Modern Korean Cinema

Capsule Review: MISSON: POSSIBLE, Slapdash Spy Action-Comedy Lacks Spark

noreply@blogger.com (conranp) — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 10:23:00 +0000

By Pierce Conran

Mission: Possible is a third-rate spy action-comedy starring Kim Young-kwang and Lee Sun-bin as a mismatched duo who both pretend to be NIS spies as they hunt down a group of gun smugglers. Despite threatening to, the film never quite edges into romcom territory, but given the lack of sparks between the leads, perhaps this was for the best.

I was having some harsh thoughts about this film during most of its running time. Partly due to the dodgy script, definitely owing to the weak cast, but especially since it looks so damn cheap.

While this is a mainstream film, it’s clearly near the bottom end of what qualifies as one. In the right hands, limitations are obstacles to be overcome. They are opportunities to show off creativity. Yet various elements of the production here, from the blocky and unimaginative camerawork to the slapdash costumes, made it clear that visual ingenuity wasn’t really on the cards today.

I will, however, concede that in its final third, when the film indulges in several bouts of comedy-infused martial arts, a modicum of life is finally breathed into the proceedings. Kudos to the props department, I guess. Did that save it? No. But it did make for a softer landing and went a long way towards alleviating the ill will I’d been fostering for it.

To keep up with the best in Korean film check out MKC's reviews and features, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

Capsule Review: HONEY SWEET, as Sweet as Promised

noreply@blogger.com (conranp) — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 04:26:00 +0000

By Pierce Conran

When we talk about Korean directors, Lee Han isn’t a name that comes up very often, but over the last 22 years, through eight films (including a few others he has written or produced), he has forged one of the most surprisingly consistent filmographies in the industry.

It was a pleasure to catch up with his latest confection, the delightful and easy-going romantic comedy Honey Sweet, in which he teams up with hit director Lee Byeong-heon (Extreme Job), who provided the script.

Yoo Hae-jin is goofy and endearing as a food chemist who can’t stop eating his company’s chips and during time off to recover, he strikes up a ‘mealpool’ friendship with Kim Heon-seon’s extremely gregarious single mother.

This is very formulaic stuff and broader than his best work, which is probably still Punch, but it’s hard to enjoy the film, thanks to its winning cast, the script's dry comedy and endless wordplay (not all of which translates comfortably, unavoidably), but especially Lee’s deceptively simple staging.

I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but the style of the film calls to mind the mood of many modern Korean classics. This isn’t as distinctive as a Park Chan-wook film but you can sense the fingerprints of that era of filmmaking all over this. Perhaps that makes it slightly old-fashioned, but I’ll take that over the blandly slick staging of modern films and dramas, many of which feel like they could have been made anywhere - stylistically, at any rate.

Also hard not to love the many amusing cameos.

To keep up with the best in Korean film check out MKC's reviews and features, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

Revew: MY NAME IS LOH KIWAN, Defector Drama Devolves into Misguided Romance and Crime Mashup

noreply@blogger.com (conranp) — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 00:16:00 +0000

By Pierce Conran

“My name is Loh Kiwan.”

There is confidence in that statement, but the same thing could not be said about the film for which it is the title. This is a film that has absolutely no clue what it wants to be. What begins as a serious and hard-hitting examination of the plight of a North Korean defector fending for himself in Brussels as he embarks on the long process of gaining asylum status soon devolves into a messy patchwork of different genre threads. By the end, the film has completely abandoned its hard-hitting social drama in favour of lumpy romance and gun-totting gangsters.

However, we don’t even have to wait for the switch to occur for the problems to begin manifesting themselves. Kicking off as a weighty drama, that revels in the miserable circumstances of its lead protagonist, this debut film by Director Kim Hee-jin is a laughably heavy-handed affair. Granted, thanks to its Netflix backing and the participation of top below-the-line talent (including the Oscar-winning editor and production designer of Parasite) it is a very handsome one and not just because of the presence of global superstar Song Joong-ki.

