Another fine additon to the "Tomie" series

Just finished this movie and I must say that it deserves to be an additon to the "Tomie" series...

I may have missed a few of the earlier versions of the series, but it is worthy to be considered amongst the rest; good cinematography, especially using the gray-toned filters in the mountain scenes and also waiting until the end for the "Gotcha" moments!.

It isn't as 'bold' as some of the earlier versions of the Tomie series, but it gives you a good scare in the final part of the movie!

I sometimes think they intentionally put it of to make the climax better and more shocking...

Re-watch value...at least every October, before Halloween....IF YOU DARE!

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30 minutes longer = better movie!

I watched this movie simply out of curiosity, yet found it was very good movie for entertainment purposes .

The angles, sound, music and atmosphere all seemed fine and I have no problem with that aspect of this movie. I also liked the "family friendly " aspect of the ladies all being clothed instead of running around half-naked.

The only aspect I had problems with was it should have been about 30 minutes longer in order to fully develop the characters and show the diabolical plot of Lin Jinyu (Kelvin Leung) in his vengeance on the married couple; the female for spurning his love, the male for ruining his business...

Special acting kudos to Yi Xuan Xuan (Chen Shuang) for her last scene with the male lead, and also her doing an about face and becoming again a supporter of the couple. She, by the way, was in love with him for years and slipped a drug into the male lead's drink when they went out partying, which led to the main couple sleeping tpogether in the first place!

It was entertaining and an average person should also find it worth a watch!

I also plan on re-watching this on occasion as well.

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Kim Hyang Gi, as So Ra, deserves an acting award for her performance in this movie!

Although Song Yoon Ah as Seo Go Eun was the lead actress in this movie, young Kim Hyang Gi as Jang So Ra, Seo Go Eu's daughgter deserves a special acting award for her portrayal of the daughter of a dying mother, especially in the ending scene!

From her acting out (due to not understanding "what was wrong" with Mommy), to her taking charge and making her dying mother proud of her, she pulled out an award-winning performance, IMHO, second to none.

Credit should also go to the martial arts instructor, who intervened to get the ballet instructor to catch So Ra up so that her mother could see her perform before dying.

Unfortunately, I recommended this movie to a friend a week ago, found it on YouTube, but was very upset that the person uploading it cut 10 minutes off of the film, taking out So Ra dancing with the big flower on her dress so that mother Seo Go Eun could see her dance with her failing eyesight (next to the last scene in the original movie.

You could feel the heartache of the support cast seeing a loved one die and not being able to do one thing about it!

The movie was done so that all the loose ends were tied off, and So Ra ultimately overcame her loss as the next-to-last scene showed.

WARNING: Have a least a full (new) box of Kleenex on hand before starting this movie!

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English tramslation of clinchamps's review: La cuisine est ici le chemin de la vie,...I agree!

Tampopo (Dandelion in Japanese) holds a small ramen gargotte. She is a widow with a son who is bullied by his friends from primary school. One day a tanker truck stops and the driver and his teammate go to eat. As the two men find ramen bad and they seem to know anything about them (especially Goro the cowboy-looking driver), she asks them to teach her.

This learning will give rise to several digressions all as tasty as each other, because for the Japanese, Cooking is an art in its own right, like Pottery or Sabre and this film is the very essence of Japan. The narration is anything but linear: we walk through this film by crossing different characters more or less connected to the story, or even not at all like the yakuza in white suit and his mistress. Cooking as an art where all the senses are put to use is the very plot of the film (the yakuza and his mistress prove to us that the pleasures of the palate are closely linked to other pleasures!)

We meet all walks of life from clodos to a rich bourgeois and the common link is always the culinary art. Little by little the gargotte of Tampopo will become a small restaurant where people queue, because everything is linked: the appearance of the kitchen, the look of the stove make the kitchen even better! And as this film is Japanese, of course the ending is perfect, positive, (Ah! the scene of learning how to eat spaghetti without noise, or the one where tramps sing...) happy, but with a light and sweet melancholy, when the tanker goes away for the last time on its highway!

