Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020) ☆☆☆(3/4): A little one-cut SF comedy film

Posted on August 23, 2026 by kaist455

Japanese filmmaker Junta Yamaguchi’s 2020 debut feature film “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” tries to roll a preposterous but interesting story premise as much as possible within its limited space and time. While you may often get confused at times due to its deliberately convoluted science fiction farce, the movie steadily maintains its lightweight sense of fun as cheerfully bouncing from one narrative point to another, and you will gladly go along with that to the end.

At the beginning, we meet a shy café owner named Kato (Kazunari Tosa). After the working hour at his café is over, he returns to his little residence above his café, and something odd suddenly occurs to his bafflement. When he turns on his computer monitor, somebody talks to him from the computer monitor, and that person in question is none other than himself. It soon turns out that the computer monitor is somehow connected with a TV monitor in the café, and this Kato in the computer monitor exists in the very near future which will come two minutes later.

Needless to say, Kato initially does not believe much of what his future self tells him, but it does not take much time for him to realize that this is really happening. Two minutes later, he goes down to the café and then watches his past self doing and saying the exactly same things done by him two minutes ago, while he repeats exactly what his future self did two minutes ago as expected.

When not only Kato’s sole employee but also several friends of his subsequently get involved with this very strange happening, the situation becomes more interesting than before. They deliberately make the computer monitor and the TV monitor face each other for generating a sort of feedback loop, and this leads to “Droste effect”, which, according to Wikipedia, refers to the effect of a picture recursively appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. (The original Japanese title of the movie is “We at the End of Droste”, by the way).

As a result, the computer monitor shows an infinite number of two-minute pasts, while the TV monitor shows an infinite number of two-minute futures in contrast. Quite amazed by this, Kato and the other main characters soon embark on finding whatever they can do with this fantastic circumstance of theirs. They simply wait for whatever their future selves are going to notify them across the infinite number of time points, and, what do you know, this comes to benefit them in one way or another.

However, Kato becomes more aware of how much he and the others around him are often trapped by the inexorable logic of cause and effect. As he confides to one of the other main characters in the story later, he does not like being limited by knowing the future in advance, and that may make you reflect a bit on how boring our life can be if everything is pre-determined for us from the very beginning. Regardless of whether things are going to get better or worse for us, we are usually not bored at least while also managing to find some will and spirit for facing whatever may lie in front of us in our frequently chaotic life, are we?

Around the middle point of the story, the situation becomes a bit more serious for Kato and the other characters in the movie, but the screenplay by Makoto Ueda keeps things rolling with more wit and humor. When Kato’s friends attempt to get a considerable amount of money via some help from their future selves, we instantly sense trouble, but then the movie surprises us as willingly pushing its story premise further. When he is subsequently going to confront two certain dangerous figures for saving someone else, Kato must take several other things besides considerable risk and one of those two monitors, because that is exactly what he is expected to do for not also accomplishing his personal mission but also maintaining the timeline stable and intact.

It should be mentioned that almost all of the movie is presented as a one-shot sequence. Since the astonishing technical achievements of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” (2014) or Sam Mendes’s “1917” (2019), there have been a number of notable one-shot movies such as “The Boiling Point” (2021), so what is presented in the film is not that new or refreshing now, but I must tell you that Yamaguchi, who also served as the editor and cinematographer of the film, and his crew member did a competent job of holding our attention during its 70-minute running time. Although I sometimes noticed how subtly the movie shifts from one moment to another, the overall result, which was incidentally shot during 7 days, looks mostly smooth and neat on the whole, and, without getting distracted at all, we accordingly get more engaged in what may happen next along the story.

In addition, the movie is supported well by the game efforts from Kazunari Tosa and its several other cast members. Although their characters are mostly broad caricatures, these good performers fill their respective roles with enough life and personality at least, and the natural comic chemistry among them is certainly crucial for making every key comic moment in the film work to the end.

In conclusion, “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” is a modest but fairly amusing genre film which deserves some attention for its considerable amount of wit, competence, and personality. Since the critical and commercial success of Shin’ichirō Ueda’s independent comedy film “One Cut of the Dead” (2017), there have been a series of similar low-budget one-shot Japanese films during last several years, and this is just one of the prime examples, but I will not deny that I was amused enough during my viewing.

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The Wicker Man (1973) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): The return of a classic British horror film

Posted on August 23, 2026 by kaist455

As many of you know well, Robin Hardy’s 1973 film “The Wicker Man” has a pretty complicated history. Not long before it was released in movie theaters in UK at that time, the movie, whose initial running time was around 100 minutes, was trimmed down to 87 minutes, and it was believed for many years that those trimmed materials were lost forever. Nevertheless, as the movie gradually gained more appreciation and admiration during next several decades, there were a series of attempts on restoration, which accordingly led to several different versions including the 2013 “Final Cut” version approved by Hardy himself, who incidentally died in 2016.

I saw the 2001 “Director’s Cut” version, which is probably the version closest to the original version in its 99-minute running time, around 20 years ago, and I noticed that the 2013 version, whose 4K restoration edition was released in South Korean theaters a few days ago, is not exactly the completely restored version. While the main story itself remains mostly intact, the 2013 version, whose running time is 95 minutes, is relatively shorter in its prologue part, which gives us a brief glimpse into its policeman hero’s uptight Christian background before he goes by seaplane to some remote Scottish island for his latest case.