Song plays the titular Loh Kiwan, a North Korean defector who we first meet cleaning up his mother’s blood on a street in Northern China. We next meet Kiwan on a plane with a group of other defectors while he sneaks into Brussels with a fake passport as he attempts to seek asylum. The process proves slow and during the months he must wait for his court case he becomes a vagrant in a strange land, where he is preyed on by various characters, one of them being a South Korean woman who pickpockets his wallet, which contains his precious final memento of his late mother.

The production quality is so high, particularly in the Yanji sequences in China, that it almost offsets the dourness of the opening. However following the appearance of Kim Sung-eun as the pickpocket - who is an athletic sharpshooter turned drug addict - all its well-meaning social posturing goes out the window as the story devolves into a preposterous romance and a laughable saga of underworld sharpshooting gambling and gangsters in Belgium.

Song is fine in his role though tries a little too hard to deliver a serious performance, but he fares much better than Choi (who was terrific in the drama Beyond Evil) who is forced to muddle through the film’s weakest character.

As the film grows increasingly exasperating, even the most patient viewers will struggle to endure the film’s bloated 133-minute running time.

To keep up with the best in Korean film check out MKC's reviews and features, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

Review: EXHUMA Digs Up Ghoulish Thrills in Spades

noreply@blogger.com (conranp) — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 03:58:00 +0000

By Pierce Conran

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 family in LA fly in a pair of young shamans (Kim Go-eun and Lee Do-hyun) to solve their supernatural woes but when the pair connect the bizarre events to the family’s buried ancestor back in Korea, they return and team up with a grizzled geomancer (Choi Min-sik) and a wily undertaker (Yu Hae-jin) to dig up and burn the corpse and bring the supernatural happenings to an end.

While many have likened it to The Wailing, another Korean thriller featuring shamans and a mysterious Japanese connection that turned into a surprise box office hit, this third film from occult filmmaker Jang Jae-hyun is a far more straightforward affair. It’s a pulpy investigative thriller, spiked with gruesome images, and leavened by the banter traded by its popular stars, yet (ahem) dig beneath its well-tuned commercial attributes and you may also unearth something else.

Following his debut nine years ago, director Jang has churned out one of the most specific filmographies in mainstream Korean cinema. All his films deal with religion, death and the afterlife, harvesting the fear that sprouts forth from the unknowable connections between them. Each explores different faiths and practices in a way that makes them feel like cinematic manifestations of someone investigating various supernatural beliefs as he grapples with his own metaphysical questions.

Jang’s debut The Priests, an expansion of his short 12th Assistant Deacon, got the ball rolling by examining catholicism and the supernatural. Though as competent and hugely successful as it undoubtedly was, it was hard not to write it off as a Korean riff on The Exorcist. Perhaps we can imagine the first-time filmmaker as the young deacon, the novice exorcist portrayed by Gang Dong-won who is introduced to the world of the occult by a senior priest - Kim Yun-seok doing his best to channel Max von Sydow.

Investigative mystery-thriller Svaha: The Sixth Finger explored similar themes and yet it gave us something more original and exciting. It was also more sprawling and less focussed, which in turn may have had something to do with its lower grosses, though it is without question the better and bolder film. It feels like Jang wrote himself into the film, existing vicariously through Lee Jung-jae’s supernatural investigator, who immerses himself in the worlds of shamanism, Buddhism and catholicism as the idiosyncrasies of each faith fight for narrative real estate.

I’m not sure if any one character in Exhuma is the Jang stand-in. It could well be that he has inserted himself in pieces into the story through all of them. Though if pushed to choose one I would probably have to go with the undertaker, the most flawed and normal character in the quartet, as well as the one who most closely fits the role of observer.