This movie is a magic potion, a slice of pure happiness that should be reimbursed by Social Security. Impossible not to finish it with a smile on your face with the irrepressible desire to put yourself in the stove.


By the way, Miyamoto Nobuko is the former wife of the late director Itami Juzo...

According to a online video interview of Miyamoto Nobuko about the movie, she said that her husband kept asking her about her opinion as to what people would think about a movie about this topic or that topic, or a movie about ramen.

Her rely to him was, "Why don't you just make the movie and see what the people think about it."...so he finally did and created a comedy to last an eternity!

There was criticism about the vignette not being 'cohesive'...it is a comedy! It doesn't have to be cohesive!

Itami Juzo is partially mocking the chefs and their secrets to making the perfect ramen. He is also portraying the Japanese city as the scene of a Western; with cowboys riding delivery trucks rather than horses; with individuals becoming jilted at the tought somenes 'stole' their ramen secrests, which they did, time and time again!

One reviewer complained about a turtle being killed; HOW DO YOU THINK ANIMALS ARE PREPARED BEFORE YOU EAT THEIR MEAT??

Cows are killed before the beef in your grocery store sells it to you, and pigs are slaughtered

Someone kills the cow and processes the meat into hamburgers!

The same process is done for pigs, lamb, birds, sheep, et al. Animals 'die' and their meat processed before you eat it!

The main and support cast worked well together and there was just enough drama to make the comedic parts funnier.

There was also criticism of the egg and oyster: take alook at daytime Japanese television and teh 'egg and oyster' sccenes are NOTHNIG campared to daily Japanese sexual hijinxs on Japanese daytime television!

This film reminds me of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)" and
It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)...so funny and so universal!

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Insert later today!

Insert later today!

(Finsins at home!)

If you ever saw and enjoyed the movies, Drama Special Season 6: What is the Ghost Doing? (2015), Lover's Concerto (2002), A Millionaire's First Love (2006), Daisy (2006), Memories of the Sword (2015), The Classic (2003) or Babo: Miracle of a Giving Fool (2008), then you should enjoy this movie as well!

Others would possibly be My Love (2021), On Your Wedding Day (2018), Samaritan Girl (2004), The Library (2013), Train to Busan (2016), Virgin Snow (2007), Cry Me a Sad River (2018)

One day, Ji Hwan begins to receive letters from an unidentified person. The letters, containing black-and-white photos of happy children playing, remind Ji Hwan of his old two friends.
Five years earlier, while Ji Hwan is taking pictures with his camera, two girls, Soo In and Gyung Hee, walk into the frame. Ji Hwan falls in love with Soo In at first sight. He then musters up enough courage to confess his love to her, but she refuses him very politely. Even so, Ji Hwan doesn't give up and tells them that he wants to be friends the next time they meet.
Ever since then, the three of them start a wonderful friendship. They spend time each other always and consider it the most precious moments of their lives. But they become confused between love and friendship and, finally, Gyung Hee and Soo In leave him without a trace.
The random letters inspire Ji Hwan to depart anxiously on a long journey to find his old friends, but while looking for Soo In and Gyung Hee, he confronts a beautiful yet sad secret. Edit Translation

Native Title: 연애소설
Also Known As: Yeonae soseol
Screenwriter & Director: Lee Han
Genres: Romance, Drama, Melodrama
Tags: Best Friends, Lovers Separated, Terminal Illness, Love Triangle (Vote or add tags)

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"I Really Regretted A Lot...For Saying I Regretted Meeting You. It's Exactly The Opposite."

"Midnight for Cinderella, 11 pm for Woo-Yeon/Woo Yun..."

Some people gave this movie a bad review, here and elsewhere online, due to the ending...

I wanted to as well at first, but I believe that that director is trying to "say something" by the way this movie ended.

This movie was told from the main male cast, Hwang Woo Yun's (Kim Young Kwang} viewpoint. Much of what I want to say here is how I interpret the main female cast, Hwan Seung Hee' (Park Bo Young) viewpoint, if I may.

