Zíza

Same as most series from Korea or Japan – one brilliant doctor rebels, doesn't want to do what he’s told, and has to overcome all the obstacles put in his way by the bureaucratic system and careerist bastards. At the same time, there's a little more to it, because through his goodness Asada makes a lot of friends to help him perform complex operations – one genius doctor is fine, but without a proper team, he's not going to grow much. At least in that respect, this series is a little more realistic than the others. It's also quite detailed, you don't just see blood, you see organs, in this series it's mainly hearts. Another bonus is the excellent OST, which seemed to fit every scene perfectly. Unfortunately, it was still rather cliched and spoiled my impression of an otherwise above average medical series. The characters are diverse, some even evolve, and the actors handled their characters and medical procedures decently. If I hadn't been annoyed by certain aspects (such as the doctors' hesitation to save a patient's life) and the occasional slightly boring moment, I would have rated higher. I may be underrating this one, but it's still a lovely 3 stars and as such it scores 78/100.

Gentle and fleeting like a sakura petal floating through a breeze to the ground. It's a film about love for mathematics, but also about love for people. The film is not moving, nor does it pretend to be. It simply tells the stories of four people who intersect and interact at a certain point in time. I really liked how the film portrays the goodness of people. There are no twists and turns, you could say the film doesn’t really have a climax, it really is like a math lesson – when the bell rings, the tale is over and you might take away something about prime numbers. A strong yet fragile 3 stars.

Based on the description I was expecting some sort of crazy comedy where various generational differences would be dealt with in a crazy way, but what I ended up with was a very enjoyable family drama spiced up with humorous situations. It didn't let me breathe for the whole eight episodes, there was always something going on, there weren’t even the kind of sermons meant to fix someone else – it wasn't pathetic. Although it may look like it on the surface, the acting wasn't over the top; nobody overacted, it all landed beautifully. For my tastes there was maybe just a bit too much stuff crammed into a mere eight short episodes. Simply like it was made for a rainy afternoon.

It’s not in a hurry to get anywhere, although sometimes the scenes are too long and your attention wanders. Unfortunately, I do have to complain a bit about the editing: somehow it just didn't feel right me in this film – it wasn’t where I would have liked it, so in places where it would have been better for the camera to capture it all, instead it was strangely cut together. So Ji-seob is a very fine actor; plus, as someone pointed out, when an actor is jacked up, he'll inevitably shown with his shirt off – so of course we saw him with his shirt off. He played the beleaguered boxer very nicely; too bad there wasn't more of him. But the actress Han Hyo-joo really didn't do it for me, I didn't think she did anything miraculous. Of course towards the end it was really trying like hell to move the viewer, and since that didn't happen for me, it left me cold (although I did like So Ji-seob's performance). It's an incredibly uneven film, every now and then you're wowed by a beautiful image or scene, only to be bored for a few minutes in return. For me, it's a completely mediocre spectacle that's at its best in the short edited fan videos on YouTube.

It's funny, fresh, overwrought; it's Korea as we like it, but at the same time slightly more open than we're used to. It plays with the viewer in a very original way at the beginning of each episode, as it shows a scene from the end of the same episode, so the viewer waits with anticipation to see what’s going to happen next. We have interesting characters and life situations, not only with the main characters but also their friends and family, and strangely enough it's not like elsewhere where you’re totally uninterested, not once did I feel an urgent need to skip or fast forward a scene. What I really liked, and I admit I was surprised, was the explanation from the grandmother as to why our main character likes to be alone in the house he lives in. I admit that even such "trivialities" were a big plus for me here and they gave the series a nice shape. Unfortunately, for me, the big weakness of the series is that it took a very long time to focus on the romantic relationship between the main characters, instead focusing on the underling and Jang-mi, which I didn't enjoy that much. Overall though, a nice and well-done series with my favorite trope of "pretending to be together until we actually end up together". While the ending was a bit too rushed for my taste, it went boom boom and everything was resolved, but it's good enough for an easy 4 stars.

Unfortunately, I can't help comparing this to the Japanese version, or even the book. Where the Japanese film made a point, even raised issues of social and philosophical themes, this version falls short. In Japan we have a brilliant physicist, Yukawa, who is the antagonist to a brilliant mathematician whom he respects immensely. Here we only have high school friends; and instead of a battle of wits, we have a battle between intellect and intuition. Unfortunately, for me that absolutely wasn’t enough; for how brilliant the "bad guy" was, I found his policeman counterpart to be completely insufficient to the task. Overall, I found it weaker, too hysterical, and the screenwriter was trying too hard to inject "mutual love" – he made the teacher into someone attractive. It's a shame, because in doing so it lost the depth and, in the end, the profundity of his sacrifice. Unfortunately, I found this version weaker than the Japanese version and much weaker than the book. If you've seen this film, I definitely recommend reading the source material, it was published in English as Devotion of Suspect X. There the math teacher gets a new dimension and most importantly there will be the character of Galileo. However, I have to admit that I liked the ending better here, as the woman can wallow in remorse and the teacher can contentedly calculate the example, because things more or less worked out for him. A weaker 3 stars. There are definitely better detective stories being made in Korea.

