The Leverton Review

  This is a quite unusual k-drama. It's unusual because there are actual stakes involved. K-drama is not one genre but it contains multiple genres within it. The kind of genre that I specifically like are the supernatural or sci-fi series. Even in shows with dark themes or maybe because of those dark themes there is always some sort of humorous aspect to it. This is not one of those shows. There's nothing that funny about what happens in the story and there are a lot of moving scenes. The actions that the characters take or don't take have consequences. The plot of the story involves a man who was cursed to become a Bugasal - which is a korean monster very similar to a vampire. Whereas European vampires are dangerous in their feeding habits, one of these Korean monsters is so powerful that it can cause people who are around them to bleed to death. The monster attempts to find the woman he believes is responsible for his curse. A lot of k-dramas are connected to the relation...

It's an interesting experience to go back and watch these classic Disney movies as an adult. I never really liked a lot of Disney movies when I was younger, so to try and understand their appeal as an adult is sometimes more difficult for me. The flaws of some of the earlier films are not present in this one. It doesn't feel rushed like in Dumbo - the animation while not attaining the heights that were reached in the detail of Pinocchio also is not as creepy as some of the humans in Snow White. The story itself is pretty basic, but it works for the film. You believe that Bambi is a deer and this is what happens to deers when they grow up. My standard of judging the success of a Disney film is if I would recommend kids to watch it. Or rather, which film I would recommend that they watch the most. So I still think that they would enjoy Pinocchio better than Bambi but if you wanted to show them more films I think Bambi would be an acceptable alternative. But be prepared for a diff...

This is the story of one of the biggest bank frauds in American history and also one of the strangest fugitive cases in American history. I didn't know anything about the real life events behind this documentary Series so I won't say exactly what happens so as not to ruin the surprise for anybody who decides to watch this. I think it's generally well done and because it comes from a more traditional news source, it was produced by ABC News. It doesn't have the same sort of production as a Netflix True Crime documentary series which sometimes can get a bit repetitive. One aspect I did not like about it is the fact that it is based on a podcast series. There's nothing wrong with that but each episode has unnecessary shots of the host of the podcast sitting in a sound booth recording her lines for the podcast. I guess it would kind of make sense if the podcast uncovered some new aspect of the investigation but as far as I can tell the podcast was just talking about the...

Waco happened at a time of my life when I was becoming aware of the wider world outside of my experience. It's not something that I have particularly obsessed about - it's just something that happened in the media and I remember. This documentary claims that it has never before seen footage and interviews - but one is left with the feeling that all of this information was already known. In 1993, a religious group with apocalyptic views and a large stockpile of illegal weapons was raided by the ATF and the FBI. The initial raid went poorly because the members of the cult were tipped off by a local reporter. Four federal agents were killed. A siege ensued at the end of which the compound burnt down and 80 people were killed. A narrative has developed overtime,  among far Right groups in the United States that this is an example of a government overstepping its rights and massacring its people. The details of what happened are controversial because the two main groups in the confl...

This is an entertaining anthology film from the early days of the Disney Studios. It shows great scenes of animators doing their work. It is a mix of live action and animation, much like the Reluctant Dragon. The animated sequences are lively and have a few jokes that manage to elicit a chuckle even 80 years later. There are a number of cultural stereotypes depicted. And on the one hand this is bad because there is a level of fetishization of these differences, but on the other hand people really were more different back then at least in terms of their dress and the food that they would eat. It's interesting though that this film was made by Walt Disney as an attempt to foster better relations between the United States and Latin American countries, and apparently it was very successful in doing so - so the intended audience did not react badly to the stereotypes depicted in it. Although one cartoonist was so offended by the depiction of a cartoon plane from Chile that he created an...

The help is a movie about a dark period in American history that is remarkably funny. I think it's refreshing because you can have different approaches to traumatic events. It's hard for me to describe why the movie is so funny without ruining one of the best parts of the movie, so I won't talk about it, but I will address some of the criticism that has been directed towards the movie. Actress Viola Davis has since distanced herself from the movie saying that it did not provide voices for the black characters in the film. It seems such an odd thing to say, and you wonder if she actually watched the movie. Because yes a white character is used as a sort of framing device - the movie is all about the lives of these women who have to live within the framework of this rich, white, very racist society. Maybe her criticism is because we do not see major events in the lives of the black characters in the film, we only hear about them, whereas we do see major events in the white ch...