Hwang Woo Yun is a happy-go-lucky juvenile delinquent in high school, He probably never had a girlfriend before Seung Hee; if he did, it was only for the "good times" and nothing else. I believe he needed the influence of a girl like Seung Hee earlier in life as well.

I personally would like two see this movie redone, but from Seung Hee's viewpoint.

In a way, Seung Hee needed a Woo Yun in her life as well. Her and her mother, (actress Bae Hae Seon) have been living the life of nomads, trying to stay a step or two ahead of the father/husband (actor Jeon Bae Soo)..He is an alcoholic, abusive apparently to both his family members and blames his wife for his troubles; remember this for later!

Seung Hee, having to stay a step ahead of her father, probably has never had a boyfriend yet; it is implied that they must move every time Daddy finds them again, or suffer from his constant drinking and abuse . I believe that Seung Hee loved her father, but not what he did to her and her mother.

Many reviewers call her "aloof" or "unfeeling" here and on other review sites; I personally believe that she is simply afraid to get close to a guy, any guy, knowing that if her father finds them another move by her and her mother will happen. However, Woo Yun's "bad boy, 'devil-may-care" attitude offers her a glimpse of what it may be like if her and her mother can settle down in one spot long enough to enjoy life for a while. I think she enjoyed not having to be so stoic for awhile!

Seung Hee showed her maturity that she had, and that Woo Yun needed, when she asked him to stop fighting if he wanted to be around her, and she told him, under her breath (by simply using her lips, so her father wouldn't hear her) to "Go!" after her father broke the glass when he forced himself into his wife's and daughter's home. Seung Hee also called Woo Yun and told him that she and her mother were leaving again, due to her abusive father finding them there. Her having to run from her father and not being able to stay in one place is, in my opinion, the reason that she came off what most people call "little or no emotion"; she couldn't afford to show her emotions then have to leave. I also thought it showed great maturity on
Seung Hee's part that she let Woo Yun know why she was leaving and couldn't stay.

While she felt safe from her father, she showed signs of a normal high-school girl, enjoying her time she was with Woo Yun and her fellow high school female students. Do you think you might be somewhat "emotionless" if you did not know how long you can stay in any one place?

They lose contact with each other, and Woo Yun has no real ambition except an unskilled job; that is, until he sees Seung Hee photo in a promo for a university, which finally makes him get off his butt and STUDY for a change. I feel that his parents are proud of his finally shooting for something greater in life!

Woo Yun finally goes to college but finds Seung Hee with a boyfriend; he tried to first sabotage their relationship, then gives her up again when he wins the game to prove her football boyfriend was "throwing the football game' since he had promised both Seung Hee and another girl a weekend for the two of them afterward if his team won, not 'the three' of them! He leaves her upset over the stunt.

They met again when Seung Hee is working in promotions in front of a camera and he also is employed;he drivers her to locations after her ride cancels his taxi service..Woo Yun is again there when she needs him!

While trying to obtain his dream, he visits Seung Hee on-location of one of her shoots and gets hurt saving her, dashing his plans for an athletic career; instead of applying himself, getting a any job and helping her, he tried to get his health back in pursuit of his "dream" athletic job! He could have helped her with any job, then working on getting back his "dream".

This movie depicts how it takes a woman sometimes to get a men motivated for greater things in the real world work: some call this "fate" but other call it physical attraction! This attraction to his lost love is the reason for Woo Yun for finally striving for something greater than a 'burger-flipping' job; it is Woo Yun that gains the most, in my opinion, in this relationship.

Woo Yun went from an amateur athlete dreaming of glory in sports to a teacher, who finds out how big of an ass he was to others while growing up! He matures so much after having to get a real job and put his dreams on hold.

