Fantasia 2024.03: Anime no Bento 2024, "The Future Is Now", Brave Citizen, and Mononoke the Movie

First guest of the day is Naoki Arata (center), whose "The True Shape of a Daisy" is part of the Anime no bento" program. It's a nifty looking film that programmer Rupert Bottenberg found interesting because it was ripped in European folk tales rather than Japanese mythology, to which she replied that a lot of the finding for the film came from a UK-based program, so…

Also on hand were the team from "The Future Is Now" (with programmer Steven Lee on the left): Writer/director/producer Jung Jong-min, actor Koo Jaho, and producer/cinematographer Park Wonjo. They had been at Fantasia last year with a horror short and were eager to come back. They've got some slick chops, so maybe they'll eventually come back with a feature.

After Mononoke the Movie - which has nothing to do with Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, which threw me when programmer Rupert Bottenberg showed a teaser last year (he aims to end the animation section of each festival by showing something he hopes to program at the next, which I suppose is kind of feasible considering that these things gestate long enough that festivals can be in contact early) - I had intended to catch Shelby Oaks, but it was a case where I walked out of the theater and there was already a sizable line, and there's no guarantee with a badge, especially when everyone wants to see it with the director and executive producer and a bunch of other folks on hand.

Ah, well. Neon has picked it up so it will probably play Boston later this year. I hadn't really eaten all day anyway, so it was kind of a relief to go across the street to a burger shop that just happened to be have the Red Sox game on.

Today's plan: The Avenging Eagle, International Science-Fiction Short Films, Ghost Cat Anzu, The Old Man and the Demon Sword, and Mash Ville.


"First Line"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)

Wrote what you know, they say, so this short's creator Tina gives the audience a story of a young animator who is running late with the segment he's been assigned but is nevertheless given a crucial final sequence on a tight deadline by the project's mercurial director.

It's a bit of a love letter to the medium, of course, with careful attention paid to how the work gets done, the flights of fancy possible, and the modest pencil-on-paper origins of what the audience is seeing. What's more intriguing, though, is the way she examines the push and pull of it. People like Mito get hired because they've got talent and creativity and are then pushed into a system that subordinates this to someone else's vision. How do you work as a member of the team but still stand out?

I'm not sure the film really answers this, but it at least makes me think of the question, and certainly feels genuine enough around that.


"Maidens of the Ripples"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)

I feel like this is far from the first time that I've watched an animated short from Japan where two girls draw closer because nobody else understood that they were "different" and had it not be about being gay but (I guess) depressed, to the extent that I wonder if the one is a euphemism for the other in Japan.

At any rate, this one has a teacher giving the class president, Haruka Arima, printouts for frequently-absent Rin Takitani, and while Haruka is initially shocked at how beautiful Rin is with her dyed-blonde hair, she soon finds these times meeting her the best part of her day. They've got more in common than they think, especially as Haruka talks about how she wasn't always a focused, organized student, and in fact that may be a facade that is wearing down.

The story here is the sort I often have trouble relating to, with its teens so cognizant of how heavy everything is and how much emotion they are investing in small things, but I love the art here: Watercolor backgrounds for what appears to be a harbor town and human figures with a pleasing sketchiness, not invested with much in the way of excess movement but not unnaturally still. Creator Michiko Soma knows we're going to be looking at the hair right away and does good storytelling with it: Rin initially appears ethereal and fragile despite calling it her "golden armor" and it feels like an early warning for Haruka about to break down as it gets a bit out of control.


"Yoruwohiraite" ("The True Shape of a Daisy")

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)

This is the first film in the package that feels kind of like a proof-of-concept, with director Naoki Arata introducing some characters and hinting at world-building but stopping short of its characters actually having an adventure. It's one that looks like it could lead to something, though, with "Child of the Night" Nycteris following a firefly through a mysterious door to find a bright, colorful valley and making friends with the boy there, before being pulled back home where her mother (I believe; the relationship is never specified) scolds her.

