JFF THEATER: The Miracles of the Namiya General Store (2017) | ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟 - Part II

Started watching on Friday night but I got involved doing other things and I had to postpone for viewing today instead.

So far, it looks like it is kind of a time travel story.  When the movie opens it shows you the Namiya General Store and you meet Mr. Namiya during the time when children are on their way home from school (I believe, I don't remember) There is a bulletin board with some notes on them and you see Mr. Namiya take one down, go into his store where he writes back and then he puts his reply on the board.

In the next scene, it is 2017 and you see 3 older teens running away and one of them tells the others he found an abandoned place where they could hide and it happens to be Mr. Namiya's store.  While they are in the store, someone places a letter in the slot from the front of the store.  The boys go out and look around to see who is there but there is nobody.  They get scared and decide to leave and go elsewhere in case they had been followed.  They run around the area and come to a spot on the street where they see a bus/trolley coming right at them.  The trolly runs over them as you see them so through the trolly with people sitting inside.  The trolly keeps going through them and disappears.  When the boys look around, they are right back in front of Mr. Namiya's store.  The boys go back in, read the letter and decide to answer it.  They place the reply in the side mailbox where someone comes and retrieves it.

At this point it seems like it was 2017 inside the store with events outside being 1981.  The letter they reply to is from a fishmonger/musician who was questioning his choice of having quit university to become a musician.  The boys reply back trying to guide him away from being a musician until the man writes back that music is not a hobby to him and he asks Mr. Namiya to listen to his song.  He places his letter in the slot but doesn't let it drop down.  He sits against the front gate, pulls out a harmonica and begins to play.  The boys inside recognize the song.  One of the boys says "Isn't that Suri's song?", and 2 of them run outside to see who is playing but there is nobody there.  When they go back inside, the song is still playing.

Cutting back to 1981 and the musician's life, his dying father advises him to keep doing what he loves after the musician says maybe he should join the family business and become a fishmonger.  His father tells him it would be one thing if he liked being a fishmonger but he knows he doesn't.  His father believed in him so he continued on his path.  Eight years later, his father has already passed, he is scheduled to play for some children in an orphanage.  At this orphanage there is a little girl and her young brother who were victims of abuse.  The little boy is so traumatized, he refuses to speak to anyone except his sister.  The musician ends up debuting a song he wrote.  There are no lyrics so he's just singing along with the melody.  The little girl asks him later what the name of the song he was singing was.  He reveals to her that it's his own song and he titled it Reborn.  

The next day, he hears the little girl, whose name is Suri, humming his song.  They go for a walk together and he is impressed that she remembered the whole song after having heard it only once. 

What happens next ties Suri, her brother and the musician, to one of the boys in the abandoned store.  In true Japanese fashion, there were tears. I mean, I cried.  Japanese dramas and movies never fail to leave me crying at least once while watching.  I won't go any further with what happened; go watch the movie yourself.  It is totally worth it.

JFF THEATER: The Miracles of the Namiya General Store (2017) | ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟

I have been missing a lot of really good J-dramas and J-movies on this site. I'm going to make sure I make some time to at least watch 1 movie on my 3 day weekends.

Today I am watching The Miracles of the Namiya General Store.  Synopsis from JFF Theater:

From the novel by HIGASHINO Keigo, three delinquents break into an abandoned store where anyone could leave a letter seeking advice.  Their arrival triggers the shop to connect with the past - old letters slipping through its mailbox.  Are these letters crossing time to reach them?  The three have no idea but write back regardless.  As they do, the store's secret is revealed, along with their connection to it, and the three, wrapped up in themselves for so long, find themselves connected to these strangers.  Having already helped so many before, will the store now help produce one last miracle?

Sounds interesting!  Here I go...

Kim Go-eun Movies

Back on my Asian drama blog, I made a list of dramas Kim Go-eun has been in because I've loved her since I watched Guardian: The Lonely and Great God!  So, it stands to reason that I need a list of movies she's been in so I can make sure I watch them all!  There have been quite a bit of them so I need to get going before I fall too far behind! 

2012 | Yeong-a (short film) | NEED TO WATCH

2012 | A Muse | NEED TO WATCH

2013 | Neverdie Butterfly (cameo) | NEED TO WATCH

2014 | Monster | NEED TO WATCH

2015 | Coin Locker Girl | NEED TO WATCH

2015 | Memories of the Sword | NEED TO WATCH

2015 | The Advocate: A Missing Body | NEED TO WATCH

2016 | Canola | NEED TO WATCH

2018 | Sunset in my Hometown | NEED TO WATCH

2019 | Hit-and-Run Squad | NEED TO WATCH

2019 | Tune in For Love | NEED TO WATCH

2020 | Untact (Short Film) | NEED TO WATCH

2022 | Hero | NEED TO WATCH

2024 | Dog Days (cameo) | NEED TO WATCH

2024 | Exhuma | NEED TO WATCH

2024 | Love in the Big City | NEED TO WATCH

After seeing this list, I need to get working on this ASAP because I haven't seen any of her movies at all!  

[2016] A Man and a Woman | 남과 여

I decided to watch this movie because of Gong Yoo.  I've loved him ever since I first saw him in Coffee Prince so I make it a point to watch his movies or dramas whenever I find them.  I should have skipped this one.

I didn't like it.  Any of it.

The movie starts in Finland with Ki-hong (Gong Yoo) and Sang-min (Jeon Do-yeon) dropping off their kids at a drop off area for a camp.  She asks if he has a light. They start to talk and decide to trail the kids to the camp. On the way back, there's a snowstorm and they end up having to get a room somewhere.  The next day, they go for a walk and find a sauna in the woods and they have a sexual encounter.  The next day, they go home and neither one knows the other's name.

Ki-hong is married and has a daughter.  His wife has mental issues and the young daughter (she might be about 5) suffers from depression.  He's unhappy.  After one of of his wife's breakdowns, her mother tells Ki-hong she is going to have his wife stay with her and she will take the granddaughter as well since she wants to be with her mother.  His MIL says she doesn't blame him because she's always had issues and she married too young.  They live in Finland due to his job.

Sang-min is also married and she has a son.  Her son has a learning disability and it's caused stress in the family.  She seems to be unhappy with her husband. She lives in S. Korea.  I think she was there for the special camp for her son but she had business as well.

So, due to their circumstances, they feel connected and they eventually meet again and start having an affair. Back in Korea, Sang-min decides to divorce her husband and goes back to Finland to be with Ki-hong but while she's there, she happens to walk by a cafe and through the window she sees him with his wife and daughter and he was happy.  She decides to walk away before he can see her.  He sees her back as she exits the door and at first he has no reaction because he doesn't realize it is Sang-min until he sees her profile as she gets into a cab.  His wife had left the table to use the rest room so he was with his daughter.  When he realizes the woman is Sang-min, he grabs his car keys and runs out of the cafe.  He was about to get into his car when he sees his daughter looking sad in the window.

I'll leave it there.  I left out a lot of detail but this is the gist of it.  The only thing that could have saved this movie for me was the ending and that did not go well for me.