Couples start off with interviews of the couples as they state how their romance began. As the movie progresses, so does the couples’ love story. After the interviews, the movie goes into a series of narratives that in some way or another overlap with each other.

At first you might think that Couple is just a series of shorts about each couple’s story. But there will come a point in the movie where you realize that the events are connected with each other. Then you become more observant of the little things on screen. The director manages the overlapping part of the narrative seamlessly. It is also watertight that it doesn’t feel forced at all.

Couples features good performances for its cast members. Yoo Suk (Kim Joo Hyuk) is a tea shop owner who is still depressed by the disappearance of his girlfriend (Lee Si Young). In her absence, he starts a romance with the pretty traffic cop (Lee Yoon Ji). Things get a little complicated when the girlfriend suddenly reappears and she brings a lot of trouble with her.

Couples also has Bae Seul Gi as Yoon Ji’s best friend. It is good to see that she’s active again as an actress. Last time I saw her was in The Greatest Love, where she also had a small role as a friend of the lead.

This begins the spoiler. Si Young gets money from her gangster boyfriend. She hides it in Joo Hyuk’s house. Yoon Ji finds the money and gets it. But as it turns out, the money is counterfeit. In the end, all the couples end up together except for Si Young and the gangster. End of spoiler.

Couples might look complicated on paper because of its overlapping plot, but in reality it is a simple romantic comedy. You just need to sit back and enjoy the show. With its likeable characters and a couple of funny moments, it is a good date movie.

The Front Line is a war drama about the last battle of the Korean War that determines the border between the south and the north. It focuses on the story of the soldiers from both sides of the fence. It shows the harshness of the war as it lingers on. Good thing is that the end is near.

Right before the ceasefire is signed, Lieutenant Kang Eun Pyo (Shin Ha Kyun) was sent to the front lines to investigate a murder. He has to do his job while his side battles it out with the Northern army. The ownership of the hill changes side each day.

It is in the front line where he meets his friend Kim Soo Hyuk (Go Soo) and his platoon. As the day of the ceasefire draws near, he builds up his case but the fighting has also become more vicious. Hundreds of soldiers die until Eun Pyo claims the land for the South.

The Front Line also shows the soldiers belonging to the North side. One of the more memorable characters from the north is their girl sniper Cha Tae Kyung (Kim Ok Bin). Apart from her being the only eye candy in the movie, her character is the perfect example of how senseless the Korean War is about. It is like killing your own family.

I expected The Front Line to be a brutal war movie. Instead I get to see guys crying while carrying big guns. But it delivers its message loud and clear. War is stupid and in the end, everyone loses. It shows the sacrifices made by the soldiers in the field as well as how humans can still be good even if faced with atrocities.

I’m not an expert with regards to the Korean War, so I will not tackle the authenticity of the story. But overall, The Front Line is good war movie. It gives faces to the statistics you just read in the history books.

Three years after the accident that rendered Soo Ah blind, she is kidnapped by a psycho serial killer Myung Jin (Yang Young Jo), who drives a car to lure young women and torture them to death. She barely escapes from him when he accidentally hits a pedestrian. She goes to the police but they treat the blind witness lightly.

Her case is assigned to Detective Jo (Jo Hee Bong), who takes it half-heartedly. Then he realizes that So Ah’s case could be connected to the series of missing women in the area, he tries his best to look for the murderer. This is another Korean movie that I’ve recently saw that depicts their police force as ineffective.

To complicate the investigation, a young biker Gi Sub (Yoo Seung Ho) tells the police that he witnessed the accident. He says that he saw a foreign car fleeing the scene. But this contradicts with Soo Ah’s testimony because she’s certain that her kidnapper is a taxi driver and dismisses the young guy as someone who is only after the reward money.

What they don’t know is that Myung Jin the serial killer has caught up with them and has started hunting down the two witnesses of his crime.

Kim Ha Neul is the perfect choice for the role. It is very different from her role in You’re My Pet, which is also released in 2011. You would really think that she’s blind in real life. Plus, she exudes the persona of a proud person just right that would still make her likeable even though she’s thick headed sometimes.

Soo Ah’s guide dog Seul Ki (Dali) almost steals the show from the human stars of Blind. She’s the same dog in the Heart Is… movies. She’s the source of comedic relief in Blind but also the one who will probably make you cry.

Blind starts as a good, suspenseful thriller but all hell breaks loose in the last part of the movie, when common sense makes room for brutal action, which is the norm for most Korean movies of the genre. You will either love or hate the movie for it. The psycho killer, Soo Ah, and Gi Sub find themselves in an empty orphanage where they play a deadly game of hide and seek in the dark.

Blind is a typical Korean thriller. It has misogyny, inutile police officers, and a pure evil psycho killer. It has the right amount of suspense to keep the audience at the edge of their seats but the climax could have been done differently. But despite its flaws, Blind is an entertaining movie.

