Korean Directors Take on STAR WARS!

By Kyu Hyun Kim

In the midst of global Star Wars mania, MKC contributor Kyu Hyun Kim imagines what a Star Wars Episode VIII might look like if the reins and total creative freedom were given to some of the biggest names in Korean cinema.

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Top 10 Korean Films of 2015

By Pierce Conran

Sales have been impressive as box office admissions reached a new peak and local films maintained a +50% market share, but looking at the quality of what was on offer, it must be said that 2015 was not the best year for Korean cinema. Big budgeted, maudlin affairs dominated the charts, though there were a few bright spots (such as Veteran), and the year's best commercial films were mostly not rewarded with healthy box office returns (The Exclusive: Beat the Devil's Tattoo comes to mind).

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Busan 2015 Review: COIN LOCKER GIRL Offers New Perspectives on Standard Thrills

Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Against a parking lot bursting with saturated colors, a person lies on the ground, at the mercy of another standing above them who wields a sashimi knife still dripping red from its last kill. Dark, bloody and stylish, this could be the beginning of just about any Korean noir. But Coin Locker Girl is trying something new, as these two characters are played by none other than Kim Hye-su, one of Korea's most glamorous leading ladies, and Kim Go-eun, its latest fresh-faced starlet.

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Busan 2015 Review: RECORDING Chronicles Charming Cast In Forgettable Story

Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

It’s the small moments that work in Recording, a story that is low on ambition but infused with a winning charm even as it drags in the scripting department, particularly in the back half. Sweet and unaffected, Park Min-kook’s debut follows a woman in her early 20s who chronicles her losing battle to stomach cancer with an omnipresent home camera. Even with the end drawing near, she continues to wear a bright smile and tries to spend some of her last carefree moments with her partner and friends.

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Busan 2015 Review: A COPY OF MY MIND Sells Itself On Romance And Intrigue

Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Acclaimed Indonesian filmmaker Joko Anwar returns with his fifth feature, A Copy of My Mind, a tale of love, passion and how to get ahead in the back alleys of sprawling Jakarta. Made with the help of CJ Entertainment, as the Korean major continues to industriously wean its way into developing Southeast Asian film markets, this romantic thriller, which teeters back and forth between the worlds of DVD piracy and local politics, is suffused with ample wry commentary.

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Busan 2015 Review: OFFICE Works Up an Intriguing Salaryman Chiller

Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Life is hard for the average Korean salaryman, and sometimes that engenders a need to blow off a little steam. For many that involves drinking to excess, but for others it can spill over into the homestead. New Korean horror-thriller Office takes this to a disturbing extreme as a diligent and seemingly placid cubicle worker returns home from work and quietly eats dinner, before taking a hammer to his wife, mother and handicapped son. Intercut with statics shots of the homogeneous residential blocks surrounding the apartment, the instrument comes down again and again, raining crimson over the blank white walls.

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Busan 2015 Review: ALONE Winds Its Mystery Through the Backstreets of Seoul

Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Four years after his experimental 3D shaman mystery Fish, Park Hong-min returns to BIFF with another singular work that offers one of the most compelling examinations of gentrification in Seoul. Alone follows a single character as he hops from one terrible dream to the next, unable to wake up and incapable of escaping nestled alleys of his small, dying neighborhood.

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Busan 2015 Review: THE PIPER, A Satisfyingly Grimm Fairy Tale

Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Step away from the city and it isn't long before you fall in with bad company or into a mystery in Korean cinema, with remote islands and mountains being among the favored haunts of the country's more macabre filmmakers. Taking its cue from a Brothers Grimm fairly tale (itself a take on an old German legend), Kim Gwang-tae's debut The Piper hums a familiar tune, yet this fable of mistrust and deceit remains engrossing and entertaining thanks to a few wicked twists.

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Busan 2015 Review: STEEL FLOWER Offers Wilted View of Korean Youth

Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

A year after Wild Flowers, Park Suk-young returns to the Busan International Film Festival with Steel Flower. Gritty, intimate and centering around a young girl lost in a harsh urban world, Park's latest kicks off on the same foot as his debut, with a raw immediacy and a tangle of youthful anxiety.

