Asian Drama

Jung Woo goes from being a successful, popular pilot to being unemployed one morning. However, he succeeds in getting a new job after accidentally taking on a newly laundered identity.

(Source: HanCinema)

Tags: Starting Over, Pilot Male Lead, Job Seeking, Unemployed Male Lead, Popular Male Lead, Fake Identity, Mistaken Identity, Stolen Identity, Double Identity (Vote or add tags)

Episodes: 1

Duration: 1 hr. 51 min.

Country: South Korea

Aired: Jul 31, 2024

Content Rating: Not Yet Rated

In the early days of the Republic, legendary martial artist Ye Ruzhou suffers a severe injury, losing her memory and winding up in the impoverished alley of Minfu Lane. By a twist of fate, she crosses paths with the carefree Chen Awang, and the two fall for each other. When local tyrant Zheng Juehou intensifies his hold over the neighborhood, Ye Ruzhou rises to defend her new community. Her actions, however, draw unforeseen danger, and together with Chen Awang, she faces the challenge to protect Minfu Lane’s hard-won peace.

A fatigued man wakes up at a bar with a bartender who will forever change his life as he gets to know more about her. Three criminals have somewhat accomplished their task of kidnapping their target, but their overall mission seems to go nowhere in the end. In the late 1970s, a mysterious woman runs a bar where a deadly situation will affect the lives of everyone. Two killers are looking for their faceless victim, who shows up at a diner every day at 6 o'clock sharp. Four incredibly talented Korean filmmakers, four intriguing cinematic visions, four astounding stories revolving around murderers for hire. (Source: fantasiafestival.com) ~~ Adapted from the short story "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway. ~~ Release dates: Jul 24, 2024 (Festival) || Oct 23, 2024 (Cinema)

Duration: 1 hr. 59 min.

Content Rating: 18+ Restricted (violence & profanity)

The story follows a young man who has been single for a year after his boyfriend suddenly disappeared without a formal breakup. One night, while scrolling through a dating app, he encounters someone who looks strikingly similar to his ex. After a spontaneous hookup, he discovers that this new acquaintance is actually his ex’s twin brother. As he navigates this unexpected twist, he finds himself drawn into a complicated web of emotions. Will he end up choosing between the two brothers, or will he find himself entangled with both?

Duration: 11 min.

Content Rating: Not Yet Rated

It is the winter of 2020, and a graduation project that had taken a year to complete can no longer be showcased at its planned venue because of COVID-19. She has time at home, but she no longer has any motivation to do anything at all...

Having been deprived of the channel to express herself, the art student Itsuka struggles with her internal conflict of being unable to figure out what she should be doing.

Staged across three distinct time periods with the bulk of the story unfolding in the post-war disorder of 1948, By a Man's Face Shall You Know Him is an early attempt at dramatising tensions between Japanese and zainichi Korean residents sharing an uneasy existence within the same living space. The film opens 8 years after the main action, introducing the character of Amamiya (Ando), a doctor at a rundown hospital who has just served an 8-year sentence for murder. When a man (Nakatani) is brought into the hospital fatally wounded after being hit by a car, Amamiya initially refuses to operate, seeing the case as hopeless. But after he sees the victim, whose given name is Sai, and recognises him as a private who fought under him under the Japanese name of Shibata in Okinawa during the war, he has a change of heart. Amamiya and Sai, however, have a deeper history. During the subsequent occupation period, the town marketplace for which Amamiya acts in the capacity of a landlord sees itself falling prey to the demands of a powerful group of Korean mobsters. With the Japanese locals weary and debilitated after their defeat, the gangsters cause regular havoc and threaten to take over this heart of the community. Amamiya initially remains unwilling to get involved in this local struggle, having seen too much bloodshed during the war. But when his hot-headed brother Shunji (Itami, later the director of such internationally popular hits as Tampopo and A Taxing Woman) courts danger in the form of a young Japanese-born Korean girl Li Keishun (Mari), he finds himself unable to remain detached indefinitely.

Kenshin Himura goes up against pure evil Makoto Shishio who is attempting to overthrow the Meiji government. The fate of the country hangs in the balance as Kenshin Himura takes up the sword that he vowed to never draw again.

Hong Kong’s answer to Backdraft is a good, solid flick that seems to contain most of Johnnie To’s favorite actors and themes. Thankfully, he neglects to add montages. Lau Ching-Wan is the risk-taking boss fireman of the “ill-fated jinxes,” a notoriously unlucky squad of lifesavers. They’re known for futility and things just going wrong, i.e. failing to save lives or saving the wrong ones (like pets, for example). However, through teamwork and perseverance, they gain each other's trust and the respect of others.

Eiichi wanted to become a top shogi player and attended a shogi player training center run by the Japan Shogi Association. At the training center, he could not beat Riku, who is extremely talented in the game, and Eiichi eventually gave up on becoming a shogi player. To live a more normal life, he enrolled in a university. Because he spent most of his time playing shogi, he has a hard time adjusting to campus life. He does not have any friends at school. One day, Eiichi comes across an AI based shogi computer program. The computer program is more creative and stronger than he expected. This piques Eiichi interest in computer programming, specifically for shogi games. He visits an AI research club and meets senior student Isono. He learns about computer programming from Isono and makes a new goal for himself. Eicchi now wants to write a top shogi computer program. A few years later, Eiichi wins a computer shogi competition. He receives a request to play against Riku.

Kyoko Fukada (Takeshi Kitano's Dolls) plays Momoko who yearns to be part of the Rococo aristocracy. A shame then, as she was born two centuries too late. Ardent loner Momoko is born into the Yakuza heart-land. She feels, how ever, more at home in Versaille than her distant home-town of Shimotsuma, Ibaraki. Her appetite for the lavish doll-like fashion known to its disciples as the "Lolita" look is insatiable. The uber-rebel Ichiko, played by model and cult J-rock icon Anna Tsuchiya, is a Bosozoku motor-cycle-gang member. On a fifty C.C. scooter. Laugh at your own risk before she knocks your teeth out. Her Pony-tails gang is one of Ibaraki's "wild speed tribes", whose teeth-rattling customized bikes are decked out with their fibreglass shields and bannered back rests. She, too, is decked out in her elaborately decorated Tokkofuku boiler-suits. In a world is as colourful as Momoko's sweet-filled lunch-box, the path of these two incongruous girls cross one languid summer. Asses are kicked (and garments embroidered). KAMIKAZE GIRLS: where Rameau meets the Japanese underbelly on the summery streets of Tokyo. Meet some different Girls on a Motor-cycle that would make The Bride blush...

Kida and Makoto have been friends since childhood. Later they befriend Yocchi, the new transfer student. Neither of them have parents, so they spend time with each other daily, essentially growing up together. An incident occurs when they are twenty and that tears their world apart. Years later, both boys are employed in the criminal underworld, with Kida as a negotiator and Makoto as a trading company’s CEO. It has now taken them ten years to get revenge on the world that changed their fates, so many years ago.

Adapted from the novel "The End of the Tiny World" (名も無き世界のエンドロール) by Yukinari Kaoru (行成薫).

Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the remote forest, an important place from his childhood and, he believes, the possible location of his former existences. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and the spirit of his long lost son returns. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave -- the birthplace of his first life.