 I have seen this movie so so many times. But I don't mind - there are some films that a person can just watch again and still get the same amount of enjoyment from it. I hope that this is a film that younger generations continue to experience and discover. For me, it is the ultimate dancing movie and I don't particularly like dancing movies. The plot is very relevant for the world today. I won't describe what it is to not spoil it for anyone who hasn't actually seen it but is handled in a very mature way. The film is full of great dance scenes and the iconic line, "nobody puts baby in the corner."  So of course I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it, and I think it should be on a list of must-see in the 1980s. I do have one question though - I had never noticed this scene before watching it with my kids. Baby is intrigued by the dancing of Johnny, so she notices that all the staff members of the camp live in a separate section of the camp and t...

I feel like I start a lot of my reviews with this was an interesting film, and on the one hand in this particular case it's true it's an interesting film, it's just not an enjoyable one. There are two problems with it, the first is that for some reason it's not available on Disney plus, so you can only watch it on YouTube, so it's in black and white and the quality is not great. The other problem is it's straight up propaganda. That's not necessarily bad, the United States was in the middle of the second world war at the time and the film is an attempt to show the public the value of all the bombers that were being built. I realize that the SWecond World ar was an important time period in the history of humanity, but personally I have seen so much media and so many documentaries connected to this time period that this is just not interesting to me. I guess if you are interested in the history of the Second World War, this is probably in interesting artifact ...

This Walt Disney film from the mid 1940s is only interesting for two reasons. The first is it was one of the first films to mix live action and animation (in the same shot). Even today, watching it so many years later, I was wondering at some points how they were able to achieve this effect. The other strange aspect of this movie is Donald Duck is a real horn dog in it. He seems to be immediately in love with any attractive woman he meets - and as he meets a lot of attractive women in this adventure, the lust of Donald Duck is really something that makes you question the people who made this film. It's kind of like the Howard Duck effect. Although it's kind of creepier because Howard the Duck is somewhat human sized and Donald at least in this movie is duck sized, so I don't know what he's thinking there. The other thing that I noticed while watching this is that when we moved to realistic animation, computer generated animation, I think we lost a lot of the creativity ...

  Glitch is k-drama done correctly. There are no unnecessary scenes - the Story begins when it should, ends when it should, and its middle is where it should be. But there is of course product placement, but it feels natural to the characters involved. This is the first k-drama series that I have watched where there is actually a love making scene - but it's not titillating at all, it's more depressing and suits the characters perfectly. In most k-dramas the male and female leads are working towards establishing a relationship together - but in this one there really isn't a male lead, and the female lead begins the series in a relationship and spends the rest of the series trying to help her ex-boyfriend. Another thing that is strange and not something I ever noticed before is that a lot of the characters smoke - weather real cigarettes or e-cigarettes. I don't think smoking is a great thing, but it's a fact that people do smoke in real life, and I've never actu...

  Stuart takes a topic with many people find disgusting and explains it in a way which is very readable and fascinating. I think by now we all know the beneficial aspects of earthworms, but she doesn't stop at talking about the benefits of earthworms, she also talks about the detrimental effects that they can have as an invasive species. It's interesting for me that this book came out almost 20 years ago, and I had only heard about the invasive aspect of earthworms a few years ago. So I imagine it took that long for this knowledge to spread in the public consciousness, and I'm sure that this book helped with that a great deal. I don't have anything critical to say about the book, only if you enjoyed this book, you might also enjoy other books of hers.

 This is a bizarre show to stream. It's clear that it was designed to be playing in the background when you're doing something else like cooking or cleaning. They repeat the same stories about the same criminals a few times. Most of these stories I was aware of, there were some that were genuinely surprising and interesting to know. For example, the description of how a Canadian burglar robbed one of the most valuable jewels in Europe I had never heard about, but it's an interesting story. I think the conceit of this series, that there are some criminals that are evil geniuses, is stretched a little bit. There are a few criminals in the series who maybe not were geniuses, but they just had great ideas or a lot of money to accomplish their goal, in the case of some of the drug dealers they talk about. A few I would say were legitimately quite intelligent, but then I think the downfall of many of them is the downfall of many an intelligent person-that they think because they ...