The story could use a bit more detail - maybe Arata will have the chance to expand it sometime - but mood is nailed very well, while keeping things somewhat mysterious. The nighttime and daylight worlds look very different but Nycteris doesn't look like something pasted onto the wrong background when brought into the daylight, even though the halo around her new friend becomes overpowering to her as the sun fully rises, the world seeming to become a van Gogh-like riot of color. There's a sort of nervy uncertainty in the scenes with her mother, even as she radiates authority; is she a giantess or is Nycteris small, or is Arata exaggerating for effect?

It's a nifty start; I hope we can see more adventures with them.


"Kamigoroshi: Prologue"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)

Another movie about animators, although rather than the nervous fellow working on one small sequence of "First Line", "Kamigoroshi" gives us a capricious god: A wolf-man who takes the figure of a generic girl, then refines her into the figure of a black-clad teenager, breathing memories into her and placing her in a model city. The only trouble is, this city is meant to be the setting for a sci-fi/horror epic, with something above pulling the souls from the other figures, while elsewhere, freedom fighters are breaking out of the model and into the workshop.

Creation and destruction go hand-in-hand with this sort of tactile animation, and really any form of storytelling, as the things you make will eventually be undone, or have violence done to them, even if you like them and would wish them well in real life, and at least in this prologue, Niho Tomoyuki seems enjoyably unrepentant, having his fox-god scoop up his attackers and use their clay to seal the holes they've made, and there's something kind of interesting about how, while he apparently struggles with rebellious characters, other parts of the story go on, which is certainly what the writing process feels like at times.

He does it in snappy, fast-paced fashion, too; while there's a little time given up front to him crafting the heroine, once the camera moves inside the city, there are several things happening at once without dialogue to explain it. He's great at using visual shorthand like the breathing life into his doll segment, and the escape from the model city is nifty for how it uses images often played for laughs as an adventure that quickly veers into horror. I don't know if this pace can be kept up for a full feature, but I'm certainly intrigued.


"Okuninushi and Sukunabikona"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)

Is there a more exciting logo to pop up before a film, whether a feature or, in this case, a sort of micro-short, than that of Science Saru? There's a gleefully cartoony chaos to their work even when they are tackling heavier themes, and "Okuninushi and Sukunabikona" is not them doing that, as it features the two title characters, gods in some local pantheon, making a goofy bet while on a walk. It's silly, sure, but it's also really good character work, sketching these two quickly enough to sell a gag beyond just what's universal. Quality cartooning.


"String Dance" ("Roots") from the film Taisu

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)

Made for another anthology (TAISU) which is apparently not far off, "String Dance" introduces us first to an elfin girl, seemingly alone in a world where trees connect in a wild tangle, north, south, up, and down, living a carefree life flying with her giant bird Mau, before shifting the scene to a castle, where Princess Tesin laments how her father the king has shrunken from the world since the death of the queen. Somehow, a pair of flowers in their respective homes serves as a telephone, and the two become confidantes. Her new friend encourages Tesin to take a stronger leadership position herself, but her city-state is at war, and the attackers…

Of the shorts in the package, this is the one most obviously done with digital tools, and it's got what seems like it must be a deliberately plastic realism at this late date; it reminds me a bit of French comic artist Fred Beltran when he started using those tools later in his career: Uncannily smooth yet nevertheless solid, somehow heightening the sense of depth and the inhumanity of war. For all that it helps to create impressive imagery, it doesn't harm the character work at all; both protagonists are given heightened personality and voice work, but it works, even as their friendship leads to tragedy because they don't know the full story.

That full story is somewhat elided, not just in terms of the audience not getting the full background but in how there's a bit of a fast forward that one might not realize until after the fact (this style is maybe not ideal for showing aging). There's also a reincarnation angle that isn't necessarily extraneous - I can see where filmmaker Shuhei Morita is maybe trying to demonstrate the bond between these two despite everything - but it's maybe one thing too much in a short that doesn't have a lot of time to explain.


