승리호 Seungniho Space sweepers - 2021

I liked it enough, it was a rather unique thing, that is best appreciateed if watched in its original language with subtitles because there’s not just one language but lots of it, because this is sciencefiction in a distopic future and there’s lots of people coexisting and using a universal translator, so everyone in this movie speaks their own language. I heard Korean and English of course and also Spanish and French and a few I didn’t recognize or didn’t notice in the confusion, but Google says they were German, Russian, Chinese, Nigerian Pidgin, and Tagalog spoken in the Philippines, not sure if I’m forgetting something. 

No Italian, though  :’(

The protagonists are four people in a starship called Victory that go around cleaning space from all the garbage and then selling it for money, but if they break stuff or something they are fined so they’re always in debt.

-The first we meet is Kim Tae-ho who was once a soldier, brought into the UTS Genius program by Sullivan himself. One day he saw a baby and decided to keep it and raised the little thing as his own daughter, and he loved her very much. He called her Su-ni, but having a little girl changed him and he couldn’t shoot and hurt like he did before and was fired. No more nice house, he had to live on the streets of Earth. One day he tried to make money gambling or something and told Su-ni to entertain herself because he was busy or something like that, and she died in a bad space accident that killed many people. He knows that she’s dead but since that day he’s trying to find enough money to pay for a search, for her body to be found, it’s possible inside a three years span until the body will go out of orbit or something. 

-Captain Jang leads them; she’s tough and very determined. Jang Hyun-sook, adopted by UTS as a child and raised to be an engineer and very good at it, until she abandoned that colony and started working against them. She’s already attempted once on Sullivan’s life.  

-Bubs is some kind of android with a peculilar personality, who wants to gain enough money for a skin operation, he wants a complete body reconstruction to look like a real person.

-Tiger Park is the fourth crerwmember. 

 Earth is barely livable so the elite and rich live in space, in the residential districts of UTS, founded by James Sullivan, the richest man in the world, who is also 152 years old apparently although it’s not clear to me how can that be, and he sure doesn’t look it. His people call him the Saviour of humanity, but actually 95% of human population is still on Earth, in hell, but he doesn’t care about them. He has his own ideas of creating a better world after a traumatic childhood, he will say that all the people in his heaven are better people, not just the rich, and to prove this point he offers the man who protested about humans condition to have that paradise handed to him and his family if he shoots a man already condemned to death; the man does it and is horrified by it, but he still did it and Sullivan then kills him saying that he’s bad like everyone down there. Sullivan’s new project is Mars.

The ‘black foxes’ is considered a terrorists group, and it’s on the news that they ‘stole’ an android looking like a small innocent child while it’s in fact a very dangerous bomb. The victory finds her hidden in one of the things they salvage, and they’re absolutely terrified when they realised it’s the same child-looking bomb. Dorothy/Kot-nim is her name, and she also has a cell  phone that she used to repeatedly call just one person: Kang Hyeo-nu. Even if they believe her a dangerous bomb they think of all the money they could do if they sell it to the Black Foxes constantly searching for her; they arrange a meeting but are attacked by soldiers. Kot-nim makes a dead plant on the ship bloom and grow tomatoes, real ones that nobody has eaten in a long time so Tae-ho can at least sell those. 

Park gets rather attached to Kot-nim who calls them uncles and draws pictures of them and basically is just a little girl. When they finally meet with the Red Foxes, Jang has already understood that Kot-nim is a human child because robots don’t poop, which is of course perfect logic, they don’t and never will, unless there’s some weird, disturbed engineer out there. She’s actually Kang Kot-nim, Hyeo-nu’s daughter. He was one of the scientists working with nanobots on the Mars terraforming project. Kot-nim was born with a rare disease that was killing her, so eventually he injected her with the nanobots; she recovered, started walking again and everything, but it didn’t stop there. We all know about nanobots, they started communicating with each other and basically it got was out of control in the best way possible, she can make any dead plant flourish. Because of this she’s Earth’s only hope, but instead Sullivan took her to Mars, and once it was enough to go on without her, every data and those who worked on it got eliminated; Kot-nim escaped before being killed herself, because it’s not that easy with all the nanobots inside her. The only way to kill her is to kill them too, which can only be done at 200million °C, a real powerful bomb. Sullivan’s plan is to make the bomb explode near her, and it will cause fractures on Earth and millions of deaths.

