TV Review: Crash Landing on You (2019)

Crash Landing on You (2019) directed by Kim Hee-won and Lee Jung-hyo

Se-ri (Son Ye-jin) has her own fashion products company apart from her family's larger company in South Korea. With two brothers, she does not seem to be the first choice to take over the family's business though she is more competent than her brothers. She does not care and is a no-nonsense leader who does her own thing. One of her own things is testing out products. She tries out a para-gliding contraption during a storm. The storm causes a tornado which scoops Se-ri up and deposits her North Korea. She doesn't know what to do when a military unit comes along led by Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin) a handsome captain. Naturally, she is suspected of being a spy and wants to get back to South Korea. Through some machinations about as credible as the storm, she winds up at his house in a poor border village. He realizes she is no security threat though there will be a lot of trouble if the government gets involved. They have a bunch of schemes to get her back south but a lot of things are working against her, including family members who do not want her to come back and a growing romantic relationship between them making her less motivated to leave. The plot blossoms out to involve a lot of characters, mostly North Koreans, in dramatic and comedic situations that are quite endearing.

The show is considered the quintessential K-Drama, with a good blend of comedy, drama, romance, and action. One of Jeong-hyeok's soldiers watches k-dramas (which is illegal since they live in the north), providing plenty of commentary and jokes about how the plot unfolds in interesting and sometimes ridiculous ways. The cast is so charming and the writing is so appealing, it is hard not to like everyone (except for the villains who are less three-dimensional for the most part) and root for the main couple to get together. A lot of circumstances keep them apart and keep the story moving forward. The secondary characters also have interesting things to do and provide a broad picture of life in both North Korea and South Korea. The show is so much fun, even if you do not know much about k-drama. 

Highly recommended.

TV Review: Black Knight (2023)

Black Knight (2023) created by Cho Ui-Seok based on webcomic "Taekbaegisa” by Lee Yoon-Kyun

After an apocalyptic event, the Korean peninsula is left a desert with atmosphere that's barely breathable. People live in a social stratified society where everyone has QR codes on the back of their hands. It's a form of identity and a way to manage money and goods. Except, not everyone has it. The lowest level of society,the refugees, live in squalor on the outskirts of civilization. Most everyone else lives in domed living areas managed by the government and Cheonmyeong, a corporation that manufactures goods and bottles oxygen for public consumption. Naturally, the corporation wields a lot of power. They use Deliverymen to get products to the various citizens. The most famous deliveryman is 5-8 (Kim Woo-Bin), who is able to fight off bandits better than anyone else. All the refugees admire him, including Sa-Wol (Kang You-Seok). He wants to be a deliveryman since it is a way for refugees to climb away from their bottom-rung status. So he practices fighting with his friends. He's gotten good, but is he good enough to earn a place among the Deliverymen?

Meanwhile, Cheonmyeong is building a new, larger dome that will accommodate most citizens. The plan is ambitious. Ryu Seok (Song Seung-Heon) is the son of the CEO and is ready to take over the company. He leads the project and has side schemes to make sure things turn out well. He's not so interested in the refugees benefiting from all their work, though the corporation has been kidnapping children and performing mysterious experiments on them. So his evil knows no bounds. Seol-Ah (Esom), a military investigator for the Defense Intelligence Command (DIC), investigates various murders and incidents which all happen to relate to Cheonmyeong's activities. Also, she had taken in Sa-Wol as a refugee child, so she has an interest in the welfare of the refugees beyond the usual desire to promote justice in her society.

The world of Black Knight is a typical apocalyptic/environmental disaster story. People wear masks to breathe when they are outside. The very first scenes have a Mad Max vibe, though quickly a lot more civilization is seen. Certainly they have a lot more technology than the Australian desert apocalypse. Overall, the show looks good, not great. The plot has a tension between the violent action (which can get graphic) and the social and political intrigue. Some plot points seem out of place or unnecessary but things are resolved by the end of the six-episode arc. The plot is fairly standard with few if any surprises. It needed something more or something less, I am not sure which. Either more character development for the characters or a tighter story arc (so, fewer characters) would have made the show more enjoyable. The actors do a good job but the characters don't have quite enough growth, action, or motivation.

While there could be a second series, the story ends with this one. I am not sure what a sequel would do. I enjoyed what is in the show but was not wowed by it. Black Knight is a mid-level entry in the post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama category.

Mildly recommended.