Mecha-Ude (Mechanical Arms) Episode 1

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Anime no bento, laser DCP)

Watching something like Mecha-Ude, I kind of wish I had more time for anime and manga, or that the likes of this had been more available in my small town when I was a kid. It's a delightfully dotty sort of premise - there are apparently alien robots that take the form of mechanical arms that can fuse with humans, although it's kept pretty hush-hush, and when young ARMS agent Aki Murasame (voice of Yu Shimamura) tries to liberate one from a lab, it winds up lost, only to be found my mostly-good-hearted teenager Hikaru Amatsuga (voice Toshiyuki Toyonaga). They connect, but it turns out his new hand (voice of Tomokazu Sugita) is amnesiac and pacifistic, which does not necessarily help with two secret agencies after them, culminating in Aki being placed undercover in Hikaru's school.

That's close to the plot of the whole first episode screened, but it's the cheeky attitude that feels like it will be the real fun here, with Hikaru's general decency tending to include a bunch of hand-wringing about whether something is a good idea or if he's being selfish, contrasted with Aki's jaded pragmatism. There's room for a sort of whimsical cartooniness to "Alma", the big ol' hand Hikaru gets saddled with, compared to the "cooler" snakelike arms others are wearing. We get hints of fun supporting casts and various subplots and conflicts, enough to see that things will probably get more serious, eventually. The animation is slick and the fights nicely kinetic.

Nine-year-old me would have absolutely eaten this up; fifty-year-old me is not going to look to see what streaming service this is on because once you start following one show, there's a million others and I've already got more pop culture on my shelves and Roku than I can get to. I'm sure the audience it's meant for will have a blast, though.


"The Future Is Now"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

At some point, between writing "The Future Is Now' and it premiering at Fantasia, the idea of a big cryptocurrency heist as a motivator in this sort of action/adventure flick went from feeling coolly futuristic to an instant anachronism, and it does something to this short's vibe that I can't quite put my finger on. It's already sort of pushing through on excitement and enthusiasm, only now it's slightly misdirected. The story has Jaho finally being given a tip that will allow him to track down former friend Paul after he stole a fortune in crypto from him a year ago, but the other partner he had expected to help has moved on while the underworld figure that loaned Jaho the money needed for this crypto play back then is ready to move in on both men. I suppose you could substitute any Macguffin, but we're at a spot right now where anything techy enough to make this seem futuristic seems to have an expiration date.

That doesn't really matter, I suppose; the point of the film is the vibe. There's some pretty slick camerawork and well-communicated speed as Jaho drives through the city, with the neon colors popping and most of the story being told in phone calls. It's not hard to see Jaho as a guy with a lot of online contacts but maybe in over his head trying to actually accomplish something on the street. It's rough at spots - there's enough talk to make you aware that the slick veneer is covering a relative dearth of action - and it doesn't quite make up for the could-be-worse-but-could-be-better acting in a way that makes Jaho and Paul reconnecting work.

For a semi-homemade film - the on-screen and behind-the-camera talent appear to be the same folks - "The Future Is Now" is polished and energetic. It could probably be better with a cast that's not also trying to set light levels and handle blocking.


Yonggamhan simin (Brave Citizen)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

I can't really argue that Brave Citizen doesn't commit to the bit, but I can't help but wish it had gone further. Maybe the filmmakers couldn't because they had to thread a certain needle - there have been enough stories and films out of Korea about teachers lashing out at students or using corporal punishment that the filmmakers don't want to be accused of Being In Favor Of That - or maybe I'm just imagining that, but this is a film that does okay for itself being moderately weird when it actually needs to be crazy.

Mooyoung High, we are told, has been recognized as an Exemplary Anti-Bullying School for two years running, but that's a facade - those two years line up with rich kid Han Su-Kang (Lee Jun-young) being suspended, and he's a terror, not just making other kids' lives miserable but avoiding accountability because his parents are rich, connected with the police and prosecutors, and on the school board. His current favorite target is Go Jin-hyung (Park Jung-woo), a good kid being raised by his street-vendor granny. Han is obviously not in the ethics class taught by So Si-min (Shin Hye-sun), a new teacher on a three-month contract hoping to latch on permanently and advised not to make waves. And she tries, but she's also a former rising star in boxing who has also trained in taekwondo and hopkaido, and probably isn't as different from her father and coach who once won a "Brave Citizen" award for standing up to street crime as she'd like to think, and the masks her father keeps in his gym for his young students does offer some anonymity.

