Doomsday Book

Three fantastic stories of the future!
Zombies, robots and asteroids out of control! Yes, you've seen similar flicks on these subjects, but not covered in the fashion of "Doomsday Book"! The three vignettes in this film are markedly different, but each seems to flow seemlessly into the next, as we wonder how the world might end in each episode.

Perhaps the most enticing and maybe frightening is the innocuously-entitled "Happy Birthday," where a little girl calls up an alien website (they exist, don't they?) and accidentally ends up ordering, perhaps, the end of our planet!

A fascinating exploration into what might just happen in the near future; I recommend "Doomsday Book" to all adult audiences.

Doomsday Book
Today, as I write this, is December 23, 2012, and we are still alive. If you recall, the end of days was supposed to have been two days ago, on December 21. Happily, that didn't happen - for now --, but the entertainment world keeps busy doing films about the destruction of life as we know it. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but it is really good when a film with doomsday themes that make you think comes along - an intelligent and plausible one, that is. "Doomsday Book" is such a movie. It is fascinating and overpowering, with many possibilities to ponder.

"Doomsday Book" is really three films into one, helmed by two different Korean directors. The first segment, "Brave New World," directed by Yim Pil-Sung, hits you in the gut, and you should see it a couple hours after having dinner, as it deals with the effect of an epidemic a la "Mad Cow disease," when people become zombie-like creatures after eating infected beef. We meet a young man on a date with an attractive young...

South Korea Sees 'Doom' In Our Future
By their very nature, anthology films are a mixed bag. They'll contain two or three or four smaller stories - essentially `shorts,' cobbled together into one complete film - usually connected by one central theme. The upside is that, if the theme is flexible enough to support multiple interpretations, the audience is treated to an insightful exploration from different (and differing) perspectives. The downside? There can be several, not the least of which is the viewer ends up stuck in a loop supportive of that main idea where nothing all that original unfolds not once but twice, or thrice, or ... well, however many installments the producers managed to cram in there!

(NOTE: the following review will contain minor spoilers necessary solely for the discussion of plot and characters. If you're the kind of reader who prefers a review entirely spoiler-free, then I'd encourage you to skip down to the last two paragraphs for my final assessment. If, however, you're...

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