Letter #64: Little Forest (and so much more!)

Good morning, Erin. 

So. 

Not too long ago, you asked me to watch a film called Little Forest—which I absolutely did. Like, right away. But, as I’m sure you have been left worrying over in the middle of the night, I didn’t write you a letter telling you as much. Which is weird, right, considering how I write you a letter for literally everything else? 

Well, fret no longer, my K-drama seonbae, for I am here to reveal the exciting reason why: 

I’ve been watching a slew of Korean movies and will tell you about all of them all at once!

[pause for you to stop squealing with delight]

I know, I know. But he already gave me something for my birthday, I can hear you saying. Well, this is just the kind of guy I am. Generous to a fault. With my K-drama thoughts. Which our relationship obliges you to read. 

…

Anyway.

I don’t know which of these you’ve seen, have no interest in seeing, or want to see (maybe) and therefore don’t want spoiled, so—with the exception of maybe Little Forest—everything I’m going to say is pretty much a general summary of my impressions. Which, given that a look back at my notes shows I don’t have a great deal to say about most of these movies, works out well. 

I love it when a plan comes together.

I. CARTER

1) Loud, relentless, ludicrous action movie silliness, replete with graphic violence, an absolute disinterest in the laws of physics, and extensive single-take fight sequences that often feel very, very video game-y. It’s a fun time…until it all becomes noise: who are the characters? why is any of this happening? and what about those 200 story threads that never get addressed? And then the contrivances and plot conveniences just get worse and worse until the movie ends—and ends bizarrely. Might be more worth the time to find a fight compilation on YouTube. 

2) And yet the most ridiculous thing in this movie is an American news reporter who’s presented as a levelheaded neutral third party. Oh, Korea…you sweet summer child. 

3) That said, the best parts remind me of (the wonderful action movie) Extraction, except not as believable. So…entertaining, if nothing else. 

4) I recognized one person: the main girl’s dad from 100 Days My Prince—and I didn’t even need to see his face to know it was him! 

II. YAKSHA: RUTHLESS OPERATORS

1) …at this point I should probably let you know that my original intention was to do a trio of action movies and write a letter about that (this being the second of the original three). And then I just never got around to it. And then I watched a few more movies. And then another. And then one or two more after that. So…this is actually a backlog from, like, the last eight months or so. (I mean, the earliest stuff was probably watched that far back. A lot of the rest has come in the last month or two.) They’re not all action movies. Just…most of them.

2) This movie is terrible. 

3) Well, every car in it is a Hyundai, I think, so it’s not that terrible. 

4) I genuinely have no idea what the plot was supposed to be or why it was told in the manner it was. It was an action movie—or, well, it was an action-y movie. Black ops military team stuff. But also the central character is a lawyer who is sent to audit them, more or less. It was like watching an Avengers movie where they have to protect the president’s daughter, but then all of their plans involve sending the president’s daughter into the most dangerous situations possible all by herself. 

5) I knew two actors, this time: 

• EL (the lady in red from Goblin) as one of the back ops team members (who we eventually get to see with long black hair, and she looks great!)

• Young-woo’s mom from Extraordinary Attorney Woo as the NIS Director (and she has a new hairstyle and looks great!)

III. THE BERLIN FILE

1) This was a slick-looking action-spy thriller. It opens like a Mission Impossible movie—which is great. And then maybe stop watching. Because it’s a choppy, dull mess that doesn’t take enough time to make you care about any one character’s story or circumstance before throttling into the final act of the movie. The focus is split into too many directions, and there’s not enough in any one of those directions to pull you through to the end. 

2) …and yet this movie has the audacity to sequel-bait. As if there was actually a reason to make this film, let alone a second one. 

3) Another one where I only knew one person in it: the main girl from My Love From the Star as the main spy guy’s wife/fellow spy (at least I think she was also a spy). 

IV. PROJECT WOLF HUNTING

1) I watched this movie as a Valentine’s gift to myself, because…spending two hours having my K-drama crush Jung So-min shot directly into my eyeballs? That’s what I call romance!

2) …which is why it turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. Because of course I couldn’t even pick something worth watching just to fawn over the pretty girl in it. 

2a) Which is to say: this movie is teeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrible. 

2b) …except that the fansubs for it bleep out the swear words just like I do, so it’s not that terrible.

2c) Except yes it absolutely f***ing is. 

