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Gray Shelter (2024)
Poetry lost in translation
It certainly needs a better, brand new English translation to allow non-Korean speakers to re-translate it from English into their own languages. I can't believe the current translation is a faithful one, because that means the original script wouldn't make much sense and logic. In English, the back-and-forth dialogues show too much nonsense. IMHO, it is unlikely that director and screenwriter Lee Son Eum would have liked it this way, not a chance... unless there is still too much inexperience, naivety or lack of skills, but I wanna hope not.
Seriously, whoever produced this mini-series needs a new translator, I beg of you! Otherwise you are missing out on a good distribution and reaching the real intended target.
Although the poverty of lines is clearly on purpose, to be honest and objective, setting aside the bad
translation, here and there there are indeed some tiny holes in the script, to the extent that you might feel confused, for example, the staging (the mise en scène) lacks something.
Another fault I perceived is the editing, which is not very clear and, again, a bit confusing: the viewer fights to get the moment in which a particular event is taking place and the general timeline of the events. When you miss that, you kinda fail to grasp the story that wants to be told, not so good, is it? We are not in Christopher Nolan's Inception, right?
Such a shame, because, otherwise, it would be one of the best Korean BL (finally NOT-BL!) series I have ever watched!
That said, I loved it!
Minimalist, hermetic, realistic, mature, intense, absolutely original and out of the chorus!
Zero clichè, zero cheap and cheesy scenes, no more cringe and unrealistic stuff that wants to trigger viewers' emotions but looks ridiculous rather than romantic.
You can definitely see a production trying to pursue its artistic style instead of luring the audience with fan service gifts or marketing expectations. BRAVI!
And so, we have fine characters, both main and supporters: real people, full of flaws, sinners but not monsters, often selfish, childish and opportunist, but also caring and capable of self-denial, sacrifice, devotion. And it concerns both sons and parents. We are finally out of stereotypical gay characters, we just watch true boys with their friends and families.
Yoon Dae's devotion and desperate love request after a life of abuse are poignant, while his perseverance in making his voice heard is admirable. He seems to be a slacker, taking advantage of other people's kindness, but deep down he is also struggling to regain a sense of belonging. He screams that he wants to love and be loved, he still believes, even throwing a tantrum, but then he endures and waits.
His sweetness in stealing kisses from Soo Hyuk shows us his most vulnerable side, almost pitiful: "Leave me tomorrow, but tonight, please, just pretend and let me have one last gift: let the warmth of your lips be my last memory of you".
There is such a sorrow in this behavior that your heart is tightened, you feel his resignation in accepting that he must live alone, but at the same time your heart is filled with love by the force of his desire. So passionate, so beautiful.
You can feel the same from Soo Hyuk: watching him carrying alone the burden of his family's failures is excruciating and yet his determination to survive and not to give up, despite fatigue and sacrifice, shows strength and courage. He has always behaved as a trustworthy adult without being able though to express his feelings and desires, to the point where he is no longer capable of dreaming for a better future. We can sense he feels guilty about abandoning Yoon Dae years before; we feel his sense of duty and how much he wants to make it up to Yoon Dae. We can also guess he has always had feelings for Yoon Dae, conflicted intense feelings that frighten him. He is exhausted from being the reliable guy, always taking care of others, he can't bear it anymore. Now he needs help, someone to rely on, someone who takes care of him; he would need Yoon Dae to man up and become the adult and so he is tempted to run away again, to put distance between the two of them.
But then he stops and waits.
In different forms, they're both fighters.
In the series there are incredible gloomy atmospheres that deliver the characters' feelings and moods, full of pain and sadness, filled with desire or rage too often suppressed. That kind of desire and anger daring to explode and surface only when there is an intimacy you finally succeeded in building with another human being you feel connected to.
That is why they easily end up hurting each other.
You can spot the exclusivity of their relationship when they confront themselves and show their true selves only to each other.
Nice choice in picking closed and confined spaces, soft lights and dull colors to portray not only the sense of no-way-out of the two leads but also the attachment, their bond and their intimacy, whispered, in total contraddiction with outdoor or open spaces, noisy and always full of light, where the both of them face their own, somehow abusing, parents. The open place, the rest of the world, is dangerous. The closed one, the two of them, is the safe zone, indeed the shelter; no more the cage that previously locked them up and isolated them. Loneliness creates anxiety though, so Yoon Dae refuses or struggles to live that solitude in places he wants to call home, places he will eventually realize he wants to live with Soo Hyuk.