He is Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Wooward), and his mission seems to be simple at first. A letter was sent to the West Highlands Constabulary, and it was about the mysterious disappearance of some young girl living on that island. Right after arriving at the island, he begins his inquiry around the island, but it does not take much time for him to notice that the residents of the islands are interfering with his investigation in one way or another. No matter how persistently he asks questions about that missing girl, they do not give any clear answer to him at all, and even her family do not help him much.

In addition, he cannot help but quite baffled by the apparently pagan lifestyle in the island. Its Christian church has been empty and abandoned for years, and it becomes more apparent to him and us that the residents of the island have been following some older religion under Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). For instance, they frequently sing naughty folk songs associated with sex and nature, and they are also very, very, very frank to their children about the sexual aspects of their upcoming spring celebration to be held a few days later.   

Needless to say, these and many other things on the island annoy and disturb Sergeant Howie a lot. After all, he is a devout Christian dude with a considerable degree of sexual repression as indirectly implied by the prologue scene, and he is certainly repulsed and confounded a lot by the pagan belief in the island, but he also finds himself quite tempted as the beautiful young daughter of the local innkeeper often flirts with him. At one point in the middle of the story, she actively attempts to seduce him from the room right next to his staying spot, and we get a darkly amusing moment as he desperately clings onto his Christian faith for not being defeated by her blatant act of seduction.

Meanwhile, he gets closer to whatever Lord Summerisle and many other residents of the island are hiding from him. Something is definitely going to happen on the day of that local spring celebration, and this seems to be involved with that missing girl in question. He becomes more determined to find and then save her from whatever may happen to her, but, of course, he only finds himself more cornered by his increasingly insidious opponents on the island.

During its final act, the screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, which is inspired by David Pinner’s 1967 novel “Ritual”, throws more odd and weird things onto the screen. As the local spring celebration is started, Sergeant Howie lets himself thrown into more danger, and the movie cheerfully swings back and forth between dark humor and offbeat horror as its hero walks toward its inevitable finale. I will not go into details here, but I can tell you at least that 1) the finale remains quite impressive and striking as before and 2) you will be chilled more by the inexorable narrative logic behind that.       

Although his character is not particularly sympathetic or likable to say the least, Edward Woodward brings considerable intensity to his role, and we become engaged in whatever may happen next along the story, even though we observe his character’s zealous pursuit of truth and justice from the distance. On the opposite, Christopher Lee, who is no stranger to horror genre considering that he once played a certain iconic horror figure, has a lot of fun with his deliberately theatrical character, and he delightfully goes over the top as his character presides over what eventually occurs along with many other island residents. 

On the whole, “The Wicker Man” is quite memorable for its decidedly morbid mix of folk horror and absurd comedy despite being rather incomplete even at present. Like some other notable British horror films in the 1970s such as Nicholas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” (1973), it has influenced a number of subsequent genre films ranging from Edgar Wright’s “Hot Fuzz” (2007) to Ari Astor’s “Midsommar” (2019), and its strikingly weird moments will certainly linger on your mind for a long time, no matter whichever version you watch. I am glad to experience it along with many other audiences at a local arthouse movie theater yesterday, and I guess it keeps growing on me as usual while continuing to influence more genre works in the future.

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Warfare (2025) ☆☆☆(3/4): Presenting warfare itself

Posted on August 20, 2026 by kaist455

2025 film “Warfare”, which belatedly came to South Korean movie theaters yesterday, attempts to do nothing more than presenting warfare itself on the screen. Based on the testimonies of a bunch of U.S. Navy SEAL platoon members on one intense warfare during the Iraq War in the 2000s, the movie is inherently limited by its rather narrow perspective, but the result is quite tense and realistic at times thanks to its competent direction, and that is more than enough to forget its several weak aspects.

After the brief opening scene introducing those soldier characters in the story together, the movie promptly throws us into their latest mission without much background information. Except the location of their operation site, we do not get much explanation on why they are sent there or what they are exactly going to do there, but, as observing how they smoothly and casually execute the first step of their mission, we come to sense that this is just another usual mission to be handled by them.

For the members of Alpha One Platoon, their latest mission looks pretty simple. In the middle of one night, they quietly break into a civilian house along with their two local interpreters, and then they swiftly set up their post inside the house before the following morning. Outside the house, everything seems to be fine and normal on the surface, but they begin to notice one little suspicious thing after another, and the mood becomes more tense while they patiently and watchfully monitor the surrounding area. Their enemies can be anywhere, and the possibility of getting attacked becomes more palpable to them even though nothing serious has not happened yet.

Needless to say, there eventually comes a sudden attack from their enemies, and all hell breaks loose upon them within a few seconds. The movie did a good job of vividly illustrating this sudden shock and awe experienced by the main characters, and you will observe how many of them struggle to recover from their resulting physical and psychological trauma while also desperately trying to handle their increasingly urgent situation. No, this is not your usual war flick at all, and we are reminded more of their fear as well as their vulnerability when they must defend themselves more before getting any real chance of survival.

While keeping everything real and authentic on the screen as much as possible, directors/writer Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza, who was incidentally one of these platoon members and also previously worked for Garland as a military adviser in Garland’s previous film “Civil War” (2024), occasionally add a bit of stylistic touch. When the platoon members in the film are unexpectedly ambushed by an improvised explosive device (IED), the mood becomes rather surrealistic as they try to process the resulting traumas of theirs during the brief but unnervingly confusing aftermath, and that makes a striking contrast with when they subsequently try to handle the serious physical injuries of some of them (The movie is dedicated to one of these injured soldiers, by the way).