This was a quite interesting documentary series to watch, but at the same time an incredibly sad one. It deals with numerous abusive situations perpetrated by religious leaders in Korea. Almost all of these leaders claimed to be God at some point - and almost all of them abused their followers in some way. One even came up with a combination of American televangelism with a sprinkling of Scientology. Some of these cult leaders ended up dead, or in prison, but others were never charged with any crime even though their followers were murdered. I am generally interested in the topic of crimes committed by religious movements, but I think that there is a tendency for people to know only the stories that happened in America because a lot of the media that tells us these stories is from America. So even though I lived in South Korea for a year, and I was aware of a heavy Christian presence in the country, I didn't know anything about some of these people who were active at the time I was...

The intro of this series is quite deceptive. It makes you expect a sort of COPS in the wilderness. But, in fact, the two seasons do a thorough examination of two separate cases. Both cases are interesting in their own right, I think the second season has wider societal implications. That's because a potential serial killer named Henry Lee Lucas is involved. We know for a fact that Henry Lee Lucas murdered three people. His mother, an underage girl he was associated with, and her guardian. And the problem was when he was arrested for the second and third of these murders, he started confessing to many murders. This was in retrospect a pretty obvious attempt to get benefits for himself and avoid the death penalty as long as he could. But it also stems from the fact that there may have been a misunderstanding when he was booked with a crime. The judge said do you understand that you are being charged with murder, and he said yes sir, I have hundreds of them. The courtroom went wild be...

  In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were a series of experiments that were conducted on chimpanzees to determine if these animals were capable of understanding or producing human speech. At first, experiments involved the animals actually trying to make human sounds, but it was discovered that chimpanzees lack vocal cords, so they would be unable to make human voice sounds. For some reason, it was considered best that the subjects of these experiments were brought up as human children in human families and taught sign language. The sign language was not so strange, as chimpanzees in the wild do use gestures to communicate with each other. The chimpanzees began to use signs in a naturalistic way- up to about 360 varied signs, and one later was able to teach her child some signs. There was a controversy regarding this language research when one chimpanzee was studied and the methodology of the experiment was poor to be generous. Basically in this study the chimpanzee named Nim...

  This is one of those stories that gives you an impression of life. The actual events in the story are not really important. It's more of an explanation or exploration of different characters and their motivations. It's almost a dark Gothic example of magical realism. There are things-significant parts of the story that do not make logical sense. But it raises a few philosophical and moral questions. The first is the question if brutal violence is acceptable because you have been subjected to it yourself. The second question it raises is about the almost eroticization of suffering - especially the suffering of women. The last question it raises is about storytelling - what is real versus what is unreal. You could interpret the main character as being mad due to her intense suffering, or you could interpret her as being an extremely opportunistic person who took advantage of the situation to rescue herself from a very dismal fate. My own interpretation is that perhaps none of t...

This is one of those movies where you ask yourself why was this even made? I personally really enjoy Bob's Burgers. I think the writing is funny, the voice acting is funny, and I think the style of animation fits the characters. When I heard that this movie had been released, I was surprised. The fact that it did not do well did not surprise me at all. I think if you like Bob's Burgers, you're not going to go out of your way to watch a movie about it - and if you don't like Bob's Burgers, why would you even bother watching a movie version? That being said, the movie is a great-extended episode of Bob's Burgers. The jokes land, there is a lot of character development, and the plot is that same combination of realistic and ridiculous that if you've watched the show you can expect. The only difference, I would say, is that you can tell they spent a lot of money on animation in this film. Not on the main characters because you can't actually change the way t...