Beautiful photography, pure and clean use of the film camera, nice close-up shots: essential, rough, but also touching and emotional. Good acting performances.
The beauty of this work lies in the unsaid, the unspoken, the untold. You get its poetry through the lack of explicit scenes and lines, which creates a very strong tension in the viewers who crave developments in the plot and focus on every detail in order to follow the story. This leads them to imagine the unseen, to create by themselves the love story line that eventually, despite everything, brings to a very happy ending. The light at the end of the tunnel.
I found this to be a very powerful narrative style.
The series starts with "I reject and resent you but I love you, I want you and chase you" on one character, while the other goes with "I care about you, I help you, I love you but I have to run away from you and everyone else".
Immaturity and emotional openness versus maturity and emotional block. Two mates under the relentless effect of attractive and repulsive forces, even after a long time.
And yet, despite the absence of words, the protagonists' mutual tenderness and love are revealed by their taking care of each other's shoes, which symbolizes so much: I cherish and keep my love for you for years only to myself, because I am too scared to believe in love. Because I don't dare to show you anything, because I can't deal with you and put myself on the line, because I can't be brave enough to hope for anything... until I do, we both do.
Wonderful, disruptive, romantic message.
However, the ultimate content I found is: "We can support and help each other, but that doesn't mean we genuinely love each other or that we are ready to commit, so what's the difference between LOVE and NEED?
I must test myself, find my own path, complete my coming of age and understand that I don't love you because I need you, but I do need you because I love you.
So, once we get this naked truth, do we really need to take our separate ways in order to love each other dearly?
Can't we just simply have dinner together?"
And taking a leap of faith, while resolving yourself, your answer becomes: "Yes, please, do wait for me, let's have dinner together, shall we?". Home.
The OST is amazing, no kitsch melodies and rhymes: strong opening and ending songs. On the various, scenes all the instrumental themes edited are wisely dosed and therefore suggestive, powerful and
impressive. It felt like glimpsing a mix of familiar sounds from Coldplay, Radiohead and David Bowie.
In the end, when Yoon Dae says to Soo Hyuk - "Don't call me. You seldom call my name." - tell me, please, who didn't suddenly think they were somehow quoting "Call me by your name"? I certainly did. ;)
Ri-eol (2017)
Visually beautiful, awfully told.
Despite the cinematography is quite amazing, aesthetically-pleasing, catchy, kinda full of fun service, while it winks to Matrix's Neo, clothes and environments, to Polar and to John Wick or to the Pulp-genre, the movie doesn't deliver.
What's the first purpose of a film?
Telling a story, IMHO.
This movie failed completely as i still don't get a heck of the full plot an narrative. Literally, i didn't understand what's happened in the film.
So, if u wanna impress the audience, just by doing splendid frames and images, maybe a videoclip is more suitable.
To me, this film resulted only as a demonstration of technical ability, without a solid story, a smart editing, a clear core. Screenplay and storyboard are definitely too lacking to the point of no return, till the viewer is lost cos he doesn't get the story and the characters, not even in the end obviously. Narratively speaking it is a total mess, confused and bad developed. Also some non-sense planted randomly.
And it almost feels like this confusion and lacking in the storytelling are wanted: wanted to create sophistications, some sort of elegance and unpredictability.
Well, sorry, but no, it doesn't work this way. Trying to be vague, misterious, skipping to different times, with flashbacks, dreams and oneiric moments is not enough to deliver style and refinement.
U gotta have soul in what you are telling, you gotta win the heart of the audience and in order to do so, u gotta let them to identify, to be moved, to empathize with what you are presenting to them.
There can't be empathy, where comprehension can't lean and root.
Not even when your goal is to create something intimate, private or totally open to free interpretations. When u wish that, u still need to give a "key" of understanding for audience to interpret your creation by its own way.
Otherwise, it is just a showoff of cameras, shots and CG.
Not impressed by the acting also: it is okay, not great. Mainly cos the roles lack in deep characterization and motives and... again... it is a failure in the script.
Good soundtrack and sound editing, very bad volume mixing though.
A great pity, it could have been a big deal... it is not.
Vincenzo (2021)
NOT for Italians!
If you are an italian viewer avoid this at any cost or you will end up throwing a brick against your tv screen!
Saying this show is insulting and disrespectful to Italy is the least...
