Kim Tae-hee,
Han Ye-seul and
Choi Kang-hee enjoy similarly enviable public recognition as attractive actresses. But they are going through a similarly gloomy Christmas holiday.
The three actresses are now competing at the box office, jockeying for a position in the usually crowded year-end holiday season. But their films are struggling to gain a foothold in terms of ticket sales.
Kim Tae-hee, who plays a tough housewife clashing with her husband in
Han Ji-seung's latest comic drama "...
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Time now to check on the week's new movies.
From Hollywood comes a fantasy based on a bestselling novel and as for domestic fare we have a cheeky story about a very confident woman.
Here is Lee Jeewon.
We begin this week with "The Golden Compass", based on a bestselling and award-winning book of the same title.
The book is the first of author Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy set in an alternative world where people's souls appear as demons.
The epic story begins when a teenage girl named Lyra ...
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By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
"My Love" is a montage film that weaves together four different love stories like the popular romantic comedy "Love Actually". If the British flick is like a mosaic of thoughts on love, this homegrown family drama is more like a hand-knit scarf ― fuzzy, warm and a bit tickly. Those who are in the mood for something sappy will love it, whereas humbugs will find it loathsomely sweet.
Set during summertime, "My Love" brings together characters from different parts of Seoul in time for a solar eclipse. Ju-won (
Choi Kang-hee) is an eccentric ― and slightly sadistic ― artist who takes pleasure in teasing her subway engineer boyfriend Se-jin (
Kam Woo-seong): At one point, a wardrobe malfunction has poor Se-jin standing, boxers-exposed, while giving Ju-won a piggyback in the subway. A few years later, Ju-won has left him, but he discovers that traces of their love remain.
For college student So-hyeon (...
More"My Love" attempts to mimic the famous romantic comedy formula set by "Love Actually" (2003), and the effort itself deserves some attention because the Christmas holiday season is just around the corner, and young Korean couples are keen to watch sweet, feel-good films with the snow falling.
"My Love" has some common grounds with "Love Actually". Obviously, as the title suggests, its target audiences as well as screening time are already set at around the year-end. Both films present multiple couples. But that's the end of the tenuous similarities, and everything else in "My Love" is dramatically inferior to those featured in "Love Actually".
In fact,
Lee Han, who has directed "My Love", has some credentials when it comes to romantic comedy in the domestic film market. He previously made romantic features such as "Lovers' Concerto" (2002) and "
Almost Love" (2006). But Lee is not Richard Curtis, a master of romantic comedy who made "Love Actually" and wrote "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Notting Hill" and "Bridget Jones's Diary"....
MoreBy Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
The winter holiday season is here, with decorative lights warming up the nippy evenings and carol tunes flowing out from record shops ― and of course, colorful movie posters adorning the faces of movie theaters. Here are several films to complete the year-end celebration.
"My Love"
Popular actors convene in this warm drama, which pieces together different love stories in the tradition of "Love Actually".
Subway engineer Se-jin (
Kam Woo-seong) is madly in love with his free-spirited and spontaneous girlfriend, Ju-won (...
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