The Black Foxes are actually ambientalists with a very simple, logical question: if it is possible to transform the hostile environment on Mars into a green land, why not Earth? So they ally wiht our crew, to protect Kot-nim. They are all very fond of her now after all.

Kot-nim is very happy to hug her father again, and she tells him how the captain gave her good spicy food, Bubs did her make up, uncle Tiger washed her hair and uncle Tae-ho and her gained 23 dollars.

Unfortunately, once again they are found out and attacked by the Guards, and all the Foxes, Karum and dad are killed.

Tae-ho and the crew save Kot-nim and take her away on their ship, but the situation is not good, it’s very bad indeed when suddenly the ship detects a nanobot infestation, they surround the ship and release it only once it’s safe. She collapses but she’s ok in the end. 

They’re on the news now, called members of the terrorists Black Foxes, blaming them for everything that happened when the Guards attacked them. 

They are again found by the Guards guided by Sullivan himself, who tells Tae-ho about his plan and then tells him he’ll pay him for Kot-nim. He gives him 4 millions and Tae-ho takes the money, that he’ll share with his crew and use his part to find Su-ni’s body. He’s lived the last three years for this.

Sullivan tells him that that’s the price of Kot-nim’s life and that Tae-ho will never be a good man.

In case there was anyone who had not yet figured out Sullivan’s personality, we see him appear to the people in the residential area as a gigantic hologram where they can look at him as if in the sky, while he shows them the new Mars.

The crew does not want Sullivan’s money; Park is set on going to rescue Kot-nim, whatever the cost. The captain agrees but she also knows about Su-ni so she tells him to go do what he has to do and that they’ll do the same. He does, he gives the office all his part of the money, 400.000, and sits to wait, looking at Su-ni’s stuff and the last words she wrote the day she died, when he was so ‘busy’ that didn’t even look at it, and cries reading how she wrote that she loved him and wanted to be as good as him. 

Tae-ho comes back to join the others and pilot the ship,and the fights begins. Missiles are launched at them: Bubs walks out on top of the ship and takes out as many as he can with his harpoon, and they reach the sphere with the bomb and Kot-nim. 

Proble is: Jang looks at it and tells them the bomb cannot be disabled,and Kot-nim can only survive the explosion if she’s 5 million or 5000 km away from it (well, the subtitles first said 5 million and later on said 5000, so one or the other; the monitor will read 5132 but it doesn’t say what, so I’m still not 100% sure). So they agree on a plan and take her away.

There’s a tough battle with one Guard that I think is a machine but Tiger Park manages to kill it/her. No, if it’s warm it must be a human hand…

98 war drones head towards them so they call for help. They tell all the other sweepers of what is going to happen so that they can escape or fight.

Pierre, the French guy in love with Jang comes right away, ready to do anything to help her. The other sweepers also fight the drones.

A shocking audio reaches the news, from the space sweepers, and it’s what Sullivan told Tae-ho, so that everybody can hear it. At least every resident seems to be in shock.

Sullivan reaches the Victory himself, to get his hands on Kot-nim. The crew does everything they can and they finally reach enough distance. They sort of say their goodbyes: Tae-ho sas he was happy with them, Bubs that he loves them and Park thanks them for everything. 

This was the best plan, of course. Had they taken Kot-nim away they would have saved only her - if that- but by taking away the bomb they also save a billion lives on Earth, it’s certainly something they’re ready to die for. So they took the bomb away and left Kot-nim behind, to be taken in by Pierre who was rushing to help Jang in any possible way.

As soon as the monitor tells them that they’re far enough, they let the bomb explode killing Sullivan. Both Kot-nim and the Earth are safe, and everybody thinks the Victory is gone until a huge mass of indestructible nanobots brings it back. They’re for sure the ones that ‘infested’ the ship before saving it, and maybe they evolved into soemthing that the bomb could not destroy… I guess… does that mean that Kot-nim would not have died?

Anyway, it changes nothing because this way they saved Earth.

Bubs has been cut in half and the captain gets hold of the top part. The others are ok.

