movie

When I first heard that Hollywood was going to remake “Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo” (My Sassy Girl), the only thing going through my mind was, “What a complete waste of an idea. It will not translate well into English” After seeing the film, It did not translate well at all and it went straight to video in the USA, where it deserves never to be seen ever again. Welcome to the failure of Yann Samuell’s, “My Sassy Girl”

If I have to state one reason why this film ultimately fails is that the Korean culture and the USA culture are so different that when you try and literally put the Korean into the American, the audience can not and will not respond to it as the Korean will. I have had 2 Canadian friends of mine both tell me that, “Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo” is one of their all-time favorite Korean films; mainly because it had the spark and that they believed the story. When they both saw the remake they both explained that Hollywood had failed to understand and grasp what make it work for them the first time.

For those of you who never saw “Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo” the plot’s simple enough. The film is based on a series of true stories posted on the internet by Ho-sik Kim describing his relationship with his girlfriend. His posting were later made into a book and then a movie about his girlfriend. It describes the meeting of Kyun-woo (Cha) and an unnamed girl. He’s shamed into assisting the girl because the other passengers mistakenly think she is his girlfriend. Once he helps her, he develops a deep sense of responsibility and honor and love towards her which enables him to somehow tolerate the girls’ abuses towards him.

Now in Korea, it’s so unusual for a girl to talk back and to actually strike a man, which the audience was in shock but they soon liked what they called, “The Sassy Girl”. The film occupied the top spot at the Korean box office for six weeks in 2001, selling 4.8 million tickets and has been shown on VCD and DVD around the world.

When Hollywood was looking at new ideas back in 2002, the remake rights were sold to DreamWorks for $750,000 plus 4 percent of the worldwide gross. I hope that the production company, Shin Cine, was not counting on a huge US box office because it ain’t happening. After testing horribly for the audiences, the film was released straight-to-DVD, For a film budgeted at around $30 Million (US) This will prove to be a huge money loser.

With the American remake, I didn’t feel any sympathy for neither Charlie nor Jordan, the main characters in the film. The only people I really felt sorry for was the audience that had to waste good money of this. As I stated earlier, it tried to make Korea into the USA and it just did not work.

For a love story gone wrong, the audience has to feel sorry for someone not the one watching this. I usually joke in some of my reviews that, “I see the crap so you do not have to.” Well I have seen this crap and please, for the love of any money that you would like to save, please pass on this film at all cost.

Grade F-

What if you knew you were innocent of murder but you are believed to be guilty and worse yet, you're pregnant and you will have to have your baby in jail. This was the plot of my last film at the PIFF, Lion`s Den .

I was told that the film was a joint Argentina, Korea production and if this was the result, then please make more films together because the audience loved it. After the film, I went to see if the director, Pablo Trapero, had made anymore films recently because I want to watch a few more of his films.

The plot is really simple, a girl, Julia, is accused of murder and even though the evidence does not look to her as the killer, the Argentinean court finds her guilty and sentences her to a few years in prison. The only thing bad is that Julia and her son are in prison together until Julia's son is 4 and then the child will be taken away from the mother and given to his grandmother to watch until her time in jail is up.

What I liked about the film was that you are given Julia's story. The film does not judge, it just lets you roll with her story from the day of the crime until the end of the film. The first half of the film deals with the crime and the birth of her son in jail and how she deals with her and her baby in a jail.

The second half of the film deals with her mother trying to raiser her grandson away from the jail and when the grandmother succeeds in taking the child away from the mother, you see her rage as she rectifies the story and ends the film. Pablo Trapero does a great job with the film and never makes Julia into a hero nor a villain. he just tells a real story and lets her roll of the punches.

Please see the film when you get a chance.

Grade A.

What if you fell in love with the perfect person but years later you find out that he was, actually, ordered to marry you because he was a "secret policeman" under the communist Polish Government? If this sounds interesting then welcome to the film Scratch.

Once again, I went into the film without any real idea what the film would be about. The crowd seemed eager to see the film and the plot sounded somewhat interesting.

Well it worked for the first 20 minutes, then I noted that the couple next to me went to sleep, the people down from me also went to sleep and I looked around and I noticed that about a half of the audience either had their eyes closed or they were really sound asleep.

I keep watching this movie about the wronged woman, and I was, sad to say, sorry for the husband for having to be married to her. For a wronged woman story to work, one must actually feel sorry for this girl, but when the daughter tells how much of a bad mother she really was, a few more people lost interest in this film. By the end of the film, it was clear that this film had failed here at the PIFF so horribly, that the person next to me stated he will never watch another film from Poland due to this junk.

I did a quick survey of the audience and with the 25 people that I asked only 1 person, she was from Poland, actually liked the film. The rest told me that they either fell asleep,or really hated the film. Michal Rosa directed a really bad film and seriously hurt any future films that the majority of the PIFF crowd will ever give him the benefit of the doubt.

Please pass on this film at all cost. Grade. F

What if you committed a sin that killed your wife and your son? What if you tried to build a church for the Lord but instead, your good intentions were the path to hell for yourself and for your family. Then you will be at The desert within.

I had never heard of the director, Rodrigo Plá, before. I had no real idea of the film except for the small plot that was in my PIFF book. It stated that the film was about a man perceived sin and how he tries to build a church to appease God, so God will forgive him for this sin. Is sounded interesting and I went in to see the film.

Before the film started the PIFF staff stated that their would be a beer special served after this film. I had no idea how to interpret that, was the film that bad that we, the audience, would need a beer to clear or minds or was this just a tie-in sponsorship?

The film is told from the point of view from the youngest of the 8 children, Aureliano, as he watches his family build a church designed to save them from sin. You are then shown 2-D animation about God that is intertwined through the movie and every time that the animation was on the screen the audience appeared to react very favorably to it.

You are shown that Aureliano has an allergy to the dust and can not go outside and play with his brothers and sisters. You start to feel sorry for this young man as his only job in to paint pictures for the church that tell of God's love for the world and his family.

It was after the first 30 minutes of the film that I noticed that the audience was not really into the film. It just seemed to repeat the same point over and over again about a false sin and how it was slowly killing all of the children. This part I though the film could have used a tighter edit. It started to drag and the audience was never really back into the film after this. A few of the audience members started to lose total interest and went to sleep.

The film went at this slow pace for about 70 minutes until the end of the film. At the end of this film, the director attempted to show what had happened and because of the righteous path the father and his children committed sins and in the end could not save most of the family nor could the director save this film.

After the film had ended, I did a quick poll of the audience, most loved the animation but would not recommend the film to their friends. One man stated that the beer was needed so he could erase this film from his mind. I left the film with a neutral attitude.

I liked the fact that the film showed what can happen between a brother and a sister but the film needed a much tighter edit that we were given. Desierto Adentro or The Desert Within is worth a DVD rental.

Grade: C-