Lek Chan
Bangkok
A beautiful healing story of kindred souls
This is the first drama or movie, in any language, that I started watching for the second time as soon as I finished it.Normally I try to avoid dark, realistic, depressive story, especially ones with violence and infidelity. I started this months ago simply because of IU, who played Jang Man-Wol in Hotel del Luna. I couldn't get past half of the first episode, and switch to Crash Landing on You and It's OK to Not Be OK.
I continue My Mister and after the episode 4 I just couldn't stop. It made me cry, smile and laugh, both with compassion and happiness.
The production is great. PD really paid attention to every minute detail.
The Story is extraordinary, and like they said in the interview, it's not a love story, but a human story. It is anything but cliche.
All acting are excellent, from lead characters to all the supporting characters. The dynamic of three brothers, the similarity of lead characters and how they came to understood and healed each other as the story progress.
The visual effect is good, I like the makeups, costumes, and uses of traffic lights to indicate relationship status (not sure if that's intended).
OST are outstanding, particularly Adult (Grown Ups), Dear Moon, and An Ordinary Day. I don't understand Korean, so I have to get the translation and found the song "Dear Moon" so accurately describes Lee Ji-An's feeling for Park Dong Hoon.
The ending is very good. Yes it's an opening end which leaves the viewers to decide the real ending themselves.
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Disappointing if you have a high expectation
I started watching Signal because it was directed by the Kim Won-Seok, and won Baeksang Art Awards for Best Drama in 2016, the same as My Mister in 2018. To be honest, the first few episodes got me hooked, but later on it became painful to finish and I almost quit (twice) in Ep 7 and Ep 15.The production is excellent, granted, acting isn't really bad, just average, OSTs are not memorable, but the story is ruined by too much "grandfather paradox" from time traveling. We can never really apply logic to any time travel novels and movies, because it's not logical from the start.
What I like most about this drama is its key messages: injustice that always favors the riches, and "never give up." What I hate most, perhaps as much as illogical time travel, is the stupidities of protagonists--all three of them. At one point, they seemed smart, but then made a series of same stupid decisions. Well, that may be our nature to do something stupid repeatedly, but for a drama, I don't think it's fun to watch our protagonists succumbed to their stupidities too many times.
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Fast-paced political drama
I started watching Hot Stove League just last week from my friend's recommendation, largely because it just won Baeksang award of Best Drama in 2020. I was extremely impressed with My Mister, which won the very same award last year.And I'm not disappointed! I went through all 16 episodes in just four days!
This is not a romantic comedy that follows standard K-Drama patterns, it is a fast-paced political struggles with convincing plots and people interactions. There were some characters' decisions that, at first, I didn't think they made sense, but was OK once their true intention revealed.
I particularly love Oh Jung Se acting. He could express his internal conflicts through his eyes and voice. I was also impressed with his acting in "It's OK to Not Be OK."
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