Now that everyone knows the Truth, UTS without Sullivan promises to do much more to help Earth, and the Sweepers that saved it are promised by Uts that they’ll pay them back for whatever loss they had, so Bubs gets a new shining body of a girl with perfect skin, although he still has his voice for now.

Kot-nim now lives with them and they’re a family. From time to time she goes on Earth to ‘make trees’ , the Captain stopped drinking, Bubs is a real girl, Tiger deleted all this tattooes so he will not scare away her friends and Tae-ho bought ten pairs of shoes since he never had shoes before (he even sold his boots in his search for Su-ni, checking on every body that was found).

The movie ends with Bubs reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Life and Songs. She’s serious about educating herself, it seems, and since she doesn’t need papers that prove it to others she also does not need a school to educate herself. Good. 

Song Joong-ki is Tae-ho

Kim Tae-ri is Captain Jang

Richard Armitage is James Sullivan

Park Ye-rin is Kot-nim also called Dorothy

愛の、がっこう Ai no gakkou Learning to love

In corso….

I liked it a lot, really a lot, maybe too much since it wasn’t very well made, but the character of Kaoru was touching and very well played, the actor that played him did very well, I had never seen him before and I liked him a lot. Now I’ve learned he’s a pop idol in a group called Snow Man, but I’m afraid I’m over the age limit for that stuff. I also learned that he’s a model, which is very understandable and perfect, but for me it has the same results, so I’ll simply gladly wait to see him in another movie.

He is called Raul (Maito Murakami)

This show talks about host clubs: night clubs where charming young men pretend to love you to make you spend your money in drinks and stuff… I mean they only talk about champagne or such, but there might be the occasional snack to eat…

 

This is a miniseries:

1-

Manami is a teacher in a catholic school - well, there’s a nun so I suppose that’s what it is - and shi only has girls in class, but they don’t respect her. Manami doesn’t do anything to make them, she just takes it.

She meets her ‘new fiancée’ Kawahara because their fathers know each other and arranged the marriage. 

When a rich mother complains to the school that her daughter is spending lots of money at a host club, the school orders Manami and her teacher aide Sakura to retrieve her, so she goes. 

Young Natsuki was with Kaoru, one of the host - with this I mean they were sitting at a table talking. His job as host is to talk to women and get them to buy more drinks and spend a lot of money.

Manami insists th girl should leave, Kaoru mocks her a bit for her strict, no fun attitude, and the girl tries to stay but the club owner stops her from entering again .

When Manami sees her at school the next morning, Natsuki is sad because nobody seems to care about her.

The girl’s mother insists on having a letter from Kaoru, a promise that he won’t see the girl again, and Manami won’t stop until she gets it. She tries at the club of course, and star host Tsubasa tells her that he is well educated while Kaoru is not, which does not interest her at all because she’s only there for the letter. When he keeps saying ‘later’ and refuses to write it there, she waits and then follows him home.

When she refuses to enter his apartment, because it’s not appropriate, he thinks she might have a wrong idea about him and tells her that he never slept with the underage girl, whatever Natsuki might have said to appear like an adult (indeed, that’s what Natsuki had told her).

Still, since Manami won’t enter they go talk on the roof and he manages to write the letter for her, but it seems written by a child, so he admits that he only had the first two or three years of school and no more, that he has no father and his mother is a parasite (yeah, she is, constantly asking him money and otherwise leaving him on his own). That they had no money and he just never learned, he can’t even write his name in Kanji. She stops him from walking away and insists on teaching him how to do it, and you can see in his posture how he feels lost and embarrassed, but he applies himself and she really enjoys teaching him, and he gets frustrated when he makes mistakes but sticks to it and learns how to write his name. 

I so relate to Manami’s emotions here about this lesson because it’s wonderful to teach someone who wants to learn, so rewarding, it’s like winning together :-) :-) 

When he sees how she writes her own name his reaction is adorable, he likes her surname because Ogawa is so easy to write, he says :lol: 

At work, he tells his boss that he can make her fall in love and come to the club.

Kawahara is seeing a married woman and only wants to marry Manami because it’ll help his career. Manami told him about her past right away: she once had a serious relationship but when her fiancée left her she lost it, she kept calling him crying, following him, leaving him gifts. A stalker indeed so he called the police on her and she had to leave the company. She also tried to kill herself, but it’s not easy to let oneself drown, she didn’t choose well. She does not tell him about the attempt, though.

