Tag: schoolmate

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YMCA Baseball Team
(YMCA Yagudan,
YMCA야구단)

Director – Kim Hyun-seok – 2002 – South Korea – Cert. – 104m

***

In 1905, as the Japanese take over the running of their country, a small group of Koreans form a baseball team to defeat the Japanese – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2025 which runsin cinemas from Wednesday, November 5th to Tuesday, November 18th

A lightweight sports comedy loosely inspired by historical events, this is set in 1905, by which time the Japanese were moving to occupy Korea. Lee Ho-chang (Song Kang-ho) is playing soccer on a local plateau when the ball goes off the edge and into the local YMCA missionary compound below. While retrieving the ball, he is confronted by US-schooled baseball enthusiast Min Jung-rim (Kim Hye-soo).

Much comedy is derived (albeit not that successfully for Western audiences) from Ho-chang’s taking a romantic liking to her, even though she has not the slightest interest in him, preferring (when he turns up later in the narrative) Japanese-schooled Oh Day-hyun (Kim Joo-hyuk) who is already highly skilled at baseball, which arrived in Japan in 1872, some 30 years before it came to Korea. Also in the team is bespectacled Ryu Kwang-tae (Hwang Jung-min), whose bureaucrat father is collaborating with the Japanese administration.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Till We Meet Again
(Sheng Qian
Yue Si Hou,
生前约死后)

Director – Steven Ma – 2019 – Hong Kong – Cert. N/C 15+ – 97m

****1/2

A young man succumbs to a debilitating psychosis in the decade following his mother’s death – online in the UK as part of Focus Hong Kong 2021 from Tuesday, February 9th to Monday, February 15th

When Wai Wong Oli, Moritz) was three, his mother Mui (Josephine Ku) told him she’d always be there. Ten years ago, she died of cancer and Wai (Steven Ma) blames himself. He’s never been able to get past this, making himself dangerously ill. He gave up a job for a restaurant job near his parents’ home just so he’d be able to look after her. He’s a conscientious and efficient worker, so his boss gives him time off to see his mother whatever he wants, and when that doesn’t work out his grateful colleagues cover for him.

Sometimes, though, he doesn’t take the meds prescribed for him by Dr. Fung (Jennifer Yu) and goes completely to pieces. Fortunately, his schoolfriend Chi (Himmy Wong) is there for him. Thoughts of guilt and suicide are never far away.

The narrative proceeds on its course, flashing back and forth in time through Wai’s memories from when he was younger, including himself (Fong Chit Lun) at age 10 and himself in the decade leading up to his mum’s passing, in the company of both his mum and his bus driver dad Chung (Ling Hiu Wah).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

A Day Off
(Hyuil,
휴일)

Director – Lee Man-hee – 1968 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 110m

*****

A man passes the boredom of Sunday in Seoul by spending time in the park with his lover, robbing an old schoolmate then going out drinking and womanising in bars – available from time to time to watch for free at the Korean Film Archive’s YouTube channel (link at bottom of page)

Shot in stark black and white, this opens with a voice-over which immediately makes you think you’re watching a film noir. However, A Day Off is something else entirely – there are no cops or gangsters in sight, the narrative concerning instead a couple of doomed lovers and the opening voice-over bemoaning the hero’s meeting with his lover Ji-Yeon every Sunday. That said, it’s all about poor people struggling to survive on Seoul’s mean streets and the main character is constantly cheating his fellow citizens or stealing money from them, so its subject matter is not entirely noir unrelated.

Heo-uk (Shin Seong-il, a huge star who also has a bit part in the earlier Bloodline a.k.a. Kinship, Kim Soo-yong, 1963) asks a consults a bird fortune-teller as to what the day will bring: her trained bird picks out a card warning him to Stay Away From Women.… Read the rest