Showing posts with label young-jin lee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label young-jin lee. Show all posts

Yoga Class 요가학원 (Yoga Hakwom) [2009] • South Korea

The premise starts off well enough. Gather up a handful of South Korea's pretty, young starlets ... erm, actresses, seal them in a beautiful yet dark and creepy castle and have them do yoga. Film it. That might have been a decent watch if they'd left it at that. Problem is, films need a story, some plot, and at least a little character development. Yoga Class doesn't do very well in those departments. And there's not enough Yoga.

The story is: five women sign up for this secret yoga class which promises eternal youthful beauty to the one of them that does the best. The plot is: there are rules they must follow, some of them break the rules and they get killed. The character development is: make one a yuppie who is being pushed out of her job by a younger yuppier girl; one an attention whore bitch; one a previously fat person who still has crazy cravings; one a goofy twit for an attempt at comic relief; and one completely without personality. Then make the rules they must abide by fit perfectly to each of their weakness, like no mirrors, no contact with the outside world, no unauthorized food ... you get the screenplay 101 picture.

The castle is beautiful, the women are mostly good looking, and some of the kills are bloody enough, but it is not possible to care about anything that happens in the film because the characters are unpleasant cliches and their projects and concerns not worthwhile.

★★
Director: Jae-Yeon
Starring: Eugene, Cha Su-Yeon, Park Han-Byeol, Jo Eun-ji, Lee Young-Jin, Kim Hye-Na, Hwang Seung-Eon
IMDb
Asianmediawiki
HanCinema

A.F.R.I.K.A [2002] • South Korea

I don't want to go on record as saying this is a good film but I enjoyed it. It's a toned down Korean version of Thelma and Louise with hotter chicks and twice as many of them. A couple girls borrow a car for a weekend getaway and discover two revolvers in the back seat. They initially think the guns are toys but when a trigger is pulled, blowing out the windshield, we know it's going to keep getting pulled. The guns belong to a cop and a gangster who want them back and don't want it known that they lost them, so there will be chasing. The film's got pretty girls robbing places, sticking it to the Man and other icky men, shooting guns but never killing anyone, and getting makeovers. Min-sun (aka Gyu-ri) Kim looks awesome with blond streaks in her long hair. Young-jin Lee, who usually plays brooding and intense, seems a little out of place but it's nice to see her trying to have fun. I actually enjoyed the shenanigans of the cop and the gangster more than the girls. All in all, a decent popcorn rental.

The title A.F.R.I.K.A stands for "Adoring Four Revolutionary Idols Korean Association".

★★★
Director: Shin Seung-soo
Starring: Lee Yo-Won, Kim Min-Sun, Cho Eun-Ji, Lee Young-Jin, Sung Ji-Roo
IMDb
Wikipedia
Asianmediawiki
HanCinema