Best movie of this year hands down!

Perfectly adorable

Great Film overall

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

An anthology of apocalyptic sci-fi. Kind of. The film as a whole is infuriatingly confusing in its conception and execution. The first segment, directed by Pil-Sung Yim (of the Korean Hansel & Gretel movie), is the part that can be definitively labeled horror. Tainted beef turns people into zombies. The film has some decent comic moments, but it never really goes anywhere. Plus, I'm absolutely sick of zombies. The third segment, also directed by Yim, concerns a gigantic pool ball from space on a collision course with Earth. Turns out a young girl accidentally ordered an alien attack on the planet. This segment is so absolutely bizarre, I have no idea what they were going for. It is, at least, a bit amusing even if baffling. Bae Doon-Na appears at the very end of this segment, in the last ten minutes of the movie, and director Bong Joon-Ho also appears. The middle segment, directed by Kim Jee-Woon, cannot be considered horror at all. It concerns a robot which has achieved enlightenment and is considered by his fellow monks to be the reincarnation of Buddha. His makers are incensed at the idea, though, and wish to destroy him. This starts off as the most interesting segment, but as it goes on it gets lost in endless dialogue. Kim is a great action filmmaker and has no ability to make abstract concepts interesting. It's the most boring segment of the film, unfortunately. The one thing I can say for the film as a whole is that it always looks fantastic. Even when it's dull, which is often, it's always pretty.

Doomsday Book is a collection of three 30-40 minute films which all have the theme of the end of the world through self destruction (though that can only really be said about the 1st film and the 3rd). It's a good concept and has a lot of potential but it doesn't live up to it due to the drawbacks of the first two films. The first film is a truly unremarkable run-of-the-mill zombie-esque feature which is lackluster and while it does get amusing with some humor at the end, it's not a great start. The second film, at first, is the most intriguing and sparks interest to see where it goes but it soon becomes packed with sleep-inducing philosophical monologues that will make you wonder what relevance it had of being in this collection. However, despite the first two let-downs, the third and final film is where Doomsday book really delivers. The third film has a bizarre premise and is funny too but for me it was truly the only good film in the set and there there was no better place to have it as it felt like a reward for sitting through the first two.

SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS.Doomsday Book is a 3 part Korean anthology film about the future of mankind. Its 3 separate story lines are basically broken down as follows: 1. Zombie Apocalypse, 2. Robot Enlightenment, and 3. Alien/Asteroid destruction. Each of the stories is independent from one another and all are acted, written, and directed by various teams.While not terrible, this movie does have some problems, and, it seems strangely out dated (despite its futuristic themes). This film debuted earlier this year (2012), and therein lies the bulk of its problems…you see, this production originally began back in 2006, but funding problems and other delays hampered its release until it was shelved for quite a while; as a result, some stories were wrapped up years ago, one never got made, another was added on post haste to finally get the film out the door, etc...The end result is an uneven amalgam of flavors and styles and eras that doesn't quite come together as a whole as was hoped for.Story 1. "Brave New World" (i.e. "the Zombie" story). Easily my least favorite of the 3 works, and the one that suffers the most from the production delays. This story has 2006 written all over it… it revolves around the world's population de-evolving into zombie like creatures as a result of a virus born of tainted meat processing procedures. This would have been right proper back in '06, but, how many stories about contaminated mass food production, end of world viruses, etc…have been made since then?...And, we've got zombies!; Sorry, but it's almost 2013 now, so, enough with the freakin zombies already!...that ship sailed years ago. This story is ultimately not worth investing in (primarily because it was so overdone by the time it was released). There's also no zombie "love story" angle as suggested that I can recall, unless there is some extended version I haven't seen…basically, guy goes on a date, guy runs into date later on during the wash, and, everybody is now a zombie or will soon become one! Summary: Somewhat OK (I guess)!Story 2. "Creation of Heaven" (i.e. the "Robot with a soul" story). Probably the best of the 3 stories, and easily the most philosophical & cerebral. Fairly interesting and well done story overall…It's basically your human created machine gains intelligence, sentience, thought, free will, etc…Then, various humans with differing opinions and motives on the subject must decide what to do with it. This story would perhaps have been better suited to be a full feature movie on its own. It does work pretty well as a short, but I could easily see it being successfully expanded into a longer production (similar to what was done with the "Dumplings" portion of the "3 Extremes" anthology). Summary: Not bad at all!Story 3. "Happy Birthday" (i.e. the "We need to tack on another 30-40 minute tale 6 years later to finally release this film" story). I like the somewhat odd premise of this segment, but unfortunately, it just doesn't work that well overall. This is the story that has the young girl trying to replace her dad's missing 8 –ball via the internet. The internet is a magical place indeed, but I think we're still a long way away from alien races fulfilling Amazon.com orders through space and time via giant asteroids. This episode felt a bit rushed, and, I think would have been far better served if it played up the comedic/surreal aspect of the plot (which it reluctantly seemed to want to fully embrace). Summary: Ultimately disappointing!Bottom Line: Overall, I was not impressed!…A bit of a missed opportunity that's "OK" to watch, but, I recommend you don't set your hopes too high going in if you're going to check it out. I'm not going to destroy it, because it ain't terrible. Occasionally though, delays/timing/funding get in the way of the best laid plans…here's Exhibit A in regards!…That's just the way it goes sometimes!6 out of 10 stars overall!

I'm writing this based on my first impression of the film. (I generally don't like to do this for films with subtitles, as the first time I focus (of course) on reading the dialogue where as the next few times I can truly "see" the rest of the movie.) The first story is of a man and his love as they go thru the Zombie apocalypse. I'd say it's a romance complemented by some horror and a dash of humor. Nothing great here, but a well done story. 6/10The film's second act is about a sentient robot that faces his potential demise and the technician who is put in the middle of it all. This part of the film is excellent. It's incredibly well done all the way around. If you like sci-fi that truly makes you think, that makes you question how you define the human experience then you will like this. The story's exploration of the philosophy of existence using a Buddhist backdrop is incredibly interesting. This section alone is worth seeing the movie over and over again in my opinion. 12/10The third narrative involves a girl accidentally ordering an alien, oversize billiard ball that ends up destroying life on earth. This section to me was pointless and unnecessary. There was nothing entertaining or redeeming about it. Standing on its own, I think it would be bad. Fitting it together with the other 2 stories just makes it appear even worse and throws off the flow of the film. 1/10These grades average out to about a 6 but I bumped the overall grade up to a 7 based on the incredible strength of the second narrative. Check it out and if your crunched for time just skip the 3rd act.