New York Asian 2021 Review: SINKHOLE, Disaster Comedy Struggles to Dig Itself Out
When a new genre catches on in Korean cinema, it tends to proliferate pretty quickly, but before audiences grow tired of it, filmmakers try to find new ways to freshen things up. Take the disaster film. A perennial favourite at...
Australia Korean Fest 2021: End of Lockdown Brings Major Genre-fuelled Hallyu Wave
Assuming COVID lock-down ends in Australia (good luck Sydney), the long-standing always quality Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) may provide some excellent in-cinema viewing in Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane this September. Assuming of course that lock-down actually ends, as...
Busan 2020 Review: SPEED OF HAPPINESS Delivers Soothing Snapshot of a Unique Profession
Documentary filmmaker Park Hyuck-jee, known for the charming documentary With or Without You, is back with his latest non-fiction work, his first to be invited to Busan. Set in the mountainous Oze region of Central Japan, the pleasurable and satisfying...
Busan 2020 Review: FIGHTER, Compelling Character Study Winds Up Pulling Its Punches
After opening the festival in 2018 with Beautiful Days, director Jero Yun returned to Busan this year with his second narrative feature Fighter, which once again focuses on a North Korean defector's difficult experience adjusting in South Korea, and how...
Busan 2020 Review: SELF-PORTRAIT 2020, Long yet Riveting Odyssey of a Drunk Savant
I'll admit I went into Self-Portrait 2020 with a fair amount of trepidation. Here is a nearly three-hour documentary that follows a man who has given up on life, turned to the bottle and now roams the streets of Central...
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Busan 2020 Review: STEEL RAIN 2: SUMMIT Dives into Thrilling and Surprisingly Funny Geopolitical Waters
Released three years, ago, the geopolitical action-thriller Steel Rain was a solid success on the charts but one that was completely overshadowed by two films that hit theaters within a fortnight of its release, Along with the Gods: The Two...
Busan 2020 Review: YOUNG ADULT MATTERS, An Explosive and Frequently Engrossing Runaway Teen Drama
Three years after his abrasive debut Park Hwa-young, director Lee Hwan returns to Busan with Young Adult Matters, an intense and frequently engrossing follow-up set in the same world of foul-mouthed, unpredictable and violent runaway teens. While it inherits many...
Busan 2020 Review: DELIVER US FROM EVIL, A Slick and Undemanding Action-Thriller Romp
It's hard being an assassin, especially when you take your work home with you. Even more so when that work turns out to be the psycho brother of your last target, who's chased you to a foreign country where you're...
Busan 2020 Review: SNOWBALL Gently Strikes with Familiar but Well-Told Tale
A wide variety of films find their way to the Busan Film Festival every year, but one thing you can always count on is the polished, youth-driven social indie that has become the de-facto Korean indie template, at least on...
Busan 2020 Review: A LEAVE, Responsibilities Clash in Compelling Character Study
Given that it successfully ousted a president after months of mass protests, which peaked with well over two million participants, it should perhaps come as little surprise that Korea is a country where protesting is widespread. For many it's an...
Busan 2020 Review: VESTIGE Ponders the Ineffable with Grace and Mystery
Two Korean masters of arthouse cinema join forces for one of Busan's most intriguing offerings this year. Commissioned by the Muju Film Festival, Vestige features two mid-length films from Kim Jong-kwan (Worst Woman) and Jang Kun-jae (A Midsummer's Fantasia), which...
WHISPERING CORRIDORS 6 to Open 24th BiFan
2020 has been a long, strange and difficult year but for genre film afficionados in Korea, at least the high point of their calendar will be returning this summer as the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan) has just announced...
Now Streaming: GOODNIGHT MOMMY Chills to the Bone
Directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, the horror-mystery, now streaming on Shudder, stars Lukas Schwarz, Elias Schwarz and Susanne Wuest.
This July Is Heating Up At Arrow Video With INFERNO OF TORTURE, BLOODSTONE, ZOMBIE FOR SALE, & BLACK RAINBOW
Arrow Video has cooked up one hell of a treat for cult movie fans this July with a quartet of impressive looking releases for some highly sought after films, and in this case, collectors from all of Arrow's territories can...
ScreenAnarchy's Top Ten Films of 2019
As 2019 comes to an end, ScreenAnarchy’s global team of critics and cineastes weighs in with our favourite cinematic offerings from the past 12 months, which saw Netflix lead the charge for cementing the legitimacy of the streaming platforms, while...
Review: PARASITE, Complex and Seamless, A Triumph Through and Through
For every Host, there must be a Parasite. Since his debut Barking Dogs Never Bite 19 years ago, Bong Joon-ho's works have always resisted easy classification. Within stories that stray from one genre to the next, surprising things tend to...
Australia Korean Fest 2019: Celebrating Ten Years of KOFFIA
The Korean Film Festival in Australia (KOFFIA) celebrates ten years this year, powered by the Cultural Office, the festival is a wonderful initiative to showcase not only great films, but promote Korean culture as a whole. With exciting special guests...
BiFan 2019 Review: THE 12TH SUSPECT, Stagey Mystery Explores Oppressive History
This year's BiFan came to a close with a trip back to the Japanese Occupation Era in the whodunnit The 12th Suspect. Kim Sang-kyung leads a cast filled with indie cinema stalwarts in a tense single location murder mystery that...
BiFan 2019 Review: FILM ADVENTURE, Well-Performed Drama Less Exciting Than Its Title Suggests
The accomplished young actor Cho Hyun-chul returns to screens as a neurotic actor who embarks on a pensive journey peppered by unusual encounters after a row with his girlfriend in Film Adventure, the second feature film by Lee Sang-deok, following...
BiFan 2019 Review: ALL ABOUT MY RIVAL IN LOVE, Style and Kooky Lead Jazz Up Familiar Story
Five years after bursting onto to the scene with his kinetic debut Alice in Earnestland, a feature graduation project from the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) which earned the top Korean film prize at the Jeonju International Film Festival...