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Busan 2015 Review: VETERAN, Who's Gonna Protect Gotham When Bruce Wayne Grew Up to Be an Evil Super-Rich Punk?

Part of MKC's coverage of the 20th Busan International Film Festival.

By Kyu Hyun Kim, Associate Professor at UC Davis and koreanfilm.org contributor.

Seo Do-chul (Hwang Jeong-min), a veteran of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, busts a ring of foreign car smugglers with his teammates, the muscle-bound Detective Wang (Oh Dae-hwan), ass-kicking Miss Bong (Jang Yoon-joo) and the cute rookie Detective Yoon (Kim Si-hoo), under the leadership of the perennially frustrated but bizarrely eloquent Chief Oh (Oh Dal-soo).  Do-chul, a pit bull of a cop, in the process of investigating the smugglers, befriends a trucker, Mr. Bae (Jeong Woong-in). Later, he is invited to a private party as a "consultant" to a hit TV series and witnesses the sponsor corporation's young heir Jo Tae-oh (teen heartthrob Yoo Ah-in) behaving cruelly to one of the partygoers. When Mr. Bae is found to be unconscious and critically wounded from an alleged suicide attempt, after directly confronting Tae-oh's corporation about his unfair firing, the cop smells a rat and starts an investigation, despite pressure from the higher-ups to look the other way. 

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New Korean Films: Coming Late at the Party (2015 Week 34)

Untouchable Lawmen

(치외법권)

By Fabien Schneider

In order to capture the boss of a powerful criminal organization who has connections with the authorities, the special investigation section has called two agents with exceptional records. While Jung-in made his arms as a criminal profiler at the FBI, Yu-min graduated from one of the best academies but is now seen as a player with women. Of course, both of them will have to go past their differences to fulfil their mission.

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New Korean Films: The Inner Beauty of Cinema (2015 Week 33)

Beauty Inside

(뷰티 인사이드)

By Fabien Schneider

Wu-jin has a very strange condition that makes him wake up every day with a new appearance. If ordinary life is already difficult when your face changes daily, having a relationship seems nearly impossible. But Wu-jin decides to confess both his love and the truth to Yi-su.

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New Korean Films: Women's Condition (2015 Week 32)

Alice in Earnestland

(성실한 나라의 앨리스)

By Fabien Schneider

Thanks to her skilled hands, Su-nam has been able to get no less than 14 typing certificates, which makes her one of the best secretary one can imagine. However, she cannot compete with a computer, and thus loses her job for a machine. She manages to find a new job, and also find a boyfriend. But when they decide to get married and buy a house, they have no other choice than taking a loan. Now that they have to pay off the loan, Su-nam suddenly has an idea to solve this situation once for all.

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New Korean Films: The Return of the Veteran (2015 Week 31)

Veteran

(베테랑)

By Fabien Schneider

While celebrating his recent successful resolution of an international auto theft scheme, a detective, Do-cheol, has a serious clash with Tae-oh, a high-level gangster from Sun-jin Group. Determined to make him fall by pinning him any crime, Do-cheol starts investigating despite his boss’ disapproval. But suddenly a boy comes to ask for his help, as his father, who helped Do-cheol in his last case, has just been severely beaten up by Tae-oh. Do-cheol then decides to get Tae-ho at any cost.

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New Korean Films: Let's Make Up the Delay Part II (2015 Week 26-30)

After more than two months of silence, I'm finally back for more discussion about Korean films getting released every week. Since I've missed a lot of interesting films and that I couldn't make my mind to just resume my weekly article as if nothing happened, I've decided that it was better to still present every film released during that period and to add my usual commentary only for the most important of them. This is the second part, covering the films released between June 22nd and August 2ndd, and you can read the first part here.

By Fabien Schneider

Director's CUT

(디렉터스 컷)

After spending a decade making independent short films, Haegang is now ready for his debut long feature. But his life is becoming a mess: his girlfriend just broke up with him, and his former team doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. As he has to work with a new producer, he’ll have to stay strong if he wants to keep his own vision in his film.