Book Review: Priest and Beggar by Kevin Wells

Priest and Beggar: The Heroic Life of Venerable Aloysius Schwartz by Kevin Wells

Aloysius Schwartz had a fairly normal childhood grown up in 1930s Washington, D.C. He loved his family and read comic books, dreaming of being a Nazi-fight hero. As he grew up, his priorities shifted and he desired to become a priest and work in missions, living a life of poverty and service as Jesus did. His American seminary wanted to shift him to an academic life, so he went to Europe to join the Societe des Auxiliaries des Missions, which had a focus on missionary work. He saw the fine, large, comfortable seminaries as totally unlike the life of the poor in the street, with whom he wanted to identify so he could serve them better. One academic break, he visited Banneux, France, where Mary had appeared as "the Virgin of the Poor." At the Banneux shrine, he promised his service in her name if she would help him get to mission country. His desire was to go to South Korea, which had just finished the civil war that left the country divided and devastated. He returned to D.C. to be ordained and was sent from there to the diocese of Busan. 

Arriving in Korea, he was shocked at the poverty and corruption everywhere. He started to learn Korean and work in a local parish but fell deathly ill. He had to return to the United States to recuperate, which turned out to be a blessing. After his recovery, he traveled around telling American Catholics about the conditions in Korea. People started donating money. Eventually, the Busan bishop came over and they criss-crossed the country in a broken-down car, getting donations everywhere. They returned to Korea where they used the money to open shelters, schools, clinics, and hospitals for the poorest of the poor. To staff these, Fr. Schwartz founded the Sisters of Mary, an order of young women who served in simplicity and love. In the orphanages, each sister had six to eight boys assigned to her. She was a mother to them. She cleaned them up and cared for them, playing with them and teaching them the Faith. The concept expanded to Boystowns and Girlstowns founded first in Korea, later in other countries.

His success did not come easy. The American bishops complained to Rome about the needs of the poor in America. Why should all the money go to Korea? The papal investigation validated Fr. Schwartz's work. The local bishop had some of the Korean relief money but was not handling it well, so Fr. Schwartz cut him off, not a popular move. Fr. Schwartz also had to deal with the Korean organized crime, which was exploiting the civic welfare system, taking the medicines and food intended for the homeless and selling it on the black market. Through courage and hard dealing, Father Schwartz was able to take over several ghastly "relief" homes and convert them to serving the poor, not the community organizers.

All the while, he kept up his priestly duties and lived a very humble life. He lived in a shack behind his rectory with no electricity or running water. He never had cash on him and was very thin. He had a joyful disposition and was able to inspire others to help him. The Boystown/Girlstown model expanded to the Philippines and Latin America. In the last years of his life Fr. Schwartz developed ALS, a debilitating disease that slowly took away his physical abilities. He died in 1992 but his legacy lives on.

His story is inspiring and well-told by author Wells. Schwartz was declared Venerable in 2015 and his cause for sainthood seems assured. So many people who knew him thought of him as a saint. He is a great and inspiring example of faith in action, like Mother Theresa or Damian of Molokai.

Highly recommended.

TV Reviews: W (2016)

W (2016) produced by Chorokbaem Media

The very popular webtoon (a digital comic designed for reading on smartphones) "W" tells the story of Kang Cheol (Lee Jong-Suk). He is an Olympic competitor in pistol shooting who comes home from a meet to discover his family shot to death. Suspicion falls on him but he is not convicted. He creates a TV program called "W" which is intended to investigate what happened to his family (and discover the real murderer) but also documents other real crimes. The webtoon focuses on Kang Cheol's search for the killer and the killer's attempts to kill Kang Cheol. But that plot is only half the show.

In the real world, the writer of "W," Oh Sung-Moo (Eui-sung Kim) is tired of the very popular comic and has decided to kill off Kang Cheol to make an ending. The plan goes awry when his daughter Oh Yeon-joo (Han Hyo-joo) is sucked into the comic. She's a medical intern so she saves the handsome Kang Cheol and starts to fall in love with him. This plot twist shows up in the webtoon, surprising both readers and the writer. The writer keeps failing to kill off the main character, causing him some angst. Kang Cheol and Oh Yeon-joo start falling in love though she is sucked back to the real world at the end of each issue. She is not really in control of when she comes and goes, making things more dramatic. The killer becomes interested in killing her, though his interest shifts when he discovers that he's a faceless character in a comic with no real motivation other than making the hero's life miserable. Just when the romantic part of the plot is resolved, the killer creates lots of complications both in the comic world and out in the real world.

The premise is a lot of fun, a typical fantasy for fiction fans. Who wouldn't be intrigued at the chance to live in an imagined world or to meet a favorite character? The logic of how the two worlds interact gets more complicated and convoluted as the story goes on. At some point, it felt as if things were changing or added just to make some new drama to fill out the sixteen-episode season. It would have been better if they'd tightened it up to ten or twelve episodes, but still it's a fun premise and otherwise well executed (good acting, charming characters, good visual effects).