As the movie constantly limits itself within their perspective, we can only get informed as much as them about what the hell is really going on outside their temporary post. Sure, they frequently communicate with their base for requesting more help or assistance, but you will not understand much of whatever is said on the communication line – even while you will sense more of confusion and chaos surrounding them with more attacks from their hidden enemies.

This storytelling approach actually contributes to both strong and weak points of the movie. On the one side, the movie thankfully avoids any unnecessary sensationalism or jingoism, and it often regards the platoon members in the movie as a mere group even while closely observing their traumas and struggles throughout the story. Sure, you may notice several notable main cast members including D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Noah Centineo, Joseph Quinn, Kit Connor, Michael Gandolfini, and Charles Melton, but none of them overshadows the less recognizable cast members in the film, and they all simply focus on making their military characters’ situation look and feel more realistically convincing to us. Thanks to their good joint efforts, there are several very intense moments which will definitely make you wince more than once, and we accordingly get more engaged even though we never get to know that much about their characters.

On the other side, the narrow narrative focus of the movie leaves some blind spots to notice. While the movie is rather vague about the goal of the military mission in the story, those hidden enemies in the film are pretty anonymous to say the least, but the movie wisely avoids any gratuitous “shoot-them-up” catharsis at least. In case of those unfortunate local civilians who happen to be stuck with the platoon members in the story, the movie mostly remains distant to them, but, as shown around the end of the story, it shows a bit of sympathy to them as well as those two local interpreters.

Overall, “Warfare” is a well-made war drama film packed with enough intensity and realism to hold our attention, but I also must point out that it does not bring any particular new or fresh to its genre territory. During last two decades, we have had plenty of notable Iraq War films ranging from “Hurt Locker” (2008) to “American Sniper” (2014), and “Warfare” looks like aiming a little too modestly in my humble opinion. I admire its strong points enough for recommendation, but, folks, I doubt whether I will still remember it several years later.

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The Dreamers (2003) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): With his two strange new friends in Paris, 1968

Posted on August 19, 2026 by kaist455

Bernado Bertolucci’s 2003 film “The Dreamers”, whose 4K remastered version was released in selected South Korean theaters in last week, is a tale of love, youth, desire, friendship, and movies. While often striking us with its forthright depiction of sexuality, the movie often intrigues us with the dynamic triangle among its three main characters along the story, and the result is alternatively amusing and compelling on the whole.

The movie begins with the introduction of Matthew (Michael Pitt), a 20-year-old American lad who came to Paris for studying French and enjoying a lot of movies at the Cinémathèque Française. It is 1968, and a lot of young cinephiles and many others protest the firing of the director of the Cinémathèque Française, Henri Langlois, and Matthew willingly joins the protest as a dude who cares a lot of the artistry of cinema.

And that is how he comes across Isabelle (Eva Green) and Théo (Louis Garrel), two twin siblings who gladly befriend Matthew even though they just vaguely know him as a fellow cinephile at the Cinémathèque Française. They later invite him to a dinner at their posh apartment in the city, and Matthew surely has some interesting time with not only his two new friends but also their parents, who are incidentally your average bourgeois intellectuals.

Anyway, Matthew soon finds himself gradually drawn into the little world of Isabelle and Théo. When their parents are going to be absent for a month due to their private vacation, they let Matthew stay in their apartment, and Matthew is certainly quite excited because 1) their apartment is a lot better than his cheap hotel room, 2) it is always fun to talk about movies with his two new friends, and 3) he has already been smitten with Isabelle in addition to having been quite impressed by how cool she and Théo look. At one point, they and Matthew take some risk just for imitating a certain famous scene in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Band of Outsiders” (1964), and this surely solidifies Matthew’s friendship with Isabelle and Théo.

While they spend time at Isabelle and Théo’s apartment day by day, Matthew finds himself attracted more to Isabelle, but it does not take much time for him to realize how tricky his position is between her and her twin brother. As they often emphasize throughout the story, Isabelle and Théo have been emotionally attached to each other to considerable degree, and their emotional co-dependency may remind you a bit of the similar case between Jeremy Iron’s twin gynecologist brothers in David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers” (1988). The more Matthew is drawn to Isabelle, the more he also feels the presence of Théo, who, not so surprisingly, turns out to be interested in getting closer to him as virtually being the other side of his twin sister’s personality.

As observing these three main characters’ rather unstable triangle, the screenplay by Gilbert Adair, which is based on Adair’s 1988 novel “The Holy Innocents”, deftly swings back and forth between humor and eroticism. It becomes more apparent to Matthew (and us) that Isabelle and Théo are playing a risky game on the rather incestuous aspects of their very intimate relationship with Matthew himself functioning as a sort of mediator in the middle, but he still cannot get away from them mainly because, so far, they all have some carefree fun and freedom together. Even as Isabelle and Théo go further and further, he remains fascinated with both of them despite being more unnerved by how much they depend on each other in more than one way, and it seems that their free time will just go on and on as long as any of them does not stop this.

However, their world is not perfect at all as gradually getting cracked both inside and outside. Isabelle and Théo are not exactly responsible adults to say the least, and Matthew sees more of how seriously immature they are – especially when they run out of money and food much earlier than expected. Furthermore, the city is about to be shaken up by a massive left-wing student protest, but Isabelle and Théo do not seem to care that much about that even though they are supposed to be your typical left-wing students.

