Festivals: Busan IFF
Busan 2024 Review: THE KILLERS, Lee Myung-se Masterminds Gleefully Cinematic Hemingway and Noir-Inspired Anthology
Some 17 years ago, viewers were both maddened and mesmerized by the tactile fever dream that was M, a cornucopia of sound and motion that is, for the moment, Lee Myung-se's last feature-length testament to the cinema medium he so...
Busan 2024 Review: THE FINAL SEMESTER, Youth Enters the Workforce in Empathetic Korean Indie
Four years after her layered character study A Leave, director Lee Ran-hee returns to the Busan International Film Festival with her sophomore film The Final Semester, a film that also examines the professional struggles of the trade-bound working class. While...
Busan 2024 Review: THE LAND OF MORNING CALM, Grim Coastal Drama Offers Satisfying Character Portrait
Following his intriguing debut The Girl on a Bulldozer, which screened at the Busan International Film Festival in 2021, directed Park Ri-woong returns to the festival with the New Currents competition title The Land of Morning Calm. Set far away...
Busan 2024 Review: KIKE WILL HIT A HOME RUN, and So Does This Kaurismaki-esque Korean Indie Delight
Possibly the highlight among the new Korean Indies on show at the Busan International Film Festival this year (though this critic hasn't quite seen everything yet), Kike Will Hit a Home Run is a quirky, charming and assured follow-up from...
UPRISING to Tear Open the 29th Busan Film Festival
Uprising, the highly anticipated period action film produced and co-written by Park Chan-wook, has been set as the opening film of this year's 29th Busan International Film Festival, which is set to open its doors on October 2. Closing the...
Busan 2023 Review: ALI TOPAN, Young Lovers On the Run in Spirited Adaptation of Seventies Romance
A rich girl and a street punk fall in love and run away together in Sidharta Tata’s polished adaptation of Teguh Esha's beloved novel Ali Topan Anak Jalanan, which was previously brought to the screen in the 1977 movie of...
Busan 2023 Review: DEADLAND, Where Nothing Actually Stays Dead Forever
Roberto Urbina, Chris Mulkey, Julio Cesar Cedillo and Luis Chavez star in a Western thriller, directed by Lance Larson.
Busan 2023 Review: GREEN NIGHT, Gloomy Feminist Noir Promises More Than It Delivers
Fan Bingbing and Lee Joo Young star in a road movie about women, directed by Han Shuai.
Busan 2023 Review: THE KILLER, the Style is the Substance in David Fincher's Clinically Executed Action Thriller
Michael Fassbender and David Fincher come together for a lone assassin thriller that glides off the screen with impeccable style and a simmering, slyly subversive wit that elevates it above the tried and tested conventions of this beloved action genre. ...
Busan 2023 Review: In CONCERNING MY DAUGHTER, LGBT and Generational-Divide Themes Drive Poignantly Acted Drama
The most promising title in this year's Korean Cinema Today-Vision program, the section dedicated to introducing new Korean filmmakers at the Busan International Film Festival, Concerning My Daughter follows a woman's uncomfortable relationship with her daughter's same-sex partner, who comes...
Busan 2023 Review: THAT SUMMER'S LIE, Teen Pregnancy Rears Its Complicated Head in Wry, Audacious, Surprising Debut
The lines between truth and fiction blur marvellously in the audacious New Currents competition title That Summer's Lie, the debut film of director Sohn Hyun-lok. Other slippery lines toed by this surprising tale include the one between childhood and adulthood...
Busan 2023 Review: EVIL DOES NOT EXIST Reveals a More Ominous Side to DRIVE MY CAR Director
Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi follows up his Academy Award winning Drive My Car with this sombre and deceptively chilling tale of urban sprawl’s encroachment upon a remote countryside community. Originally conceived as a video piece to accompany the music of composer...
Busan 2023 Review: POOR THINGS, a Ghoulish, Glorious Fairytale of Tongue Play and Female Empowerment
Equal parts Frankenstein and My Fair Lady, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Golden Lion winner Poor Things is a visually ravishing, disgracefully funny tale of sexual awakening and female empowerment. Adapted from the prize-winning novel by Alisdair Gray, this riotous romp stars Emma...
Busan 2023 Review: ADAGIO sees Rome Burn in Stefano Sollima's Operatic Crime Saga
Italian genre stylist Stefano Sollima returns to his homeland to complete his thematic “Roman Trilogy” that began with his debut ACAB - All Cops Are Bastards ( 2012) and continued in Suburra (2015) with the muscular and kinetic crime drama...
Busan 2023 Review: WORK TO DO, Downsizing Drama Examines Moral Quagmire of Middle Management
Caught between professional duty and personal responsibility, a young man navigates through a maze of grey with a spinning moral compass in the compelling debut Work to Do from director Park Hong-jun. Jun-hee is a diligent young man, now in...
Busan 2023 Review: HERITAGE, Korea's Generational and Social Divides Under the Loop in Ruminative Indie
What sort of a world has the older generation left behind for the incoming one, how do they expect them to navigate it, and what do they anticipate in return? These questions and more concerning the uneasy ties that bind...
Busan 2023 Review: FAQ, A Young Girl's Surprising Journey Takes a Sci-Fi Turn
The intense and at times faintly ridiculous extremes of Korea's private education system are laid bare in the disarming fantasy satire FAQ. Morse code and Farsi language classes are just some of the things an elementary school girl is forced...
Busan 2023 Review: HOUSE OF THE SEASONS, Evocative Family Drama Introduces Us to New Visual Talent
Oh Jung-min channels Kore-eda Hirokazu's Still Walking in his lyrical debut House of the Seasons. The film chronicles several difficult seasons in the life of a rural family, as the pull between tradition and modernity threatens to tear them apart....
Busan 2023 Review: AT THE END OF THE FILM, Hypnotic if Overlong Snapshot of Korean Indie Sector in Crisis
Director Ahn Sun-kyoung returns with her fourth and most ambitious work, At the End of the Film, screening in the Jiseok competitive section at the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), ten years after her terrific sophomore film Pascha won the...
Busan 2023 Review: 24 HOURS WITH GASPAR Brings Hardboiled Detective Sci-Fi to South East Asia
South East Asia is not the region you'd typically come to looking for science fiction thrills, but Indonesian director Yosep Anggi Noen looks to change all that with his fast-paced, dystopian detective thriller 24 Hours with Gaspar, which premiered tonight...
