever-present Seoul social media and CCTV.

Complications stem from an evil N. Korean officer, an arranged marriage, silly villagers, naive but well-meaning soldiers, S. Korean government officials, a cello-playing ice princess, a regretful stepmother, good for-nothing brothers, Swiss piano competitions, and a rogue con man with a heart of gold. It's mostly very lighthearted. The atrocities of the N. Korean government and the abject poverty of the citizens is hinted at, but never shown in full horror. People seem to come and go more freely than real life would indicate. The S. Korean government is much more lenient and understanding than real life would indicate, and 20/30-something Koreans (either North or South) evidently not only never desire sex from true love dating partners, but seemingly have never even heard of sex.

A good plus for the show is the strength of the two main leads, both as characters and as actors. I really liked them. The two main "sub-leads" are also good. I started off not liking either one of them (which was the point, I think), but they really grew on me.

A couple of fun and funny nuggets:
--one of the young N. Korean soldiers smuggles in S. Korean dramas to watch while on guard duty. We first see him crying over a show--which turns out to be Stairway to Heaven, my all time favorite K-drama, and which jerked more tears out of me than all others put together I think. There were quite a few funny moments with the N. Koreans getting their impression of S. Korean society via K-dramas. For example, one soldier explains, when a parent meets up with their child's suitor in a restaurant, one of two things will happen. Someone will throw a glass of water in the other's face, or the parent will slide an envelope of money over to "never see my child again." Ha! And, 80% of the hospital cases in S. Korea are for amnesia. HAHA!

--on their undercover foray into the South, the friendly N. Korean squad tries to fit in. A lot of funny and cute moment with this, but the best is when they come across the same actor/character from the movie Secretly/Greatly! He immediately sees through them, and thinks that N. Korea has finally sent him a mission. He's still in his goofy green track suit, acting like a dim-witted moron. It's a hilarious call-back to Secretly/Greatly, if you've happened to see it.

I liked this quite a bit. It's easy to nitpick here and there, but overall it's a feel-good type of show where the good guys (and true love) prevail--at least as much as it can between a N/S relationship, and the baddies get what's coming to them. I laughed; I smiled; I got caught up in the drama and the intrigue. It was not heavy enough to jerk any tears out of me (the show did not appear to try hard for that), so I deduct half a point. Overall I'm rating it a 4/5. Fun, and time well spent.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
A Quiet Dream did little for me (2 stars), and This Charming Girl was even more mind-numbingly boring (1.5 stars). So...what to do? I don't want to watch any trailers, as I like going into movies pretty much cold. Should I give December a go?
It's much closer to This Charming Girl than A Quiet Dream. You could watch the "trailer" I posted and ask yourself if you want to root for that girl, as she pretends to read the ingredients on that chocolate bar for the third time, to get that guy -- for half a film :)

The girl nails pretending to read the ingredients of things. She doesn't act like she's pretending. She's really pretending. It's Oscar-worthy!

I don't think the film is for you but I know for a fact that this editor is not for me when it decides to just start making my text BOLD ITALIC
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
I recently watched a couple English Language comedy horrors which I would recommend:

The Hunt 2020

★★★★

The Hunger Games with Liberal Elites hunting MAGA deplorables

The kills are decent (a couple are cringe-worthy), the comedy is well-paced, the twists are predictable but well-executed, and Betty Gilpin is a riot --she teeters on the edge of failing the whole time but never does.

I might have given this 5 stars but the surface level politics tug it down. Although it's refreshing things aren't one-sided, everything is so specific and easy, dreams of cult status are dashed.

If the film would have ended with the final fight culminating in a tender make-out/fade to black, the film could have called it's own bluff instead of insisting on more commentary and blunting what little edge it had created.

This film missed a glorious opportunity to use the famous (USA tv commercial) line: "I've fallen and can't get up".

Snatchers 2019
★★★★


"Whoa! Okay, that was way more butthole than I was expecting"

It's too bad they tried to use that punchline twice more.

It takes 20 minutes or so for the film to find its rhythm, to mold its obnoxiousness into something witty. I laughed out loud many times watching this. YMMV. The three main actors are quite good at the over-the-top acting required for a really good editor to make this kind of thing work. That's the best part of SNATCHERS: the editing. It's musical, rhythmic. Nothing new, but executed very well. And the Sound Design is equal to it.

The gore and the aliens aren't the attraction. It's the humor in spite of it all, especially if you can find it funny, for example, when someone simply gasps or screams --if it's edited in well.
 

divemaster13

Member: Rank 4
It's much closer to This Charming Girl than A Quiet Dream. You could watch the "trailer" I posted and ask yourself if you want to root for that girl, as she pretends to read the ingredients on that chocolate bar for the third time, to get that guy -- for half a film :)

The girl nails pretending to read the ingredients of things. She doesn't act like she's pretending. She's really pretending. It's Oscar-worthy!
I could definitely root for that girl! But probably not a blind buy for me. I'll put it on my mental "one day" list. Even if "it's not for me," you've earned yourself a lifetime of credits with me, just for recommending M. I probably never would have come across it otherwise, and my life is just that much richer for having seen it.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
But probably not a blind buy for me.
Nah, not a good blind buy. I didn't want to even "blind download" it because I didn't know it would be worth going against my leech ratio :) So I used a friend's Amazon credentials to check it out and at that 30 minute mark of wanting to hug the movie to death I started the download because I want to possess it. I thought you had the Amazon thing. It's free for Prime people.
 