Ghastly suffers from the lack of originality of the story. None of the scenes are scary at all. You can predict what will happen next. It features a lot of formulaic moments already done in past horror movies.

One of the things I like about Ghastly is Han Eun Jung. Her performance is convincing enough to convey that something terrifying is happening around her. It’s a bonus that she’s easy to the eyes. The audience knows that the boy is evil but Sunny is clueless about it. This is a bit frustrating and there are times that you would want to knock some sense into her.

Hyomin of T-ara plays Sunny’s little sister. I don’t have any problems with Hyomin because I’m a T-ara fan. I do have some issues with her character. Yoo Rin appears to be a spoiled brat who competes for her sister’s attention. Her sister is experiencing some financial problems and yet you see her partying in a club with her T-ara friends. To be honest, I expected her to be the first one to die.

Overall, Ghastly is a bad horror movie. There really is no reason to watch it except if you’re an Asian horror lover or a rabid T-ara fan.

As you might have guessed, The Cat features a scary cat. Instead of a black one, they opt to use a white cat. The movie combines feline shocks with traditional Asian horror motifs, such as a child ghost with black eyes. The ghost provides a lot of jump scares.

Aside from the addition of the cat as a plot device, The Cat doesn’t bring something new to the table. I have already seen it done before. It’s a usual mystery regarding a ghost with unfinished business and the body must be found in order to exorcise it.

But The Cat has Park Min Young in it and she makes it more interesting, well for me at least. She’s much cuter than the cat, which might have been the reason why during one of the events the cat tried to rip off her dress. Or maybe the cat’s a guy who wants to take a look at her puppies.

If you’re someone who hasn’t seen a lot of Asian horror movies, then prepare to be traumatized by The Cat. You will not look at a cat the same way again. But if you have seen the likes of the Grudge then you might find the movie weak and predictable. As for me, Min Young made watching the movie worthwhile.

Ha Jung Woo plays the defense lawyer Kang Sung Hee, who believes that his client is innocent. On the other side of the court is Park Hee Soon as the public prosecutor Ahn Min Ho, who is doing all he can to keep Han Chul Min in jail.

The Client has a very plausible plot and the clash between the defense lawyer and the public prosecutor leaves question in the viewers’ minds as to who really killed the wife or whether prosecutor Min Ho has a personal grudge against the suspect. Both actors who played the lawyers are convincing and show the proper emotions needed for their scenes.

Han Chul Min (Jang Hyuk): You can brand me as a killer. But don’t deny the fact I truly loved my wife.

Jang Hyuk has a poker face all throughout The Client until the great reveal. He even managed to make me believe that he was not the killer. I truly believe that the prosecutor just wants him thrown to jail for some personal reasons. For a moment, I thought that prosecutor Min Ho killed the wife and framed it on the innocent husband.

The Client has runtime of a little over two hours but the pacing is just right. While there are some doubts to the innocence of the husband, the arguments presented in court led me to think otherwise. While it does have its faults, I am certain that people looking for a good court room thriller will enjoy The Client.

Flower Boy Ramyun Shop is a perfect example of a romantic comedy where poor girl meets rich boy and they fall for each other. Yang Eun Bi (Lee Chung Ah) is a college student preparing for her civil service exam. Chi Soo (Jung il Woo) is the heir of the biggest food conglomerate in Korea. Through some twists of fate, they end up working at a ramyun shop owned by Choi Kang Hyuk (Lee Ki Woo). To complete the flower boys in the series are Kim Ba Wool (Park Min Woo) and Woo Hyun Woo (Jo Yoon Woo).

The one who caught my attention in Flower Boy Ramyun Shop is Ho Soo, who played Ba Wool’s girlfriend. She was unsure about her feelings for Ba Wool, which I think everyone can relate to especially during our high school years. I will keep my eyes on Ho Soo’s career from now on.

Chi Soo and Eun Bi show us that you can’t control your heart to love someone. It just happens. While Flower Boy Ramyun Shop is somehow predictable, it made up for it with interesting characters, funny situations, and heart whelming moments. It tried to be realistic and at the same time suspend reality for its audience. It is well-written and the ending will satisfy most of the viewers.

White made the group famous but strange things began occurring. Mysterious incidents happened to the one chosen as the lead vocalist of the group until only Eun Ju (Eun Jung) was the only healthy one. She tried her best to solve the mystery and get rid of the Melody of the Curse.

The other members of Pink Dolls are Maydoni as Sin Ji, Choi Ah Ra as Arang, and Jin Se Yeon as Jenny. White: The Melody of the Curse is the first time I saw any of them. Eun Jung clearly is the star of the show and the other girls were simply fillers whenever she’s not part of the scene.

Pink Dolls is not the only girl group featured in White: The Melody of the Curse. Some members of After School were in the movie as the group Pure. They were seen in the first part of the movie performing to After School’s Bang.