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New Korean Films: Let's Make Up the Delay Part I (2015 Week 20-25)

After more than two months of silence, I'm finally back for more discussion about Korean films getting released every week. Since I've missed a lot of interesting films and that I couldn't make my mind to just resume my weekly article as if nothing happened, I've decided that it was better to still present every film released during that period and to add my usual commentary only for the most important of them. This is the first part, covering the films released between May 18th and June 21st, and you can read the second part here.

Alive

(산다)

By Fabien Schneider

Jeong-cheol tries to make ends meets despite all the odds against him. He has to keep an eye on his mentally ill sister who wishes to leave for Seoul and he tries to fulfill his niece’s wish to play piano, while he’s not even sure to have a job to feed them and repair their house. When his coworkers suspect him when an associate runs off with the pay of everybody, Jeong-cheol offers them to take a job all together at a bean plantation.

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Coming Attractions: Keep Your Friends Close But Keep Your INTIMATE ENEMIES Closer

By Rex Baylon

It's been awhile since we've heard from Im Sang-Soo. Having made big waves in the early aughts with critically acclaimed films like A Good Lawyer's Wife (2003) and The President's Last Bang (2005), it's been three years since one of his films was released, and sadly a lot of his latter work leaves much to be desired. Intimate Enemies, with a projected release date of June 25th, seems to be yet another meditation on the ways money and power corrupt the human animal. Though instead of the dour oppressive atmosphere that was present in works like The Housemaid (2010) and The Taste of Money (2012), Im has Ryoo Seung-Bum to inject his picture with Ryoo's trademark rakish charm. I love the conman subgenre and from the trailer it looks as if Intimate Enemies has the requisite colorful characters, sex appeal, and elaborate grifts that are the hallmarks of the genre.

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Cannes 2015 Review: OFFICE Works Up an Intriguing Salaryman Chiller

By Pierce Conran

Life is hard for the average Korean salaryman, and sometimes that engenders a need to blow off a little steam. For many that involves drinking to excess, but for others it can spill over into the homestead. New Korean horror-thriller Office takes this to a disturbing extreme as a diligent and seemingly placid cubicle worker returns home from work and quietly eats dinner, before taking a hammer to his wife, mother and handicapped son. Intercut with statics shots of the homogeneous residential blocks surrounding the apartment, the instrument comes down again and again, raining crimson over the blank white walls.

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Coming Attractions: THE SILENCED Is Not Keeping Quiet Anymore

By Rex Baylon

What the hell is it about boarding schools that make it such prime real estate for horror films? I doubt Lee Hae-young is keen on trying to answer that question, but his new picture The Silence, reaching theaters this June, seems to be in no short supply of the requisite scares that this unique sub-genre is well-known for. Starring Park Bo-young, of A Werewolf Boy (2012) fame, as a young girl named Joo-ran who is transferred to an all girls boarding school that is suffering an epidemic of vanishing students. Why are they vanishing? Are they being kidnapped by some demonic force? Or just the typical human villains? I guess you'll have to wait a few more weeks to find out.

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Cannes 2015 Review: MADONNA - A Riveting Tale of Sorrow and Redemption

By Pierce Conran

Following her accomplished sophomore film, the absorbing high school revenge tale Pluto (2012), Shin Su-won returns in glorious fashion with the searing Madonna. Meticulous, layered and yet seemingly effortless, this rewarding tale of mingled sorrow and redemption should go a long way towards establishing its director as a major talent on the global scene.

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New Korean Films: Disobeying Civil Servants (2015 Week 19)

The Chronicles of Evil

(악의 연대기)

By Fabien Schneider

Detective Choi has been decorated with a president’s mention, one of the most prestigious awards that a police officer could have. But on the way back from a celebratory party with his coworkers, he gets physical with a taxi driver and eventually kills him by accident. Thinking of his newly-found prestige, he decides to hide the body and cover the crime. But on the next day, the very same body is found hanging from a crane in front of Choi’s police station. He now has to investigate his own crime, while trying to know who is trying to make him fall.