While the comparisons to The Wailing are understandable, for me the Korean film it shares the most DNA with is Kim Jee-woon’s horror-comedy debut The Quiet Family. Now there’s a film with a lot of grave-digging, and just like Exhuma, the digging invariably leads to more problems. It also leads to the past. The Quiet Family alludes to generational trauma, including the oppressive atmosphere of Korea in the 1980s and the very recent IMF Crisis (at the time the film was made). Exhuma, led by characters who also share a family-like dynamic, stretches much further back with its exploration of historical trauma.

Yet while Exhuma surely features layers that are very important to Director Jang, for most viewers the film works as an exercise in mood and suspense and carefully doled out revelations. Given its fairly straightforward story, it’s on the long side at 135 minutes, but that’s not really an issue as the film’s six-chapter structure evokes the plotting of a modern streaming TV series. The episodic feel is most acutely felt about halfway through when the primary obstacle appears to have been overcome and the story winds down, only for a greater foe to suddenly emerge and kick things back into gear.

Stylistically the film comes alive in its set pieces, like the big ‘gut’ (shaman ritual) that takes place surprisingly early on, but if we are going to compare this to something like The Wailing, the visuals come up short. Rather than evocative and unsettling, the film’s horror is fun and superficial. A friend compared it to The Pope's Exorcist, a simple and delightful little occult time-passer from last year, and I’m inclined to agree.

Mid-budget thrillers have long been the bread-and-butter of the Korean film industry, beefing up its box office receipts when the going’s good and propping it up in its down periods and boy if there was ever a down period, we’re living it now. As this imperfect but thoroughly entertaining film makes its way to an enormous tally that will probably top ten million viewers (out of 50 million Korean residents) I hope that local studios remember that these are the films that give Korean cinema its charm and get people into multiplexes.

To keep up with the best in Korean film check out MKC's reviews and features, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

THE ROUNDUP: NO WAY OUT, Ma Dong-seok Knocks Out Crowd-Pleasing but Safe New Instalment

noreply@blogger.com (conranp) — Wed, 31 May 2023 00:17:00 +0000

By Pierce Conran

While The Roundup: No Way Out doesn't quite match the raw force of previous instalments Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee) packs a mighty punch once again as his burly big screen alter ego Ma Seok-do in the third of a promised eight ‘Crime City’ films (with some spin-offs touted to boot).

The jokes are there (in an even more abundant supply) and the punches are as thunderous as ever, but what this third film lacks is a compelling villain and the same calibre of colourful side characters. Lee Joon-hyuk is all cold stares and whispery baritones, and guest Japanese star Munetaka Aoki grows and slices his way through the screen, but both lack the charisma of Yoon Kye-sang or Son Sukku.

Meanwhile Ma’s detective squad, which has also changed this time around, doesn’t share quite the same level of banter. This is partly due to the fact that the new film takes place seven years after the last one (there may be a larger mythos at play here with five more films mapped out, but it's a somewhat confusing jump). Speaking of familiar faces, series standout Park Ji-hwan is also sorely missed.

The film is also missing a solid story as it relies on a flimsy case of crooked cops and yakuzas double-crossing each other in a drug deal that Detective Ma barrels into. It's lightweight to the point that it struggles to hold down your attention after a while.

Granted, these films aren’t remembered for their stories but what they do have is texture. Alas, this new outing doesn’t really have an answer to The Outlaws’ grungy Chinese-Korean neighbuorhoods or The Roundup's sun-drenched Vietnamese detour.

Quibbles aside, Ma remains a terrific lead, ably carrying what is now clearly a franchise on his massive shoulders. And given how everyone else in the Korean film and drama industry is trying to supersize everything with giant CGI budgets I love how slimmed-down this series still is (save for Ma’s arms, they’re as big as ever).

Korean theatres have been flooded with big-budget tentpoles for years now and I’ve never been convinced this was the right play. Let Hollywood do Hollywood and let the local industry do what it does best - mid-scale, crowd-pleasing genre fare.

I think local audiences will be a bit more forgiving than I was and all signs point to this being a behemoth and likely the year’s biggest local hit.

