Bridesmaids, a chick flick for dudes

When I first saw the trailer (see below) for Bridesmaids (dir. Paul Feig, 2011), I knew I was going to end up hitting the theaters the first weekend it came out. My comedic tastes almost always tend to fall on the male spectrum and I love all of Judd Apatow’s heartwarming gross-out comedies. The fact that it was an all-female cast and boasted SNL star comedienne Kristen Wiig as the screenwriter was an even bigger draw for me.

Bridesmaids follows Annie (Wiig) as she helps plan her best friend’s (Maya Rudolph) wedding. By that sentence alone, I’m sure, most men are saying, “Bleck, another chick flick.” But they’d be wrong … Continue Reading

The Gift to Stalin [Review]

Well now. I was not quite ready for the experience that was The Gift to Stalin, Rustem Abrashev’s tale of a man recounting his escape and survival as a boy during the forced deportations/migrations imposed by the Soviet Union in the 1940’s. Now I’ll be the first to admit that my Modern European lessons haven’t solidly stayed with me over the years, but I know for sure that there is a very special place reserved in hell for one Joseph Stalin. An incredible amount of lives in the Soviet Union were ended senselessly (something I feel is too often glossed over), but millions of people were also displaced. This film in all honesty should be weighed down by the darkness of that time period, but the story is told on a smaller and more localized scale, with it’s focus the people of a small village in Kazakhstan and their determination to live life as best as they know how, despite all that is going on. … Continue Reading

KAFFNY ’11: psychohydrography

Peter Bo Rappmund’s 2010 experimental documentary psychohydrography is a sensory journey along the LA River from the mountains to the sea. It was shot on location at the Eastern Sierra Nevadas, Owens Valley, the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Los Angeles river and the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Korean American Film Festival New York’s Opening Night program on March 17th at 10:45 pm. Tickets for the Opening Night can be bought here and more information about the event can be found here. My thoughts after the break. … Continue Reading

KAFFNY ’11: Wet Sand: Voices From LA

Dai Sil Kim-Gibson’s 2004 film Wet Sand: Voices From LA is her follow up to her 1993 film Sa-I-Gu (reviewed here) and is her attempt at creating a wider picture of the 1992 LA Riots and is screening as part of the Korean American Film Festival New York in their Dai Sil Kim-Gibson retrospective. The KAFFNY will screen Sa-I-Gu: From Korean Women’s Perspectives, Wet Sand: Voices from LA (2004), Olivia’s Story, directed by Charles Burnett (1999), A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans (1995) Motherland (2006) and Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women(1999). You can find the info here. Read my thoughts after the break. … Continue Reading

One Hundred Mornings at reRun

We here at cineAWESOME! love the reRun Gastropub Theater in Brooklyn. A theater where you can drink good beer and eat some amazing snacks (also if you’re feeling very hungry just go right next door to reBar for some more substantial meals). It is also surprisingly affordable and a ticket and a snack is often less than what you would pay for just a ticket (substantially if its 3D) at a big chain theater in Manhattan.

So when one of our favorite places is playing a film we’ve had our eyes on for a while it’s time to get excited. Conor Horgan’s One Hundred Mornings has been on our radars since we first saw the trailer and we were hooked. There are a few genres that we love more than the post-apocalyptic film. One Hundred Mornings is a film about two couples who take refuge in a lake side cabin sometime after the world has experienced a breakdown in society. Horgan’s first feature, the film has been earning great reviews all over and this will be it’s New York theatrical premiere. As a bonus there will be special guests on Friday night!

So we highly suggest you check it out. I will be there, just look for someone with a funky t-shirt and an Irish hat most likely drinking a beer.

The film is running from 3/25-3/31.
You can buy tickets here.
Film Website is here.

ONE HUNDRED MORNINGS from Bl!nder Films on Vimeo.