During the series there is an unbelievable amount of screaming, raised eyebrows, furrowed brows, now and then someone gets a tic in their eye, people get beaten up regardless of gender and age. It's not bad when the two "brothers" are competing with each other, but the same thing kept getting repeated over and over again, it even kept turning out the same way, with the outcome that despite its interesting moments, the boring ones prevail. Even the lines are repetitive. The whole thing is like a fairy tale – the viewer clearly knows who is bad and who is good. And the bad guys are bad all the way through to the end and all the time, and so nastily that you just can't root for them or sympathize with them in any way, which is a shame because it would have made the show so much more interesting. Once Hana breaks out of her disguise, stops being the subtle younger son and starts being the confident young lady, at that point it gets interesting again. It's just so much like a telenovela that it hurts, I was even reminded of Dallas a few times. Plus, it's unbelievable the kind of bastards that live in Korea. In the end, despite a few interesting situations, I’m less likely to recommend it, since it's an incredible time eater and the viewer gets nothing special for the entire 122 episodes. Not to mention that by the end it had become too far-fetched, and it ended the way I didn't want it to. PLUS one of the main MALE characters was named Julia(n), I mean really... :-D A very weak 2 stars.

Okay, so at first I thought I'd just switch off and enjoy this popcorn movie. It was going well, but then I ran out of popcorn in the first half and started to focus more on the movie. The music was great, no question about it, so it gets a star for that. The other star is for a successful joke here and there, for some pretty good effects that look like every other Marvel movie or Michael Bay movie... Unfortunately, I got bored from the middle onwards, suddenly this Star Wars parody, which at times played at being more than a parody, lost the charm it had at the beginning. It was like I suddenly woke up from hypnosis. Even though it wasn't New York that was being destroyed, but a city that looked like an amusement park, it oozed American patriotism and the kind of stuff that makes my teeth ache. Of course, some people don't mind it, some people enjoy it and all that. But I'm a bit of a curmudgeon, and I just rolled my eyes for the last half hour. I went to the cinema expecting to be entertained (the ovation on FilmBooster really got me hooked), only to get the same thing I've gotten in other Marvel movies and other American movies where XY is being saved (XY = Earth, the USA, the president’s daughter, Beetle Baggins, ...), and I just wasn't entertained. Yup, my brain. I just didn't want to turn it off and be entertained. So we get a cynical raccoon, we get Prince Hardbody, we got the girl from Avatar, only painted green instead of blue, we got a tree who has the biggest heart out of all of them, and we got a tattooed typhoon who lost his family but found a friend. We've got such a cool crew that you're just guaranteed to have fun, of course!!

I had to raise the rating to 4 stars after the second viewing. Probably what had the most to do with it was the brilliant music – it totally captured the situation and you could see that the composer was really playing with it, and it gave the series a new swing. The story isn't too bad, and the acting isn't bad either. Of course, don't look too much for kabuki in this; it's true that it might give you some rules, "family traditions", and so on, but they are still just actors, not kabuki actors, so an actual kabuki performance looks just a bit different than what they show us here. Except that the show is more likely to be watched by lay people who may never have even heard of kabuki, so it's all fine and everything is totally convincing. It's a nice Japanese high school romance spiced up with the aforementioned world of kabuki and various betrayals. The last episode is admittedly a bit too full of flashbacks for my taste, not to mention a lot more naive than the previous episodes, but it still doesn't spoil the overall impression of the series. While it does feature high school students, thankfully this time the focus is more on their lives outside of school, which is a pleasant change of pace in this genre. I definitely wouldn't be afraid to give the series a try if you're in the mood for something relaxing, with twists and turns that don't hurt, and featuring one of the best TV dads I've had the pleasure of getting to know in all the time I've been watching TV series.

It's got too many episodes for this kind of thing. Basically the same scenes were repeated over and over again – not only in their love life, but also at work. Problem-yelling-hard work-recognition. Plus, for as old as they are, they made a big deal out of some banalities (like when the boss and Jin-hee sleep together in the same bed. They were just sleeping, not doing anything, but it was as big a deal as if they were 16). I didn't like the immaturity and frequent theatrics. Plus the main character comes across so bland, almost like she wasn’t willing or able to keep carrying the lead role. Unfortunately, I didn't like Choi Jin-Hyuk's character Chang-Min either, he kind of struck me, like the rest of the series, as a teenager who first has to get his revenge, but then doesn't know what he wants, and then when he figures it out he has to usurp it and act like a little boy. That's why I liked the boss best of all; I was basically rooting for him from the very first episode (well, not for a happy ending with the heroine, but I just wanted the best for him in his imaginary life). Overall, it's a kind of bland and flavorless series that doesn't have much to offer.