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...
LOVE IN THE BIG CITY Review: BFFs Kim Go-eun and Noh Sang-hyun Shine in Big Screen Marvel
Sometimes a film comes along and blindsides when you least expect it. The sublime surprise Love in the Big City is just such a film, enriching the landscape of Korean cinema in a year that has quietly seen low-key films...
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...
BiFan 2024 Review: DEATH SONG, Colonial-Era Romance Sings a Lush, Eye-Poppingly Melodramatic Tune
Kim Ho-sun, one of the key directors of 1970s cinema, returned to the spotlight in the early 1990s with the sprawling period romantic epic Death Song, about the torrid affair between Korea's first professional soprano and a playwright during Korea's...
BiFan 2024 Review: THE TENANTS, Freaky Korean Real Estate Horror Allegory Lingers in the Mind
Real estate woes, job security anxiety and social inequality, all neatly packed into a metaphorical dystopia. No doubt about it, The Tenants is definitely a Korean film. Yet by providing a novel twist on its elements and staying true to...
BiFan 2024 Review: PIG THAT SURVIVED FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE, Grimy Korean Animation Offers Punchy Eco-Horror Parable
Hur Bum-wook announces himself as a talent to watch with his furious and deranged animated eco-horror parable Pig That Survived Foot-and-Mouth Disease. A cross between early Yeon Sang-ho animation works like The King of Pigs, Bong Joon-ho's Okja and Watership...
BiFan 2024 Review: BASE STATION, Paranoia Reigns in Dystopian Indie Sci-fi from Talent to Watch
After impressing many viewers and critics two years ago with his wildly original debut film The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra, Park Syeyoung returns to BiFan with his second feature, Base Station, which he co-directed with artist and filmmaker Yeon Yeji, who...
BiFan 2024 Review: IDIOT GIRLS AND SCHOOL GHOST: SCHOOL ANNIVERSARY, Lo-Fi Horror Comedy Lovingly Lampoons Far East Asian Horror Tropes
Combining The Ring and the Whispering Corridors series, the giants of J- and K-horror, and stirring the pot with tongue firmly planted in cheek, the low-budget horror spoof Idiot Girls and School Ghost: School Anniversary lovingly pokes fun at the...
LOVE LIES BLEEDING and TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIORS Bookend 28th BiFan, Festival to Launch AI Film Competition
This year's Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan) in Korea will open with Rose Glass' acclaimed romantic neo-noir thriller Love Lies Bleeding, while Soi Cheang's Cannes-premiered Hong Kong action-drama Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In will serve as the closing...
Udine 2024 Review: THEIR LAST LOVE AFFAIR, Lee Myung-se's Daring and Dazzling Tale of Illicit Romance
This year's Far East Film Festival is screening a large number of South Korean classics, including a full program dedicated to the country's fascinating 1950s output, such as Park Nam-ok's progressive drama The Widow, the first Korean film ever directed...
Udine 2024 Review: 12.12: THE DAY, Riveting Drama Brings Dark Episode of Korean History Into the Light
One of the final dark closets of modern Korean history gets thrown wide open in Kim Sung-soo's riveting historical drama 12.12: The Day. The film dramatises the coup d'état that took place in the wake of the assassination of President...
Udine 2024 Review: CITIZEN OF A KIND, A New Kind of Hero Rises in Delightful Female-Centric Vigilante Drama
If its films and dramas are to be believed, South Korea is a land teeming with vigilantes. They are typically brooding, sharply dressed and very attractive characters with dark pasts who mete out justice with brute strength or elaborate schemes,...
EXHUMA Review: Digs Up Ghoulish Thrills in Spades
In the smash hit Exhuma, four people dig a hole. Things don't turn out well - digging up corpses can do that - so they keep digging themselves in deeper. Unsurprisingly, things go from bad to worse. A rich Korean...
ScreenAnarchy's Top 10 Films of 2023
Hello all of you readers, and the best wishes for 2024 from all of us here at ScreenAnarchy! One of those best wishes is that we hope you will all see many good films. May our enjoyment of cinema be...
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: 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...