People might dismiss White: The Melody of the Curse as another Asian horror movie with a scary, long-haired ghost crawling out of nowhere. It has a Sadako wannabe as its main terror but it managed to stay unpredictable until the end. I didn’t imagine that Eun Ju would die because I really thought that she has broken the curse.

Well it is not that scary but it managed to incorporate ideas to make it entertaining and fresh. It showed the reality of a K-Pop group struggling to make it big in the scene. I find it weird for the movie to feature a commentary on how some idols reach the top when its main star came from one of Korea’s top idol group.

White: The Melody of the Curse is more of a mystery than a horror movie. I was not scared out of my wits by it but it managed to make me guess as to who or what is causing the problems. This is a must-see for Eun Jung fans.

It is a typical melodrama with Han Da Jin losing both her parents after graduating from a pilot school. Being a pilot would make her father proud. It provided a source of income for her so that she could take care of her younger sister. What she didn’t know was that pilot Yoon Sung directly caused the accident that led to the death of her mother.

Take Care of Us, Captain’s take off was not good. It immediately experienced turbulence during the first episode. I had high hopes for the drama but nothing can save it from crashing down. The rest of the episodes were full of drama and formulaic. The main characters would work on their love lives and the crew would encounter passengers that needed their help or touch their lives. One way or another, the cast would either be shouting with each other or someone would be crying.

Since I saw her in Boys Over Flowers, Koo Hye Sun has a special place in my heart. But role after role, it seemed like her character never changed. She is typecast as the tomboy that gets the man. I don’t know why writers kept giving her the same roles over and over again. Another thing I dislike about her is her inability to kiss. She looks awkward in all her kissing scenes that would make the audience think that she’s not enjoying it at all.

I think that Lee Sung Min was casted in Take Care of US Captain only to have a sexy girl for the pool scene in Episode 3. Aside from that, she is forgettable. If the writer tried to incorporate more scenes with her in a bikini then the ratings could have gone up.

Of the girls in Take Care of Us Captain, Yoo Sun gave the best performance. Her character was the antagonist at first until the writer decided to place her in the back seat towards the second half of the drama.

Ji Jin Hee is a fine actor but you can’t like his character since the start of Take Care of Us, Captain because you know he caused the accident and he hasn’t fessed up to Da Jin. He had to wait until the end until he told her about it. No matter how the writer builds up the relationship of the two main characters, there’s just no spark between them.

Lee Chun Hee had a better chemistry with Koo Hye Sun. As Dong Soo, he had a playful relationship with Da Jin. But he was placed in the friend-zone very early in the story and he can’t get out of it. In the latter part of Take Care of Us, Captain, his character transformed that reminded me of Da Lung from Hi My Sweetheart.

But probably the most adorable part of Take Care of Us, Captain is Kil So Won, the kid who played Da Jin’s sister. She’s so fluffy that she could play the part of the little girl in Despicable Me. She lightens up the mood whenever she’s part of the scene.

To be honest, I skipped a few episodes of Take Care of Us, Captain. I watched until Episode 15 and skipped forward to the finale. I don’t know whether watching the four episodes would change my opinion about the series as a whole but from what I’ve seen, Take Care of Us, Captain is a Korean drama series that I should not have bothered watching at all. It made me not want to see another Koo Hye Sun starrer in the near future. Hopefully, she does her homework and chooses a role that’s not reminiscent of her previous ones.

Doctor Kim Sang Chul (Oh Dal Soo) is a medical genius who committed suicide. When his body was on the way to his funeral, his head went missing. Hong Je (Ryu Duk Hwan), the motorcycle delivery boy, didn’t know that he was carrying the lost head.

When Hong Je was kidnapped, his elder sister Hong Joo (Park Ye Jin) came to rescue him. As she gets involved deeper into the case, she uncovers a scoop of a lifetime. But will she be able to survive the ordeal to report it?

Head keeps the audience on the edge of their seats but it elicits some laughs as well. It is a fun ride from start to finish as Hong Joo tries to save her brother from the hands of an evil head snatcher. Park Ye Jin and the rest of the cast were effective with their given roles. Ye Jin portrayed Hong Joo perfectly as a girl who is silly yet at the same time manages to stay cool under pressure.

And in the end, everything wrapped up nicely. Head ended with no loose ends. It is a happy ending but she needed no prince to save her in the end. She found out that the head of a charitable organization was engaged in illegal organ trade and got the scoop of a lifetime. She also succeeded in saving her brother from the mortician who was in cahoots with the charity leader. It was also discovered that the head detective in the case was part of the syndicate.

Head is fun and thrilling at the same time. You would be guessing as to what the motive might be in stealing someone’s head. Well, that is if you’ve skipped the previous paragraph. Park Ye Jin is a very good actress and this movie is an excellent vehicle that showcased her skills.