Her father found her this teaching job.

2-

ซ้ำวัน กับ (Same day With someone) - 2025

 I liked it, it was cute, and even movingg at the end, but with the perfect happy ending and some funny moments. Of course it’s the usual fairytale, like any ‘repeat the same day in a loop until it goes well’ story, but that’s the premise of this story so if you watch it it means that you have accepted said premise and are okay with it. 

I am okay with it, because it makes for funny stories sometimes, although a small part of me is indeed bothered by the all: why would this person get all these chances while others barely have one… but that should be accepted to before starting the movie, so I don’t dwell on it too much.

I must say though that this particular film was rather nice in that regard too.

Plot in details now:

Mesa is a rich girl, so she’s not weird she’s just eccentric and showing her personality. Since she was little she wanted to open a museum, I think it was the huge villa of her grandfather, not sure where all the pieces inside come from. Anyway, that was her dream so she prayed to her Goddess; Mesa finished her studies and I think she actually worked hard to get there, but we don’t see any of that.

We find her grown up and with the museum about to open; she also prayed to find love and we see her engaged.

At least I think it’s its first official opening, although I think Ben was working there already, but maybe he was working on it but it wasn’t open to the public… not totally sure. Actually she watched people around so maybe it was already open and has been for a while but only now they finally got the chance to have the precious stone that looks like cooked bacon. Probably.

Now we come to the important day, the eighth of August, and she wakes up happy and ready for another fabulous day, but things do not go well. A spoiled kid from hell threatens the safety of the precious pieces inside and also the travelling case of two guys leet loose… it all results in the ancient stone of Chilin, the priceless, precious artifact falling down and breaking in two, damaging diplomatic relations and ruining the museum’s opening. As if it wasn’t enough for Mesa, her fiancee comes to break up with her. Also, her shoe’s heel breaks. What a day. 

So, what do people do when things go to hell? She drinks, she gets very drunk and she goes to yell at her Goddess in front of her statue. Ben tries to stop her but she won’t have it, she’s got frustrations to yell. Being drunk and unstable on her feet, she pushes Ben away, she falls down and causes the statue to fall too, right next to her, in perfect range for when her being drunk catches up with her and she throws up on its face.

The next morning, Mesa sees that it still says 8 on her phone calendar and is all happy that it was just a dream, but during her morning run she sees the same things and at the museum people say the same things… so she understands she already lived through the whole of it.

Loop has started. She tries staying awake until the next day starts but sooner or later during the night she falls asleep and it starts again. She tries saying sorry to her Goddess for how she disrespected her statue.

After a week of trying by herself she’s already losing her mind so she starts asking Ben’s help. Ben was her mentor and he left the museum to her because he’s about to leave for… somewhere, maybe France, I don’t know, and it’s apparently a great opportunity. 

Ben starts helping her, but nothing works. Every day Ben believes her and helps her. 

They try everything to protect the precious stone and to keep her fiancee, with the same results: no matter how big a gesture or how far she hides he will find her and leave her anyway. 

To protect the stone they try throwing out the family with the brat, securing the case right away, nothing works. There will be a stone kicked by the brat or even a mouse or squirrel making the chandelier fall on the stone. This was bad, on the same day that she went to her fiancee determined to change whatever it was in her that made him leave her only to find another woman in his room.

She gets drunk again and again she starts yelling: at Ben for complicating things and mostly at her Goddess for choosing a bad man for her and getting her in his nightmare, and when she starts throwing thinks at the sacred statue Ben tries to stop her, she pushes him and they both fall down, and the statue falls on Ben…

Next day of the loop, Ben is trapped in it too, he remembers everything but he reacts quite differently: he will now have time to read and watch everything he wants, and he proposes using that time to do whatever they’ve ever wanted.

They visit Japan and India and other places not too far away (for obvious reasons), she practices hard until she learns to play sepak takraw, basically volleyball with feet instead of hands, she can eat a lot without getting fat, they get tattooes, rebel hairstyles (so cute though, they both look better with shorter hair)… he looked very handsome with the suit and the well cut hair (just free your forehead :D ), but I got annoyed when she took away his glasses, can we stop saying that people look bad in glasses? He needs to see, you know. 