Besides movies and politics, sex comes handy in the story, and the frank and direct presentation of sensuality and sexuality in the film often reminds us of how many of recent movies, especially American films, are ludicrously bland and sterile in case of sex and nudity. As you can expect from a filmmaker who once gave us “Last Tango in Paris” (1972), Bertolucci does not flinch at all from fully and frankly presenting the sexual sensitivity and energy around the three main characters in his film, and the result is not only quite striking but also surprisingly sensitive and intimate at times.

Three main performers of the film do a lot more than bravely throwing themselves (and their bodies) into the sensual triangle among their characters, and it is not surprising that the movie boosted their respective movie acting careers a lot. With Michael Pitt, who has often gone for unconventional roles rather following the footsteps of many other seniors of his such as Leonardo DiCaprio, steadily holding the ground as demanded, Eva Green and Louis Garrel ably handle their showier moments, and they and Pitt flawlessly click together whenever they are together on the screen.

In conclusion, “The Dreamers” is still an excellent erotic romantic drama filled with a lot of youthful mood and energy, and it is surely a notable high point in the later years of Bertolucci’s filmmaking career, which went down to considerable degree after he won a Best Director Oscar for “The Last Emperor” (1987). Although his achievements were later tarnished by the recent controversy surrounding the shooting of that infamous rape scene in “Last Tango in Paris” (I am still not so inclined to revisit it even at this point, by the way), it is still undeniable that he was one of the great filmmakers of our time, and “The Dreamers” reminds me that many of his notable works will continue to live on as we keep watching and talking about them.

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Vive L’Amour (1994) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): How lonely they are…

Posted on August 18, 2026 by kaist455

I found myself caring a lot more than expected as watching Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang’s 1994 film “Vive L’Amour”, whose recent 4K restoration version was released in South Korean theaters in last week. Leisurely revolving around three different main characters, the movie gradually and sensitively illustrates the achingly deep loneliness in their dry and uncaring urban background, and we are both saddened and touched by that. 

The movie opens with a little unexpected opportunity thrown in front of Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a young ossuary salesman who happens to come across a key left hung on the door of some big expensive apartment while going through another workday of his. Once he finds that the apartment has been left empty for some time, he decides to stay inside the apartment because, as slowly implied to us along the story, he has no particular place to stay at present.

And then the story takes a couple of unexpected turns. For some unspecified reason, Hsiao-kang attempts to commit suicide not long after moving into the apartment, but then something quite unexpected interrupts him. A young woman and man suddenly come into the apartment without noticing anything at all, and then they have sex in one of its several bedrooms, which is fortunately not where Hsiao-kang is staying.

We already know who they are – to some degree. The young woman is a real-estate agent named May Lin (Yang Kuei-mei), and the apartment is actually one of those many properties she has been trying to sell for a while. Her sex partner is a young street vendor named Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung), and he is a total stranger to her as shown from their first scene in the film.

Not long after both of them get what they want, Ah-jung steals the apartment key from May Lin because, just like Hsiao-kang, he needs any place to say right now, and this eventually leads to a wryly comical situation between him and Hsiao-kang, who continues to stay in the apartment after his suicide attempt was aborted by the unexpected entrance of Ah-jung and May Lin. The first encounter between them is understandably a bit confrontational, but it does not take much time for Hsiao-kang and Ah-jrung to understand and then accept their absurd circumstance. After all, both of them are technically intruders, aren’t they?

Instead of hurrying its three main characters into conventional triangle plot, the screenplay by Tsai and his co-writers Tsai Yi-chun Yang Pi-ying takes its time as letting us get to know the three main characters bit by bit. Although they do not reveal that much to us on the surface, their small individual moments give us indirect glimpses into their humanity and personality, and the movie does a masterful job of subtly conveying to us their personal thoughts and feelings without spelling them out at all. As patiently observing more of Hsiao-kang’s daily work, we get more understanding on his deep loneliness which is probably the main motive behind his suicide attempt, and we are not so surprised at all when there subsequently come a series of little private moments revealing a bit of what has made him so lonely and introverted.

And that is the main reason why it is poignant to see how he and his life get brightened up a little by the presence of his “roommate”. While not still noticed by anyone else including May Lin, they keep staying in the apartment as before, and there is a brief but sensitive scene where they cook and then have a dinner together in the apartment. In addition, Hsiao-kang and Ah-jung gladly show each other’s professional life, and we get a little amusing moment as they observe several potential clients visiting Hsiao-kang’s workplace.

Meanwhile, the movie also shows a lot of sympathy and compassion to May Lin without getting melodramatic about her own loneliness at all. As she busily struggles to sell any of those expensive properties assigned to her day by day, she often cannot help but feel lonelier and emptier, but there is no one on whom she can sincerely lean on. At one point later in the story, she tries to sooth and then relax herself inside her small residence, but that is still not enough for her, and we later get a bitter moment of irony when she happens to come upon a street spot where Ah-jung and many other street vendors are doing their illegal business night by night. 

Three main performers of the movie are believable in their respective parts. Yang Kuei-mei, whom you may remember for several other notable Taiwanese films such as Ang Lee’s Oscar-nominated film “Eat Drink Man Woman” (1994), firmly holds the ground as required, and she is simply terrific when the movie depends a lot on her presence and talent around the end of the story. Her two co-stars Lee Kang-sheng and Chen Chao-jung also have each own moment along the story, and Lee, who has been one of Tsai’s main collaborators since Tsai’s 1991 TV movie “Boys”, handles well several key moments where his wordless but expressive face speaks volumes about his character’s inner feelings.

