One of the best movies I've ever watched

"Long Time No See" is one of my favourite movies of all time (including non-asian ones).

Though the beginning of the felt a little rushed, I enjoyed this short series from beginning to end. It's a very interesting story that captures. The plot twist is no joke. There's no idolization of the underground which I find pretty important. The leads were well chosen, and I came to love Gitae's older sister. I totally forgot that she's such a good, accepting and supporting character. The chemistry between Gitae and Chisoo felt almost like you could touch it. Their complete incapability of taking their clothes cracked me up so much that I started sending lines of the dialogue to a friend.
The music mostly fits well. At times the combination of the visual imagery and the music almost sent me down from my chair because I laughed so much (at 4 am - everyone would have hated me for that). Honestly, I'm still laughing about that one bed scene.

Since I was re-watching this, I think I can answer this honestly. It's still great. I have watched "Long Time No See" two times about a year or two apart, and I remember having enjoyed watching back then just as much as now. I rarely skipped, which is a feat in itself, seeing as I start skipping a few seconds whenever I start feeling bored.

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First half was fine, second half let me down

Fairly unpopular opinion but not completely unknown: I think "Vincenzo" is a rather overrated drama. While the first couple episodes were very promising and at least somewhat deserved the hype that was all over the feeds when it was airing, the grip this drama had on me had completely vanished by episode 14. After that, I used the "skip 10 seconds" button way too often because the drama slowly but surely did not interest me anymore. I honestly can't even say how much of the last 3 episodes I really watched... I don't think it was much. The story could have been great, there were so many opportunities for this drama, but the result of the writing... was not my thing. Also, the over the top acting was funny, from time to time. It was used way to often though. Even my love to Song Joongki and his visuals could not save this drama for me. The music by itself was not remarkable enough for me to notice it and, I'm sorry, but even though the cinematography was great (at least from time to time), I definitely won't be rewatching this drama as long as I can remember my feeling of disappointment that came through during the second half.

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Very different from the prequel! Enjoyable if you're willing to look over several plotholes

When I found out that "Train to Busan" has a sequel I honestly was very confused. However, seeing as "Peninsula" doesn't manage to live up to expectations from "Train to Busan", it's no wonder that I'd never heard about it before. However, if you think of this movie as a completely different story set in the same universe but four years later, it's quite decent.

On the one hand, there are a lot of plotholes, seeing as cars still have gas, food trucks randomly standing on the streets (and the food apparently still being edible, which is even more of a surprise), infected being at places where I have no idea how they even got there and supposedly no one is thinking about a cure for the virus or a permanent solution for the peninsula even four years later which is just plain illogical. Frankly, the writing is a disappointment if you're here for logic. On the other hand, if you're here for action and cars, go for it. Also, I personally liked the connection between the male and the female lead. It's a cliché, but hey, I mentioned that logic is not the most important here. The ending was a very positive surprise for me. Honestly, I don't know if I had liked the movie if it was different.

I was considerably surprised to see that the cast had changed completely. However, it quickly becomes clear why that's the case as well. Still, even though everything changed a lot, the actors were good and brought their characters to life. Opinions may differ on this one, but I could connect with the characters quite well and felt sorry for them, whenever something negative happened. I must say that I love the family our male protagonist meets, especially the older sister. And thank goodness there was no romance anywhere. It wouldn't have fit at all.

Also, once again, I loved the music. I can't even say more to it than that it was great and the scenes on screen.

About the rewatch value I got to say that I probably will rewatch it - one day. Probably in a few years. I did enjoy the movie, but there are significant weaknesses that just left me questioning.

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Addicting but has too many timelines

I honestly didn't expect this drama to get me as addicted to it as it did but the first couple episodes were very good and got me extremely invested in the drama. I really like the cast and the acting, especially Luo Yun Xi whom I've watched in A Life Time Love before and whose character was actually my favourite there. He sure did not disappoint me here either and I do really enjoy watching him whenever he's on the screen. I also liked Bai Lu's role here quite a lot, especially since her character doesn't seem as incapable as a lot of female Lead roles in c dramas often seem to be. Also, since I've started another drama where the following aspect is bugging me enough that I'm contemplating on dropping it, I realized that I'm very thankful to the fact that they didn't give her a high and cutesy voice but a normal one. Another personal favourite of mine is Sun Zhen Ni as Pian Ran. I've never seen her in a drama before, and I liked her role and performance here a lot.