(Of course the show friends was an exception, everybody would look bad with those glasses not just Chandler, the were 19th century psycho doctor glasses)

They ride a bike, play golf and much much more and now she says she has learned to value little things and special moments, she listens to his doubts about going abroad and then they kiss.

She thinks this is what the Goddess wanted for her, to realize her true love was always right in front of her,  and since they’re in love and they’re still stuck in the loop, maybe they haven’t loved each other enough, so sh decides to add passion and they sleep together. 

She’s so sure it’ll work that when she wakes up alone still inside the loop she goes all crazy, smashing the Goddess statue, the museum pieces and the stone herself. She yelled at her mom and then cried while talking to her on the phone.

Next morning, for the first time, she takes a look at the “assembly instructions” of the “art display cabinet), and talks to Ning, one of the girls that works at the museum, and notices bad signs on her skin, clear signs of an abusive man. She stays with him because of the usual excuses and also because she feels like she’s got only him. 

Ning notices that the cabinet was not assembled properly, and then Mesa sees the name that she heard several times on the radio as the identity of the girl found dead, written on a package. Lalita Patnon turns out to be Ning’s full name. 

Realization time. Mesa sees now that it’s not her having the worst day, it’s not her second chance, it’s not her that needs saving, and a stone is not the only thing that can be broken.

First time Mesa tries to save Ning from jumping in the river at night, they fall together. Still that day the cabinet was repaired and the stone was not broken, so they see that things can be prevented after all.

Next time Mesa tries to save ning from jumping and they both fall, there’s somone ready to save them both, alerted by Ben. 

Loop broken, she wakes up next to Ben and the phone says it’s finally saturday. 

Ben leaves to go abroad but they plan of seeing each other soon (she’s rich after all); Ning has left the bastard, and the Goddess herself appears in front of Mesa. Now she’s been granted everything and there’s nothing else the Goddess can do for her.

Jarinporn Joonkiat is Mesa

Warintorn Panhakarn is Ben

Charlette Wasita Hermenau is Ning

Trisanu Soranun is Tul (the fiancee)

크로스 (Mission cross) - 2024

It wasn’t bad but to be honest I didn’t like it all that much, it should have had more of them together; like this it was just a spy story, sort of. Not bad, no, but not something that leaves a mark or I’d like to watch again.

Plot in details:

Kang Mi-seon is a fierce cop, tough and determined. Her team call her Crocodile because they say she has 90% of success. Her husband is Park Kang-moo who is very attentive and caring, does the housework and worries for her health, because she doesn’t and she works too much; cop Lee calls him her wife because when they go to her house to celebrate solving a case he takes care of everything.

She is very tough and grumpy, so even if she knows she’s lucky to have such a good husband, she also sort of looks down on him.

What she doesn’t know is that in the past, in the life he left behind, he was a secret agent.

The story now follows two separate lines, which stay separate for almost the entirety of the film, too long in my opinion, they come together only towards the end so that they can fight together, it should have happened earlier

Mi-seon : their next case is a shooting, but the woman didn’t die because she was wearing a bulletproof vest. This Baek Seon-u is in a coma for a while. Her cops see her husband talking to Hee-ju and in their mind it appears a clear affair, and they talk about it where she can hear them. They keep seeing them together, even going into a hotel together. Cop Lee is sure that he loves her, but the evidence is also clear to them… so she clones his cell phone to spy on him. When the girl wakes up she tells them of how they used the account to try and get General Park to come out in the open. Mi-seon sees in a  video the ‘mistress’ face among her suspects. She also learns Jung-san’s address so she goes there to investigate, and right in time to fight Park’s men come to get the usb key with the account. Mi-seon destroys the usb after sending it to Kang-moo’s phone, so she’s taken prisoner.

Kang-moo: he meets Hee-ju after a long time, and she says she’s married to Jung-san but he’s now disappeared. They both worked with him as secret agents once. It’s been six years since their last mission together, I think he was the team leader, and worried there might be a spy among them. The mission didn’t go well and it also was an unauthorized mission, so he’s out.

