DVD Talk Forum - [Review] Failan (Korea), Inugami (Japan)

Failan

This may sound like it contains a few spoilers, but nothing really comes as a surprise in this film and I'm leaving the ending out - it's more about the emotional impact this film will have on you. Failan is a tear jerker starring Cecilia Cheung and Choi Min Sik. Choi plays a rascal who is released from prison back into his position of lower rung on the ladder of his little crime syndicate. Only this time, he commands even less respect than before. Cecilia plays Failan, an immigrant from China who has a string of bad luck and has to get married in order to stay in the country to someone she doesn't know and is forced to work it off. Luckily she avoids a job as a hooker and ends up assisting a laundry business. Long before he was sent to jail, Choi marries her and collects his money and leaves having never even met her or seen her. A year later, Choi witnesses his boss kill another man and his boss asks him to go to jail again in his place in exchange for being allowed to leave the gang as well as get enough money to buy a boat. He soon finds out that his wife Failan has died and he travels to where she lived to wrap up the paperwork and whatnot since he's listed as her only family. Through letters she wrote to him and notes she had left him he discovers that she had loved him even though they had never met... he also falls in love with her. This all comes a bit late though since she's already dead. :) The last act is pretty heavy and even though you knew she was dead from halfway through the film, by the end you're probably gonna squeeze out a tear or two. Not the saddest film I've ever seen, but it was still very emotional.

I really liked all the characters and the acting was top notch. Classic Korean drama. There's some lighter moments in the beginning to keep it from being just depressing and boring. The cinematography is good and everything in this film just came together really well. The DVD is really good as well. ChinaStar screwed up the subtitles again by leaving out a few sentences here and there... nothing major, but I wanted to once again point out how ChinaStar screwed up. The subtitles were removable though and easy to read - maybe a bit on the small side, but still. The video was great - anamorphic widescreen. The sound was 2.0, but nothing was really calling out for surround anyway. Seperate bilingual menus as well. Good DVD overall.

The film gets a :up: and a recommend to whoever likes dramas like this. I give it a 7/10 (a low seven, but a seven).

Inugami

Really strange film that looks like it'll be some sort of soft Japanese porn or something. It's actually pretty decent. It's about this cursed family and this woman who makes paper and... jesus, I don't even know how to describe it. The film just gets stranger and stranger as it goes on. I found it really fascinating and it pulled me in. There's a bit of supernatural, a bit of ghost story, and a bit of witchcraft. The town they live in is really isolated and has avoided most technologies such as televisions and phones. I wish I could describe it better, but it's just one of those movies you have to see and I also don't want to give away any spoilers on this one.

The acting is good and the director has good vision here. It's not really a scary movie or an overly surreal one, but it's very engrossing. The DVD is decent with a non-anamorphic transfer that's fairly clean and in widescreen. The sound is decent as well. Overall, I'd say this one deserves at least a high 6/10 and a :up: because I was entertained. It's also one that you don't absolutely have to see though because Japan has offered up some other films that are better. This one surprised me though by being pretty good. I recommend this one for those interested in Japanese cinema and especially that which deals with supernatural events and curses and whatnot. :)