Tag: busan
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 2022 Review: CONNECT Sees Miike Takashi Trade J-Horror for K-Drama
Miike Takashi becomes the first Japanese director to dip his toe into the ever-expanding world of K-dramas, helming all six episodes of Disney’s upcoming fantasy horror series Connect. Adapted from Shin Daesung’s webtoon of the same name, this ghoulishly entertaining...
Busan 2022 Review: BONES AND ALL, An All-Consuming Adolescent Love Story
Timothée Chalamet reunites with his Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino for another unconventional romance, the cannibal road movie Bones And All, adapted from Camille DeAngelis’ award-winning 2016 novel of the same name. Chalamet is just one of...
Busan 2022 Review: BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS, Pretentious but oh so Pretty
It has been seven years since Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s last film, the epic western The Revenant, which scored him his second consecutive Best Director Oscar after winning for Birdman the previous year. Considering the subject matter of his...
Busan 2020 Review: COALESCE Shows Cambodia as a Land Compromised by Opportunity
Three young men look to forge their own paths in the fast-developing Kingdom of Cambodia in French filmmaker Jessé Miceli’s keenly observed debut feature. Employing non-professional actors and an entirely Cambodian cast, what follows is a coherent and engaging story...
Busan 2020 Review: In THREE, Soviet Rule Made Monsters Of Everyone
A police intern becomes the lead investigator in one of the most gruesome and notorious murder cases in modern history, in Ruslan Pak's bleak and introspective new thriller. Inspired by the true story of Kazakh serial killer and cannibal Nikolai...
DEMONS: Take A First Look A Daniel Hui's Berlin Selected Dark Satire
Singpore director Daniel Hui wades right in to the thick of the debate around sexual politics, manipulation and abuse of power with his new feature Demons. Following a successful bow at the Busan International Film Festival the film has now...
SMALLER AND SMALLER CIRCLES: Watch The Gripping Trailer For Busan Selected Thriller
A Jesuit priest may not seem like the most obvious leader of a criminal investigation but that is exactly where Raya Martin turns with his Filipino thriller Smaller And Smaller Circles. About to have its world premiere in Busan, Screen...
Toronto 2015 Review: COLLECTIVE INVENTION Asks The Right Questions, But Has None Of The Answers
Wrapping a raft of social issues plaguing modern Korean society into a simple allegory, Collective Invention, a quirky new comedy-drama with dashes of the same humor found in Bong Joon-ho's work, is a succinct but relatively straightforward affair. The setting...
Busan 2014 Review: A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION Is David Lynch Meets Hong Sangsoo
Following his terrific debut Romance Joe (2011), Lee Kwang-kuk is back in Busan with A Matter of Interpretation, a breathless play on dream logic with smart plotting and a great script that proves he's no fluke, and then some. Frustrated...
Busan 2014 Review: DAUGHTER Explores The Ills Of Modern Korean Parenting
Following a pair of indulgent films that awkwardly straddled the balance between fantasy and reality, the multi-hyphenate Ku Hye-sun, a well known actress, singer and artist as well as director, returns with Daughter, her most mature work to date. An...
Busan 2014 Review: GIFTED Takes An Interesting Turn Before Veering Off Course
Taking its cue from the common social grievances often found in Korean indie dramas, Gifted, the sophomore effort of Poongsan (2011) helmer Jung Jai-hung, examines the friction between unemployment and consumerist ambitions in modern Korea. Slight and familiar, the film...
Toronto 2014 Review: Epic And Austere, ALIVE Depicts Dark Days For Korean Laborers
Incessantly grim and pushing the three-hour mark, indie helmer Park Jung-bum's Alive is about as challenging a sophomore work as anyone could have dreamt up. And this from a man who debuted with the ferociously bleak The Journals of Musan...
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Berlinale 2014 Review: SPROUT's Short and Sweet Seoul Odyssey
A little girl's trip to the market becomes a charming journey through modern Korea in Yoon Ga-eun's delightful short film Sprout, which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival last October. Korean indie cinema often makes a point of demonstrating...
Busan 2013 Review: The Devastating HAN GONG-JU Is A Hidden Gem
What is it that drives us to the cinema, time and again? What are we looking for when we enter a theater and the lights begin to fade? In answering that question you will often come across the words entertainment...
Busan 2013 Review: MISS VIOLENCE Is The Hardest Watch Of The Year
There is something terrifying about the uncanny nature of Miss Violence, a film that exists in mundane reality but for its attributes is very much alien to our world.A Greek household reacts so strangely to the sudden suicide of their...
Busan 2013: Tarantino Declares BIG BAD WOLVES Best Film Of The Year
Yesterday in a regular screening of Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado's Israeli thriller Big Bad Wolves, Quentin Tarantino, who had popped into Busan to have a chat with Bong Joon-ho, was in attendance. Sitting mere seats away from me, we...
Busan 2013 Review: EINSTEIN AND EINSTEIN Is A Searing Generational Indictment
Einstein And Einstein is a smart and assured cinematic drama from mainland China that is rife with underlying politics and cutting-edge metaphors.When thirteen year old Li Wan (an incredible performance from Zhang Xueying) rebels against her estranged father for lying...
Busan 2013 Review: ROUGH PLAY Reveals The Darkest Ego
Rough Play had its world premiere at Busan this week, and for a film with a commercial K-Pop heartthrob lead Lee Joon, you can certainly tell it was penned by Kim Ki-duk. The official synopsis pitches the film as a...
Busan 2013 Review: STRANGER BY THE LAKE Explores An Uncanny Attraction
It is hard to know exactly where to begin when it comes to discussing Alain Guiraudie's psychosexual thriller Stranger by the Lake. Direct from Cannes, this controversial film was strangely given an R18+ rating and uncut in more conservative places...
