Voice Of A Murder

Year : 2007
Runtime : 122 Min.
Genre : Thriller, Suspense, Crime
Director : Park Jin-Pyo
Movie Stars : Sol Kyung-gu, Kim Nam-ju, Kang Dong-won
Country: South Korea
Language : Korean

A wonderful Korean thriller to add to you collection. The film's plot revolves around the true story of a 10 year old kidnapped in 1991.  I don't want to spoil the movie but, obviously, he was not found alive.  The film never shows the child after he is kidnapped so we can conclude he was killed shortly after. Additionally, what kidnapper/ killer will feed and take care of a boy for 44 days?  Most children kidnapped are dead within 48 hours.  This is what makes this story so terribly sad is that the killer just played a game with them with no hope of the parents winning their son back. He got 200 thousand dollars, and in the 90s that was a lot more money than it is today. Why couldn't he just let the boy go and take the money to some nice island and live like a king. He won't have deserved it.

The killer was never found and as of 2007 the statue of limitations have expired. The killer put this family though hell and back and is still walking among us... maybe, hopefully some other bastard played a game with him  if you know what I mean.

Black House (검은집)

Year : 2007
Runtime : 104 Min.
Genre : Horror, Suspense, Thriller
Director : Shin Tae-ra
Movie Stars : Hwang Jung-min, Yu Sun, Shin-il Kang
Country: South Korea
Language : Korean

I'm taking a break from the Tollywood movies and heading back to Korea, The King of movies. You know you love Korean movies too... or you just never seen one.  This was pretty good. I didn't love it but it's a good horror and suspense movie about a meek insurance agent that bits off more than he can handle when he begins having suspensions about the alleged suicide of a young boy .  The ending is quite a twist.

Korean: Geomeun jip

Dek Hor

I don't really feel like writing a summary for this movie, so I'm going to paste the one from Wikipedia with a few of my added detail because it pretty much sums of the plot of the movie in a few sentences.

 Summary
In Thailand, young Ton Chatree (Trairat) is sent to a boarding school by his father to get good grades and not tell his mother about his father about him having a affair. Once in the school, Ton feels like an outcast and misses his family and friends. His new schoolmates tell ghost stories about a boy who died in the school swimming pool and a young pregnant woman who committed suicide. The stories frighten him, thereby exacerbating Ton's difficulties adjusting to the school. However, Ton becomes close friends with another lonely boy, Vichien (Chienthaworn), who Ton later discovers is the boy who drowned, and his death repeats every night. Ton finds a way to help his friend rest in peace by seeking help from the school "weirdo", who tells him that the ghost can not move on till another ghost breaks the cycle. Ton is found later on the floor, apparently, taken some kind of liquid that would just knock him out but not kill him. I'm not sure what the liquid was because my version of the movie did not have English subtitles over the bottle to translate the Thai writing. The boys move Ton's body over to the pool and wait. The scene flashes back to Vichien's death, only this time Ton is there to save him. The scene changes once again and now Ton and Vichien are walking down a road together talking about a girl. Ton gets ahead of Vichien while walking and looks back to hear Vichien say he has to go now. Ton wakes up in the present with the group of boys around him and Miss Pranee running to him.

At the same time, Ms. Pranee (Sukapatana), the school administrator, is deeply troubled by Vichien's death because she believes incorrectly that Vichien committed suicide and that it was partly her fault. At the end of the movie, Ton tells Pranee the truth, that Vichien's death was an accident and that Pranee should not blame herself. Ton and the boys that bullied him and told him the ghost stories are now friends and the troubles between Ton and his dad are resolved.

Vichien's Death  And Why He Can't Move On
The wiki summary doesn't go into detail on Vichien's death so I'll explain it for you. The boys of the school were swimming all day. Another boy, jokingly begins to call for help and bob in and out of the water yelling. All the boys that were not in the pool quickly jump in to aid the falsely drowning boy. The students become distressed when they can not find the 'drowning' boy after he goes under water. After a few seconds he pops back up and begins laughing about how scared everyone became. The students slash him with water and say that it's almost 6 o'clock, dinner time. As everyone gets out of the pool Vichien remains and starts to call for help. The other students believe that he is joking and stand around the pool as Vichien is drowning. Hungary, the boys leave the pool for dinner. Vichien goes under the water and doesn't come back up. Hours later at bedtime one of the boys comes to Miss Pranee's office to inform her that Vichien has not returned to the dorm. Miss Pranee imediately rushes to the pool where she finds Vichien's body floating in the water.