Now on to things I did not quite enjoy: The timelines. There are four of them which is quite confusing at times. I personally needed to give these timelines names so I could make more or less sense of it:
1 The Original (Li Susu)
2 The Past (Tantai Jin and Ye Xiwu)
3 Way Back/Bo're Life (Ming Ye and Sang Jiu)
4 The Changed Original (Li Susu and Cang Jiumin)

Personally, while I've really enjoyed watching The Original and The Past I didn't really like Way Back and skipped most of it, though ended up watching the first two or so episodes and the last one or two episodes (pretty sure it was episodes 16 and 17) while fast forwarding a lot to be able to get the gist of the plot there. The Changed Original I did enjoy a lot at first, but there are some characters and side plot lines that I didn't really like. Thankfully towards the end the reason why these characters and plotlines got screen time became clear though. All in all I did enjoy the drama a lot and I might rewatch it some time.

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Interesting: For non-Blinks as well

Let me start this off with one pretty important statement: I'm not a Blink. I listen to Kpop in general and also to at least some of BLACKPINK's music, but I'm not a Blink. I watched this documentary mainly because it was recommended to me by Netflix and I decided to just watch it, because 1. I'm interested in what's going on behind the scenes in Kpop, though I definitely don't have enough time to watch much content about it and 2. I like the girls and have lots of respect for them, so I was interested in their point of view of their story.

I liked that the documentary was pretty much in two parts, one about the members themselves and the other about their story as trainees and as a group. I was surprised and found it refreshing how open they were about their training period and the difficulties of that kind of lifestyle, especially considering that this was intended for a lot of people, Blinks and non-Blinks as well, to see. I would have expected them to tone down the shadow-sides much more, I'm pretty sure they were anyways.
My takeaways from the documentary are that I do like them and their music, and that there is much more to their story than I've known: I did not know about their relatively long training periods (most groups I know them had trained for about 3-4 years with the occasional longer or shorter periods, everyone having trained for at least 4 years was a bit surprising to me), and I did not know about injuries and general health, which honestly explains the /scandal/ from a couple years ago (which I honestly did not care about... The so-called scandal, I mean)

TLDR: Some interesting information for non-Blinks who may or may not listen to Kpop in general, not exactly a must-watch but still worth a watch

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Too messy storyline but the main pairing was great

First of all, I always skip a lot within episodes. However, in this case, it was.... excessive. I usually only skip a few seconds, but here it was up to a minute. I don't know if it was because I was watching the drama for the second time, but it didn't really manage to capture my attention.
I know that the amount of plotlines contributes to that and it also is my first point of critique. The ideas themselves are good - it's the execution that is missing. I'm not sure if I captured it correctly, but to me, the focus of the storyline is not clear. If I'm not mistaken it should be on saving the swimming club and the evolving relationship between Waii and Apo. However, I feel like other potential relationships get almost as much screentime as the main pairing. I understand that those are important as well if you want to explain the relationships between all those people but the same things could probably have been shown in half of the time. If the screenwriters and producers had put their focus a little more clear and had not decided to use literally every cliché seemingly possible this drama could have turned out a lot better than it did.
And, did they really portray rape? I'm sorry but if there are no consequences it looks like they're trying to normalize it. There hasn't been any discussion or any other consequences to the relationship between them which doesn't sit well with me. Then there also are bullying and manipulation. According to the only girl in the club, the members of the swimming club can't express their feelings well and often end up hurting people they care about because of it. Another thing that I didn't like is that the only 'lesbian' suddenly becomes bisexual. It wasn't necessary.

I think the cast did pretty well, I especially like how New portrayed Apo. I think he really shines and managed to convey Apo's feelings well. The chemistry between Waii and Apo seems to be quite good as well after the first two quite awkward episodes. For the others, their performances weren't outstanding but still okay.

I got to say that I didn't really pay attention to the music. What often threw me off are little audio breaks whenever there is a cut to another scene. I'm not sure if this only happens because I need new headphones or if it really is the case, but it always strikes me as odd if I don't hear any sound at all.

About the rewatch value: I was re-watching it right now because I had forgotten about literally everything except for "Thai bl drama swimming pool", and I got to admit, that's probably all I will remember after rewatching it. So I guess that the re-watch value isn't too high.