On the whole, “Vive L’Amour”, which was Tsai’s second feature film and deservedly garnered the Golden Lion award when it was shown at the 1994 Venice International Film Festival, is worthwhile to watch for its dry but engaging mood, storytelling, and performance. Yes, this is one of those “slow movies” which definitely requires some patience from the beginning, but, believe me, it will come to you as a rewarding cinematic experience once you sense and then go along with what and how it is about.

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Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) ☆1/2(1.5/4): Such a bloody boring bad place this hell is…

Posted on August 15, 2026 by kaist455

Tony Randel’s 1988 film “Hellbound: Hellraiser II”, a sequel to Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” (1987), is a bloody boring mess I observed from the distance without much care or attention. Sure, there are a number of well-made moments intended to disgust or horrify you, but they are not held together by any sense of direction, and we are only left with unpleasant impressions instead of being really scared at all.

The story starts at the point not long after what happened at the end of the previous film. Quite shocked and traumatized by her father’s death caused by her evil stepmother, Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence) is sent to some big mental hospital, and, not so surprisingly, nobody believes her incredible story about that mysterious puzzle box and those gruesome entities of hell or whatever.

Well, one person is actually quite interested in her case, and that person in question is none other than Dr. Philip Channard (Kenneth Cranham), who is the head of that mental hospital. On the surface, he seems to care a lot about Kirsty’s traumatized status, but then it turns out that he has been obsessed with that puzzle box and what exists beyond the gate to hell.

Needless to say, Dr. Channard is ready to do anything for getting his answer. First, he manages to bring back Kirsty’s stepmother Julia (Claire Higgins) from hell, and that is the beginning of many bloody and unpleasant moments to repulse you a lot. At one point, he lets a very disturbed mental patient of his mutilate himself with a razor blade, and you will wince more when something horrible suddenly appears and then sucks all the blood from that poor dude.

And there is Tiffany (Imogen Boorman), a young mute female mental patient whose special talent on solving puzzles certainly comes handy for Dr. Channard. In my humble opinion, solving that mysterious puzzle is not exactly rocket science, but Dr. Channard needs Tiffany anyway because he is going to observe whatever may happen once the puzzle box is solved by this poor unfortunate girl.

Around that narrative point, the movie expectedly pulls all the stops just for more shock and disgust. We see how Dr. Channard provides more blood for restoring the body of Julia, who initially looks as bloody and sticky as her brother-in-law/former lover Frank (Sean Chapman) did in the previous film. And then we are surely served with a highlight moment when the gate to hell is eventually opened in front of Tiffany and several other main characters.

However, what exists beyond the gate to hell is not particularly scary or interesting or imaginative to me. The main characters of the movie just walk or run along the dark, drab, and endless corridors of hell, while occasionally coming across some disturbing stuffs such as a nightmarish hall of mirror filled with dark memories and traumas. In addition, it seems that there is nobody else in this boringly bad place except those horrific entities of hell who previously appeared in “Hellraiser”.

Oh, yes, they are ready to play again with Kirsty. She must confront them again for finding where her father is in this dreadful place, but the movie is so busy with doling out one terrible moment another that it eventually seems to forget the purpose of her visit to hell around its last act, which is already quite jumbled even before Dr. Channard is transformed into a mighty evil entity ready to unleash more chaos and mayhem to the situation.

And the movie also miserably fails when it tries to bring some human backstory to those horrific entities of hell. There is a rather embarrassing scene where Kirsty clumsily attempts to remind them of whoever they once were a long time ago, and this is thankfully cut short by the expected appearance of Dr. Channard. He is now under the control of the powerful lord of hell via a sticky appendage which looks a bit like a certain male body part, and he also brings a bit of twisted amusement as occasionally throwing deranged one-liners (His first line after his full transformation: “The doctor… is in.”)

While not so impressed at all during my viewing, I appreciated a few enjoyable stuffs in the movie at least. While Claire Higgins gladly chews many of her diabolical moments along the story, Kenneth Cranham brings some cool detachment to his character’s fiendish side, and he surely has some naughty fun during the last act of the film. Composer Christopher Young, whose career got boosted a lot by his considerable achievement in the previous film, willingly goes for something grander and louder, and the movie can be regarded as a sort of music video for his undeniably epic score.

In conclusion, “Hellbound: Hellraiser II” is an inferior sequel which simply gives us more blood and gore without any real emotional engagement or impact for us. As reflected by its very last scene, the movie was followed by another sequel which was then followed by several more sequels, and they only brought down the franchise more and more. In fact, the 2022 remake film is relatively better compared to them, and you will have a bit more productive time if you watch it instead of wasting your time on these forgettable sequels. No, I do not mind watching a lot of blood or gore, but the movie does not have much personality or style for that, and it only reminds me of how tedious hell can be. Now that is a really dreadful possibility, isn’t it?

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Hellraiser (1987) ☆☆(2/4): It didn’t tear my soul apart at all

Posted on August 15, 2026 by kaist455

Clive Barker’s 1987 film “Hellraiser” did not tear my soul at all when I watched it for the first time via an old VHS copy in 1996. When I saw its promotional poster before that, it looked so scary to me that I even had some nightmares involved with those grotesque figures in that film, but, alas, the movie turned out to be not as scary as I imagined during that time.

