Korean

Returning home and finding his town drastically changed, a former soldier falls in with gangsters.Read More »

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The final completed film by Kim, one of the foremost directors of South Korea’s golden age, this gender-flipped take on Patricia Highsmith’s novel Strangers on a Train sees two women (one of them, Minari’s Youn Yuh-jung) make a deal to bump off one another’s spouses, who are guilty of neglect and infidelity.Read More »

A solitary woman re-evaluates her isolated existence after her neighbor dies alone in his apartment.Read More »

From modernkoreancinema.com
The burden of expectation can sometimes be a heavy weight to bear and after a little too much of it, many films simply crumble. In 2009, an indie Korean film clocking in at three and a half hours began to make the rounds of the festival circuit and attracted some very positive attention. After a full year screening at various events it was finally accorded a domestic release in late December 2010 but, like the vast majority of independent features, it failed to find an audience in Korea. A number of people (myself included) patiently awaited its DVD release but it never came… until now. After premiering at the Busan Film Festival in October 2009, Café Noir was finally released on DVD in June 2012. While I can’t say exactly why the wait for the disc was so long, I can, to some extent, understand it.Read More »

Kinema Junpo Annual Top Ten of 1990

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Kaoru, a highschool boy, falls in love with a girl, Sonoko, a leading member of his high-school’s swimming club. Though he cannot swim at all, he joins the swimming club to win her heart.Read More »

In a small Korean province in 1986, two detectives struggle with the case of multiple young women being found raped and murdered by an unknown culprit.Read More »

It begins with a cough in the darkness. It ends with barricades, guns and threats of war. In between, there is worse – but that’s ‘flu for you. It’s the risk we all face.

An epidemic movie made in South Korea is a very different proposition from the sort of thing we’re used to in the West, whether it’s Perfect Sense or [film]28 Days Later[film]. Hot and humid for much of the year, surrounded by places where humans, pigs and chickens live side by side, its gleaming cities are likely first targets for any major outbreak of disease, and we’re still at least five years away from a universal ‘flu vaccine. Facing this very real threat, it’s unsurprising that the country’s filmmakers have no time for the nonsense that Hollywood likes to deliver on this subject. There’s melodrama and oodles of sentiment, but the science is (mostly) strong, the protocols realistic, the brutality of its scenario unapologetic.Read More »

The process of excavating an ominous grave unleashes dreadful consequences buried underneath.Read More »

“Die Bad” is an inventive feature made up of four distinct episodes, each with their own style. With their criss-crossing characters and themes, they add up to a fairly comprehensive account of the causes and effects of male aggression, both tribal and individual.Read More »