Skip to main content

Never Forget Your Enemy (Korean Series)

Let's just cut right to it, this show was painfully boring. There, I said it. A story built around partial amnesia has real potential, but between the choppy scene structure and random flashbacks thrown in constantly, the whole plot ends up feeling more tangled than it needed to be. The romance doesn't fare much better either, it's written so poorly that I never really found myself invested in this couple. Both leads come across stiff on screen and deliver their lines in a really awkward way. The show runs 8 episodes, each somewhere around 30 to 35 minutes. Hanuel, a 29 year old language teacher, wakes up after an accident only to realize his memory stops at age 19. It turns out he'd been in another accident back then too, which is why his memories cut off at that point. He has zero recollection of the fact that he's currently living with his childhood friend Saebyeok, who's now a huge celebrity. That makes the whole situation even harder for Hanuel to wrap his ...

Beautiful Something

Is it just sex or is there something more that our protagonists are looking for? Depicting the often erotically charged interactions among four gay men and assorted friends and lovers, this film could have been an interesting study but somewhere it failed to connect with me.

Brian is a struggling writer who is in this writer's block moment who has a deadline to submit. He desperately needs human connection and love but for whatever reasons, every guy he meets wants ti just have hot passionate sex and nothing more afterwards. His many hookups include one fleeting moment with Jim. Jim is a young, beautiful, struggling actor who has just walked out on his lover Drew, an artist who fails to be able to connect to the world because he is too lost in his art. Finally we meet Bob, a talent agent from L.A. in his sixties who is being driven around in his white limo until he finds the right boy to pick up, well why not, he can afford it. In the process he ends up picking up Jim. 

The film is shown over the course of one night with each of the four main characters introduced separately but as the film progresses their lives become intertwined. The character that runs through the middle of the narrative is Jim. He touches upon the stories of all of the men and over the course of the night he embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Chance encounters with both Brian and Bob help him to take a look back over his life and his decisions with surprising outcomes. ON paper the concept must have been interesting: 4 men of different backgrounds, age and ethnicities cross their paths over the course of one night but it fails in execution. None of the characters was fully developed for me to invest in them as an audience and as a result there is no connection at all. There are some elongated suggestive sexual scenes and moments of gaze and silence which become very tiring after a while. Towards the end, the film starts to find a little heart but all too quickly resolves before the morning sun rises.

The film could have been a very powerful one addressing the difficulty that modern gay men have balancing the physical and emotional connect in today's fast moving world where sex is so easy, but we just get that in bits and pieces. (4/10)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Tuxedo (Thai Series)

When I saw this series with 8 episodes of about 20-25 minutes each, I thought, good: Finally someone has come to senses and made a show which is not stretched out and they have tried to squeeze in a decent storyline in a good small episode format. But unfortunately, despite a decent premise on hand, the clunky writing, bad screenplay and an extreme tasteless portrayal of mental illness makes this show, not a fun watch. By the time it finishes, you just want to laugh off at the entire absurdity of it all. Aioun is talented tuxedo designer and very much in demand but he has handful of clients and he builds suits only for people who he feels a connection to. One night when his younger brother is about to get mugged, he is helped by a total stranger named Sichol. Since he tears his suit in the fight and has an interview the next day, Aioun gifts him a suit form his design as an expression of thanks. Sichol's interview is for. Personal assistant of a man named Nawee, a wealthy heir to h...

Heartstopper: Season 2 (Web Series) (UK)

Heartstopper Season 1 was a universal hit. You could not have read one bad review or heard from anyone who has seen the show not liking it. It was the kind of series that is easy to love, with sweetness exploding out of every scene without overwhelming you. So naturally, when Netflix greenly Season 2, expectations were naturally high and the same happened with me. I didn't know what to expect, but I had high expectations of this very very sweet teenage love story. And with eagerness and being a little late to the game by a few days, here I am, pouring my t thoughts down having just finished one of the most anticipated shows of the year. The second season also has 10 episodes and has all of our loved ones from the original season. The show continues from where it had left off in Season 1. Charlie and Nick are a couple and only their very close circle of friends know about it. This includes Charlie's best friend Tao and his trans best friend Elle. The center of the show is still ...

Gaya Sa Pelikula (Filipino Series) [Like In The Movies]

Pinoy BL series seem to be catching up to the popularity of the Thai shows. And I must say that they are doing a pretty good job at it. Where Thai series started to get repetitive with so many shows based in a college setting with seemingly similar storylines, Pinoy series are offering the viewers with new and interesting stories and some really good sets and surroundings. This series was 8 episodes of about 25-20 minutes each. Karl, a 19-year old introvert architecture student is in the middle of an identity crisis. Prior to the start of the second semester in college and forced by his parents, he moves into his uncle's condominium unit so that he can learn to be financially independent. Karl takes on odd jobs online to do so. But when one of his major clients suddenly goes MIA, he is left short on funds and without a means to pay for his utilities. An opportunity presents itself when his cocky neighbor Vlad has to hide from his family and proposes to share Karl's space for th...