The story opens with a sadomasochist dude named Frank Cotton (Sean Chapman) buying a mysterious puzzle box in some middle Eastern country. After that, we see him attempting to solve this puzzle box alone by himself at a house belonging to his family, and, what do you know, solving it turns out to be much easier than handling Rubik’s cube.

Frank was promised that he would experience pleasure to the extreme degree once he solved the puzzle box, but, of course, he gets far more than he wished for. The gate of hell or whatever is opened, and then there come several gruesome entities who give him an extreme amount of not only pleasure but also pain via their own sadomasochistic way.

Some time later, Frank’s brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his wife Julia (Clare Higgins) move into the house. When she and her husband find that Frank was there at least for a while, Julia cannot help but become haunted by what happened between her and Frank not long before she married Larry. It is apparent to us that there is not much love between her and husband, and that makes her miss Frank all the more than before.

Of course, she gets her wish – sort of. Not long after her husband gets seriously injured in one of his hands and then bleeds a bit on the floor of a big empty attic room where Frank solved that puzzle box, Frank returns from hell as partially regenerating his body during the stickiest moment in the film. After finally reuniting with Julia later, he demands that she should get more blood for completing his regeneration, and Julia eventually agrees to help her lover.

What follows next is supposed to scare or horrify us, but the movie presents that without much tension or suspense at all, while just serving us more goriness from Juila and Frank’s morbidly bloody love affair. She lures those several lustful guys into the house one by one, and their blood comes to nourish and then strengthen Frank more, though he still mostly looks like a walking human anatomy textbook picture.

While all these and other things happen, Larry, who is usually absent to whatever he does outside the house, remains quite obtuse as merely wondering about what is wrong with his wife – even after when Frank is right behind him while he is having a rather joyless sex with Julia during one dark and stormy night. Eventually, he confides his ongoing issue to Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), the daughter from his previous marriage, and it does not take much time for Kirsty to find what her stepmother has been doing behind her back.

Around that narrative point, those horrible entities of Hell appear again as expected, but the movie does not have much shock or surprise or depth for us – even during a deranged moment when Julia and Frank decide to go further in the name of love and lust. Besides, we never get much understanding on what drives Julia so much into such gory madness, and that is why we come to observe the eventual finale without much care or fear for anyone in the story.

The movie is based on Barker’s novella “The Hellbound Heart”, and, needless to say, the novella is more effective in engaging and then scaring us in my humble opinion. Thanks to Barker’s good writing, we get more engaged in the unspeakable horror surrounding its several main characters along the story, and I particularly remember when one of them desperately tries to save herself from those horrible entities of hell during its climatic part.

In contrast, Barker stumbles more than once as struggling to deliver shock and awe on the screen. The climactic part of the movie feels curiously static, shabby, and sloppy even during its most horrific and unpleasant moments, and those horrible entities of hell, led by a figure later nicknamed “Pinhead”, sometimes feel like the masked killers in those cheap slasher films during the 1980s. Sure, they do have a bit more style and personality in their extremely sadomasochistic appearance, but do they actually add up much to the story and characters? I don’t think so.

At least, the movie is not a total dud thanks to a few good things to stand out. Claire Higgins is convincing in several disturbing scenes where her character lets herself go down into more evil and madness, and it is a shame that Barker’s screenplay does not flesh out her character more. In case of the unforgettable gothic score by Christopher Young, it was a major breakthrough work in his career filled with a lot of notable horror films ranging from “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” to “Drag Me to Hell” (2009), and I must tell you that I often listen to his score despite not liking the movie itself much.

Overall, “Hellraiser” still does not impress me a lot, but I also have to recognize that it remains as one of the notable horror films from the 1980s. Yes, its status has been tarnished to some degree by a bunch of unnecessary sequels, but its gruesome qualities are something you cannot easily forget, regardless of whether you like it or not.

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Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) ☆☆☆(3/4): Two different prisoners between desperation and fantasy

Posted on August 12, 2026 by kaist455

Bill Condon’s 2025 musical film “Kiss of the Spider Woman”, which went straight to streaming in South Korea, is about two very different but equally desperate prisoners whose reality swings back and forth between desperation and fantasy. As they begin to open themselves more to each other along the story, they also come to hold more onto their shared fantasy, which eventually leads them to sort of salvation for both of them.

Like recent musical film “The Color Purple” (2023), the movie has a rather complicated background history. It is based on John Kander and Fred Ebb’s acclaimed Broadway musical of the same name, which is based on the novel of the same name by Argentine writer Manuel Puig. Incidentally, Puig’s novel was already adapted into Brazilian filmmaker Héctor Babenco’s 1985 film of the same name, which won a Best Actor Oscar for William Hurt besides being nominated for Best Picture and Best Director Oscar (Sidenote: It was the same year when “The Color Purple” (1985), which is the predecessor to the 2023 film, came out and then garnered 11 Oscar nominations).

I am not so familiar with Kander and Ebb’s Broadway musical (I only watched “Chicago” (2002), by the way), but I can tell you instead that director/writer Bill Condon, who wrote the adapted screenplay for “Chicago”, makes a fairly solid musical film. Like “Chicago”, the movie frequently alternates between reality and fantasy, and this can be a bit distracting at times, but it mostly succeeds in holding our attention thanks to Condon’s competent direction and the strong performances from its three lead performers.

At the beginning, the movie, which is set in Argentina, 1983, introduces us to Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a young gay window dresser who got convicted due to his homosexuality and has spent several years in some big prison. We see him being sent to a section mainly for political dissidents, and we soon meet his new cellmate Valentín Arregui Paz (Diego Luna), who does not welcome Luis much right from their first encounter just because of his homosexuality.

