Zíza

A nice family film about how a girl who couldn’t care less about anything in the world wanted to get into a prestigious college in Japan. It's nice to watch a teacher who can motivate students to try, to find in them what they didn't even see in themselves – all in a completely natural, un-cheesy way. Atsushi Itō is a great actor, and he handled playing a teacher who motivates his students like this with complete grace, obviously getting everything he could out of the character. Kasumi didn't do anything world class, but it didn't matter because her character was a perfectly average lady who didn't need to be played by a prodigy. The second string consisted of Tanaka Tetsushi, Yoshida Yō, and Nomura Shūhei – of whom Yoshida Yō stood out the most as the mother of our student, who tries her best to support her daughter. A nice picture for the whole family.

A series built on pretty pictures and "smiley faces". It would definitely have been an above average commercial, and it’s definitely slightly average as a series. The side characters were almost useless, the only one I really cared about, but basically didn’t learn a damn thing about, was Koide Keisuke. Of course the main characters were hurt from the past, but they were obviously trying to get over it. Straightforward story, with more or less flat characters. A few scenes here and there were "treats", but the soundtrack didn't impress me much, nor did the acting, but then again there wasn't much to play with. Just a nice commercial. That's all. A weaker 3 stars.

I was hooked right from the start, the characters were interesting but we didn't get too involved in their lives, it was more focused on the drama in the ER. And I ate it up. I was able to like them, fall in love with them, and I was glad it wasn't just one season and I could save lives or lose lives with them for longer periods of time. Unfortunately, over time, the medical drama became more a drama of soap opera proportions. Let's just say it was still going until that sixth season, but then it got really bad. Everybody was traumatized, in trouble, doing drugs, ... Basically, it was kept going by the creators tormenting my favorite characters, or killing them off, or putting them somewhere without saying what happened to them. I basically put up with it until the end of season 8, but once everyone from the beginning disappeared from ER, I gave up. Went through some of the drama of the new, totally uninteresting bad copies of the predecessors, only to enjoy my favorites guest starring at the end of season 15. So the ending was a bit like a school reunion, it was nice, sentimental. But the seven seasons in between... the Africa storyline didn’t hook me. So by series six I was loving it, then the character I loved the most left – Carol, I adore you, especially together with Ross – and there was massive drama. Nice show. It's got its charm. If you want "OR" action or tired doctors with compassion, I think you might like this one.

So I finally got to see the whole classic and not just the most famous scenes. The film moved along beautifully, which I thought was the best thing about it. The lead actress is very pretty, so I enjoyed watching her. The best scene was the one in the church at confession anyway, the one the communists cut at the time. And finally, I noticed with the last rehearsal scene, how all the people who danced it blended in together – changing hair, muscles, even skin color slightly. It's interesting that the creators came up with something that one person couldn't dance properly. A naive story spiced up with a bit of hip-steria.

Unfortunately the main female character, Lizzy, could really get on my nerves, I found her a totally annoying character, but luckily there's that bald Red who doesn't play the hero but just kicks it however as he likes, the main thing is that he's always on the winning side. Without Raymond, this series would be totally below average, with him it’s slightly above average. Every single episode to a certain template; the most annoying of which is always the "eleventh hour" part. Perfect for after work relaxation, the series has no other bonus (unless you count our anti-hero Red).

Kind of a classic – the "bad guy" comes among the gentle, naive, but awfully nice people, and they change him so the bad guy suddenly starts working to benefit all the nice people, who of course appreciate it with a standing ovation. The acting doesn't shine, the only one that surprised me was Satō Ryūta, because even though he was in a position where most of the time the characters are passionate and shout their convictions wherever they can, here he was calm, restrained, and basically very dignified. I liked the ending. If you like shows where you can watch people helping each other, plus the fire department coming in now and then, this is the one. A better 2 stars.

I'm so sorry, but after the fairly realistic depictions in Dr. DMAT, where it was about doctors, but only the ones who worked with firefighters, and there was some insight into their profession, this felt like a kick in the gut. The moment the firefighters brought the desperate dad into their midst, I wanted to turn it off (because it makes sense to keep a guy fresh from a burning building in a squad car so he can be reunited with his daughter; it could have been handled so beautifully in other ways, like having the firefighters navigate the building from the outside – after all, it was all in his head; but no, it probably wouldn't have been as poignant then and so forth). The nonsensical behavior of the characters, the decisions of the firefighters, who looked like a bunch of amateurs... forget it, not my kind of movie. Unnecessary extortionate pathos. I was looking forward to a nice crisis and how it gets handled. In the end, it was just a rehash of what I've seen so many times (in Korea) – somewhat of a romance, misplaced humor, a child in peril, a pregnant woman in peril, Bruce Willis on an asteroid, love conquers all, and everything somehow by chance in a burning skyscraper. I just wasn't hooked, I wasn't entertained, I wasn't interested.

Lately I've been craving a medical setting, preferably without all the guesswork about who's but to kiss this time, and even better when the doctors prove their skills during crisis situations. To my satisfied surprise, Dr. DMAT accomplishes all of this. Although not without genre clichés, I was almost amazed that one actually sees the central character grow as a doctor because of them. It's a bit of a slap in the face that in the second and third episodes he has to save someone he knows personally. I get that it was important to the story – it helped him move on, but when it was tacked on like that, it felt almost undignified (kind of like where Poirot enters, murder happens = where he runs to save lives, some acquaintance of his suffers). But otherwise I actually liked it. I was a bit moved, too. If you don't expect miracles from it, I'd say you won't get burned. 4 stars by a hair.

I can basically second Cedra's comment. This is not a happy film, and if you think of Japan as the promised land, this is one of those films that will be happy to sober you up. It's filmed very subtly and presented very naturalistically. The acting is great from all the leads. I agree with the majority opinion that Suda Masaki managed to captivate and shine the most. It's not a romance, it's not a feel-good movie where you watch the beautiful countryside of a coastal town. It's no wonder the film has won awards at several festivals, because that's exactly where it belongs. The mainstream would have ripped it apart.

I'll admit that I only started watching Yong Pal for two reasons – I quite like Won Joo, and it had pretty high ratings in Korea and I wanted to find out why. In the end, the viewership was probably mostly due to Tae-hee Kim, since she's their beautiful Madonna. The beginning moved along, it had momentum, there was always something happening, and honestly I could imagine the show without the character of the hospital heiress trapped in her own mind. But then it became a crazy revenge pathos with a weird romance on top. It alternated in an unpleasant way between scenes of amorous chirping and plotting assassinations, revenge, usurpation, and God knows what else. Not to mention that most of the characters were horribly unappealing (Won Joo really turned me off when he started looking at Tae-hee as an idol and forgave her for basically everything because she's a lonely wretch), and ultimately what I enjoyed was the evil brother who suffered from a lack of love and Won Joo's work colleagues who pulled together with him. With almost the majority of Korean series, I want to know what's going to happen next right away, I play the next episode right away; but here I didn't want to. It didn't excite me, I found it lacking in spark, pizzazz, and scripted in a rather oddly assembled way. Eventually, I finished it with all my might, realized that I would have missed nothing if I hadn't finished it, and sighed to myself that this Won Joo guy really can't pick a decent series at all these days. Seoul is so small it's unbelievable – everyone needs surgery on the same day, everyone has a problem with the same organ... The series as a whole is worthless. Certain parts of it are good, though. But I'm not sure if they’re so good that you should watch the whole series... I'm sure you can get it better elsewhere (revenge – e.g. Bad Guy, romance between different classes – e.g. High Society, hospital setting – e.g. Code Blue, etc.), this mishmash... pfft. A very weak 2 stars.