The people behind the scenes at IMDb share their favorite movies and series of the year.

IMDb Staff Picks: Our Favorites of 2024

We followed these memorable characters through various episodes, and what a journey it’s been! Here are the top 10 Indian web series that fans couldn't stop talking about in 2024.

The Top 10 Most Popular Indian Web Series of 2024

We followed these memorable characters through various episodes, and what a journey it’s been! Here are the top 10 Indian web series that fans couldn&#39;t stop talking about in 2024.

From memorable moments to stunning red carpet looks, check out all our favorite photos of 2024.

The Year in Pictures

A winter-summer romance of He Ran, learning about the outside world, romance, and personal growth at a pivotal point in her life. Then, she met an excellent horticulturalist, Xiao Han, who had a rough past.

Everyone Needs a bit of Sexy in their Lives

Holy crap this was beautiful! I'm going to give K-drama comparisons here.

I'm Rating High Despite My Gripes - WATCH IT!

How to begin this review? This drama wasn&#39;t on my radar at all until I saw the trailer and it stopped me in my tracks. Was this c-ent&#39;s version of 50 Shades? How were they going to make this possible? I was extremely curious; I&#39;m totally unfamiliar with the entire cast save for the actor of Mr. Han who I saw last year in The Story of Xing Fu. Everything about this drama from the trailers gave off a totally different vibe than what I&#39;ve previously seen in c-dramas. And for real, everyone does need a bit of sexy in their lives. Pros: The Bohemian vibe, the rich color palette of the locations, just gave the series this extra richness and made every scene extremely alive as it awakened the senses to exotic surroundings and vibes. I never cared about the age gap as that&#39;s what the story is about and how the characters overcome to develop their own love story. The music was probably my favorite part of the series and that says something as usually OSTs are ok or good but not to the point where you want to hear them on repeat. Jerry Yan obviously has a very long and impressive résumé in both acting and music, here he knew when to be aloof, almost wooden and when to let his walls crumble and be taken over by emotion. The little nuisances that could be missed sometimes but were very important to viewers like the significance of the painting and the fact that he started out with a copy and ended up with the real thing. I didn&#39;t understand the FL at first when she bailed on him twice when she started to relapse. In her mind, though she was sharp as a tack, she didn&#39;t want him to see her sick. She wanted him to see her happy and healthy. Though I don&#39;t understand the logic in it but I&#39;ll speak about it below. In her mind, she wanted to not present as weak for better or for worse. Because they focused so much on flowers, paintings, and animals; I&#39;ll use the latter as an example. Both cats and dogs do this, when they know they are in the last stages of their lives, they tend to leave their homes and owners, they just want to go on their own quietly. Of course as humans, we want to be there for them and say a proper goodbye. So in that sense, HR was like a cat running away so her human could remember her in her prime, while not really considering or understanding the human&#39;s or XH&#39;s need to be with her, nurture, and take care of her even when he had no idea what was going on. That&#39;s the best way I could describe how I felt about the two sets of breakups. Also though she broke up with him the second time, she still was ridiculously jealous of him even talking to another woman, which showed her internal tug of war with whether to tell him the truth or just keep pushing him away. Thankfully he solved that one for her. The last two episodes, I think were very beautifully done. Though he had to put the puzzle pieces together himself and we don&#39;t actually know how much time passed between the gorgeous wedding he gave her in his hometown and her passing away in his arms in the snow. I&#39;d like to think they had sometime together to live in between. I love how the mom smartened up and gave her blessing and finally just let go. The extra scene after the ending credits I think was his dream where they always meet in that field of his favorite flowers in front of the building he proposed in; it&#39;s forever their very special place. I know many people cried but to me death is just the next step that a soul takes in order to return home. And most importantly, she&#39;s now pain free and can come to XH in his dreams in the best of health. She&#39;s waiting for him now instead as before it was the opposite. Their chemistry, for me didn&#39;t start right away. Though he claimed he already had feelings for her when they met, I didn&#39;t feel anything for real until their first intimate scene in Ep. 9. Even after, all the scenes, cut or not, I have to say that real love