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Cannes 2015 Review: THE SHAMELESS Delivers Hardboiled Melodrama with Top Drawer Performances

By Pierce Conran

"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist"

Pablo Picasso

Today's Korea, whether looking at its entertainment, fashion or culinary scenes, is a society awash with fusion. Nowhere is this more true than in its cinema, as since the late 90s Korean filmmakers have never shied away from playing with genre. Many artists and artisans would do well to take note of the above quote by Picasso (though I imagine he wasn't the first to say it) before dishing out cookie crust shrimp and potato pizzas or dumping a motley crew of genre fare into a blender and calling it a script. However, while these hybrid experiments have frequently backfired, a surprising amount have been successful, including modern classics like Bong Joon-ho's The Host (2006) and Jang Joon-hwan's Save the Green Planet (2003).

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Review: TAEGUKGI: THE BROTHERHOOD OF WAR is a Heartbreaking Tale from the Korean War

By Chris Horn

You would be hard-pressed to find a more compelling and difficult to portray subject than war. Having successfully proven himself with his 1999 action film Shiri, director Kang Je-gyu once more took a look at the breakout of violence between North and South Korea in Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War. While comparisons to Saving Private Ryan (1998) are inevitable, Taegukgi cuts to the heart of a different kind of war with less clearly defined lines and much more personal stakes for its characters.

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New Korean Films: The Taste of Love and The Love of Taste (2015 Week 18)

Love Clinic

(연애의 맛)

By Fabien Schneider

Two doctors are opening their cabinet on the same floor. One of them is Kil Shin-seol, an urologist who knows everything about men’s sexuality, while the other is Wang Sung-ki, an obstetrician who knows more about female sexual attributes than their minds. But both of them have barely even had relationships, thanks to their own behaviors and fears. As they become fond of each other, they also start to treat each other as their own patients.

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New Korean Films: The Last Stand Against the Avengers (2015 Week 17)

Coin Locker Girl

(차이나타운)

By Fabien Schneider

A baby girl named Il-young has been left in the locker number 10 of a subway station. She’s taken in by a woman who rules Chinatown thanks to her many adopted many children. With the years passing Il-young becomes one of the most efficient members of the gang. One day, she meets the son of one of her mom’s clients, a friendly and charming young man. She suddenly gets curious about this new world outside of the gloomy atmosphere of Chinatown. It’s at this moment that her mom gives her one last mission.

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New Korean Films: Homages To Parents (2015 Week 16)

Clown of a Salesman

(약장수)

By Fabien Schneider

Il-beom worked many jobs in his attempt to pay back his loans but his bad reputation always come in the way. Most importantly, his daughter is in need of a treatment for her illness, and this won’t come cheap. That’s why Il-beom starts working at an “information center” despite his initial aversion, because under this cover lies a PR company that organizes events for older women in the intent to sell them healthy food and daily necessities. But he soon realizes that these women are mostly mothers who barely even get visits from their adult children, and that he’s making their lives merrier. One day, Ok-nim, who lives alone so as not to burden her prosecutor son, joins the center and becomes friend with Il-beom.

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New Korean Films: People Who Lend a Hand (2015 Week 15)

Black Hand

(검은손)

By Fabien Schneider

Jung-Woo is a married man, but he also has a secret relationship with Yoo-gyeong, one of the doctors he’s working with in a hospital. He works there as a neurosurgeon, but also does research on bioengineering. One day, Yoo-gyeong gets her right hand cut off under strange circumstances. But thanks to Jung-Woo’s reflexes and his skills, he manages to do the operation to put it back on her arm. During the following days, while Yoo-gyeong seems to have perfectly recovered, she starts to lose her mind. When asked, she pretends that there is now someone else in her.