He thinks men were after her, that enemies took Jung-san and wants to help her. She says her house isn’t safe so she lives at Jung-san’s safe house. They are contacted by a mysterious man and meet him at a hotel, and he tells them that the Minister of Defence announced a big contract as a cover for a load of money, like 3,5 trillions of won. It’s General Park’s plan, but nobody knows Park’s identity, only the name. Jung-san put together a new team to investigate Park he’s losing all its members. Jung-san found Parrk’s account and sort of encripted it to make Park come out to retrieve it. The man tells them where Jung.san is kept prisoner and they free him; this is when we see that Hee-ju is Park, and she used this elaboratae story because she knew that once Jung-san thought himself safe he would reveal to those he trusted what he didn’t tell the enemy even under torture, Kang-mu takes Jung-san to be healed, and before he can go away Jung-san tells him to keep the account safe, and tells him where it is, and since it was all her plan and she knew where they would be, there’s a hidden microphone and she hears it all. 

When the man instead of healing him tries to kill him, Jung-san knocks him out and calls Kang-mu to learn more, and tells him Hee-ju is not his wife, she disappeared at the same time Kang-mu was dispensed with. Unfortunately he’s killed because the guy didn’t stay knocked out for long and shot him. A car crashes into Kang-mu’s car.

At this point, they tell Mi-seon they’ll kill Kang-mu so she reveals about the account and they get it from his phone while he’s still out from the crash, but then he comes to and fights them before they kill him. Mi-seon heard the order to kill him, but won’t have to live with that for long because he storms inside and when he sees her tied up of course he frees her and takes her away with him. 

A very sweet scene at this point: Mi-seon asks him who he really is, and he admits that in another life he was a secret agent. She’s upset that he kept it a secret from her, that for years he kept from her such an imporant part of him. When he says he was worried how she would have reacted, she says ‘who else could understand if not me? When the world is against you, I am with you. This is marriage’ and she also tells him how stupid he was to let himself by used by that crazy woman. Now they work together to stop her. Before going into action he weakly tries to tell her that maybe she should stay behind because they’ll have to deal with mercemaries protecting Park, but of course she won’t have it, he’s not alone in his fight anymore. She helps a lot, in fact, becausse she’s a better shooter than he is, she won a silver medal for it.

Asia’s n.2. 

Now there’s a bit I didn’t understand: they were looking at the computer telling Park the account was two minutes from being… what? How were they… what were they doing? Money laundry, somehow? Where was the money? How come she has a case now that supposedly contains the 3,5 trillions? Maybe it means that she herself had the money already but needed to make it look clean money to fullly enjoy it? And when the money laundry was interrupted by our couple storming in and cutting the power, she decided she’d keep the money even if it was dirty? 

And how small is Korean’s money that 3,5 trillions can fit in such a small case? Google says they have a banknote of50.000 but one still needs 70 millions of them to make 3,5 trillions, or di I go wrrong somewhere? That case is fara too small and way far too ligght to contain all that physical money…  or maybe I didn’t see it and it simply contains a small computer that can be used to access the money? It’d make sense of course, it’s just that when Mi-seon takes the case, the scene feels like she retrieved the money, but if it’s all digital she didn’t really, she only stopped her from having it.

Well, it doesn’t matter all that much. 

Wife and husband fight fiercely side by side then dress up like two of the mercenaries so Hee-ju follows them into a car. Mi-seon gets angry when the woman insults her husband :) then Hee-ju tries to escape but Mi-seon stops her and wins. 

They come out of it leaving Hee-ju alive and find lots of soldiers ready, and her cops waiting, who now also learns who Kang-mu is. 

The end. Well, almost, we see that six months later they’re working together… google says it’ s a scene to wink at fans because it alludes to another of the actor’s films, but I wouldn’t know about that, and therefore I didn’t appreciate this scene at all. I would have liked to know how they’re working together now, is he an agent again and she works in his team? She wouldn’t leave being a cop, would she? Is she still a cop and he helps her with it? He wouldn’t be allowed, as a civilian…

So, this is why I didn’t enjoy the ending, and I would have appreciated if they came together sooner, with more action together.

Hwang Jung-min is Park Kang-moo

Yum Juna-ah is Kang Mi-seon

Jeon Hye-jin is Jang Hee-joo

Jung Man-sik is Lee Sang-eung  (the cop I liked in Minamdang, here in a similar role)