KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

jitendra kulaste I basically prefer mystery movies to watch in free times, and reviewing a romantic movie is generally not my business, but this movie is just so amazing that I just cannot help myself to be silent or say anything bitter about it.. The unpredictability of upcoming events, style of storytelling, camera angles that will increase your interest suddenly.. at some points I thought that right now I am watching some quality cinema stuff but not expect much for the ending because as always happen to great movies , to give a great ending is very big deal for every writer and director..that's why I am giving 8/10 score. But a good movie, I am just feeling amazed.

pontifikator This is the first film I've seen by director Kim Ki-duk, and I'll put it in the "Magic Realism" genre. The movie stars Lee Seung-yeon as our hero, Jae Hee as our heroine. As far as I can remember, the characters they play never say a word to each other until the final scene.Lee's character (Sun-hwa) is apparently homeless; he posts take-out menus on doors then circulates back to see which doors still have the menus on them the next day. He picks the locks of supposedly vacant homes or apartments and spends a night or two -- he listens to the answering machine to see if people have said they'll be away. While he's there, he fixes whatever is broken and does the people's laundry. He finds one apparently vacant home in a very well-to-do neighborhood and breaks in. He wanders through the home, finds that the scales need to be repaired, does so, and plays some golf in the backyard before noticing that the home is indeed occupied. It turns out the owner is away on business, but his wife (named Tae-suk) remains; she shows the bruises and busted lip of their last discussion. She's a prisoner in her own home, and our young hero is a free-spirit with no home. It's a match made in heaven. The title of the movie comes from the 3 iron that Sun-hwa finds in the home occupied by Tae- suk and her beater. The husband comes home early, takes her to task for not answering his phone calls, and discovers Sun-hwa lurking in the back yard. Sun-hwa takes the 3 iron and drives several golf balls into the husband, knocking him down; Sun-hwa and Tae-suk make their escape on his motorcycle. Our couple continues his pattern of handing out fliers, finding a vacant apartment, and staying overnight. Nothing much happens during these scenes with nothing being said, and yet we follow their meandering path with interest and feeling. Eventually someone discovers them and calls the police. The police investigate but find no evidence of any crimes, no thefts, only repairs and clean laundry. Tae-suk is returned to her husband, and Sun-hwa is sent to jail for breaking and entering where he serves a short sentence.Now is where the magic realism comes in to play. Sun-hwa hides from his jailer, causing the jailer to beat him and threaten to kill him. Sun-hwa becomes better and better at hiding, becoming capable of standing behind the jailer out of his view no matter how the jailer twists and turns. Eventually, he becomes invisible to the jailer. The jailer constantly threatens Sun- hwa with death and beats him each time. When it comes time to release Sun-hwa, he is escorted down a tunnel to a light at the end of the tunnel. Apparently Sun-hwa revisits each of the places he stayed with Tae-suk; I say apparently because there is evidence of his ghostly presence, but neither we nor the occupants ever see him, although the occupants are aware of a presence. He goes to Tae-suk's home, and while her husband can't see him hiding behind him, Tae-suk does see Sun-hwa and tells him she loves him. Her husband is shocked and pleased because he assumes she's addressing him. Tae-suk fixes her husband breakfast, placing bowls around him so that as he turns to one serving, Sun-hwa steals a bite from another, both husband and loved one being filled from the same offerings.The husband leaves, and we see the lovers embrace, standing on a scale that reads zero.We saw Sun-hwa fix the scale earlier. If we paid attention, we know his weight shown before he fixed it, his weight after he fixed it, and her weight after he fixed it. We saw Tae-suk take the scale apart after she was returned to her husband, so she may have restored it to its former error, and we know their combined weight would take the broken scale back to zero if they both stood on it. So we can imagine that the unrepaired the scale and their combined weights plus the error is the 180 kilos which takes us back to zero. Or we can imagine that the yin and yang of their love is weightless. Or we can imagine that he was beaten to death in prison and that he is, indeed, a ghost whose spirit lifts her body so that it, too, is weightless. It's an interesting film with a spiritualism that is not heavy-handed.Because of the ending, we get to fill the movie with meanings and emotions of our own. Of the places they stayed, only one couple was happy, and they both return to it separately to spend some time again. It's an easy movie to put meaning into as we see the empty apartments and lives of others in Seoul. It's a fascinating and interesting love story.The version of the movie that I saw is rated R in American. This is a travesty. There is no nudity, and there is no sex. Apparently two scenes caused the MPAA to lose its mind: in one scene we see him under a sheet looking at a book of photographs with a nude model; his hand is jerking back and forth under the sheet, so we assume he's masturbating. In another scene after Tae- suk was returned to her husband, we see them get into bed, both in pajamas. Her husband puts his hand under the sheet and demands to know if "he touched you there." Our assumption is that he's asking if she's had sex with Sun-hwa. Why this deserved an R is a mystery to me.

