Tag: 곤지암
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...
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...
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,...
Busan 2023 Review: RANSOMED, Overseas Korean Action-Comedy Bromance Hits the Right Beats
Kim Seong-hun and Ha Jung-woo, the director-actor combo who gave us Tunnel, reunite for the second time on the winning buddy action-comedy Ransomed, the latest in a series of high-profile films based on recent real-life stories featuring Korean characters gallivanting...
Friday One Sheet: DEEP SEA 深海
Summer Cottages. Summer Dreams. Tian Xiaopeng's animated film has already played in its domestic Chinese market. It is currently touring on the global festival circuit, from Berlin to Tribeca to Neuchâtel, and soon, Fantasia. The international and festival poster is an...
Busan 2022 Review: THE DREAM SONGS, Moving and Marvelous Portrait of Teen Friendship
For the past half a dozen years or so, some of the very best debut Korean films have chronicled friendships between young girls. Filled with the fleeting excitement of youth and the complex, mutable feelings that underpin the process of...
Busan 2022 Review: A WILD ROOMER, Wry and Stimulating Character Study Delights
Screening in the Busan International Film Festival's signature New Currents competition section, A Wild Roomer, the delightfully droll debut of director Lee Jeong-hong, is a refreshing character study that unfurls around a minor mystery. The film begins much as it...
Busan 2022 Review: THE POLICEMAN'S LINEAGE, Korean Thriller Delivers Slick Package
When you've been deprived of something for an extended period of time, anything that comes close to the real McCoy starts to look a little better than it did before. That may well apply to The Policeman's Lineage, director Lee...
Busan 2022 Review: NEXT SOHEE, Bae Doona Shines in July Jung's Memorable Slowburn
Good things come to those who wait, and so it is with Next Sohee, the blunt and powerful new film from director July Jung, which bowed at the Cannes Film Festival this spring, following eight years after her sensational debut,...
Friday One Sheet: CHOROKBAM
Is the man smoking a cigarette while his ride waits, or is he about to be hit by a moving vehicle? This festival poster, designed by the director of the film, Yoon Seo-jin, for the Busan International Film Festival, captures...
Busan 2021 Review: HEAVEN: TO THE LAND OF HAPPINESS, An Infectious Return to Form for Im Sang-soo
The Busan International Film Festival puts a strong first foot forward this year with its tightly paced and effortlessly entertaining opening film Heaven: To the Land of Happiness, marking a return to form for director Im Sang-soo. Ace Korean cinema...
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...
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...