 I did not like this movie. I did not like the talking train. I did not like the stork in the rain. In other earlier Disney films, the quality of the animation is superb, especially in the backgrounds and the landscapes. In Dumbo, Disney had the idea to significantly reduce his costs so that the film would make more money. The only part of this movie that I'm mildly enjoyed was the hallucinogenic Pink Elephant scenes - because in those you can see that studio really cared about the quality of the animation. I think the movie is generally too short, lashes through the story - dumbo discovers he can fly, and the next scene is the end of the movie. Also, I think this film has numerous aspects about it which are very uncomfortable nowadays. The first is the fact that the story happens in a circus, and the circus animals are depicted as being extremely happy in their lot and proud of what they do. But it's obvious if animals were transported that way back then they would be sufferin...

 This series has a great premise which is ruined by two things that generally ruin k-dramas - overt product placement and lack of editing which makes it far too long. Even though this can be considered as a supernatural or sci-fi drama, the sci-fi of it only comes into play at certain points. The story revolves around a young man who is wildly in love with a person he has known most of his life, and this love is unrequited. The problem is that he is not conventionally attractive by any means, and she is a goddess of beauty and grace. He tries to move on, the woman he moves on with breaks off the relationship, steals a lot of money from him and disappears. In despair, he considers suicide when some aliens accidentally kill him. They revive him with a magical ball called Abyss - and he comes back to life looking like his soul looks like, so a very attractive young man. Meanwhile, his childhood friend is being murdered across town. He is shocked, and he begs to see her in the morgue a...

 The producers of this documentary made a stylistic choice to focus on how out of touch the Romanovs were and how that led to their brutal murder at the hands of violent extremists. I think it ultimately fails because it focuses so much on the Romanovs and not the sufferings that policies created. It's easy to do this because the story is quite sensationalistic - a very sick child and a family coming under the influence of a cult leader. The parts connected to or indirectly connected to the family are re-enacted and the effect on the Russian people is described either through archival footage or interviews with talking heads. This does a very good job in showing how out of touch the Romanovs were, but it doesn't explain the anger felt towards them by the majority of the Russian population by 1917. I think a better choice would have been to follow more closely the character that actually executed Nicholas II. He's just introduced by saying yeah he thought the war was bad, th...

 I have a Sentimental Feeling about this series. It was one of the first k-dram watched and was the first to deal with more Supernatural aspects. It also got me through a rough time in my life. So to do it justice, I rewatched the entire series with a more critical eye. Let's talk about the things that are not good. It is one of the longest k-dram dramas - watching it takes about a day of your life. The special effects are incredibly cheesy, so much so that it almost makes me want the production to go back and do it again with great special effects. The story is about these demigods who have magical and mystical powers, and yet there isn't that much action in it. The stakes in this series are higher than in other Supernatural dramas from Korea. Whereas in those it's usually about the Redemption of one person, in this one it's about the fate of the entire world. Often shows like this will have an overarching plot and each episode will have a subplot that shows you how th...

  This is the true crime drama equivalent of an Arby's restaurant. It is trashy, salacious, and gross. The idea is to examine stories where university students have been murdered - and I guess come up with some sort of conclusions as to the dangers facing the young. There was one aspect of the series that I really didn't like and one aspect of the series that I really did like. The first is that several of the interviewees mention that it is so sad because the victim never got to experience University life in its fullness. And it seems to have been a line that was fed to them by the producers of this crime documentary. Connected to that, I dislike the premise of this series. It is clear just by the stories that they present that these are not crimes that make any sort of pattern. There are people who are murdered by rapists, people who are murdered by jealous boyfriends, people were murdered during hazing rituals gone bad. Only one of those things could only happen in a univers...

 If you are the kind of person who cannot stomach any movie that was made more than 20 years ago, this is probably not the film for you. The special effects look quite dated the way that the movie was filmed also is dated and some of the lines in the film clearly refer to the historical moment when it was released at the end of the '60s. But I think you would be missing out on a sci-Fi masterpiece. It's quite good because the dilemma in the film is about the nature of faith versus science - and we as an audience are generally rooting for a science on till the end when we realize that the science that they're talking about in the movie caused a global catastrophe. So it raises the question is it better to be ignorant or is it better to be knowledgeable. That's what's so compelling about the film - it seems to be this sort of Fish Out of Water the universe is turned upside down kind of story, but actually it's the story of what measures should be taken to prevent ...

