This Silver Berlin Bear winner is one of the great tear-jerking melodramas from the Golden Age of Korean cinema, depicting the struggles of a working-class family as they find their self-respect and dignity constantly being attacked.
A minor work from Hong, though this time he shifts his primary focus to women-centered conversations which act as a collective bubble that shields them from the annoying intrusions of men.
A solid WWII melodrama by the great Korean master Kim Ki-young about an impossible romance between a Korean soldier forced to serve the Japanese imperial army, and a Japanese woman with radical thinking of her own.
Bong Joon-ho wildly entertains in this high-concept sci-fi picture about survival and class issues that features a high-speed train hurtling through an apocalyptic world.
One of the highest peaks of contemporary K-horror, this is a precise and complexly-layered piece of filmmaking, marked by unbearable suspense, effectively creepy scares and a poignant backstory.
Continue reading →A strange if beautifully-shot work by Kim Ki-young about how myths might operate in the modern world.
Continue reading →Im Sang-soo fashions a sexually-explicit drama about a disintegrating family that doesn’t quite work in a meaningful way, but its playful nature might prove charming for less demanding audiences.
Crafted with operatic scale and striving for an epic-ness that its subject matter necessitates, but ultimately feels overdrawn to work powerfully.
If South Korean vengeance movies are your thing, this extremely violent and misogynistic flick might just scare you away.
Continue reading →One of the classic Korean cinema’s most adored works – this is a tale of lust, greed and revenge.