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New Korean Films: Les Amours des séniors (2014 Week 14)

Salut d'Amour

(장수상회)

By Fabien Schneider

The unfriendly and inflexible old man Seong-chil, who is a model employee at Jang-su Mart and proud of his military career and never thinks of other’s feelings, suddenly breaks his outer shell when a woman moves to his neighborhood. Geum-nim looks young despite her age, always smiling in any situation. She takes him by surprise when she offers to him to have dinner together. Even if he tries not to care, he cannot hide his feelings and soon everybody is in the know, even Geum-nim’s daughter and Seong-chil’s boss, and they try to give them advice for their first date. But after having almost forgotten the date, he arrives late for their rendezvous and accidentally discovers her secret.

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New Korean Films: Balls Delivery (2015 Week 13)

Foulball

(파울볼)

By Fabien Schneider

Kim Sung-keun has been a baseball coach to many internationally successful players. Along with many young people who dream of becoming a professional player, he also created South-Korea’s first independent baseball team, the Goyang Wonders. Their training is really intense and demanding, but this is what it takes if they want to one day join the national league. During the first three years of their existence, they surprised a lot of experts with their impressive record: 90 wins, 25 ties and 61 losses. So far 31 players have been able to sign with professional teams. However at the beginning of 2014 season, the Goyang Wonders announced to the public that they would soon be disbanded.

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News: 2nd Wildflower Film Awards Reveals Nominees

By Pierce Conran

Following its launch last year, the Wildflower Film Awards Korea revealed the nominees of its upcoming 2nd edition last week. Leading the pack with seven nominees is July Jung's A Girl at My Door, while Han Gong-ju and The King of Jokgu following at five a piece and 10 Minutes, Gyeongju and Hill of Freedom each picking up four.

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New Korean Films: First Steps (2015 Week 12)

Twenty

(스물)

By Fabien Schneider

Three friends are spending together the most confusing period of their lives, when they enter their twenties and are confronted with many opportunities but also struggles. Chi-ho is a popular guy who wishes he could live a life of excess without doing much. Dong-wu is a lively and strong man who never stops practicing to become a cartoonist. Gyeong-jae is an excellent student who has all the best qualifications to be employed by a major company but has a problem with alcohol.

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New Korean Films: Foreign Perfumes (2015 Week 11)

Mongolian Princess

(몽골리안 프린세스)

By Fabien Schneider

Dan-woo has lived 34 years without having a single girlfriend. The only experiences he has had came from the roles he played during his career as a film actor. One day, as he was watching the preview of his last movie, he meets a French writer, Elizabeth. Despite his clumsiness, they become attracted to each other and soon start a relationship that seems like a dream for him. But before they know it, tension arises between them. Dan-woo doesn’t want to leave that dream and decides to direct his own film.

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New Korean Films: Vengeful Society (2015 Week 10)

Socialphobia

(소셜포비아)

By Fabien Schneider

Ji-woong and Yong-min are two aspiring police officers who are soon going to take exams. When a mysterious “Re-na” leaves a spiteful comment on the Internet about the death of a soldier, they and seven friends decide to go on a vendetta against her. They soon discover who she is and where she lives. But when they go to her apartment to hold her accountable, what they discover is not a victim shamefully apologizing, but a woman who hanged herself. Since they’re now involved, Jin-woong and Yong-min decide to personally investigate what led her to her demise, as they are certain that things are not what they seem.

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New Korean Films: Deadly Sins (2015 Week 9)

Empire of Lust

(순수의 시대)

By Fabien Schneider

In 1398, six years after the founding of the Joseon kingdom that succeeded Koryeo, a struggle for the designation of the Crown Prince pits two of King Tae-jo’s sons against each other. The fifth son, Lee Bang-won, helped his father so much that he got his hands dirty and thus now expects to be appointed as the next king. But Jeong Do-jeon, the King’s adviser who greatly contributed to the establishment of the new kingdom which he sees bound to be governed by ministers, favors Lee Bang-seok, the eighth son who is still a youth. Between them is Kim Min-Jae, the supreme commander of Joseon who owns his rank due to his successful defense of the borders against the Jurchen and the Japanese pirates. His own son, Jin, has become the King’s son-in-law and tries not to get involved in politics as he enjoy the pleasures of a noble life.