3) And here’s why: the film is two separate bog-standard ways to tell this one very familiar type of story sewn together, so that the narrative arc from one archetypal version of this story is supposedly completed by taking a total left turn into the NARRATIVELY UNRELATED other archetypal version of the story. (Like, imagine Sarah Connor running from the Terminator, and then everything turning out all right because Marty McFly got his parents to kiss.) Anything and anyone you invest yourself in early on—and I’m not even sure that’s possible, but let’s, for the sake of argument, say that it is—WILL NOT MATTER by the end, because it’s all but a different movie, come the halfway point in the story. 

4) To say nothing of how amateurishly gruesome it is. Which is its own can of worms. 

5) With this one, I actually knew a bunch of people:

• Jung So-min as our central cop character except also not because I can’t have nice things

• Mr. Shaman from Café Minamdang as a tattooed psycho killer 

• Coach Choi from Weightlifting Fairy as a…um, female psycho killer

• the hapless dad from True Beauty who does a great job as the veteran cop 

• Prosecutor Cha from Café Minamdang as a thug or something

• the recruiter guy from Glitch as…look, probably a psycho killer, I dunno, who cares

• the minor villain from The Uncanny Counter as…as…I’m not sure, but he was sleazy

• baby Nam Do-san from Start-Up as [REDACTED]

6) MDL promised me Chae-ran was in it—but she wasn’t. Because I can’t have nice things. 

7) Jung So-min is supposed to come off as a rough-and-tumble cop, in this, but she’s so tiny that…I mean, I love her, but I didn’t buy it. Coach Choi basically dwarfed her, when they were in a scene together. Which…wait, lemme check their heights—oh, Coach Choi is 5’6”, according to the interweb. Wow. I never thought she came off as average height. Okay. That changes things a bit. And Jun So-min is 5’4” (which…is great), which is not as small as she feels, I guess. Hmm. I may be making this point using the wrong supporting evidence. But, too late, there’s no way to delete something once it’s been written. Alas. 

8) Have I mentioned that the movie is terrible? Because I should have. Because it is. 

9) And it was still probably the best Valentine’s Day I’ve had in years. 

V. NIGHT IN PARADISE

1) Surely, I thought to myself as I pressed Play, I can trust Ms. Hong from Vincenzo not to let me down, right? Right?

2) Answer: she did not!

3) Mostly! 

4) Good action, when it’s there; pretty good character writing; a decent overall story…up until it stops have a story and is just a mess of seemingly pointless (that is, seemingly without serving a greater narrative rather than plot purpose); and it was chockablock with Hyundais. So, this one turned out to be an okay time. I think the script needed another pass, but it moved well, and the performances were generally really good. By no means a waste of time. 

4a) Oh, and there’s a rad sauna-centric action scene that is twice as rad as the twice-as-long sauna-centric action scene in Carter. So…yeah. 

5) And we had a handful of folks I generally enjoy, in this one:

• Ms. Hong from Vincenzo, of course, unsurprisingly rocking it as the female lead

• Coach Choi from Weightlifting Fairy as the male lead’s sister

• the hapless dad from True Beauty as a mob boss

• Blue Oni from A Korean Odyssey as a (psychopathic) mob lieutenant 

VI. JO PIL-HO: THE DAWNING RAGE

1) “...you know I’m just skipping down to the part about Little Trees, right?” I hear you say. And…yes. But there’s always the chance that you might one day be desperate for a very brief, vague, unhelpful blurb about movies you’ve never had any interest in seeing, and I would never want to leave you hanging. 

1a) Also, what if I’ve left one of my patented personal secrets in here, like in my Alchemy of Souls letters? Like how I always sing Sia’s “Chandelier” doing a Patrick Stewart voice. You never know. 

2) Anyway, this movie—despite the insistence of the title—is dull. It all makes sense, which is among the highest compliments I can give with (most of) this list of movies, but it is really, really dull. 

3) There is so much broken glass in this. Like, the movie is 87% broken glass. And then the last 13% is divided between the writing, the acting, and the lead character’s collection of undershirts. 

4) That said…there is a character called “Glass Bones,” so I’m not ruling out the possibility that the broken glass is some kind of metaphor. 