However, mainly because there is nothing else he can do as tediously waiting for whatever may happen to him next during his seemingly endless incarceration, Valentín gradually befriends Luis as time goes by, and Luis gladly talks a lot about not only himself but also his favorite movie. It is some old musical film he often watched when he was young, and he is a huge fan of its beautiful lead actress Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez). As your typical romantic, he sees a lot of himself from the heroine played by Luna, and he certainly describes her romantic musical drama with considerable enthusiasm.

As a guy far less apolitical than Luis, Valentín cannot help but become sarcastic or critical about the movie, but, what do you know, he slowly finds himself more engaged in Luis’s vivid description of that old musical film. In fact, he and Luis soon become the two male characters surrounding Luna’s heroine, and their shared fantasy brings some levity to their grim life condition at present.

Nevertheless, they are also often reminded of how things can be cruel and harsh to them in prison. Valentín must be always careful for his possible survival, and he still cannot open himself fully to Luis because that can endanger not only himself but also Luis. In case of Luis, it turns out early in the story that he was forced to become an informer by the prison warden, and the situation certainly becomes all the trickier for him as he finds himself more attached to Valentín in addition to getting to know him more. 

While their despair and anxiety are increased more and more, both Luis and Valentín are more absorbed in Luis’s movie story, and the movie serves us several nice musical scenes as expected. While making a striking contrast with the two heroes’ gloomy reality, the musical scenes in the film come to resonate more with their complex relationship drama, and there is some real poignancy from when both of them make each own important choice during the last act.

The two lead actors are certainly crucial for the emotional ground of the film. As Diego Luna steadily holds the ground as required, Tonatiuh, a newcomer who previously played a substantial supporting characters in “Carry-On” (2024), goes up and down along his character’s dramatic arc as demanded, and his natural chemistry with his co-star is one of the reasons why the movie works well in both of its reality and fantasy parts. They smoothly slip into the musical scenes in the film whenever that is necessary, and they and Jennifer Lopez, who incidentally gives her best performance since her commanding supporting turn in “Hustlers” (2019) here in this film, are compelling as their musical movie characters come to form a complex triangle among them. While Lopez surely has a couple of showstopper moments as exuding her undeniable star quality, Luna and Tonatiuh also have each own moment to shine, and Tonatiuh is quite terrific as his character delivers the grand finale of the story. 

On the whole, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” does not reach the achievement level of its 1985 predecessor, but it is engaging for several good musical moments to be savored as well as the commendable efforts from its three lead performers. I admire it rather than being enthusiastic about it, but I had a fair share of entertainment and poignancy, and I guess that is enough for recommendation.

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Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): Between two different prisoners

Posted on August 10, 2026 by kaist455

Brazilian filmmaker Héctor Babenco’s 1985 film “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is a hauntingly complex prison drama between two very different figures. Although there are not many common things between them, they cannot help but connect more with each other under their grim life condition, and then the movie becomes all the more compelling when their developing relationship turns out to be more complicated later in the story.

The story is mainly set inside a stuffy prison cell shared by Luis Molina (William Hurt) and Valentine Arregui (Raul Julia). While Valentine is a journalist imprisoned for his left-wing political activity, Luis is a flamboyant gay dude who happens to share his prison cell with Valentine, and the movie opens with Luis describing to Valentine about some old Nazi German propaganda film he watched some years ago. While he does not like Luis that much, Valentine listens to Luis’s story anyway, just because that makes his seemingly endless time in the prison a bit less boring.  

Even though he knows that old Nazi German propaganda film is an inherently bad flick, Luis has been mesmerized by the love story inside it, and he really wants to share with Valentine for showing more of his sensitive side. It is about a beautiful French entertainer who feels quite conflicted about her loyalty to her country and her love toward a high-ranking Nazi German officer, and Luis is particularly touched by how the heroine eventually follows her heart to the end. 

While he throws some sardonic comments on the movie story presented by Luis, Valentine gradually opens himself a bit more to Luis, and the story becomes more interesting as his personal story resonates with Luis’s personal story as well as that movie story described by him. Under the dictatorship of their mostly unspecified South American society, both of them struggled in one way or another, and they also had to choose between love and integrity not long before they got imprisoned. 

Around the narrative point where the relationship between Luis and Valentine becomes more solidified, we come to learn that there is something Luis did not reveal to Valentine from the beginning. This certainly adds some tension to their ongoing drama, but the screenplay by Leonard Schrader, which is based on the 1976 novel of the same name by Argentine writer Manuel Puig, takes its time as usual for more character development. While there is still some distance between its two main characters, we come to sense more of human connection developed between them, and that makes their ongoing drama all the more intriguing and poignant than before. 

The movie was incidentally the first English language film by Babenco, who rose to considerable prominence thanks to the critical success of his previous film “Pixote” (1980) at that time. After the critical considerable success of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (The movie garnered four Oscar nominations including the ones for Best Picture and Best Director, by the way), he made “Ironweed” (1987) in US, but he eventually went back to his home ground and then made several notable films including “Carandiru” (2003).

 Besides making a fairly smooth transition to English language movie, Babenco also did a commendable job of generating a striking contrast between gritty realism and beguiling romanticism. The more the movie focuses on its two main characters’ relationship, the more we get immersed into their grim life condition from which both of them desperately want to escape. Luis’s movie story, which is often shown to us in soft sepia tone, comes to function more as an emotional relief for both Luis and Valentine, and we are not so surprised when they come to share a lot more between them than expected.