Seung Hee being the more responsible one is paying the bills; however, she tells Woo Yun of a training assignment in Europe for 2-3 years where she can learn to master her profession . But before that can be discussed further, Seung Hee's father dies...again, she really loves her father, but in her pain of losing him, all the pain of trying to live with him while he degraded her and her mother while in his drunken state comes back during the funeral. While Seung Hee is remembering all the things he said and done, Woo Yun opens his mouth and says the one thing that will end their relationship: he is overheard by her saying that "she" could be the reason he cannot make it!

This opens up all the wounds he had caused her in the past, added to this is what her father claimed about his wife/her mother. Seung Hee realizes that Woo Yun is becoming her father! This seals the relationship and Seung Hee takes the job opening and training in Europe that her job offers her.

Woo Yun is left to fend for himself and finally makes the grade to become a teacher. He then finds out how much of a pain he was to his teachers when he finds students under his supervision with the same attitude he displayed when he was a high school student!

In my opinion, had Woo Yun found a job such as this when he and Seung Hee were together, his attitude would have improved and his maturing would have been greatly admired, and appreciated, by Seung Hee.

Both were immature in different ways, but Woo Yun needed to "grow up" more than Seung Hee; on the other hand, she was handicapped in her relations with men due to her father, and that hurt her acceptance of Woo Yun as well.

At the end of the movie, both are mature enough to have a marriage, but not to each other, unfortunately!

I personally like this movie better than the Chinese adaptation entitled My Love (你的婚) (2021):

Both Woo Yun and Seung Hee express their gratitude for each being in the other's life: for Seung Hee making Woo Yun a man, and for Woo Yun for being there for Seung Hee when she needed someone...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjxn216CYaQ whereas You Yong Ci, the female in My Love (2021), didn't say as much to Zhou Xiao Qi, her love for 15 years.

Another great movie about an immature couple getting married and later regretting not sticking it out will be found in Drama Special Season 3: The Wedding Planner (2012), an excellent movie as well!


The cinematography is great, even though some of the shots look like they were done on a hand-held camera...which would how some of the scenes would have been shot if done by a friend with them or them. This to me makes the movie actually more believable as we follow the main cast around town, which almost all of the movie is about.

The music is also great, except for one place, which I figure the director knew better than I about its placement.

The main cast were excellent together and they actually seem to grow as a couple; again, some mention that the female is less emotional than the male lead, but her wariness of establishing a real relationship then having to move again would make this necessary: I actually felt that she was thinking about Woo Yun's feelings should it have happened in the movie.

The support cast did an excellent job in their parts and for supporting the main cast in telling the movie's story.

It is a one to one and a half box of Keenex movie.

RE-WATCH: Yes, but I also think that a movie like this should be mandatory for young people in middle school to watch in order to show them that individuals must give up some of their "needs" and "desires" in order for them to become a compatible couple. Young people are not taught except selfishness these days, and the couple must give up some of their "individuality" so that when the babes come along, they can handle the stress, problems (but also) the pleasures of a family!

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Great little movie; better than the original short on Five Senses of Eros (2009)

The cinematography is great on this movie, and the actors/actresses do a good job making you feel they are who their characters were supposed to be in the movie!

The first person to review this movie thought that it was strange and "You will need to suspend disbelief while watching this."

You have to forget linear time to understand what is going on in this movie!

if you can do that, you can piece together what happened, not presented in chronological order, and what the movie is trying to say.

This is similar to many love triangles where a man is married to a stoic, dependable but DULL woman, and he cheats on her with a bubbly, undependeable, but EXCITING womans in order to feel young again...You could compare this movie with The Stud andThe Nympho (1980). However, if you don't listen closely to what is being said by Kang Na Roo in this movie, mispelled on some sites as to Na-ru (Kim Hyo-jin) you miss understanding what was actually happening, and after finding out what was/is happening you can also understand why Lee Jung Ha (Kim Hyo Jin) finally told Mini Jae-in (Hwang Jung-min) that he could finally leave.

I didn't like the non-chronological sequence of events until I figured out how the director had set this movie up, the it was both enjpoyable and made more sense after that happened.

The original short, part of Five Senses of Eros, did no tmake much sense without this extended version being released, in my opinion.

