tenshi_ippikiookami

Now, I knew "Yellow Door" was a documentary, centered on Korean cinema and with Bong Joon Ho, but I didn't know much else before starting to watch this movie. And I have to say that it is a very fulfilling experience to discover this group of Korean university students (back then, in the 90s) discovering art, cinema, and trying to be a part of something. It is an intelligent and delightful look to a love (movies/cinema) that brought many different people together and was the starting point for a very famous director.

There are too many people talking all the time, many of them (well, almost all but the actors and Bong Joon Ho) you will probably have never heard of before, and it is all seen through maybe too rose-tinted glasses, and sometimes their talk of Godard or similar (even if kept to a minimum) could feel a little pedantic, but this is a well worth watch (and not very long, as it is barely one hour twenty minutes). Give it a chance if you want to see how art, artists, dreams, communities are created and disappear.

A guy breaks with his girlfriend and discovers, surprise, surprise, that a ghost has been living in their room for the whole time, and now that the girlfriend is gone, they can appear (the girlfriend having had some power to stop the ghost from showing themselves till then). Our main character, Yohei, doesn't seem particularly happy with the appearance, but pretty soon a relationship develops between him and the ghost, and a beautiful story blossoms, with some drops of humor, a little bit of romance, and some drama too. The two main actors do a good job with their characters, and even if there is not much originality here (it is all about relationships), it has a subtlety and human touch that is refreshing and makes the viewing really enjoyable.

A movie about high schoolers cheering for their baseball team on the first round of the national high school tournament where nothing of the match is actually shown shouldn't be so fun. But "On the Edge of Their Seats" is a total surprise. Centering on five students (and a teacher) it is basically action free and dialogue heavy. But these students' fears, insecurities, hopes are so well developed and so vividly shown on the screen that you will actually want to join them in their conversations. It can be said that what they say is not particularly original, but the way it is expressed, the actors' refreshing delivery and the pace of the story makes for a wonderful time. If you have the chance to watch it, do.