and the feeling of it came with the cut scene in 17 when he says the words. They cared for each other and the make out sessions were well placed, but it wasn&#39;t until he uttered the words himself that I understood, that he understood it himself. I put this in the pros instead of cons because I felt prior to that, it was more on a physical level of things; nothing wrong with that. And I liked the development of his understanding of his own feelings as it builds his character. Other characters I liked were Mr. Han, Fatty, the hotel chick that was related to SML, I really liked SML, even HR&#39;s roommates. Not one person in the entire series made it an issue of the leads many differences and that was beyond refreshing. C-dramas are known to always point out differences like they&#39;re the plague and then create an entire show around how everyone has to learn to grow and accept them instead of just being like &quot;yeah, so what?&quot; Cons: The secondary couple, they were definitely more of a filler as I never really felt from mom the same passion or longing as from SML. It seemed like he put all the effort into the relationship which even didn&#39;t quite feel completed at the end. Were they really necessary? This show didn&#39;t need to turn the original into an older woman/younger man thing just because that&#39;s a trope very frequently used. Should have left well enough alone. Even though mom explained she suffered from insomnia and anxiety, her symptoms present as PTSD that induces the other two. I wish they explained that more as to the reason she was essentially the jailer of her own daughter in the beginning of the series. As someone who suffers from all three but for different reasons, if you&#39;re going to go with the diagnosis, at least do the proper research on it because what she was actually experiencing was totally different from her explanations. You&#39;ve already got Leukemia in the picture, which I&#39;m unsure they researched properly either, might as well be as realistic as possible. I&#39;ll be honest, I wasn&#39;t a fan of the FL in the beginning at all, though she pursued ML like to the point of almost stalking, she didn&#39;t even act 20 but more like a high schooler; the baby voice at times, pouting in others, the way she walked and the things she said, just didn&#39;t jive with this very smart woman we saw as the show progressed. I really wish this was one trope they could permanently get rid of in c-dramas. Why was the character of Han Yu even there? That dude lived in his own world literally until the last episode. It was quite funny that even his uncle was like &quot;I don&#39;t like him&quot; because he was this narcissistic, annoying as nails spoiled, delusional brat. I never felt sorry for him, I just wanted him to go away. He added a layer to this series it didn&#39;t need. I&#39;d rather have the cut scenes over his entire character. Personally not a fan of characters hiding health conditions from their loved ones and going as far as breaking up. That second break up, I completely skipped over. Some people may agree and that&#39;s fine but I don&#39;t because I&#39;ve got a plethora of health issues, one of which if it would relapse most likely then not lead me to seeing my guardian angels early, I would never keep something like that from someone. While I don&#39;t want them to suffer, I would want them to have that choice since I decided to make them a part of my life (this could mean significant other, family, or close friends). The fact that she eradicates that choice for him the second time around given their strong love, is something I do not and cannot agree with. Would I recommend it? Absolutely. Despite the sad ending, it&#39;s a drama that you would most likely see in the west not in c-drama land. Give it a chance, it deserves it. You&#39;re basically watching a work of art so don&#39;t just look at the surface details, because inside are where the real flowers bloom.

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The Forbidden Flower

First of all, do not let the title of this drama take you &quot;there&quot;. I don&#39;t know why its rated 16+ or for mature audiences. I watched it on Amazon Prime and this is PG13 at best and I don&#39;t know why the other review says &quot;sexy&quot;. Let&#39;s say the one or two scenes in the entire series show them completely covered and it&#39;s not raunchy or anything like that. This is a love story about a younger woman in her early 20&#39;s who pursues an older guy, perhaps 40. She&#39;s not looking for a fling, she wants his whole heart, and he is reluctant, obviously because of the age difference. He is one of the kindest, most gentle and humble souls out there. She comes from a wealthier family, and he is not. The soundtrack is beautiful, my favorites are &quot;The One&quot;, &quot;Love Again&quot;, and &quot;Lucid Dream&quot;. If you are looking for a nice and clean love story, this is it. You won&#39;t be disappointed.