Ctt519488 With a modest $1-million budget, this 2004 Korean film takes you on a journey through the life of a young man, Tae-suk (Jae Hee), who spends his every waking moment living someone else's life. He is a wanderer, who doesn't appear to have any family, except for the families he photographs when breaking and entering their homes while they're vacationing, vicariously enjoying their amenities. The opening scene pictures the swinging of a 3-iron golf club in a green, grassy panorama and transitions with a simple cut to a scene with a man honking the horn of his car. Of course, most would honk the car's horn if Tae-suk blocked in their car with his motorbike. He left it there while he was taping "take-out" signs to the doors of houses nearby. He doesn't work for a restaurant, however. Soon enough, the viewer realizes he does so to find out if families are away on vacation to ensure he can take a vacation himself in their houses until they return. Of course, not without washing every bit of dirty laundry in the house and leaving a few tricks for the returning voyager. While the viewer is left wondering what exactly is going on, there is a sense of subterfuge that will keep you watching until the end. Tae-suk's daily expeditions of moving from house to house to enjoy the lives of the homeowners in a voyeuristic way will make you wonder why you are watching this and what the point of the film actually is. Keep watching because the plot gets tangled as Tae-suk stumbles into a house that wasn't as empty as he assumed. Tae-suk breaks into a house where he meets Sun-hwa. Although their interactions remain silent, it is clear there is some sort of meeting of the souls when Tae-Suk returns to the house to check on Sun-hwa after he realizes she needs help. Seeing the wounds left from her abusive husband, Tae-suk treats her with the utmost privacy and respect, ironically, by breaking back into her home and leaving fresh clothes for her upon her emergence from the bath. The deliberate twists and turns of the plot offer an insight into the main character's innermost feelings and experiences in life, though seemingly unrealistic at times. Tae-suk and Sun-hwa run off together when her husband returns home, after much trial and tribulation between the encounter of these two men. But wait, this isn't a Disney film. This film doesn't have a fairy tale ending. Retaining the memories of their time together, Tae-suk uses his ever-present digital camera to impose himself and Sun-hwa, who follows him as he trespasses, into the lives of the vacationing homeowners. Although silent and seemingly aloof, her true love is apparent in every interaction Sun-hwa has with her soul mate, Tae-suk.The short screen cuts and melodic interludes embellish the partial periods of time that Tae-suk remains in the random, temporarily vacant homes. Like many of director Kim Ki-duk's films, the main character is mute and peripheral ones are laconic. If you are a fan of American films, where the hero does most of the talking, this one is most definitely not for you. Despite the hero's lack of conversation, the Moroccan music playing through the scenes help to move the film along at a steady pace. The melody also invites the viewer to enter a mysterious world and engage in the voyeuristic frame-within-a-frame perspective that writer, director and producer Kim Ki-duk creates. Similar to Ki-duk's Samaritan Girl, written and produced in the same year, there is a deep underlying sense of unhappiness and passionlessness in the love lives of the main female characters. They find their soul mates but are forced to part just before another life-changing event occurs. The comparison of 3-Iron to American films is minimal in terms of screenplay, director cuts, and cultural similarities. There are intricate details that really piece the movie together if a viewer watches from a culture-less, judgment-free perspective. If you attempt to impose American film culture on this masterpiece, you will miss some obvious connections that the more observant, objective viewer is bound to catch. While the American viewer might notice such subtleties as the man leaving the driveway in the very beginning of the film is none other than Sun-hwa's husband, the cultural values and norms of this film may lead to incorrect conclusions. As Sun-hwa remains alone during the days in which her husband is away on work trips, one might assume that he forced her to remain there almost like a slave that does not work. When the police bring her back to him, from the American perspective, it would appear that they conspire to enslave this young woman. Yet, in Korea, the woman is expected to be submissive to her husband, unlike in the United States. Although this perspective is becoming outdated, the culture is slow to move past this, especially for very conservative, business-centered individuals. From an American perspective, submission to a husband may seem wrong, but to the Korean viewer it is a cultural norm. The morality of the issue is bound to come up, but difference in norms could confuse the American viewer. Nevertheless, the film is enjoyable, despite the temporary confusion one may experience in certain scenes. I highly recommend this film to any cinéphile. If you enjoy dramatic flavor, imagine the romanticized tragedy of the American film, Remember Me, paired with the silence, yet flourishing meaning like The Artist, and a refreshing nihilistic edge, and you've pictured this must-see, award winning film.

chaos-rampant Spring...Spring showed that this man knows reflections, remember the temple gliding on waters, but has trouble articulating a convincing illusion of life. So we got splendid revelations of a phony nature, a postcard in place of the real thing, this was problematic because it run counter to the everyday essence of Buddhism. This is also an issue here, the human dimension as it were; the abusive husband, the cop, the warden, Kim doesn't seem able to convince that these are human beings who breathe and walk in the same world as you and I do and not just plot agents on a page.Something else is at play here, emptiness that I usually seek. The bulk of the film is a love affair between protagonists who never speak, so have to come up with other ways to convey the intimacy. Wong Kar Wai that this was inspired from strives for a similar effect; he presents only impulses for connection, only gestures, time and caress, trusting us to complete the affair in emotional space he has reserved for these things. I think we really lucked out that this was filmed quickly, in just over two weeks, so it is less conscious about a lot of things, again a little contrived, Kim will probably never be one of our greatest filmmakers, lacking a truly subtle touch, but has enough intuitive pull this one.They break into other peoples' homes while the owners are away, transient beings passing through the world. They own nothing, are attached to nothing, in the sense that everything exists just for the night together and is not theirs to take on their way out. He spends time diligently fixing things, doing laundry, taking care of life around him. They take photos together, reflections for later, one of the most poignant images about what this is all about is where he photographs himself next to photos of people. You can presume that eventually he has died and it has all ever so slowly been rolled into a dream about him, pieced from time and reflections. It doesn't matter so much as being enveloped by a feel they have built between them.It is much more Buddhist than Spring. They don't need words between them because they don't have to weigh on each other with self and desire, not having any attachments beyond being together and getting busy putting back into order each new world they come into.He becomes a shadow, air, air that she holds by the hand. The golf ball spins the karmas into motion again.This is fine but if you are like me, you'll get shivers imagining the film in the much more delicate hands of a true calligrapher like Shunji Iwai.