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News: Kim Han-min to Follow ROARING CURRENTS with Manchuria-Set War Pic

By Pierce Conran

In the wake of the record-breaking success of last summer's Roaring Currents, Kim Han-min is opting to remain in the period war genre as he is busy preparing a new film called Bongoh Town Battle (working title), about a two-day skirmish between independent Korean forces and the Japanese army in Manchuria in 1920.

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Review: JEON WOOCHI: THE TAOIST WIZARD is a Purely Energetic Fantasy

By Chris Horn

Choi Dong-hoon’s 2009 hit Jeon Woochi: The Taoist Wizard (or Woochi) is a boldly incomprehensible film that challenges viewers to hate it. It’s also an immensely fun—and funny—film that further cements Choi’s reputation as one of the most bankable Korean directors and answers the question, “Remember when movies were fun?”

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Korean Box Office: British Invasion Shuts Out Local Films (2015 WK 9)

By Pierce Conran

Following the busy Lunar New Year holiday, admissions fell to 1.97 admissions over the weekend but the main victims were local films, which saw their market share plummet to 18.5%. In a surprise turn of events, it was the United Kingdom that powered the box office with a 47.5% market share from the top two films, both holdovers.

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New Korean Films: Wandering Souls (2015 Week 8)

By Fabien Schneider

Yes, I know, you must have been profoundly perturbed from waiting in vain for my column last week. But rest assured that this absence wasn't caused by my laziness, but was actually the result of an event that is quite rare: there simply was not a single Korean film released that week. No need to worry, the rhythm that you've been used to is back again with three new films gracing theaters this week, all of them independent productions.

The Avian Kind

(조류인간)

Jeong-seok is a famous novelist who spent the last fifteen years exploring the most remote areas of the country, looking for his wife who disappeared suddenly without leaving any trace. His last book recalls the events he went through, which doesn’t go unnoticed. A mysterious woman contacts him on the pretense that she can help him in his quest, while a group of people who also saw their dear ones vanishing think that Jeong-seok is the most fitted to get them to the truth. All the clues put together seem to point toward a village. But what they will discover there goes beyond everything they could imagine.

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Review: WELCOME TO DONGMAKGOL Is a Surreal Anti-War Drama

By Chris Horn

There is perhaps no region better suited to make a unique anti-war film than Korea, a country itself split and in a constant state of escalated threats of renewed warfare. Not quite content to make a film weighed down by excessive melodrama, new director Park Kwang-hyun made a splash in 2005 with his quirky, surreal adaptation of Jang Jin’s well-regarded play Welcome to Dongmakgol. Though imperfect, this feature film debut ultimately proves more memorable than most other anti-war films that pile on the misery.

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Korean Box Office: Detectives and Spies Lead Lunar New Year Weekend (2015 WK 8)

By Pierce Conran

Business shot up 70% over last week, as 3.88 million holiday spectators flooded the theaters, however that figure was over a million lower than last year's Lunar New Year weekend. Granted it's not exactly as fair comparison as LNY itself fell on Friday in 2014 and fell just before the weekend this year. Against stiff competition from British films and foreign animation, local films barely maintained their market share with 50.2%.

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Review: WAIKIKI BROTHERS, A True Korean Classic

By Pierce Conran

Yim Soonrye could lay claim to being the first female director to forge a lasting career in the Korean film industry. Indeed, she has one of the most varied filmographies among current filmmakers, yet ironically, or perhaps necessarily, she rose to prominence by making a pair of films that explored Korean masculinity far more successfully than the majority of her male contemporaries. 14 years on, her second feature Waikiki Brothers (2001) stands up as one of the best works of contemporary Korean cinema. Though the movement is generally considered to have ended with Lee Chang-dong’s Peppermint Candy in 1999, it’s also a film that could easily be included among the best of the Korean New Wave. 