I appreciate the filmmakers pointing out that the Su-kang was suspended for two years and this isn't a minor, because it means one can watch the film without being uneasy about his teacher eventually beating the shit out of him, as must happen because otherwise why are you paying for a ticket. On the other hand, it also means getting very impatient to see Si-min beat the shit out of him. It also kind of messed with the structure of the movie; this feels like the sort of film (or comic, as it's based on a webtoon) where the heroine climbs a ladder to get to the final boss, but what's she going to do, beat up a bunch of kids? So you get a kind of static situation until things jump from masked vigilante to pro wrestling tropes (as they kind of have to, because the resolution can't happen somewhere off in the background). It never quite feels right, and the movie is a bit long to have relatively little happening to move things forward.

Maybe if it had been zanier for longer? The filmmakers get a lot of mileage out of Si-min looking the part of a sunny, idealistic young teacher who is actually a skilled martial artist with anger issues in the start, but ease back on that contrast later. It's hilarious, though, and every time the filmmakers go big with introducing a character or showing student reaction, they hit on something that at least kind of works. It's tough to sustain that when you also want to have major stakes and treat a real-life issue with respect, I suppose, but you're already having a teacher pummel a student; might as well stay in that sort of obviously exaggerated zone.

The fun of it is that Shin Hye-sun has a good enough handle that SI-min never seems to be putting on a facade - she genuinely seems cheerful and like someone who has the right attitude to be a teacher with obvious enthusiasm and empathy, just apparently not squeamish about using violence to deal with people who are making things worse for everyone. She's kind of interesting even as the other actors are mostly playing types, although I suspect that the way they jump from terror to poorly-contained glee when Su-kang starts getting a little of what's coming to them helps make Shin's performance work, because it feels like human nature and she's just able to express it more actively.

That active expression (by which I mean fighting) is okay, although as mentioned, one wishes there was a bit more of it, because it's almost all quick encounters between Si-min and Su-kang which can't really have a definitive ending. The final match is a little more pro-wrestling than MMA, which might be a bit of a disappointment, but there's some good storytelling in it as Si-min can't exactly take Su-kang apart because he is bigger and more muscular but she and everybody watching realize that he's probably never been up against someone who knows what they're doing and isn't afraid of upsetting him or his family before.

It works well enough, and when it leans into how the audience knows they shouldn't be in favor of something but enjoys it anyway, it's great fun. It could just use a bit more of that.


Gekijouban Mononoke Karakasa (Mononoke the Movie: Phantom in the Rain aka Mononoke the Movie: Paper Umbrella)

Stars? I dunno
Seen 20 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024: Animation Plus, laser DCP)

I'm not entirely certain what it is that I just watched but I'm glad that I got to see it on the big screen with good sound. It is some amazing animation outside the usual mold and, hey, I knew coming in that this was a spin-off from a cult show and if I didn't get caught up beforehand, that's on me.

Near as I can tell, the Medicine Seller (voice of Hiroshi Kamiya) wanders around feudal Japan looking to slay demons ("mononoke"), but his Exorcism Sword will only unsheathe if he knows the Form, Truth, and Reason that connect them. His latest target is Ooku, a palace that only women are allowed to enter, which has some strange omens about it: A parade normally scheduled to occur before a princess gives birth has been mysteriously delayed, and there are rumors that someone has left the palace unrecognizable. As he arrives, two young women arrive for their first day as servant girls there: Asa (voice of Tomoyo Kurosawa), a serious girl who wishes to be a scribe, and Kame (Aoi Yuki), bubblier and taken with the glamor of Ooku, which she has obsessively studied as a true fan, and immediately find themselves involved in things far more sinister than they anticipated.