Looking forward to round 4 (though hoping for a marginal improvement)!

To keep up with the best in Korean film check out MKC's reviews and features, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

KILLING ROMANCE Will Make You Fall in Love with Korean Cinema All Over Again

noreply@blogger.com (conranp) — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 04:49:00 +0000

By Pierce Conran

Almost 20 years ago I walked into a theatre in Dublin, taking a chance on a strange-looking movie that no one had heard of. I was rewarded with one of the best cinema experiences of my life. I grinned from ear to ear from start to finish, as I laughed, and cried, and marvelled at the constant madcap ingenuity rocketing from the screen into my bewildered eyeballs. That film was Save the Green Planet.

I’ve been fruitlessly searching for that feeling ever since, until now.

Director Lee Won-suk debuted ten years ago with How to Use Guys with Secret Tips, a heady and infectious mix of kitsch, visual pizzazz and heart that would have reinvigorated the flagging Korean romcom genre, had anyone dared to follow his lead. But there’s no one quite like Lee and he’s had to blaze his own Technicolor trail ever since.

All the promise he showed in that debut has crystallised in his defining and deliriously entertaining third film Killing Romance, a glorious and abundant mix of absurd humour and karaoke musical, suffused with a love of B-moviedom and a beating heart, that gradually grows and grows until it leaps out from the screen, bearhugs you and sucks you right back in with it.

CONFESSION TIME - I spent an afternoon on the set of Killing Romance after I was invited to walk on for a bit role (it’s so small that people who know me haven’t even noticed me in the film). Does that colour my view of my film? Personally I don’t think so, but I leave it up to you whether you believe that or not. Right, moving on.

It’s the story of a fading actress suckered into a marriage with a tyrant, who teams up with her fan neighbour to free her from said husband. That simple synopsis has ample room to luxuriate in a few very clear themes, among them toxic masculinity, broken dreams and the lives of the marginalised living under the boot of society.

Local critics have had a very mixed response to the film, troublingly echoing the reactions to films like Save the Green Planet and Castaway on the Moon, box office bombs that would later be embraced as cult classics. Many have called it a Korean riff on Wes Anderson, as if the tweed suit cineaste had a monopoly on comedies that care about mise-en-scène.

There’s certainly some Anderson in there, but you could just as easily namecheck Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise, Bryan Fuller’s Pushing Daisies and the works of Seijun Suzuki, the list goes on, and still not be able to convey what the film does and more importantly what it feels like. Given its giddy love of cinema, visual inventiveness, heart-on-sleeve earnestness and willingness to break conventions, it provides an electric cinematic charge that is not unlike that given off by the films of S.S. Rajamouli. It’s as infectious as RRR, though perhaps more in step with his earlier film Eega.

Leading the cast are Lee Ha-nee, Lee Sun-kyun and Gong Myung in three utterly distinctive performances. An eye-opening Lee Ha-nee throws herself tooth and nail into the part of Hwang Yeo-rae, with a physical and emotional performance that draws our laughter and empathy in equal measure. Bright and wide-eyed, Gong Myung plays repeat college exam failer Bum-woo, who’s sincere love for Yeo-rae and ‘Yeoraeism’ wins us over almost instantly. And Lee Sun-kyun is a riot as the grand caricature Jonathan Na, a macho and moustachioed monster who saunters through the film’s colourful sets, lilting his way through his character’s bizarrely captivating Korean-English dialogue.

“It’s good!”, he croons again and again. No Jonathan, it’s VERY good.

Korean cinema has scaled peak after peak over the last 20 years, but save for a handful of filmmakers with relative freedom to do what they want, the industry has been struggling to foster distinctive new voices. Aside from being a remarkable film, Killing Romance is all the more special because it’s the kind of film that doesn’t get made in today’s safe Korean commercial arena anymore.

I hope it isn’t another 20 years before I get that special feeling again but until then, please please please do not miss the chance to feel it for yourself if this sensational spectacle plays in a cinema near you.