  This was an interesting watch. If you know nothing about the case, this series will take you on a strange ride. My takeaway from it is that the law needs to be equally applied to everyone, and when you start to bend the rules for someone because they have a privileged position they will continue to bend as many rules as they can and tragedy will likely happen. It's hard to talk about this series Without describing exactly what happened and while these events are public knowledge I think it wouldn't be fair for me to explain the events before somebody watches it. I will just say that if the rules had been taken seriously by the people in this community most notably the police and the legal establishment it's possible that at least four people would be alive and one probably wouldn't be sitting in prison right now or at least he would be sitting in prison for a different crime. It's a well done documentary so I recommended if you're interested in True Crime.

 This series starts as a typical true-Crime documentary, in which it begins with loving interviews of the families who have lost a loved one due to crime. But in most of these documentaries, the person that they are talking about is the victim of the crime. In this one. The person that they are talking about, at least initially according to the police, was the criminal. The series then goes on to explore, if not the corruption of a local police force, certainly the incompetence of it. In fact, this small community had the highest per capita rate of citizens being killed by the police in all the country. It's an important issue, but I feel that the documentary doesn't do it justice. I think generally, American True-Crime documentaries are in a blind spot when it comes to crime. What I mean by that is the topic of guns is not touched upon at all. The police could certainly be trained more and better. I think that it is ridiculous that a police officer can be trained in the United...

 Spindictators is one of those rare books where the title tells you all you need to know about the book. It talks about a more modern form of totalitarianism, where the authoritarians in power use spin rather than fear to maintain their grip on their populace. It  is written by political scientists, so they do backup their thesis with research, it seems to be attached to idealistic. Unfortunately, the book was released before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. I say unfortunately because Putin is held up as the ultimate example of someone who doesn't use fear to control the population of his country, but uses spin to do so. Putin was of course really great at doing so for many years. And for many years he was much more effective than a more brutal dictator such as Hitler. He was able to expand his control domestically, destabilize neighbors such as Georgia, and Ukraine, and almost have de facto control over Belarus. In addition to this, while being able to achie...

There are some K dramas that are excruciatingly bad, there are some that are so bad they are funny, there are some that could be great but are fatally flawed, some are great, and some are good. Those last two are exceedingly rare. Mystic pop up bar is a good K-drama.  Here's what makes it good. Its story is told in an appropriate length - it doesn't drag anything out. The acting of the main characters is good, and believable. We can believe that the two older main characters are legitimately 500 years old, and despite that time, they remain human. I also like the fact that none of the characters are "cool". Many a drama is ruined by having characters that are supposed to be cool. I can see why this happens, in that a lot of the actors in k-dramas are also K-pop Stars, and they probably don't want to do anything that destroys their image. However, in this series a K-pop actor is a character who is socially awkward for very good reasons, and even when those reasons ...

  Culpability is an interesting aspect of the legal system. When a crime is committed and two people are involved how can you separate one person's guilt from another? This documentary series is another and a long line of attempts to present horrifying crimes that end up somewhat glamorizing the perpetrators of those crimes. In this particular case a woman and her husband go on a murder spree in France and Belgium. One of the potential victims escapes and she is able to identify her attackers and they both shortly are arrested thereafter. The question though is the man wholly responsible for his crimes or was he like some kind of Beast fed encouraged and manipulated by an evil woman. I don't think that the woman in this case is necessarily innocent. He clearly outlined what he wanted to do in his life horrifying crimes before they ever met and she was quite okay with that. So that suggests there is a degree of culpability there. However, the whole tone of this series shifts aft...

I remember watching this with my cousin at 3:00 in the morning many years ago, and we just left our heads off. The conceit of this movie is that nature has had enough and is going to start to murder everyone. They start on an island where there is a southern family and the southern family are having a birthday weekend that happens to coincide with the 4th of July. A freelance photographer who works for some kind of ecological magazine gets involved with a boating accident with one of them, and they invite him to stay for lunch. There are shots of scary looking frogs and snakes and geckos and alligators and some other kinds of lizards. Slowly, very slowly, the plot unfolds. There is lots of tension in the family between the older patriarch and the younger members of the family for various reasons. This is a family that has African American servants, so I think there is some kind of metaphor that's being grasped at here. Every single member of the family and servants are probably mur...