I'm going to have to assume that phantom in the Rain has the basic shape of an episode from the Mononoke series, just writ larger and with fancier effects work, because while there's a sort of token effort to say "I've got to do A, B, and C", it feels more like a reminder for folks who haven't watched it since it premiered in 2007 than exposition for newcomers. Maybe there's material from the larger world that informs what's going on; there certainly seem to be a few characters on the outskirts of the narrative. Otherwise, though, it is throwing a lot at the audience and presuming we know how it fits together.

Even without that knowledge, though, a viewer can get caught up. The design of everything is great, very reminiscent of traditional woodcut illustrations, and indeed, you can see grain behind the image, which sometimes ironically makes everything look even less solid, like a floor is actually a pool until someone steps on it. There are wisps that maintain shape and sparks that indicate constant and momentary smells and tastes, and an unnerving tendency to draw eyes as unblinking pupils. This all stands beside psychedelic imagery that mixes better than one might think - the evils being committed are ancient and incomprehensible.

Writer/director Kenji Nakamura does neat things with the pacing, too, sometimes lingering just long enough to make one wonder about something, other times making things eerie with a bunch of quick cuts or ending sequences by slamming closet doors shut on them. Action is fast and almost overwhelming as the traditional imagery is enhanced by digital 3-D renderings and anachronistic electric guitars show up on the soundtrack.

The folks around me who were familiar with the property seemed to love it. It's probably a bit of an acquired taste and a bit of work if you haven't previously done that acquisition, but unlike a lot of anime films picked up from something that ended a while back (such as Rebuild of Evangelion), it never gave me the sensation of being something only for a niche audience that doesn't include me.

The Roundup

An online acquaintance recently bemoaned the lack of schlock in theaters, which kind of seems like the flip side of not having romantic comedies or coming-of-age films in theaters; I don't think it's the inevitable result of any one thing but a lot of different forces that have positioned going to the movies as something you do for spectacle or prestige pictures as opposed to an affordable and pleasant evening out, at least in the United States. I don't miss schlock so much myself, but I do miss mid-range movies that might be at least a little better on the big screen, and it's kind of amused me at times over the past decade that we often wind up importing those things from Asia, because a Chinese romantic comedy (occasionally a remake of an American one that would go straight to Netflix today) or an Indian underdog story or a Korean cop movie at least has a niche appeal that will get people out of their living rooms in a way that something more mainstream doesn't.

That's what The Roundup is, more or less - a crime story of the type that would hit theaters fairly regularly in the 1980s or 1990s (Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris starred in a bunch of them) but became too small at some point. It's a sequel to another movie, The Outlaws - that's why you see a "2" on any posters with Korean script - but you get the shape of it from a quick look and don't exactly need to come in with anything else. It's not quite ambitious enough to get a big screen release if it were an American film, but it hits enough marks to pull fans of Korean genre cinema out of the woodwork, and just good enough that I'll probably circle back around to the first at some point.

Beomjoidosi 2 (The Roundup)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 June 2022 in AMC Boston Common #13 (first-run, DCP)

It's kind of funny that I was initially kind of frustrated/annoyed that Boston wasn't one of the cities that opened The Roundup almost day-and-date with South Korea, because as much as I like quality action and Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee), there are probably a dozen movies like it that anonymously appear on video-on-demand services and streamers every month starring people like Michael Jai White and Scott Adkins. The fact that there might be some sort of obstacle in the Korea-to-America pipeline keeping it from me probably annoyed me more than the excitement that a trailer almost entirely composed of Ma punching people and dropped the week Eternals introduced him to the wider world actually merited.

It's basic enough stuff - Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok) is a Deputy Captain in the Seoul Police Department, prone to cause some embarrassment because he's got a tendency to rough people up too much. After one such incident, he and his captain Jeon Il-man (Choi Gwi-hwa) are sent to Vietnam on a milk run to extradite a lookout who turned himself in at the consulate. The why of it bugs Seok-do, though, and he soon learns that the guy basically figured Korean prison was safer than being anywhere near Kang Hae-sang (Son Sukku), a kidnapper with a tendency to kill his abductees and any henchmen who get squeamish. The father of Kang's latest victim sent a team of mercenaries to deal with him, which means Seok-do will eventually have to track him back to Korea.

