Weekend watches

Nü Er Hong (2023) (stream here)
Science fiction/fantasy + GL microdrama where one of the two main characters is basically a killing machine and the other has to stop her. I'm not built for microdramas and romance trope speedruns, so I mostly enjoyed the beginning and end parts and wish they'd picked a different BGM for the poison-sucking scene... But I'm very into this specific trope dynamic (it made me want to continue the NieR: Automata anime) AND the aesthetic of the main characters so I'm still glad I watched it.

PS. Apparently the series tells you at the beginning of the first episode that the main characters are aliens, but somehow all four people in our watchparty missed that AND none of us caught on to the visual cues... everything made more sense (the earpiece, the inability to use chopsticks, the mentions of dishwasher, the meteorite sword) when we realized. 🤣


Ballerina (2023) (Netflix)
Revenge thriller about an ex-bodyguard who in her quest to avenge her ballerina girlfriend uncovers a drug and human trafficking ring. Overall this is a very genre-typical addition to the revenge movie catalogue with gorgeous setpieces. It's not as tight or cathartic as it could have been even with its short runtime:

spoilers

I didn't see the point of introducing another character (a victim!) who also wanted to kill the bad guys but having that character still get abducted and undergo torture AND not even be able to participate in the revenge. It felt not only extraneous but also like it went against the emotional logic of the movie.

In terms of violence/gore, there were a couple of gruesome scenes that I avoided looking at, but the movie otherwise avoids gratuity more than you'd expect; a lot of the bloodshed is quite clean, either averting from the gore or skipping ahead to the outcome, and at one point puncturing through the tension with comical abruptness. The action is also a lot more exciting before the main character gets access to guns, but it's all still very cool.

tl;dr - a gritty action-thriller revenge movie for the lesbians (the ballerina dies at the beginning, and the ex-bodyguard destroys everyone who hurt her while remembering their past)

CW: suicide, blood/gore/violence, date rape (they show the lead-up and the aftermath), drugs, sexual assault, human trafficking and blackmail