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Coming Attractions: CHINATOWN to Battle In Theaters This April

By Rex Baylon

It seems that almost every trailer I write about ends up being an upcoming thriller or crime picture and this time is no different. Han Jun-hee, screenwriter for the 2013 thriller The Gifted Hands, debuts as director this April with Chinatown, or for people who've been paying attention, Coin Locker Girl. Starring Kim Hye-soo, of The Thieves (2012) fame, and Kim Go-eun, who you might remember from the erotic drama Eungyo (2012), Han's picture seems to be a gangster-cum-family melodrama with Kim Hye-soo playing a stern and powerful Chinatown gang boss and Kim Go-eun as her troubled adopted daughter.

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Review: THE KING AND THE CLOWN is a Bawdy, Heartfelt Period Classic

By Chris Horn

There’s no question that Korean period films have continued to increase in popularity in recent years as three of the top ten grossing Korean films by ticket admissions are set during the Joseon dynasty. As Korean studios allocate increasing resources to the next big period films they would do well to study Lee Joon-ik’s masterful The King and the Clown. Not only does Lee capture a thematically interesting story rounded out by compelling performances, but The King and the Clown is brilliant in its sympathetic look at all levels of Joseon society.

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Reel Talk: The Thriving, Yet Embattled Korean Indie Scene

Every Friday I appear on a segment called Reel Talk for Arirang TV on the 2 o'clock news, mostly covering Korean cinema.

There's plenty to celebrate in Korea's contemporary indie scene, with fascinating new works appearing year-round and across the world's biggest festivals, yet few viewers in Korea are getting a chance to see them. In the most recent Reel Talk I preview a few of the films that will get limited runs in Korea soon as well as the challenges the industry faces.

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Korean Box Office: DETECTIVE K 2 Opens Over Original (2015 WK 7)

By Pierce Conran

2.25 million spectators shuffled into theaters during the weekend before the Lunar New Year holiday, which was better than last week but still far behind the comparable weekend last year, when Frozen and Miss Granny led the market. Local films maintained a slim majority with a 50.7% screening share.

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News: Golden Bear for Korean Short HOSANNA

By Pierce Conran

For the second time in five years, a Korean film has walked away with the Berlin International Film Festival's Golden Bear for Short Film. Na Young-kil trumphed with Hosanna four years after brothers Park Chan-wook and Park Chan-kyong took home the same award for Night Fishing.

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News: Bae Doo-na Boards Omnibus THE ROMANTIC

By Pierce Conran

Bae Doo-na is close to signing on to what would be her first commercial Korean film since 2012's As One. The film in question is The Romantic, an omnibus drama in the same mould as Love Actually (2003).

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New Korean Films: Smart Moustaches (2015 Week 6)

Detective K: Secret of the Lost Island

(조선명탐정 : 사라진 놉의 딸)

By Fabien Schneider

Two years after his investigation of a series of murders led to a conspiracy by government officials, Kim Min, the best detective in Joseon, has been sent to forced retirement on a remote island. The only people who still come to meet him are his partner in crime, Seo-pil, and a mysterious girl who desperately asks him to find her younger sister. Kim Min comes to hear a rumor about counterfeit silver ingots that have been spread in the country. That’s exactly what he needed to get back on track. He decides to escape from the island with the help of Seo-pil and to investigate the mystery of the silver ingots as well as the missing young girl. But as they delve deeper into these affairs, they constantly come across Hisako, a woman with an unknown background.

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Review: Im Sang-soo's THE OLD GARDEN, A Heady Cocktail of Art, Ambition and History

By Pierce Conran

Ambition, artistry and Korea’s painful recent past combine to fascinating results in The Old Garden (2006), an impressive yet flawed work from director Im Sang-soo which frames the trauma of a nation through a brief, yet passionate romance.

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News: Choi Dong-hoon's Period-Thriller ASSASSINATION Wraps

By Pierce Conran

Choi Dong-hoon's much anticipated period action-thriller Assassination wrapped its shoot on January 31st in Paju, Korea, after having begun in Shanghai back on August 27th last year.

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