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Definitely watch it before starting "Tomb of the Sea"

In the beginning the story felt like it was dragging a lot, enough that I had to put the drama "on hold" for about a month because I couldn't bear watching it anymore. Different from what I expected, the middle part of the drama was very interesting and not dragging at all, at least not from my perspective - thank goodness, theren is tomb raiding in some way, I doubted that for quite some time - and it only slowed down again in the end, which was very confusing for me. I think it was a good idea to end the drama with some glimpses of the future. However, in my opinion, it was poorly executed. The last episode basically consisted out of flashbacks from throughout the drama, you might enjoy that if you tend to watch things over a long period of time and don't binge-watch like I do, some parts were not-really-flashbacks and then, all of a sudden, we were in the middle of the war with no clue what actually happened in between. And, I hope this is not too spoilerish, Huo Sanniang is a badass warrior, which makes me wonder why there are so few strong female characters throughout the whole series when they can be as good as any men. I mean, I get it in this particular adaptations since the story takes place in the early or mid 20th century (honestly, no clue when exactly) but in the later ones it's just baffling how few there are. Yes, sorry, I'm digressing from the topic. Other than that, I basically skipped all of the scenes with Hendry Cox because his voice and way of speaking Chinese sounded absolutely awful to me (a non-Chinese speaker), resulting in me skipping most of the "bad people"'s scenes. Some characters have way too much screen time and there definitely are too many flashbacks. However, overall it's quite a decent drama.

I don't think that I will watch this show again. I think it's very important to watch it once because otherwise there are going to be a lot of things in the other adaptations that you simply will not understand because the background knowledge will be missing, but I think if you watched it once and occasionally search online if you don't understand something you wil be fine watching the rest of the adaptations. However, If you want to watch it again, do it. I don't think it would be wasted time as I personally often find things that I didn't see or realize when watching for the first time and I think it's possible to enjoy when rewatching.

I'm sorry if this review is confusing, I wrote it at 2am while nursing a headache because of the weather :) Probably will edit it later but for now, that's how it stays.

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Great movie and d*mn I love what the zombies look like

I really liked the introductory scene as it gives you a little bit of backstory and the first creeps at the same time. I think the film wasn't trying to have the watcher on highest alert all the time but always gave some time between action-packed scenes to calm down again. Those scenes in between often seem to be a little cheesy but to be honest, who wouldn't be cheesy if they knew that any word they spoke could be their last. Others are plain horrifying, seeing - and realizing - what human minds can do when scared and under pressure. Seeing that a central topic of the film is a virus outbreak that causes people turning into zombies, it's not surprising that people are dying and turning into zombies. I'd say, don't watch the movie if you are sensitive to that. I also loved the kind of open ending, though I'm still wondering what happened to them afterwards.

I felt the actors be quite suitable for their roles. Also, I love how they made their characters seem so real. It sometimes was eerie to look at it. There also are a few characters that I grew to love: those two grandmas who gave me chills in their last few scenes, the dad caring for his daughter and putting her first throughout the whole train ride, the pregnant woman caring for the child when the dad wasn't around, and of course, the not-yet-dad who was always bickering with the dad, the cute guy who hesitated to face his teammates... Of course, there are some stereotypical characters but let's be honest, pretty much every movie, drama, book - every story has them.

The music was great as well. In some scenes, solely the music already gave me chills, other times it made me tear up in combination with what was on screen. Honestly, I can't tell why exactly I got that emotional, fact is, I did. All in all, I can say that I'm no professional, but I never thought that the music was sticking out like a sore thumb.

As most of the time, when I'm writing reviews, I already re-watched this movie. I thought that, compared to the first time I was watching it, it didn't lose much. The only thing I'm kind of sad about that this time I couldn't watch it with friends during a sleepover. This time, I was alone in my room, cuddling with my blanket and holding a pen and paper ready for taking notes. What I only realized this time around is that the zombies look great. I'm not particularly a fan of horror movies, but I mainly watched it because I knew I had loved it before and that I like some eerie atmosphere.



PS: don't watch it when you're (almost) drunk. At least, not if you're the type of drunk person who's always laughing. I am that type of drunk and, my dear friends who were with me when I saw the movie for the first time when I was 17, I'm sorry. I had never been drunk before, and Wodka mixed with orangeade was a little bit too tasty.

PS+1: I mainly re-watched the film because a friend told me to write another review and that's the only thing that I knew where to watch it that I wouldn't have had to spend more than 5 hours watching. But really, I don't regret it at all.

PS+2: I somehow can't find anything negative about this movie except that we have no idea about what happens afterwards. But that's just how this film is, so I can't justify a lower rating than 10 to myself.

PS+3: THERE'S A SEQUEL???

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