I disliked it until my brain realized the non-sequential character of the film

Read my review of The Stud andThe Nympho (1980) for more about the dualistic nature of women.

The nude love sceens were very tasteful and well-thought through and executed, but still wild.

Again, once you figure out what is really happening, it makes so much more sense and is also more enjoyable!

RE-WATCH: Definitely!

By the way,

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Worst Asian film I have ever watched!

If starts out with a warning that the movie "may not be suitable for those under 15 years of age"...they should changee this to "this movie may not be suitable for those at ANY age"!

If I was KBS, I would have my affiliation with this movie REMOVED...

This movie seemed rushed through the most of it; it seemed as if it was thrown together, then someone said "let's go with it" and they filmed it, without correcting the shortcomings. I also cannot believe that Jung So Min pulled off a much better performance on the other KBS special shot 3 years afterward by the name of The Red Teacher (2016). Either the director was better, the script was better or Jung So Min actually learned how to act!

The movie did not allow enough time to develop the characters at all; poor girl not being paid by the company she works for (entirely her fault!) and the guy living above her on the low-income hostel has a job and tutors as well, but every dime he makes goes to caring for his uncoscious mother and bills!

The main female lead's only good part is where a little boy on the light rail system accidentally got some strawberry drink or what on her white dress and she placated him by putting her scarf on around her neck and hiding the strawberry stain on her dress.

Ha Jin (Jung So Min), has a spot on a romantic dating party; after being the most compatible with a person of the opposite sex, the persons gets to choose the contestant she is being paired with, and can choose a love cruise or a rice cooker...Ha Jin chooses the rice cooker, then he offers her a ride home ( even though he CAME on the light rail system with her!) . The anti-herione also carries her heavy rice cooker several blocks in order for him not to know where she lives; neither one knows that they live one floor apart in the same hostel! Kang Seok (Kim Ji Suk) thinks that her standing there afterdropping her off is her being intersted in him as a boyfriend, even though she chose the rice cooker over a week-long lovers'vacation package with him.

What is really pathetic, they could have moved in together, shared rides together and actually "lived" better has she not insisted n hiding where she lived from him.

Our main male lead, is making good money, but bills and an unconscous mother in the hospital are draining all his assets away. The whole show would have been different had she admitted where she lived!

Money problems keep popping up each and every scene; he keeps coming up with unforseen bils, or mises the first few minutes of a tutoring class, and students demand icec cream for the lost time (he has no money whatsoever), and our female lead's company comes up with no delivery of their goods because of a port strike..and the movie goes downhill from there!

Or anti-herione collapses, whether from hunger or stress or what, we ane not told); even then, she makes him let he off at the wrong address again! Finally, he sees her on the street, waiting for a bus and realizes he had not been home yet; following her, he finds out that she lives in he same hostel as him! She seems heartbroken that he now knows she is living in the same building, and he seems to be totally confused with this fact.

As Kang Seok is pouding ion Hi Jins's door wanting to talk to her, the ever-present hostel drunk verbally gives meaning to the whole charade that has been going on: "a new couple birthed in this dump."

Even after saying that he will be in a better situation soon, Hi Jan asks to break up their relatonship; she cannot wait for one of them to get out of poverty; she wants to meet a"rich" man and not a poor person like him...I personally would have dumped her then and there! What is funny, I agree with her analysis of herself!

Our male lead admits that he is afraid of losing her, to the point of wishing his mother wold either wake up or die; after she cannot see things his way, he goes to the hospital and briefly holds the oxygen line crimped on his mother, temporaily blinded by his loss of his girl. After losing his mind temporarily, he starts crying and his sister, unkown to him sleeping in the big chair in teh mother's room with the lights off, comforts him, not knowing this will bethe last time she can.

After this, he makes the ultimate sacrifice to his girlfriend, who I pesonally do not think deserves it: he sells his car, closees all his other meager assets and rents a nice house with a window for her for two years; at the same time, we see his girlfriend in the empty toy comapany offices that has not paid anyone in months, with her belongings being placed in a box to leave.