Just trying to make a dramedy with gags, jokes and clichè about italian Mafia, presenting it like some cool exotic lifestyle, is painfull to the bones, showing in plain sight that these korean writers have not a freaking clue of what Mafia is and how it has been one of the most atrocious thing Italy has ever faced in its history. It would be like joking about how cool a jihadist terrorist might be in US, think about that...
So instead of condemning the organized crime, "Vincenzo" gives it a green light like "well, if u are charming, well dressed and smart guy enough, u can do whatever crimes u likes". I can't even begin to figure how all the victims of mafia could possibly think about it.
Goof about Italy are countless and it makes u wonder if they botherd to even hire an italian culture consultant... but the top reaches its peak when they mention the death penalty... geez, helloo, death penalty doesn't exist in italy since 1946, or when they talk about the vineyards around Milan... which i can count on one hand, cos Milan is an industrial city. You could at least say Florence, or Turin or any other italian province but Milan, LOL! It might be totally irrelevant if u come from US or China, but if u are italian, listen to me: do not make yourself miserable for such a bad, really poor, show.
Gotta say though, the fire of Bolgheri's Cypresses is so unbelievable that turns out to be hilarious.
That said, the show is not even barely sufficient on its bases:
overacting from minor characters and female lead is constant, the things they do best is basically screaming all the time and moving like circus clowns, boring you to the death. It's like the directing enjoyed to belittle the role of supporting actors, asking them to forget any possible acting skills they might have, if...
Kinda like watching a18th century's Comedy of Art's play by Goldoni, but with very bad actors and with Goldoni's writing replaced by Carlo Vanzina's at his worst.
What it is supposed to be amusing and hilarious is embarrassing for the poverty of spirit and the lack of good writing. There is not a trace of logical or realistic behaviour in any of the characters, not even between law enforcements, institutional figures or whatsoever, as like as in Korea, law doesn't exist at all, everyone is corrupt and dirty. Literally as if Korea was the Far West. And that seems to be the usual plot device to make the show go on from an episode to the next. If the writers and producers had in mind to denounce corruption in korean institutions, they surely succeded beyond every reasonable expectations.
That poor fellow of Song Joong-ki has tried, u may say he tried hard, but the result of his italian accent was that i needed to read english subtitles in order to understand what the heck he was pronouncing (i am not kidding, i had to use subtitles!). Sorry mate, no offense, not your language at all, i know.
Add also that the non-stop commercial propaganda of products is so spread all over, like in many other Kdramas, that results really annoying and... albeit u may sell the best instant coffee on the planet, rest assured, not even in your wildest dreams you'll ever have an italian dude preferring drinking that instead of his espresso or his mama's moka coffee. LOL
Even the soundtrack, unfortunately, is not good enough: u can hear Koreans trying to sing in italian: not talking about opera's lyrichs, cos that is just absolutely normal and frequent, i am talking about modern pop music! Brrrrrrr, spine-chilling.
Cutting to the chase: totally unrealistic (both the plot and the characters), full of silly narrative devices and non-sense, bad acting, superficial soundtrack, horrifying script, excessive use of slow motion (as usual in korean shows), many times super boring, discriminatory and offensive instead of satirical. Figure out by yourselves how well i can value the directing... Producers totally blew it for carelessness, if not negligence.
Do i miss something? Oh yes, well, at least the cinematography was nice.
A-X-L (2018)
Not even at 11 years old!
Since the idea is not original (a bad rehash of "Short Circuit"), please, at least give us a decent script! And instead it's even worse, so much worse.
No explanations, absolutely no logic, human characters' reactions to what is happening are completely unrealistic, fake, irrational, out of space. It's not even funny or witty at times. Bonds and feelings come up from nowhere, there's no kind of evolution, coming of age, spark of awareness that can suggeste you that these movie characters are actually human beings.
I really don't know what has forced (because the reason I hope is that he has been blackmailed at least) David S. Goyer to produce this eyesore... Have the producers ever read the screenplay before accepting? Really?
It feels almost like an insult to the history of sci-fi cinema or young genre, as if the audience were totally stoned, mindless and ignorant to the bones.
Sure thing Oliver Daly is not a storyteller and It is a euphemism!
By the way, is a 4 score and not 3 because the photography is good enough, some actors deliver the job and visual effects are not terrible (I've seen much worse).
I wouldn't like it in my 11 y.o. not even the soundtrack....oh well, aye, at my 11 I would have seen "Short Circuit" in theatre...and could have given a full 6.