It's a raggedy plot built to space the action out and vary what kind of action to stage. Some action movies of this sort build their fight scenes around impressive choreography and clever staging, but Ma Dong-seok is a big muscular dude who is built to just whale on people, as the folks who made this movie are well aware of that, opting to exaggerate how much a punch will send a normal-sized person flying rather than have fights end quickly and anticlimactically. It sets a tone that carries through all the action, with little of it pretty or elegant but canny in how the filmmakers use the impact. Most folks are trying to be effective and do enough damage with each blow ro end it more or less right away, even if their opponents have more stamina than expected.

You need a little extra to make it go on for more than a few seconds, and since guns kind of have the same issue in terms of ending it quickly, the solution director Lee Sang-yong and his co-writers (including Ma) is blades, which are going to make even a mountain like Seok-do think twice. The film has got some top-shelf knife fight material, and is indeed stabby enough in general to make folks more used to clean gunfights and martial arts wince a bit, although it may just be the sort of Korean violence one is up for.

So why head out for this meat and potatoes (or whatever the Korean equivalent is) VOD-level flick? Well, it is elevated by the presence of a genuine movie star who can inject a bunch of charisma. Ma is better than what this material asks of him as an actor and he probably knows it, but it lets him add an odd wholesomeness to this sort of tough-cop character that lends itself to self-deprecating jokes and a sense of fun even when the violence amps up; he thinks in terms of helping people rather than being a cynical thin blue line holding back chaos. It's a counter to Son Sukku's vicious kidnapper who spew pure undirected malice, a permanent scowl who doesn't necessarily give any signs of enjoying his viciousness despite his intensity; one gets the feeling he's come to the conclusion that maximizing violence is just what's best for business at some point.

It's straightforward but gets the job done, maybe a touch self-aware and too dedicated to helping characters from the first installment around - I haven't seen The Outlaws, but there's one guy with a small role in Vietnam that the audience is clearly meant to recognize and someone else that must have been a fan favorite because he's given a lot more to do that seems wise. It's still able to find room for a couple curveballs, like the wife of a kidnap victim summoning nerves of steel, and knows exactly what sort of hard-hitting action the audience is leaving their apartments to see.

Ashfall

Finally! This isn't necessarily a movie that I was waiting for impatiently, but one I was hoping to see earlier on a couple of occasions and it never worked out. I got a publicity email about it which showed that it wasn't going to be booked in Boston near the start of January offering screeners. I emailed back, yes, send me a link, I've reviewed a whole ton of Korean films for EFC and would like to review this one! Nothing. Mid-January, I strongly considered bus-tripping it to NYC to see it, but didn't for some reason or other (some combination of "it's cold", "it's either a long day or an expensive hotel room", "there's something else going on closer to home"). A Hong Kong disc was announced for mid-May, but Hong Kong wasn't shipping stuff to North America at the time. Finally, an American Blu-ray that came out the first week of October but which I finally put in the player last night. Well, not quite "finally", as the Korean place I occasionally order from is showing a release there in a couple of weeks from now. No 3D or 4K versions, though, which is a pity, because this is a movie that could do well with those.

Not that I have any idea whether or not it played in 3D in Korean theaters or not, or even to what extent 3D is/was-as-of-December-2019 a big thing in South Korea any more than it is in the U.S. A year or so ago, a South Korean place was a good bet to find combined 3D/4K releases, but you don't see the 3D ones much any more, so maybe it's not particularly popular there despite what one occasionally reads about other over-the-top exhibition tech showing up on the peninsula. I wonder this, though, because it seems worth noting that both this and Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula both wound up having a lot of car-chase material, and it occurs to me that car chases are the sort of thing that would go great with those theaters that have screens on the left and right sides of the auditorium. You don't need to specifically stage a whole lot of action that only a small percent of the folks going to the movie will see - just stick a couple of small HD/4K cameras on the sides of your rig as you zoom through the desert or city streets - but having scenery whizzing by in one's peripheral vision will probably enhance the visceral impact of that sort of action quite a bit.