To keep up with the best in Korean film check out MKC's reviews and features, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

Review: SEIRE, Ace Horror Debut Plunges Us into Korean Superstition

noreply@blogger.com (conranp) — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 07:45:00 +0000

By Pierce Conran

Superstition and fatherhood collide in Park Kang's crisply staged and chilling indie horror debut Seire, which had its world premiere in the New Currents competition at the Busan International Film Festival. Channeling Rosemary's Baby and The Wailing, this low-budget gem is one of the standouts from last year's edition of the festival.

The film draws its title from the Korean 'seire' custom, a 21-day period during which newborns are kept home and away from strangers and potentially harmful influences. Seo Hyun-woo plays Woo-jin, father to a newborn child who follows along with the custom, which his superstitious wife and mother-in-law insist on.

What should be a special period as a new father becomes a stressful one for him as he bends to opaque customs he himself does not believe. He also begins to suffer from ominous nightmares filled with rotting fruit and a pregnant woman who is not his wife. That woman turns out to be Seo-yeong, a college classmate and his longtime ex-girlfriend. But the morning after he dreams about her, he wakes up to a notice for her funeral.

Woo-jin must go to the funeral, but his wife, not knowing whose funeral it is, doesn't want him to attend, as it would be bad for the baby. In the end he goes, and meets Seo-yeong's twin sister. As the three-day funeral ritual proceeds, odd things begin to happen at home as their baby develops a fever, his wife's pregnant sister, living next door, also begins to experience problems, and Woo-jin's dreams become more sinister and intense.

Steeped in old customs and tensely pitched between the extremes of birth and death, Seire unfolds as an absorbing mystery. The story is dark and filled with a sense of dread that grows and grows the deeper Woo-jin's journey takes us into these old beliefs and rituals. With its sharp and formal design, the film exists on a knife-edge between tradition and modernity, with a hesitant Woo-jin acting as our entry point.

When we first meet Woo-jin he is haggard, exhausted by the seire process but dutifully going through the motions for his wife's sake. The dreams unsettle him but he remains skeptical as he stoically allows his wife to pelt him with rice, among other customs he must endure.

The film's exploration of tradition is sombre and very local but while many viewers will not be familiar with the rules and rituals on display, this lack of understanding puts us squarely in Woo-jin's shoes, so when unexplained things do begin to happen around him, a fear of the unknown emerges. Much like Na Hong-jin's The Wailing, this a film that seeks to get under your skin and challenge your expectations rather than jolt you with jump scars.

First time director Park Kang has a firm command of the tone of his tightly paced story, making the most of a limited budget through striking compositions and shrewd sound design. Park assiduously raises the stakes for Woo-jin and his child but no matter how perceptive you think you may be as a viewer, the film's gleeful climax will be a welcome and wicked surprise.

Leading the cast is the eminently talented character actor Seo Hyun-woo, who has toiled away for years in supporting roles in major films such as The Man Standing Next, and is now finally starting to get bigger roles. As the somewhat schlubby Woo-jin, Seo expertly veers us between sympathy and distaste throughout the story.

Seire, which is produced by the Korea National University of Arts (K'Arts), was first revealed at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BiFan), where it participated in the Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF) project market.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

To keep up with the best in Korean film check out MKC's reviews and features, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

Top 40 Korean Horror Films

noreply@blogger.com (conranp) — Sun, 23 Oct 2022 08:56:00 +0000

By Pierce Conran

Korean horror isn't what it used to be. But it was never any one thing to begin with.

For many years it was unfairly seen as the poor cousin of J-horror in neighbouring Japan, but K-horror, as it has come to be known, has roots stretching back 60 years. Influenced by local folklore and urban legends and shaped by a society that teeters along sharp divides between tradition and modernity, and shamanism and christianity, it has continually evolved during that time.

