Exquisitely shot and not without its dense subject matter, Im’s transcendent film is a masterful look at secularism and asceticism from a bold, singular lens of Buddhism.
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Exquisitely shot and not without its dense subject matter, Im’s transcendent film is a masterful look at secularism and asceticism from a bold, singular lens of Buddhism.
A confident debut feature as this poignant drama about two Korean childhood sweethearts who meet again as adults in New York will likely work the tearducts.
Intentionally shot out of focus, Hong’s impressionistic and ‘painterly’ new work about an actor-turned-director in search of an idea to shoot a short film doesn’t always work, but its meta-filmic final act is sublime.
Some may feel Hong’s doing something different here—it’s more self-introspective and structurally liminal, but also slower and more meandering than usual as a film director brings his daughter to visit an old friend who might offer her career advice.
Song Kang-ho is superb in this highly-engaging mainstream drama based on the dark history that was the 1980 Gwangju Uprising as a taxi driver unwittingly brings a German reporter to the site.
A Korean adopted by a French couple when she was a baby returns to Korea for the first time as a French woman in Davy Chou’s intimate if chastening third feature, backed by an excellent performance from Park Ji-min in her acting debut.
A more melancholic piece than some of Hong’s breezier offerings as he explores fictive ideals and sad realities through the idea of cinema as a mirror image.
A promising and polished debut feature, this Singapore-Korean co-production has earnestness in abundance even if the storytelling doesn’t quite offer anything markedly revelatory.
An outrageously fun kimchi western for the ages, this is one of the most accomplished action films from South Korea.
Park’s latest Cannes winner charts an alluringly new direction for him—a layered if at times convoluted crime procedural that hides an elusive romantic drama about the perverse relationship between a conflicted investigator and a seductive murder suspect.