After walking back to the hostel together, he says he is sending her away, and hands her the address and passcode of the house he sacrificed everything to give to her; his car was sold and his sbank account drained. She says she is going to her mom's in the countryside AFTER he gives her the house! He also tells her that meeing her and falling in love was the best thing that ever happened to him!

What does she do? She heads to thw bus station to go to her mothers!

As she is leaving the hostel (with he ex-boyfriend upstairs in his room), she is passed by the hostel drunk carrying a gasoline can. While she is getting her ticket, she is oblivious to the news saying that a man in his 40s (the drunk) set fire to a hostel killing 10 people. After receiving the ticket and ignoring scenes of the hostel fire on TV news, she gets a call from her mother, lying that nothing is wrong to her mother and saying she is just comlng for a visit!

However, after boarding the bus, her hospital shoes fall out of her case, and she remembers that he said that she was the first thing that he ever wanted was her, and the best thing he ever did was meeting and falling in love with her. With that, she hastily leaves the bus depot leaving her luggage behind!

What is worse is how she repaid him for his last sacrifice for her! Two years later, she finally goes to the house he rented for her for two years, empty for the whole time but complete with a window showing the stars and a fancy pair of high heels shoes, replacing those she lost off her feet as he carried her to the hospital earlier in the film...SHE NEVER USED HIS LAST GIFT!

The last scene is her putting on the replacement shoes on her feet and gazing out the window at a star. He was probably looking down and thinking how stupid he was to befriend her in the first place...I don't know if she is crying or smirking in the ending scene.

RE-WATCH VALUE: Little, if any!

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To long and ending was terrible...

I admit that I watched this for Shi Shi and found her character quite Stoic; a lesser person would have given up long ago!

As said by others, the first half to three-fourths was very good, although I didn't like the pairing of Tan Yunxien with Empress Hang:

Historical fact vs the series:
Yunxian lived to be around 93-94 years old, while Empress Hang only lived to be about 29-30 years old...

Empress Hang was preceded by Empress Wang (Not Mei Lin) and followed by Empress Qian...

Hang was originally the concubine of Prince Jingta and was promoted to consort when the character played by Wallace Huo was captured by the Mongols , not after she returned to the palace when both her and the Retired Emperor escaped.

Consort Hang's son was made emperor, which promoted her to Empress, not her husband. And Yes, she did deliver rather than abort! As stated on another review, a little push would not have caused her to miscarry.

IMO, the whole captivity part should never have been portrayed in the series, but it was an interesting part but not historically accurate at all!

The series itself:

It seems that there was no one 'man enough" to control the first Empress Dowager, the royal female characters in the series were allowed to run wild, sort of. Some historians consider the Empress Dowager as being under the Emperor himself, but this series says otherwise.

I thought all three actresses of the royal family portrayed themselves as villians quite well; one can see why Mei Lin was such a nasty person, after the two other Empress Dowagers and her father got through raising her to be self-centered and greedy. It still blows my mind that after Yunxian saving the royal ladies' lives, they still plotted against her the way they did! And for Mei Lin to beg Yunxian to save their husband's life after she poisoned him...unbelievable!

The younger brother's character fell in love with Yunxian out of gratitude for saving his life, and his actions led her to agree to marry him; and for the emperor to back off her courting after seeing Little Brother loved her, showed me early on that his character was more mature than he acted at the time. However, the court players and the royal women turned Little Brother into a greedy Emperor, and as he said, he got what he deserved from Mei Lin ultimately.

The only good part about the Mongol imprisonment was Little Sister, who treated Yunxian as an equal; although there is no historical fact to this part of the series. The scenery was beautiful and a nice break from the Forbidden City.

Most of what else should be said has already been said by other reviewers; I recommend the reading of the other reviewers to fill in the rest of the review I planned here.

The story was good but artistic license spoiled the historical facts...

The music was great, but not perfect...

Had I known how it would end I would probably not have finished it.

I am glad the two remaining characters did get together, but it left us wondering what happened after the final scene ended!

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