Producer: Kim Sung-min   Director: Choi Dong-hoon   Screenplay: Choi Dong-hoon   Cast: Ryu Jun-yeol, Kim Woo-bin, Kim Tae-ri, Choi Yu-ri, So-Ji-sub, Yum Jung-ah, Jo Woo-jin, Kim Eui-sung, Lee Ha-nee, Shin Jung-geun, Lee Si-hoon, Yoo Jae-myung, Kim Ki-cheon  and Kim Dae-myung   Distributor: Well Go USA

Grade: C+

After nearly two years’ hiatus the second half of Choi Dong-hoon’s “Alienoid” (the original Korean title translates as “Alien+Human”), a wacky mash-up of science fiction, magic, martial arts and slapstick comedy, appears, and proves rather a disappointment after the overlong but engaging lark that was Part One.  You might sum up “Alienoid: Return to the Future,” as it’s been retitled for international consumption, as representing twice the confusion, but only half the fun, of the first movie—a surprise, given that both were shot simultaneously, and presumably from a single finished script.  (A proviso: the first half flopped badly at the box office, so perhaps Choi took the opportunity to do some re-editing in the interim.)

Choi begins with a brief recap of the initial installment, about an alien race using humans as vessels in which to imprison their criminals, the process overseen by a handsome computer program called Guard (Kim Woo-bin), who’s assisted by Thunder (voiced by Kim Dae-myung), a little robotic ball that can mutate into various shapes.  The action shifted between present-day Seoul, where the entire operation is threatened by a master alien criminal called The Controller, who intends to release all his fellow captives and envelop the planet in his home world’s atmosphere so that they can take over earth while the earthlings perish, and fourteenth-century Korea, where a fantastic weapon called the Divine Blade is being sought by a bevy of characters—an inept young dosa named Muruk (Ryu Jun-yeol), whose magic fan releases two cat-helpers called Right Paw (Shin Jung-geun) and Left Paw (Lee Si-hoon); a mysterious masked man named Ja-jang (Kim Eui-sung); two comic sorcerers, Madam Black (Yum Jung-ah) and Mr. Blue (Jo Woo-jin); and a strange young woman (Kim Tae-ri), who’s said to release thunder from her hands but is actually carrying a modern pistol she occasionally uses to deadly effect. By the end of “Alienoid,” Guard and Thunder have apparently been destroyed in a journey to medieval Korea, and it’s revealed that the enigmatic young woman and Muruk share a history.

That’s where the action of Part Two picks up.  Chronologically it shifts less haphazardly between the time frames of the first movie; much of the first hour is set in the Korea of 1391, and much of the second in 2022 Seoul, where all of the main characters from the initial installment reassemble in a final showdown with The Controller, which among other things includes a battle aboard a speeding train.  They’re joined, moreover, by one whose part in the first film was peripheral and mostly comic—Min Kae-ae (Lee Hanee).  The aunt of a friend of a young orphan girl adopted by Guard at Thunder’s insistence, she now takes a major role as a customs officer whose attempts to confront the danger The Controller poses are dismissed by government superiors. 

The curious thing about the movie is that while it manages to tie up the various plot threads Choi set out in the first picture, it does so much less elegantly than before.  The less visually expansive sequences, including some of the fight sequences, are oddly cramped and claustrophobic, without the élan of the earlier movie, and when the big last-act confrontation occurs, it’s overstuffed with the sort of CGI bombast that’s characteristic of Hollywood blockbusters, and played in a desultorily repetitive fashion that grows tiresome, coming off as more tedious than exciting.  The slapstick is cruder this time around too, the result of giving more room to the two sorcerers, whose antics too often descend to the puerile (a sequence involving their introduction to treadmills at an exercise club seems to go on forever).

More generally, there’s a feeling or arbitrariness in the movie’s final stages; you’re left with a nagging suspicion that Choi is increasingly making up new rules to fit the requirements of the moment rather than fitting things into an established framework.  It’s absurd to expect impeccable logic in this sort of fantasy nonsense, of course, but when you begin to suspect that anything can happen, you begin to lose interest in what does.

Still, you have to admire the gonzo imagination that animates the “Alienoid” duology and the energy with which the cast commit themselves to the zaniness Choi has contrived.  This second installment doesn’t equal the nearly-inspired lunacy of the first, but it has its moments, and especially if you enjoyed the first movie, you should check out this finale, inferior though it might be.

And finale’s what it probably is, because though it has taken the top slot at the Korean box office during its initial run “Future” isn’t performing even as well as the first movie, which, given the huge budget of the two-parter, was considered a flop.  Any plan to turn “Alienoid” into a continuing franchise—which the concept seems to invite—now appears a forlorn hope.  So to its fans, the advice must be: enjoy what you have, but don’t expect any more.

