Review: RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN, Stars Shine in Classic Hong Sangsoo

By Pierce Conran

Following Hong Sangsoo's career guarantees for viewers, at the very least, one thing - developing a keen eye for detail. The auteur's films are remarkably similar to one another, from their lecherous male director/professor characters and conversations over bottles of soju, all the way down to their repeating details and occasional (but abrupt) camera zooms and pans.

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Locarno 2018 Review: HOTEL BY THE RIVER, A Wonderfully Performed New Drama from Hong Sangsoo

By Pierce Conran

Six months after the premiere of Grass at the Berlinale, prolific auteur Hong Sangsoo is back with another black and white drama which once again reunites him with his leading actress Kim Min-hee. Having just debuted at the Locarno International Film Festival, where it picked up the Best Actor Award for lead Ki Joo-bong, Hotel by the River employs less narrative trickery than most of the director's films and builds from a series of slight vignettes into a moving story of an ageing poet trying to take stock of his life in what may be his waning days.

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Review: THE HANDMAIDEN, Park Chan-wook's Deeply Engrossing and Highly Sexual Tale of Female Sexuality

By Pierce Conran

Following his Hollywood foray Stoker, Park Chan-wook returns to (mostly) home soil for his sumptuous and sensual adaptation of Sarah Waters' Fingersmith. Transposing the novel's setting from Victorian England to 1930s Korea and Japan, when the former was a colony of the latter, The Handmaiden is a deeply engrossing, highly sexual and at times darkly humorous tale of female sexuality brought to life in spectacular fashion.

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Review: CLAIRE'S CAMERA, Hong Sangsoo's Low-Key Cannes Holiday

By Pierce Conran

Love him or hate him, Hong Sangsoo has been remarkably consistent with his films, which both offer viewers a familiar framework and new variations on his favorite themes. His 20th work Claire's Camera debuts this weekend as a Special Screening in the Cannes Film Festival, after shooting at the festival last year. The brief (68 minutes) film reunites him with his In Another Country (2012) star Isabelle Huppert and muse Kim Min-hee for the third time (with a fourth collaboration, The Day After, also premiering at Cannes in a few days in competition).

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Review: THE DAY AFTER Offers Bitter Portrait of Infidelity

By Pierce Conran

Returning to black and white for the first time since The Day He Arrives (which screened in Un Certain Regard in 2011), Hong Sangsoo returns to the Cannes competition section with The Day After, a focused rumination on love and betrayal which is, much like his other 2017 films On the Beach at Night Alone and fellow Cannes-invitee Claire's Camera, an act of bitter self-reflection.

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Berlinale 2017 Review: ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE, Hong Sang-soo's Most Personal and Cruel Film to Date

By Pierce Conran

A new year has arrived and with it the challenge of reviewing a new work from Korea's arthouse darling Hong Sang-soo. On the Beach at Night Alone, which borrows its name from the title of a Walt Whitman poem and premieres at the Berlin International Film Festival, his third time there in competition after Night and Day and Nobody's Daughter Haewon, certainly does not depart in any significant way from the stylings and themes of his body of work to date.

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Review: Straightforward Action in NO TEARS FOR THE DEAD

By Hieu Chau

Writer-director Lee Jeong-beom made a big splash in 2010 when his confidently made action feature The Man from Nowhere became a box office hit in South Korea. It made a believable action star out of its lead, Won Bin, and had an emotional core that helped it lean closer towards other, well-established action films of its ilk such as Luc Besson’s Leon: The Professional (1994) or Tony Scott’s Man on Fire (2004). Lee follows a similar format with his newest ultraviolent follow up, No Tears for the Dead, which at times feels like it could have been another Tony Scott film.

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Hong Sangsoo Taps Jung Jae-young, Kim Min-hee and More for 17th Film

Prolific auteur Hong Sangsoo is getting ready to shoot his 17th (as yet untitled) film this month after fixing his leading cast. Previous collaborators Jung Jae-young (Our Sunhi, 2013) and Yu Jun-sang (The Day He Arrives, 2011) will be joined by Hong first timers Kim Min-hee (Helpless, 2012) and Ko Ah-sung (Snowpiercer).

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