Le Grand Chef: Kimchi Battle 2

Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle

You know what is most disappointing about Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle?  The title!  While it is not inaccurate, the title definitely makes this movie sound like a comedy, which it most assuredly is not.  This movie is hard core Korean soap opera, a weepy weepy drama at its most weepy weepy.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; I just want to make sure you know what you are getting into before you watch it.

Jang-eun (Jeong-eun Kim) is a world renowned chef who has now achieved success after years of climbing her way through a mostly male-dominated profession.  Now one of the best chefs in the world, she wants to return home to Korea.  Her ailing mother owns a little traditional restaurant that is in danger of going out of business.  But Jang-eun doesn't want to help.  Oh, no.  She harbors deep and bitter resentment towards her mother because she wasn't married when she had Jang-eun.  All her childhood, Jang-eun suffered the social stigma of growing up in a one parent home in a society that frowns upon bastards as improper and wrong.  So now Jang-eun wants to force her mother to retire, tear down the traditional restaurant that means so much to her, and open a fancy new high-end Asian fusion restaurant.  The only thing that stands in her way? Foster brother Seong Chan, the good son who is also an incredibly amazing cook.

Conveniently, Korea is staging a nation-wide contest to see who can make the best kimchi.  Both Seong Chan and Jang-eun enter, agreeing that whoever wins gets to do what they want with mother's restaurant.  And the stage is set.  Both are masters of their craft, their foods perfectly representing their characters: Seong Chan's food is as traditional and calm as he is, while Jang-eun's cooking is bold, experimental, and ruthlessly ambitious.  This sounds like a lot of fun, right?

Well, it's not.  I just described the setup.  But the movie is really all about people with mommy issues.  And there is so much crying.  There is even a random side plot with an escaped convict who misses his mother's cooking that exists in the movie just so a few other actors can get a chance to cry.  Wow, does this movie get depressing.

I don't want to say this movie is bad, because it isn't.  The characters are interesting, the acting is terrific, and the cinematography is rock solid.  And wow, when there is cooking going on, the film explodes with life, color and excitement.  The food in this movie looks fantastic and should inspire the hopeful chef in all of us.  And I also admire the fact that Koreans are making films about families with real three-dimensional people with real emotional problems.  Hollywood doesn't really do that often anymore.  My wife, an avid lover of Korean soap operas, loved it.

But, it just isn't my type of thing.  When a movie calls itself Kimchi Battle, I expect to have some fun.  Oh, there are some half-hearted attempts at comedy, but I know the director's not interested in that.  He wants his characters and his audience to cry.  Me?  I just wanted a Kimchi Battle, damn it!

MVP:
I am going to have to go with Jeong-eun Kim as Jang-eun, an over confidant and bitter woman.  She is the villain of the film, make no mistake, but Jeong-eun Kim never plays her that way.  The best villains are the ones whose motivations we understand.  And her performance shows the pain that led her to become this way, how she had to develop a cold exterior to deal with childhood hazing, how she had to fight tooth and nail to work up the ladder and become one of the greatest chefs in the world.  No matter how bitchy she gets, no matter what she says or does, you just can't hate her as a human being.  You might even find yourself admiring her grit and creativity.  I think this is all due to the fine performance from Jeong-eun Kim.  She gets my MVP.

BEST LINE:
Kimchi Judge: This tastes like cabbage.

Castaway on the Moon

Castaway on the Moon

Sometimes you go strolling through Netflix with some friends and nothing jumps out at you.  There seems to be so much and yet nothing worth watching at the same time.  You tap from page to page, someone offering a suggestion, someone else turning it down, and the minutes just tick tock away.  And then you see a strange picture of a Korean dude running across a river, and you all think, "meh, I don't  necessarily want to watch that, but I guess I will because it's better than that other thing."  And when everyone has that same reaction, well, it's unanimous.

Sometimes you pick a random movie and you end up with aimless junk, something that passes the time and is instantly forgotten.  And sometimes you pick a random movie, and you find gold.

And make no mistake, Castaway on the Moon is absolutely gold.  It was a complete shock to my senses - a true original.  It was like nothing I have seen before.

Kim Seong Geun (played by Jae-Yeong Jeong) is super depressed, woefully in debt, and recently dumped by his girlfriend.  Despondent, he leaps from a bridge into the Han River.  His suicide attempt fails and he finds himself stranded on a small island in the middle of the river, too far for anyone to hear his cries for help, but close enough to Seoul to be cruelly tortured by its skyline.

At the same time, a nameless young woman (Ryeowon Jung) in Seoul is stranded in her own way, unwilling (or unable) to leave her room for the past three years.

The tragic circumstances of these two characters would make you think Castaway on the Moon is a study of loneliness and isolation.  And it is.  But it is also a study of hope.  And I don't mean the movie is just about how the characters need to find hope.  It is it also about what the film does to us, as the audience.   By the end of the film, we have gone through so much with them, laughing, crying, riding their triumphs and disasters, that we feel intimately involved in their fate.  We hope for them.  It's pretty inspiring when a movie can do that.

And plus, it is funny.  Wow, is it funny.  A look at my pick for the best line of the movie below should tell you that!

I hope I haven't built this movie up to much.   There is nothing worse than disappointment.  But for me, this movie was a real treasure.  I don't want to say any more.  The less you know, the better.  I've already said too much.  Just go find some friends, pop over to Netflix Streaming and scroll around until you see a strange picture of a Korean dude running across a river.  Trust me.


MVP: 

It's a tough call.  Do I say writer/director Hae-jun Lee for concocting such a brilliant little adventure?  Or do I go with the two leads, whose stellar performances are equal parts pathetic and compelling.  I think I have to go with Hae-jun Lee because of his inspired madness.  I hope you guys find this film and like it as much as I did.


BEST LINE:

Kim: I need to make healthy poop!  And a lot of it!!!!