clayton-12

Member: Rank 4
December (Park Jeong-hoon, 2013) Okay – I had a crack at this one, and here are some thoughts. It’s structured as twelve short vignettes or scenes, each given the title of a consecutive month, commencing with January. At the beginning, they’re both random, but connected. The same guy, the same awkwardness to the conversations, but different girls and no obvious connection to what’s gone before. But after a while, the scenes coalesce around a schoolgirl who has a massive crush on the guy, and who comes to the convenient store where he works time and again just to see him. As the months roll by, they strike up a tentative relationship, united by nothing more than a mutual obliviousness.

This is a very deliberate, subtle piece – the focus is placed firmly on very specific emotional aspects of the characters, to the point where events that would ordinarily form a massive part of the dramatic impetus of the story are pushed to one side – they’re not revealed in the film because the characters don’t need to, or can’t bring themselves to, talk about them.

I probably didn’t like it as much as @sitenoise – the repetition of the middle of the film started to wear me down a little and had me wondering if there was a point to it all, but …

Films have to end at some point and I think this one tried to have an ending, to say something. Not sure I got it or approved of it but 71 out of 72 minutes of pure genius ... I'm not going to quibble.
...

The film is just one painful scene after another. Except for the last one.
… the final two scenes (November, and then back to January – there was one month that remains nameless throughout) formed a lynchpin that tied everything together perfectly. They linked back to the initial, seemingly random, scenes and completed the circle, finally making sense of everything that had gone before.

Actually, writing all this makes me realise that I think I like the film better the morning after … maybe I do like it as much as @sitenoise. That final scene definitely elevated it into something special.
 

clayton-12

Member: Rank 4
Okay … I found myself going back and rewatching slabs of December to check out the shifting timeframes. I’ll put down my take on the very last scene of the film (which isn’t the last scene in the overall chronology of events) – there’s probably nothing that is a “spoiler” in the pure sense of that term, but I’ll mask it as such anyway:

Christmas Eve has come and gone. She has not given him the orange sweater – even though her life had been revolving around the plan to gift it to him on that auspicious occasion. And now it is January – she has discovered that he has been seeing someone else (hell, he even uses her “onion ring with ambasa is delicious” line on his new girl). He was supposed to be hers, but he’s been touching someone else, with the same hands that touched her back, her back that then lay down on the sheet. Yuck. She’s not going to lie down on that sheet anymore, so she throws it out.

On the one hand, she’s taking back control. But it’s still painful – just as painful as all the other scenes – even with the knowledge that come April he’ll be dumping the new girl over a table tennis game.

If I had to nominate a reference point, the final scene struck me as almost being a remake of the ferry journey back at the end of Tokyo Trash Baby.
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
I found myself going back and rewatching slabs of December to check out the shifting timeframes
I re-watched it, and then a lot of it more, not investigatively but in that way that when you have a crush on someone you just want to see them more. Kind of felt like stalking on her.

I read about the "non-linear" structure but it didn't strike me that way :) even though it's obvious at the end when the one (JAN) scene circles back. But that's where I would have ended the film. Or even the scene after that where the girl takes away the guitar. Or any point in the next scene where she reveals what's she's wearing.

If I had to nominate a reference point, the final scene struck me as almost being a remake of the ferry journey back at the end of Tokyo Trash Baby.
Good analogy. I thought that's what she was doing but honestly wasn't sure. It did feel like a 'wrap up' offering closure, but I didn't want that. I wanted the rebellious anger of everything being inexplicably unfair, un-parseable, like Hur's *One Fine Spring Day*. But thanks for explaining/confirming the end shot. I wasn't sure (which is also why it didn't work for me). I thought maybe there was something special, uniquely Korean, about that bag that if I knew what it was would have made it more clear. I thought maybe it was a bag from the convenient store and she was going to take it to him. I don't know where I was going with that. I was just flailing.

Glad to hear it stuck with you for a while and seemed to grow better or more interesting. Another film friend of mine used to call that a film's echo. I like that notion and find that when a film hangs around for a while it usually grows. *An Elephant Sitting Still* had that effect on me. A very long echo.

I did also re-watch it to investigate if the opening girl, the scene 2 girl with him at the hospital, the girl who stopped in the store "after visiting a friend", the ping-pong girl, and the guitar girl were all the same girl. I had to study the birthmarks on her face and the shape of her teeth to feel confident that they were. Figuring all that out did boost the non-linearity aspect of the proceedings. But even if there weren't these circles and figuring things out I would have been very happy with a series of vignettes that made no sense at all :emoji_relaxed:
 

sitenoise

Member: Rank 5
but different girls
I just reread your review ... Oops! I came to the conclusion they were all the same girl :emoji_flushed:

At first I thought scene 2 hospital girl and "just dropped by" girl were different from opening, ping-pong, and guitar girl. Now I'm flummoxed, except it doesn't matter unless we need to figure it out and confirm a timeline.

This also makes me think of all the stuff in the trailer, and where all that came from and what other story it might have told
 
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