Aside from that, I'm considering giving the disc a quick re-insert today to see if it gives you alternate opening credits if you choose to watch in Korean without subtitles, because it was initially kind of odd to see how those titles were entirely in English. I don't particularly think the Korean version would credit one of the actors as "Ma Dong-Seok aka Don Lee", but then, I suspect figuring out what to do with him when you're advertising is kind of weird, since different parts his American fandom probably know him by different names.

His English being better than most people who play "Korean-American" characters in Korean movies isn't surprising - his family lived in the US for some time - but it's kind of an interesting thing to watch as these movies become more international. I can't tell whether he sounded particularly "American" when speaking Korean, but it might explain why there's occasionally references to his characters being Korean-American when he pops up in other movies, if it's something a Korean audience would notice. This one also had a couple lines about Lee Byun-Hun's character having a southern accent despite playing a North Korean, which amused me some because he actually did sound kind of different from the rest of the cast, and I probably have assumed that this was a North Korean accent without the filmmakers specifically telling me otherwise.

It's a funny coincidence that I put this in right after finishing my post on Minari, because I did kind of find myself idly wondering what South Korean folks think of Steven Yeun in movies like that where he's playing native Koreans, especially since he's the only part of the main cast who doesn't match his character's background. Is it jarring? He could have believably been Korean-American in Okja and his delivery in Burning was meant to sound like he came from nowhere in particular. Maybe he's got a really good Seoul (or wherever) accent in his pocket.

Anyway, if nothing else, this was a pretty enjoyable way to close my laptop, put my phone away, and not continually read about news that would make me nervous all night despite there being nothing I could do, and let's be thankful for that!

Baekdusan (Ashfall)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 November 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Blu-ray)

Ashfall is the sort of movie that looks made for a splashy world-wide release: Slick visual effects, a plot that hits the sweet spot between being of its origin country (and thus not easily remade) but readily accessible to outsiders, and a couple of cast members who are already international stars. The problem: It hit screens in South Korea on the day that The Rise of Skywalker opened in the rest of the world, and between that and Oscar season, screens would be hard to find in areas that don't have large Korean-American communities (it even skipped Boston, where such films tend to do okay). It's good enough to be fun on video, even if its timing wasn't great.

It opens hopefully, with North Korea's impending denuclearization on the news while Captain Cho In-Chong (Ha Jung-woo) and his team defuse a piece of unexploded ordnance from the Korean War; he's due to be decommissioned later that day and looking forward to spending it with his pretty pregnant wife Choi Ji-Young ("Suzy" Bae Su-Ji) before Seoul is hit by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake, and the new gets worse: Mount Baekdu on the border of North Korea and China has erupted, devastating Pyongyang and leaving the North in chaos, and is poised to do so three more times in as many days, with the last one likely to devastate the entire peninsula.

Fortunately, Senior Secretary to the President Jun Yoo-Kyung (Jeon Hye-Jin) recalls a paper by visiting Korean-American scientist "Robert" Kong Bong-Rae (Ma Dong-Seok aka Don Lee) outlining a long-shot technique to vent the magma before it erupts, but which would require at least a 600-megaton explosion. Fortunately, those last six nukes are still somewhere in the DPRK, but their only lead is an informer, Ri Jun-Pyong (Lee Byung-Hun), who will have to be broken out of prison. A hard enough task for seasoned combat soldiers, but one of the two planes carrying the secret mission can't make it through the ash, the whole thing falls on Cho's squad of engineers.