The Last Witness (2018)
It is really a pity...
Because of the extreme importance of the matter, I am really uncomfortable to saying this movie is quite a misfire. It could have been so much better, it should have been better.
Directing and editing are very confusing: you are not allowed to easily understand the settings or the whole post-war background, there's no difference between the fighting age and the reconstruction time. You can't appreciate any shades that suggeste you are in Russia, England or Poland. The whole movie seems to take place in the same few exteriors. The assembly rythm is terrible: the editing is very boring, so slow that loses all the tension and the final suspense (there's none!), some scenes unnecessary. Nor it helps in taking time to get deep in the characterization of the personages: their portraits are very flat, their evolving in the storyline and the following awareness of human monstrosity (in war and politics both) are superficial. Main character is tedious and pale, as well as being not quite an eagle...
Because, maybe, the production tried to avoid volgar spectacularization of the massacres, I guess, it eventually ends up to minimize the real tragedy: the movie turns out to depersonalize victims of Katyn, merely corps, lack of scenes, lack of details... so wrong!
The acting is also quite poor and Michael Gambon's performance is completely wasted in two minor scenes...somebody would ask please why in hell he accepted this part...again: bad final editing, quite sure, and not such a good screenplay.
Pretty enough are the cinematography and the original soundtracks. Good basic plot, shaking movie structure and timing.
In the end, all these aspects stop you to have any kind of "transfert" or to reach a deep empathy that the movie should have inspired.
Its greatest fault is the lack of passion and heart: the claim and the reckoning of one of the worst slaughters in the 20th century, I feel, should have been shouted and screamed loudly like a running train to the truth, instead you hear just a whisper.
You would have liked to be moved instead of simply Learning an excruciating truth....but, sometimes, could it be enough?
Lion (2016)
I thank you
I just finished to watch the movie two hours ago. I've been using these hours to adjust my emotions, compose myself, elaborate, call my mother and my grandma on the phone and restore my balance once again. I can't even describe where to start to explain one of the most touching, moving, elevating experiences in all my adult life in front of a screen. I'm a 42 years old woman, I began going to movie theaters at 4 years old, with my parents, about twice a month, since then I've never stopped chewing films one by one, week after week, year after year. I'm neither an expert reviewer nor a proper critic, not a pro in the field. I've just seen a lot, and I mean a LOT, of movies in my life, from Italy (where I come from) to France, from US to UK, from Iran to China and Australia, from Mexico to Spain
well, I didn't see this coming! "Lion" literally teared me apart , chopped my guts, shook every fiber of my being and rebuilt me with my heart wide opened. I'm keeping it in my very hands right now! I started crying after few minutes from the beginning 'till the very end. I was a child, I was the child. The more Saroo was trying to find his roots, his particular unique whereabout, the more I was feeling that mine no longer belongs to my country, my specific culture, my city. I was just enjoying my worldwide connection, my cum-passione, my sym-patia: I felt Empathy. I felt mankind. I sensed the delicacy and the innocence of butterflies, the brutality of ignorance, the violence of poverty, the fear of injustice the beauty of rely on genuine family bonds. I felt the courage, the strength, the resilience that a man can bring, I felt Love. For That (!!) I wanna thank you all: Garth Davis, Luke Davies, Saroo Brierley and the crew, the whole cast and all the producers, for making me live one of the best moments that Cinema has ever been able to give me. Maybe because I think that Cinema is the Hegelian Absolute of human expression, or, perhaps, It was only a particular unconscious mood of my today, anyway, whatever! With all my sincere gratitude, Giorgia, from Milan.
Santa Clarita Diet (2017)
That's cool
OMG! This show is a little gem. I haven't seen it coming: I's been a while since I haven't laugh so big. The cast is awesome, Olyphant and Barrymore are sparkling. Even if Olyphant had been tremendous in "DeadWood" and "Justified", now It's a pleasure to finally see him again in a brilliant comedy role. It just suits him! Skyler Gisondo is a charming surprise, wow. What can I say about Barrymore? I simply love her, she confirms herself and her spontaneity in acting funny characters. The direction is quit simple, as the structure of the scenes; It could be perceived as too poor, but , maybe, in the end I think it enlarges the attention on the script and the acting. You must like the grotesque genre and be at search for something different and new....so, you're gonna love this show. Best quality is that they never take themselves seriously. Simply the beauty of madness.