5) …which sounds like a joke (and it mostly is), but there really is a possibility that it’s a metaphor. Because I think there’s an actual honest-to-goodness message to the film, at least insofar as having a cohesive theme is concerned. The story has a lot of connections to the 2014 Korean ferry disaster (bunch of high school kids on board, it crashed and sank) in which the only survivors were the folks who ignored the authorities and, rather than staying put like they were told, jumped off the ship to save themselves. There’s also a subplot about some evil corporation using scholarships for poor kids as a method to later leverage them and their places in various other business or public offices (under the guise of returning a favor) to nefarious ends. (And then there’s a scene about a sleazy doctor looking to purchase a…good time…from an underaged girl that I’d tenuously include in this discussion.) Taken in concert, I think there’s an argument to be made that this is an indictment of adults and their selfish irresponsibility towards children. It’s not a great argument, if that’s the case, but I appreciate the attempt. 

5a) …if true.

5b) I hate that phrase, by the way: “if true.” I mean, I’m fine with some benign speculation or even innocent gossip, so I don’t literally hate the employ of phrase—but I was going to bring it up in my letter for Crash Course in Romance, in terms of the way “news stories” are published using that phrase as an excuse to justify what they darn well know is just exploitative rumormongering. It’s reprehensible, manipulative, irresponsible, shortsighted, destructive, needlessly cruel, and oftentimes sinister. And every outlet or individual who trucks in that muckraking deserves to have the full weight of it turned right back around on them. 

5c) Same for whoever decided to put sourcream on top of cheesecake. 

6) Um…anyway, let’s see who I recognized in this:

• the main guy from My Mister as Jo Pil-ho, the main guy of this movie

• CEO Ma from Because This is My First Life as a star prosecutor 

• one of the lackeys who killed Ms. Hong’s dad in Vincenzo as an IAD detective

• uncredited, but Mr. An from Vincenzo as the aforementioned “Glass Bones” (a smallfry thug)

VII. THE HANDMAIDEN

1) Hey–it’s got Kim Tae-ri in it, which means we’re gettin’ closer, right? 

2) So, from the cursory research I’ve done, this is the film that put Kim Tae-ri on the map, and, given how much I enjoy her as an actress, I’m glad for that. But…is it a good movie? Well, as it turns out…um, sometimes!

3) Overall, I think this movie is more thoughtful than it is good, though I ultimately enjoyed it. It’s weird and makes some very strange choices, both in terms of storytelling and…let’s call it cinematography choices. It’s a little amateurish with aspects of its erotic/erotica-centric subject matter, including at least one instance of a sexytime scene that is ABSOLUTELY needless and excessive (much as I don’t mind the content itself, in isolation)...but it doesn’t too often stray into those amateurish turns, so I wouldn’t say it hurts the story to any degree more than the story hurts itself. All in all, its successes (particularly early on) probably just outweigh its failings, so I would say it’s a solid enough recommendation from me, if you want to watch something clever, if a little bit full of itself. 

3a) …by which I mean watch not with your parents. Or anyone else you’d be embarrassed to be in the same room with for, um, adult-oriented storytelling. 

3b) Speaking of: there’s one specific reference that the movie sets up—which I knew before the movie explained it (...b-because it’s kinda famous, of course)—which is used to great effect…but only if you remember why. Otherwise, it’s just frikkin’ weird. (Or, like, I assume it is. I dunno. I knew the reference, so I dunno what someone who doesn’t would think.)

4) There’s a lot of jumping between Korean and Japanese dialogue (which you know is a thing, with me), buuuuuuut the subbers were kind enough to change the color of the subtitles depending on which language was being used. It’s one of those things that makes you feel like it’s being done just for me. I mean, it’s plot-relevant, at times, to know if someone is speaking Japanese or Korean, so indicating the change is totally logical for foreign audiences, but that’s never stopped anyone before. 

5) And it wasn’t a big cast, but I still recognized two people in it:

• our much-beloved Hee-do from Twenty-Five, Twenty-One as the female con-artist

• Grandma from Start-Up as the head maid

VIII. LITTLE FOREST

1) …not to be confused with some kind of reality show Jung So-min participated in where she (and a couple of other actors) take care of kids at a camp in the countryside which you absolutely know I am going to track down and watch. (Plus: Red Oni is in it. And he’s super-nice.)

2) I totally see what you mean about it being a nice, relaxing ride. (I mean, it’d be hard not to.) Between the atmosphere and the step-by-step explanation-y content, this reminded me very much of the anime series Yuru Camp (which is INCREDIBLE and about girls who like/learn to camp), but with way more existential sighing and far fewer sapphic fan-comics. I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as I did Yuru Camp, of course (because there are few things I enjoy as much as that series), but it was nice to enjoy something so…nice. 