It is a gloriously over-the-top scenario even before you get to the many ways Ri is not to be trusted and how the President (Choi Kwang-Il) recognizes right away that their American allies are not going to be cool with a plan that involves detonating a nuclear bomb on the Chinese border for a 3.5% chance of success (though Kong is working on it!). If nothing else, filmmakers Kim Byung-Seo and Lee Hae-Jun are dedicated to keeping their characters busy enough that the audience doesn't have a lot of time to feel let down after the splashy opening that may also be where most of the effects budget was spent, or because the characters succeeding will mean there's not a whole lot of destruction at the climax. It's one thing after another, and maybe it's not insightful and intricate, but it's exciting and good enough to keep the audience from going "hey, that's stupid" as they move from one action bit to the next

It means none of the impressive cast are doing their most exceptional work, but they're all giving the movie what it needs. Ha Jung-Woo, for instance, gives good "working-class guy stuck trying to save the country" as Cho, easy to get behind and funny without becoming comic relief, a great foil Lee Byung-Hun, whose Ri is intimidating enough to be believable as a dangerous, sophisticated spy but able to look kind of foolish when he and Cho are talking about ordinary things. They're a comedic-style odd couple with enough genuine tension to not make what's going on a joke. Ma Dong-Seok is, as usual, a delight on the side, playing the fussy and kind of cowardly scientist easily despite most of how his parts play into his being a big intimidating guy; there's clearly some sort of backstory about him having rejected his home country that doesn't need to be dragged in despite it making for nice interplay with Jeon Hye-Jin's Jun. Suzy Bae makes for an unusually strong girlfriend-in-danger.

Filmmakers Kim & Lee have a good visual-effects budget to work with and know what to do with it; the budget may not be Emmerich-sized but they know how to get maximum impact from short bursts of FX work and plenty of on-the-ground action. Kim has been the cinematographer for a lot of other glossy/big-budget features, and between them they're good at making chaotic firefights clear and letting the audience get long, wide looks at what's going on before zooming in to the middle of the action. They don't let a lot of fat build up and are good at finding the spot where there are high stakes but the action and adventure are fun - challenging, but not crushing.

It makes for a big, fun disaster movie that has just enough other than destructive spectacle going for it to be a decent at-home watch. It's a shame that more people outside of South Korea didn't get to see it as a giant-screen blockbuster.

Also at eFilmCritic

Rampant

Can I take back a little bit of my getting worked up about Well Go stacking their Korean movies too closely? It looks like The Burning is scheduled for next week, though we don't know if it will get a Boston release yet. They've got another one scheduled for the end of the month which basically looks like Ma Dong-seok punching a lot of people, and, sure, I'll take that.

Chang-gwol (Rampant)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 3 November 2018 in AMC Boston Common #15 (first-run, DCP)

You might reasonably expect a fusion of palace intrigue and supernatural action to be a lot more exciting than Rampant turns out to be, or at the very least more crazy. Maybe that's an inevitable peril of setting this sort of horror movie in a time when people mostly believed in demons - they are just not going to yell "what the hell?" when discovering that they're in the middle of this crazy mash-up the way the audience is - but either half could certainly be a better take on its genre.

As things start, the Joseon kingdom is already on shaky ground - Kng Lee Jo (Kim Eui-sung) is weak and easily manipulated by cabinet minister Kim Ja-joon (Jang Dong-gun) and fortune-telling concubine Jo So-yong (Seo Ji-hye), enough that Crown Prince Lee Young (Kim Tae-woo) is supporting a revolt, something he knows is dangerous enough that he's written brother Ganglim (Hyun-bin) to bring his pregnant wife Kyungbin (Han Ji-eun), to safety in Qing. But when Ganglim and servant Hak-su (Jeong Man-sik) arrive, the port town of Jemulpo is abandoned - at least until nightfall, when the zombies that Young's aide Park Jong-sa (Jo Woo-jin) and sister Deok-hee (Lee Sun-bin) have been defending the town from come out of hiding.

There's a couple ways this can go, ideally - even if the filmmakers don't go the full From Dusk Til Dawn route of not springing the genre change on the audience without warning, there's usually a point where the viewer gets caught up enough in the conventional part of the story that the strange catches them by surprise. Rampant never quite manages that - it dives full into zombie stuff early on and then steps back to the nobles which is never quite so fast-moving. Writer Hwang Jo-yoon eventually stitches both halves into a single story that doesn't feel too much like cheating but only fitfully ever has either half feel like it's doing anything special, beyond being combined with the other.

Full review at EFC.