Filmmakers like Lee Man-hee and Lee Yong-min were jolting audiences all the way back in the early 1960s and local folklore gave us the templates for the Korean horror films of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, whether through mythical creatures like the Gumiho (aka 'Nine-Tailed Fox') or folk tales like 'A Tale of Two Sisters'.

Yet rather than blood and guts or the pulse-raising editing and sound design of modern horror films, the heart of Korean horror has alway been psychological. What makes Korean horror work so well when done right is the emotional foundation that anchors the genre's shock tactics.

We do love a good list here on MKC (apologies for being away for a while) and while I've finally taken the plunge, the task was a daunting one. Not just because of how much is out there, but because, compared to other genres, tastes seem to vary the most within horror, so I expect (and welcome) quite a bit of disagreement.

Beyond that, it's not always easy to identify what deserves the horror film label, but to keep things interesting I've opted for a broader definition of the genre and put together a longish list (though I would confidently recommend all these films), and offered a list of honourable mentions that I could't bear to leave out completely.

I've seen a limited amount of classic Korean horror films (though several are featured here), but I believe I've watched the vast majority of K-horror titles released in the last 25 years. So, if you think something is missing, truth is I probably didn't like it as much as you did, but please voice your dissent below!

P.S. The top 6 are essentially a tie. One any given day I'd be likely to rank them a little differently.

40. Spellbound
(오싹한 연애, 2011)

Probably the least 'scary' film on this list, Spellbound is a cute romcom spruced up with some horror elements, which are mostly played for comic effect. However, it happens to be one of the best Korean romcoms released during the 2010s and the horror elements are expertly staged, giving it a more convincing style and atmosphere than many genres films released around the same time.

39. Bestseller
(베스트셀러, 2010)

Not one of the most fondly remembered titles on this list, Bestseller wasn't really appreciated at the time of its release. Yet this beautifully shot chiller foregrounds a strong character and surrounds her with several curious characters, played by people who would go on to become among the most visible actors in Korea today. It all works beautifully until a few twists and turns threaten to take it off the rails.

Modern Korean Cinema

Capsule Review: MISSON: POSSIBLE, Slapdash Spy Action-Comedy Lacks Spark

Capsule Review: HONEY SWEET, as Sweet as Promised

Revew: MY NAME IS LOH KIWAN, Defector Drama Devolves into Misguided Romance and Crime Mashup

Review: EXHUMA Digs Up Ghoulish Thrills in Spades

THE ROUNDUP: NO WAY OUT, Ma Dong-seok Knocks Out Crowd-Pleasing but Safe New Instalment

KILLING ROMANCE Will Make You Fall in Love with Korean Cinema All Over Again

Review: SEIRE, Ace Horror Debut Plunges Us into Korean Superstition

Top 40 Korean Horror Films

Top 10 Korean Films of 2020

Busan 2020 Review: SELF-PORTRAIT 2020, Long yet Riveting Odyssey of a Drunk Savant

Busan 2020 Review: STEEL RAIN 2: SUMMIT Dives into Thrilling and Surprisingly Funny Geopolitical Waters

Busan 2020 Review: LIMECRIME Tunes Up Coming-of-Age Drama with Sick Beats

Busan 2020 Review: DELIVER US FROM EVIL, A Slick and Undemanding Action-Thriller Romp

Busan 2020 Review: SNOWBALL Gently Strikes with Familiar but Well-Told Tale

Busan 2020 Review: FIGHTER, Compelling Character Study Pulls Its Punches

Busan 2020 Review: SPEED OF HAPPINESS Delivers Soothing Snapshot of a Unique Profession

Busan 2020 Review: A LEAVE, Responsibilities Clash in Compelling Character Study

Busan 2020 Review: VESTIGE Ponders the Ineffable with Grace and Mystery

Busan 2020 Review: YOUNG ADULT MATTERS, An Explosive and Frequently Engrossing Runaway Teen Drama

Top 50 Korean Films of the 2010s

Top 10 Korean Films of 2019

Top 15 Korean Films of 2018

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