It&#39;s quite literally taken my breath away. I binge K-drama non-stop. Every Day. I temporarily ran out of series to watch and decided to take a risk on this. I&#39;ve watched a couple of minutes of Chinese drama before, but the accents/voices really threw me. They take a little bit of getting used to. Fortunately, I got somewhat used to it in this series. K-drama die-hards may have a hard time with this opinion, but Forbidden Flower is quite possibly more romantic than Something In the Rain and Crash Landing On You. There, I said it. I like that they can have PDA in public. With K-dramas, I get so frustrated when couples just stand and look at each other and don&#39;t even hug. Drives me nuts! This gave me relief from that. LOL! EVERYTHING is beautiful about this show. The music, the scenery, the lighting. Very ethereal and dreamy. The music was outstanding! K-drama music is pretty lacking. I would have Something in the Rain on repeat if it weren&#39;t for the extremely repetitive, strange musical theme. I don&#39;t want country music in a K-drama! LOL! The romance in the K-dramas makes me happy, but the romance in this one just had me outright crying. I like that I didn&#39;t have to think too hard--except trying to keep a couple of guys straight in my mind. They look similar. The series is 24 episodes, but it goes fast with each episode only 45 minutes. 3 things not quite right--calling it a winter/summer romance. PLEASE. Everyone is young. Also, the mother&#39;s romance storyline was very underdeveloped. I felt like I had fallen asleep at some point or skipped an episode and missed details. Finally, this drama was more realistic than K-dramas in that the ending was pretty hard. Buy tissues. I will say no more.

If you like choppy editing, poor directing and
musical montages galore, you&#39;ve found the right drama! We have very twilight-esque romance in that it&#39;s super intense. That was done well but I have some creative differences with the director. There were far too many, even back to back, musical montages during the last few episodes. What&#39;s worse, those scenes didn&#39;t advance the story any. It felt like the episodes were originally meant to be one hour because so many places seemed to have scenes cut. That made it hard to understand why characters behaved a certain way. Additionally, the English translation on Viki was very rigid. People&#39;s sentences were coming out like lines from a novel rather a script. Finally, some really dramatic scenes that we should have gotten to see instead of endless closeups of people staring:
Mom and ML actually getting into it and subsequently forgiving, IN PERSON. HeRan discovers mom with SML. Whether she reacted positively or not, what was the point of introducing that romance and then NEVER having it cross paths with HeRan. The lady only even saw her daughter once in the last 10 episodes. Both of those scenarios could have even been fulfilled with a funeral scene with, you guessed it, a musical montage featuring everyone in one place, mom holding hands with SML. That would have at least implied that everyone knew about everyones relationship. Finally, the death scene was beautifully done although it seemed to come out of the blue since the makeup dept forgot to make her look end stage and the editing department didn&#39;t tell us how much time had passed since she got on that plane. I thought he was trying to die with her :( Now below are the notes I made after watching the first 13 or 14 eps and comparing it to a kdrama. I was on cloud nine and every thing was perfect with this drama. (The last 2 points became completely untrue.) -It&#39;s Jung So Min and Lee Min Ho! -No food slurping -Did the accidental kiss RIGHT! -The girl was 100% adorable and didnt have to saved every five seconds. She fell first and was not shy about showing it. -There was a lot of showering! -I thought the guy was brooding for far too long but that just made his changing far more organic and pronounced. Wouldn&#39;t change a thing! -The second romance came out of nowhere and I was skeptical at first but it was a genius move to keep the butterflies flying. (x) A few slow motions were overly dramatic but it was more emotional instead of artistic (think, no slow CEO power walks) (x) Slowmance but not frustratingly so.

User reviews

The Forbidden Flower

Everyone Needs a bit of Sexy in their Lives

Beautiful But Slow

Holy crap this was beautiful! I'm going to give K-drama comparisons here.

I'm Rating High Despite My Gripes - WATCH IT!

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