The movie is constantly supported by the powerful performances from its two different lead actors. Although he may look a bit awkward in the South American background, William Hurt, who won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival and then a Best Actor Oscar for this film, subtly brings human nuances to his seemingly theatrical character, and he also deftly illustrates his character’s inner conflict along the story without overplaying that at all. On the opposite, Raul Julia, whom I have always fondly remembered for his enthusiastic comic performance in Barry Sonnenfeld’s “The Addams Family” (1991) and its 1993 sequel, steadily holds the ground for his co-star with considerable intensity and gravitas, and he and Hurt never make any misstep as their characters pull or push throughout the story.

Although a number of supporting performers around Hurt and Julia simply come and then go, the special mention must go to Sônia Braga, who is simply unforgettable in her multiple roles. Besides playing Valentine’s girlfriend, she plays not only the heroine of that Nazi German propaganda film but also the titular character of the movie, who is the heroine of some another old movie described by Luis later in the story. While imbuing her three different roles with each own personality, Braga does more than holding her own place around Hurt and Julia, and the movie led her to a number of many various films ranging from Robert Redford’s “The Milagro Beanfield War” (1988) to Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “Bacurau” (2019).

Overall, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” remains as an interesting film to watch even though more than 40 years passed since it came out. Although I only watched it once around the 2000s before revisiting it yesterday via a Criterion 4K blu-ray copy, I found impressed again by its mood, storytelling, and performance during my viewing, and I guess that says a lot about its considerable dramatic power.

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Last Summer (2023) ☆☆☆(3/4): As a country summer passes…

Posted on August 9, 2026 by kaist455

It may take some time for you to sense and then process what and how South Korean independent film “Last Summer” is about. Leisurely establishing its vividly realistic rural atmosphere across the screen, the movie gradually blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction for intriguing and then engaging us more, and you will feel more of the underlying sense of ongoing life around the people and locations shown in the film.

The movie, which follows several months in a little real-life rural village, begins with the opening shot showing the beginning of one hot summer day, and then we see several villagers who are about to work on their rice paddies. While the sun is shining, the temperature is pretty hot, and, as reflected by the title of the first chapter (“Drought”), there has not been much rain during last several weeks. Needless to say, the villagers are quite concerned about their rice paddies, but they can only hope that they will have some rain before they eventually run out of water supply. 

Meanwhile, we get to know a bit about one of these villagers. He is a middle-aged widower living with his aging mother and his adult son, who has incidentally worked as a local public servant for a while. When we later see his son at his workplace, it is apparent that he does not like working there much, and we are not so surprised when he subsequently quits his job and then begins to help his father’s farming work instead.

While this naturally causes some tension in the family later in the story, the movie does not overplay this at all, and it simply observes the son’s uncertain situation at present. He surely knows that he must make a decision sooner or later, but he still does not know what to do next for his life, and his father patiently hopes for the best for the son. 

The son sometimes hangs around with a close friend of his, who seems to be quite content with his current status in contrast. Besides running a pet shop along with his wife, the son’s friend also works at a local cattle farm belonging to his father, and we often see him diligently working at his father’s farm. It looks like he genuinely cares about the cows in his father’s farm, but, as reflected by one sobering scene later in the story, the movie sharply recognizes that all these cows are bound to be sold or slaughtered someday.

As slowly building up its story and few main characters, the movie also pays attention to not only their little world but also its many other residents at times. Usually sticking to its calm and static position, the camera simply observes the people and places in the village, but then we gradually find ourselves immersed more in its mood and background. While appreciating a series of crisp landscape shots, we come to focus more on whatever can be glimpsed from the occasional individual moments from the villagers, which often approach to the considerable level of verisimilitude observed from good documentary film.

Not so surprisingly, director/writer/co-producer/editor Choi Seung-woo, who incidentally made a feature film debut here, actually had a bunch of real-life villagers play the minor supporting characters in his movie. As far as I could observe from the film, they all look natural and spontaneous while just playing more or less than themselves on the screen, and they are also mixed fairly well with several professional performers in the film playing the main characters in the film, who are not showy at all in their low-key acting.  

Around the end of the second chapter (“Rainy Season”), the movie takes a little unexpected turn, but it still sticks to its phlegmatic tone even at this point while showing more sensitivity and thoughtfulness than before. At one point, the camera just looks at the son merely cutting his toenails inside his family house for a while, but then we somehow sense some change inside him, and the movie did a splendid job of conveying that to us via a rather simple but undeniably effective visual touch.

And we observe more of how life keeps going in the village as usual. When the movie eventually arrives at its final chapter (“Harvest”), we cannot help but notice how the village looks different with its rice paddies turning yellow day by day, and you will also reflect more on what one farmer says around the end of the movie. Sure, it is one of those familiar words on farming, but we cannot possibly agree to that more.

In conclusion, “Last Summer” is commendable for its subtle storytelling and sublime mood and details to be admired and appreciated. Although it was premiered in the Busan International Film Festival in 2023, the movie had to wait for no less than three years before it is eventually shown to me and other South Korean audiences in this year, and Choi already showed his next feature film at the Busan International Film Festival in last year (He also made a short documentary about revisiting the village and its residents shown in “Last Summer”, by the way). I have seen neither of his next two works yet, but I can tell you at least that he is another new promising South Korean filmmaker to watch, and I will certainly have some expectation on his burgeoning filmmaking career.

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