Blog Archives

I Saw the Devil (2010)

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Posted on April 12, 2011 by Elizabeth Kerr

Director Kim Jee-woon and Lee Byung-hun are turning into Korea’s own Scorsese and De Niro. After flopping around the industry for a while and getting notice on and off for his interesting, if uneven, films (The Quiet Family, The Foul King), international audiences sat up and took note of Kim’s segment in the horror anthology Three. A year later A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) really made a splash. Imperfect though it was, Sisters had a … (read more)

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The Man From Nowhere (2010)

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Posted on April 8, 2011 by Elizabeth Kerr

Oh, you’ve seen this movie before, my friend. It’s Taken. It’s Man on Fire. It’s every movie ever made wherein a super-tough but fundamentally sensitive man with a mysterious, deadly and usually governmental past has to go on a bloody rampage to rescue a child — his own or one somehow close to him. The Man from Nowhere is that hoariest of tales, the one about the redemptive power of genuine affection as only children are able to … (read more)

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The Unjust (2010)

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Posted on April 7, 2011 by Elizabeth Kerr
Image from The Unjust

Director Ryoo Seung-wan has quickly made a name for himself as an action man; a director of a singular, urban, macho brand of thriller. Beginning with Die Bad (basically all about male aggression) and through Crying Fist (basically about male self-determination via the world’s most brutal sport) and The City of Violence (basically about male grief and the loss of fraternal trust), Ryoo could easily be referred to as the polar opposite of Pedro Almodovar: he’s a man’s director! I … (read more)

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Chaw (2009)

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Posted on August 15, 2010 by Justin

Chaw is an surprising little film to come out of Korea. It’s not a historical drama, nor a modern thriller, nor a huge piece of CGI-assisted melodrama like Haeundae, my last Korean film experience. It’s a proper monstrous-animal B-movie, and much of the buzz surrounding the film has compared it to Spielberg’s Jaws or the Aussie cult classic Razorback, also starring a gigantic boar. I cain’t think of another recent Korean film that’s gone for this particular genre, … (read more)

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Mother (2009)

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Posted on July 11, 2010 by Samson

Bong Joon-Ho is one of my favourite directors, and in my opinion, one of the world’s best directors working today. His works so far have covered a wide variety of different genres, ranging from the quirky social satire Barking Dogs Never Bite, to the memorable murder mystery Memories of Murder, to the monster masterpiece The Host. What impresses me the most about this director is his ability to tell stories, regardless of their genres, so incredibly well. … (read more)

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A Dirty Carnival (2006)

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Posted on April 28, 2010 by James

One of the best Korean gangster movies of the 2000s. Noted for the gritty, spontaneous look of its fight scenes, to me it’s also the interplay of conventional and reflexive elements that makes A Dirty Carnival stand above the excessively histrionic Friend, cute but daft jopok comedies like Marrying the Mafia and My Wife is a Gangster, the aesthetically appealing but shallow A Bittersweet Life and the largely unadventurous output of Ryu Seung-wan, among others.

Jo In-seoung, unbearably … (read more)

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The Chaser (2008)

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Posted on January 11, 2010 by James

Na Hong-jin’s incredibly assured feature debut is the best Korean crime movie since Memories of Murder. Upon release, The Chaser helped bring Korea’s domestic box office out of a half-year slump and for the first time since the arrival of Choi Dong-hoon (The Big Swindle) and Jang Jun-hwan (Save the Green Planet) announced a new genre auteur worth following.

From the first few opening moments it’s clear we’re in good hands. Aided by some wonderfully … (read more)

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This Charming Girl (2004)

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Posted on December 2, 2009 by James

Quite an assured debut that deservedly attracted plenty of attention for the director and star.

Kim Ji-soo received universal plaudits for her portrayal of a quiet postal worker dealing with the a pair of traumatic events in her past, one revealed early on (the death of her mother) and the other withheld until much later. The revelation of this second trauma is ultimately a letdown – unfortunately predictable given the intensity of the character study and the audacity of the … (read more)

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