Producers: Michel Franco, Eréndira Núñez Larios, Alex Orlovsky and Duncan Montgomery  Director: Michel Franco  Screenplay: Michel Franco   Cast: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Brooke Timber, Merritt Wever, Elsie Fisher, Jessica Harper, Josh Charles and Tom Hammond   Distributor: Ketchup Entertainment

Grade: C+

Memories—lost, garbled, suppressed—provide the driving force in Michel Franco’s tale of two troubled people who eventually find one another.  “Memory” has narrative problems, and its stark visual aesthetic is hardly attractive, but the performances are strong, though not enough to rescue the film from its improbability. 

Jessica Chastain stars as Sylvia, an alcoholic who, as we learn in the opening sequence set in an AA meeting, has been sober for thirteen years and works dedicatedly in a facility for the disabled.  But she suffers from emotional turmoil of her own, the result of memories of childhood sexual abuse, and it leaves her wary and frightened, not only for herself but for her teen daughter Anna (Brooke Timber), with whom she lives in a Brooklyn apartment.  Her obsessive securing of the multiple locks on the door and equally obsessive tidying of the place, along with the strictness she imposes on Anna, are signs of her continuing psychological trauma.

One evening Sylvia attends a high school reunion with her married sister Olivia (Merritt Wever), whom she often leans on for support.  There the fragile woman is unsettled by the presence of Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), a quiet, absently smiling man, and abruptly leaves.  But Saul follows her, taking a seat on the curb outside her front door and remaining there in the rain all night.  When she emerges the next morning to find him unresponsive, she calls emergency services.

Saul’s brother Isaac (Josh Charles) explains to her that Saul suffers from early-onset dementia, and experiences both fractured memories of the distant past and short-term memory loss.  At which point a revelation occurs: Sylvia is convinced that Saul was one of the students who assaulted her sexually in school, though he claims not to remember her at all.  But she nonetheless accepts an offer from Isaac’s daughter Sara (Elsie Fisher) to serve as Saul’s part-time caretaker.  True, there is a further revelation that explains, to some extent at least, her decision, but from an emotional perspective it still seems far-fetched.

Sylvia and Saul build a bond that gradually takes on a romantic element, but it’s a matter of concern to Isaac, and even Sara, when the final piece in the fraught tangle of relationships in introduced in the character of Samantha (Jessica Harper), Sylvia’s mother.  Sylvia has been estranged from her for years and has forbidden Anna to have anything to do with her, and is shocked that Olivia has kept her in her life, and that Anna is broken her pledge to avoid her. 

Like Isaac, Samantha is opposed to her daughter’s involvement with Saul, but her animosity toward their closeness becomes secondary when Sylvia accuses her of failing to intervene when she was being sexually abused in their own home.  And when Olivia admits a certain degree of culpability in the matter, both Sylvia and Anna turn on her as well.  (Of course, the film’s previous twists have already included the implication that at least some of Sylvia’s memories are mistaken, but resurrecting that possibility ion this case is summarily dismissed.)

By the end, the issue is whether Sylvia and Saul can overcome resistance from virtually everyone around them to connect on a deeper level. In that respect the movie calls to mind another New York take on lonely people struggling toward a relationship, 1955’s surprise hit “Marty,” but Paddy Chayefsky’s story was a far simpler tale, without the heavy emotional backstory Franco has contrived. 

And, indeed, that backstory is so contrived, with so many fraught interconnecting parts, that it makes it difficult for a viewer to suspect disbelief.  That’s true despite the raw, dingy look that the director and his crew—production designer Claudio Ramirez Castelli and costumer Gabriela Fernández—have cultivated, and by the spare compositions, often static group shots, that he and cinematographer Yves Cape favor.  The unhurried, even lackadaisical pacing that he and co-editor Oscar Figueroa Jara impose, intended to increase the gravity of the plot, instead often bring a sense of relentless repetition.

Nonetheless the performances of Chastain and Sarsgaard are impressive.  Given the characters they’re playing, both can seem studied at times, but she conveys Sylvia’s tremulousness as well as her burst of fury well, while he captures Saul’s mixture of uncertainty and serenity—and his sense of humor—without overly exaggerating either.  Among the others, Harper is the very image of the horridly self-satisfied mother, and Wever of the regretful sister.  Young Timber and Fisher are convincing as well; only Charles seems a trifle bland.

“Memory” features a display of compelling acting talent in service of a script that, in the final analysis, just doesn’t ring true.