The Magicians

Song Il-gon’s 2005 film The Magicians began its life as one of the 30-minute short films that make up Jeonju International Film Festival’s “Short Digital Films by Three Filmmakers” omnibus series. Song then expanded it to an a feature film. Filmed entirely in one take, this digital film takes place on New Year’s Eve in a bar on a mountain owned by Jae-sung (Jeong Woong-in) who is meeting with his former band mate’s Myung-soo (Jang Hyeon-seong) and Ha-yeong (Kang Kyeong-heon). The band broke up three years prior when Ja-eun (Lee Seung-bi) killed herself on New Year’s Eve. Now they are back together to drink and talk and reminisce. … Continue Reading

Gagman

Lee Myung-se’s (recently known for his visually stylistic film such as Nowhere to Hide (1999), Duelist (2005), and M (2007)) Gagman (1989) was his debut film, and is about the travails of Lee Jung-sae (Ahn Sung-ki) the titular gagman who has a thing for Charlie Chaplin and cinema. He wants nothing more to escape his current existence by directing a film but the only people he finds to help him are Moon Do-suk (Bae Chang-do) his barber and Oh Son-yong (Hwang Shin-hye) a young head strong (and good looking) female that he meets and ropes into his schemes. And schemes he does, and they turn serious (in a comic way!) when he comes across real guns and decides he will self finance his films. With various banks’ money.

This is not going to end well. … Continue Reading

The Chaser

Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy
My review of Hong-jin Na’s The Chaser

Hong-jin Na’s 2008 thriller, The Chaser, is but a brief glimpse into the chaotic world of pimps, police and killers. Jung-ho Eom (Jun-seok Kim) plays an ex-detective who has turned to the dark side…prostitution.

When we first meet Jung-ho, he is in dire financial trouble as his very talented staff has begun to disappear before clearing their debts with him. There’s almost nothing worse than messing with a pimp’s money, until you start messing with his product. One by one his staff dwindles, and as the pieces from the puzzle slowly fall into place, he realizes that his product is not voluntarily disappearing. … Continue Reading

The Host (2006) Review

Bong Joon-ho’s 2006 monster tale, The Host, brings a level of sophistication to the monster movie genre with a combination of several genres all working to develop the narrative and its characters. The story follows a snack car employee Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), his father, Hee-bong (Byeon Hee-bong),  daughter Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-seong),  sister Nam-joo (Bae Doona), who’s an archer, and Gang-du‘s brother Nam-il (Park Hae-il), an alcoholic former activist who has not done much since graduating.

The story focuses on the family dealing with an unexpected attack by a mutated amphibian monster that emerged as a result of dumping formaldehyde in the Han River. The monster takes Hyun-seo seemingly killing her until Gang-du receives a call from Hyun-seo informing him that she was in fact still alive but trapped in the monster’s sewer lair.Gang-du and his family set out to save his daughter but must get by the government and the monster in order to do so. … Continue Reading

The Man From Nowhere

The Man From Nowhere (dir. Lee Jeong-beom, 2010) is about a man, Cha Tae-sik (Won Bin), who wants to be left alone to dwell in his mysterious past, his next door neighbor Hyo-jeong (Kim Hyo-seo) who is a drug addict and involved in VERY BAD THINGS, and her daughter Soo-mi (Kim Sae-ron) who has no one to talk to except for this man. As in any crime/thriller movie, stealing from gangsters is bad and when Hyo-jeong and her junky boyfriend steal from the wrong people Soo-mi gets taken and Tae-sik must rescue her. With shades of Leon: The Professional (dir. Luc Besson, 1994), there is even a cactus that Tae-sik takes care of, this film became the biggest hit of the year even knocking aside Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2010) with 6.2 million people seeing the film. Just released on DVD and Blu-ray by Well Go USA, I decided to pop it in my Blu-ray player and check it out. Here’s what I thought. Some minor spoilers, although spoiled on the synopsis on the back of the box, follow so don’t click if you really want to remain surprised by the all too obvious mysterious past. … Continue Reading