3) Which is not to say that the movie isn’t a little bit odd. Outside of creating a vibe, I don’t think the movie was really about anything—even in a “it’s not about the story” kind of sense. (I mean, if I had the money, I’d come up with a reason to make Kim Tae-ri spend time with me, too, but I don’t know that that should count as a purpose.) So, it was a little unsatisfying to see that there wasn’t much in the way of a resolution, insofar as there were personal decisions that she needed to resolve, but…I still enjoyed the vibe all the same.

4) Oh! I didn’t tell you: my sister’s latest kick is watching British schoolboys try different Korean food on YouTube, which means she’s gotten the slightest taste of Korean culture (pop or otherwise), and we managed to have a nice chat about some stuff, including those mesh-looking Joseon nobleman hats. So that was fun.

5) Speaking of hats: seeing Kim Tae-ri in that convenience store uniform hurt my soul. I don’t know if it was manufactured by the production or if it’s her natural radiance that made that horrible outfit feel so suffocating, but it certainly had the desired effect. I’d have run away, too, if I were her. 

6) I quite enjoyed her female friend who worked at the bank, and I wish there’d been more for her to do.

7) The little girl version of our protagonist was both adorable and able to make the same facial expressions as Kim Tae-ri. Or Kim Tae-ri mimicked the girl’s expressions. Either way, I liked that detail. 

8) And, yes, Kim Tae-ri was the only one I recognized, in this one. 

IX. KILL BOKSOON

1) Obviously, Netflix and what used be called The Swoon were very keen for me to watch this, but I didn’t have any particular interest in what little bits of it I’d been shown—until I finished watching Crash Course in Romance and realized Ms. Nam was also playing the murderous lead in this movie. At which point I said, “F*** you, sleep, let’s start this right now!” 

1a) …yes, I am still not sleeping in my bed, thank you for asking. But I’ve cleaned my apartment, so I’m slowly working my way out of the strange slump I’ve been in. Heck, I may be back in my bed before 2024, at this rate!

1b) Jokes aside, though, I don’t know what the issue is. But…I am making progress. 

2) This one also starts with dialogue swaps between Korean and Japanese—but with absolutely no effort to distinguish between the two. The jerks. 

3) The movie is a really fun time, lots of neat action, but there isn’t a story worth a damn. It’s more like a John Wick worldbuilding exercise than a proper story, but it’s still really enjoyable. Solid acting, solid action, a nice pace despite not really going anywhere. I say give it a shot, if you are already interested. 

4) The first fight in the movie is straight outta the Zak Snyder Suckerpunch handbook…and that’s totally fine by me. 

5) I’m 87% sure I know where they church in the movie is located. Or, rather, that I’ve seen it in those “walking around Seoul” videos I like to keep on in the background when I write to you.

6) There is one detail in the story I want to talk to you about…but I don’t want to spoil it. So I won’t say what it is. And I will sit here and wait patiently for you to watch it. And then even more patiently for you to mention in passing that you’ve watched it. And then we’ll talk about the one detail!

7) And now for the list of folks I knew—and we’ve got more than a couple, this time!

• Ms. Nam from Crash Course in Romance as the titular Boksoon

• Young Ms. Nam from Crash Course in Romance as the intern (my favorite character) 

• the out-of-it old guy patient from It’s Okay to Not be Okay as the bartender

• the main dude from Yaksha (see II. above!) as the chairman (does a really good job)

• the tall friend from Because This is My First Life as the director

• the real estate office assistant from A Korean Odyssey as the sergeant(?) boss guy

• the dad from My Name as the principal

• the jerkface boyfriend from Extraordinary You as the young chairman

• the little girl from The Silent Sea as Boksoon’s daughter

• the Children’s Liberation Front guy from Attorney Woo as Boksoon’s special friend

And THAT, dear Erin, is all I have to say about that. Those. (Thems?) Whatever—we’re done with this letter, is what I’m trying to say. 

This was obviously a mixed bag…though I think it was more bad than mixed, overall. And, not surprisingly, the ones most related to your recommendations were the ones that were the least disappointing. 

I’m sure you’re still caught in the middle of the end-of-year storm, as I write this. But I also hope that this can give your mind a little break, should you need it. 

More very soon. And maybe it’s even gonna be good.

Spoiler: it’s not.

—Daryl