The part that really bugs me about this film in the fact that no one but Miss Pranee felt bad in anyway for Vichien. Miss Pranee had nothing to do with Vitchien dieing, but all the students that sat by and watched did and yet they felt no remorse for what they did. They even made of a ghost story about him, saying that he killed himself. Granted that most of the boys that were at the school with Ton arrived were almost as new as he was, but there were a few that had been there when Vichien died.

According to some web searches that I did Vichien couldn't move on to the after life because the Thai people believe that if someone dies in usually ways that are not of natural causes, such as drowning, they wouldn't be able to move on till the cycle is broken.

Review
Thai horror film Dek Hor, or Dorm/ My School, seemed more like a suspense and thriller than horror to me. I wasn't scared during the whole movie. I enjoyed it quite a bit but there were some moments that bored me. It a good suspense film. I would recommend it to anyone.  

Watch Online{Click}
Subtitles: English
Video Quality: Fair- Medium
Source: Youtube

El Secreto De Sus Ojos

El Secreto De Sus Ojos, also known as The Secret In Their Eyes, is a 2009 Argentinean film by Juan José Campanella, based on Eduardo Sacheri's novel La Pregunta de Sus Ojos (The Question in Their Eyes).It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 82nd Academy Awards, making Argentina the first to win it twice.

Having this be my first Argentinean film I was more than excited. The movie is a crime thriller, something I'm very much into, so I thought I would give it a go. For all of you who have not seen it, I'll give you a quick summary. Spoiler Alert! Benjamin Espósito is seen writing a novel about the Morales case, having been assigned to it years before. He pays a visit to Irene Menéndez-Hastings, his partner on the case, to seek advise on how he should tell the story. She suggests that he begin at the start of the case.

On a quiet morning in June Liliana Colotto is found raped and murdered in her home. (Warning! Nude scene of Liliana's body) Espósito promises the widowed husband, Ricardo, to put his wife's killer to justice.  Aided by alcoholic friend and assistant Pablo Sandoval and the law smart Hastings, they uncover photos of Liliana in her home town of Chivilcoy. All the photos contain a man named Isidoro Gómez looking deeply at Liliana, his eyes never leaving her. Espósito sees this as unresolved lust and believes they are the eyes of an killer. Espósito's suspicion leads him on a journey spanning  years to uncover secrets of the accused killer, the widowed husband, and himself.
The Ending

Espósito, after completing his novel, with help of Hastings finds the widowed husband of Liliana in a rural area of Buenos Aires Province and takes his finished book to him. Apparently, he is no longer obsessed with his wife's murder and has seemingly moved on. Espósito is shocked and reminds him of his promise to get the man who murdered the love of his life. Backed into a corner, the widower reveals that he tracked down Gomez, kidnapped him, and shot him. Espósito leaves with this revelation on his mind. As he is driving back, Espósito begins to wonder about the case and about the widower. This thinking leads him back to a conversation he has with the widower years ago, a conversation about the death penalty. The widower was strong in his belief that the death penalty was wrong and unjust. Espósito is unsure that  a man who believed so strongly against the death penalty could go back on his views and kill a man. Espósito senses that something is not right and heads back to the widower's property. Undetected by Ricardo, Espósito follows him into a small building at the side of the house. Inside is a makeshift cell, where Ricardo has been hiding Gomez for the last few years. Gomez is tried and older looking. He asks if  Espósito could get Ricardo to speak to him, apparently, he has not all these years. Ricardo reminds Benjamin of his promise that Gomez would never go free.
My Review
The film moved a little bit on the slow side for me. I usually like the fast pace murder mysteries but, it was still a decent watch. I didn't really talk about the love connection between Hastings and Espoito, but that was a good twist in the plot. The character were full with emotion and wonderful actors. The scenery was nice to look at, reminding me of some old French city. All in all, it was just a decent film. I read so many good reviews for this movie that after I saw it I became fairly disappointed. I was expecting to be blown away and fall forever in love with Argentine films, but unfortunately this was not the case. I would recommend it to other people with a understanding of films, not someone who gets bored easily or is unable to see past what is in front of his/her face. The plot is about human nature more than just a murder case.
Rating