I Saw the Devil
Rated: R for graphic depictions of violence
Director: Jee-woon Kim
Writer: Hoon-hung Park (screenplay)
Starring: Byung-hun Lee, Min-sik choi, and Gook-hwan Jeon
Summary borrowed from IMDB: When his pregnant fiancee becomes the latest victim of a serial killer, a secret agent blurs the line between good and evil in his pursuit of revenge.
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Really not all that bad. For serious.
We were sitting around mid-week, completely bored out of our minds (or at least, some of us were. Others were watching kdramas on Hulu and dreaming about flying to Korea to corrupt some youth.) Anyways, my dad put on “Season of the Witch,” a movie that had been on our Instant Queue for a ridiculous amount of time.
The movie opens up with the killing of a bunch of women accused of witchcraft and just keeps right on rolling. There was like no let up at all, it was just this fast-paced ride through a countryside ravaged by the Black Plague. And Behmen (Nicolas Cage) and his guy, Felson (Ron Perlman), are hot out of the Crusades and are charged with helping transport an accused witch for persecution.
If all the swinging of swords and chopping off of limbs in the first fifteen minutes didn’t catch your attention, that’s about when things went full-on action movie. There’s hallucinations, murder, mutilation, a crazed bridge crossing, and at the end of it all… yeah, I’m not going to ruin it for you. (If you want to ruin it for yourself, use the Internet. That’s what it’s there for: ruining the endings of good movies.)
So if you want to watch a movie, eat some popcorn, and maybe have something to yell about with your friends, check out “Season of the Witch.” It’s on Netflix streaming right now, if that’s what you’ve got.
~Pax
Title: The Monster a.k.a. Home Sweet Home
Starring: Shu Qi and Alex Fong, Tam Chun-Ho
Summary: A young family moves into a nice Hong Kong high rise and things immediately begin to go badly for them. They’re only there for a short time–maybe a week–when their three year old son Chi Lo is abducted. The mother frantically searches for her son after the police have given up after only a few weeks. Some of her actions during her search–falling through the ceiling, buying a big rottweiler, etc–have some of the other inhabitants of her building thinking that she’s just some crazy woman. But she is certain that some strange, rag-wearing woman has taken her son and she’s not going to stop until she gets him back.
Opinion: Though this movie is classed as a “horror” movie, it would be a mistake to try and judge it by the same criteria as the usual Chinese horror movies (“The Eye,” “Gu-On,” etc.) And even though some parts were a tad overdramatic, it was still very interesting and I actually became very sympathetic of “the monster.”
I would recommend watching this movie, just don’t rate it on the basis of the usual horror movies. Don’t go into it blind and prepare yourself to be moved to tears over the plight of the supposed villain.