Recommended.

As I write this (December 2021), the show is only available in America through Viki.

TV Review: Sisyphus: The Myth (2021)

Sisyphus: The Myth (2021) created by Jin Hyuk, Lee Jane, and Jeon Chan-ho

Han Tae-sul (Cho Seung-woo) is a brilliant polymath who saves the crashing airplane he is on. He runs a tech business and is about to make his most famous and fascinating invention--the uploader, a machine that enables time travel. Viewers know he will be successful because Seo-hae (Park Shin-Hye) has come from the future to keep him from being killed. And somehow to prevent the nuclear holocaust that is coming in a couple of months! A lot of other people are involved in the plot machinations, including Tae-sul's crazy brother (who isn't really crazy though he seems so because he knows about the time travel), two other groups who have come from the future with their own agendas, and the mysterious Sigma who is the mastermind behind all the bad stuff that happens. 

The action stays mostly in the present with visits to the future and the past. The story does a good job blending the action and the science fiction. Some romance is shoe-horned in and become more significant as the story goes on. The middle of the 16-episode arc felt baggy, adding backstories of the minor characters to fill out the running time (each episode is around 65-80 minutes long). By the end, the show turns into a bit of a soap opera (which is bad in my opinion) and it has an extended "this is all the time travel tricks I pulled" exposition that goes on longer than I would have liked. As with a lot of time travel stories, the logic and continuity does not hold up under scrutiny. Even with the flaws, I still got emotional in a good way and was satisfied with most of the ending.

Mildly recommended.

Currently (June 2021), this is only streaming on Netflix.

Movie Review: Goksung (The Wailing) (2016)

Goksung (The Wailing) (2016) written and directed by Hong-jin Na

Local policeman Jong-goo (Do-wan Kwak) has a tough time with nightmares about horrible things happening. If that wasn't bad enough, bad things do start happening in the local village. Mysterious and gruesome murders take out entire families, often with one family member (who killed all the others, i.e. the perpetrator) committing suicide. The theories that assign blame are all wild speculations, from bad mushrooms to the recently-arrived old Japanese man (Jun Kunimura). The investigation is slow and depressing but becomes more urgent when Jong-goo discovers that his daughter (Hwan-hee Kim) has started changing and may be the next perpetrator. Jon-goo's mother-in-law contacts a local shaman to help get rid of the evil presence, if it's not already too late.

The movie starts like a police procedural but quickly morphs into a horror film. Jong-goo is a bit hapless and very passive at the start. He gets more active once he's in jeopardy. The atmospheric surroundings create more tension in an already tense situation. The setting is beautiful and also haunting with all the fog and rain. The plot suffers from having too many red herrings. A lot of significant scenes don't make sense with how things turned out at the end. The ending is horrifying but fails to pull things together, leaving me as a viewer unsatisfied.

Mildly recommended--the atmosphere is great and the story is intriguing until they fail at the ending.

TV Review: Kingdom Season One (2019)

Kingdom Season One (2019) written by Kim Eun-hee and directed by Seong-hun Kim

Set during Korea's medieval period, Kingdom tells the story of the nation's king who has been afflicted with smallpox. At least that's the official story. The Crown Prince (Ji-hoon Ju) is suspicious since no one is allowed to see the king except for a small set of advisers...and the queen. The queen is not his mother. She is the second wife of the king. In fact, she is about the same age as the crown prince. She's also pregnant. Since the crown prince is actually the son of a concubine, the royal lineage will fall to the unborn child if he is born before the king dies.

The king did die but a royal physician was brought in with the "resurrection plant" to keep him alive. Unfortunately, the cure turned the king into a flesh-hungry, irrational monster, i.e. a zombie. Political intrigues ensue as the Crown Prince investigates and the Haewon Cho clan (the queen is a member) schemes to get rid of the Crown Prince. Zombie mayhem also ensues as the corpse of the physician's assistant inadvertently causes a zombie plague outbreak starting from the doctor's rural clinic.

The show is a good mixture of royal drama and zombie horror. The political fencing would make a good drama all on its own. The gore starts off fairly mild though that increases during the third episode. The actors are very good and the stunt work and special effects are very realistic-looking (hardly any noticeable CGI). I enjoyed the ongoing story and the action/horror elements.

The big finale had two problems. We expected this to be a self-contained series but found out at the cliffhanger ending that there's another season. So we would have been left waiting around. Luckily the second season has already released. The other problem is a surprise twist about the zombies that really does not make much sense though they may have a chance to explain it away as the characters reading the situation wrong. At least I hope that's what happens. We will watch on.

Recommended.

This is currently available on Netflix (as of May 2020).