Review: 1987: WHEN THE DAY COMES Offers Timely and Powerful History Lesson

By Pierce Conran

Save the Green Planet director Jang Joon-hwan mobilizes dozens of familiar faces, including The Chaser and The Yellow Sea stars Kim Yun-seok and Ha Jung-woo, for a weighty and powerful dramatization of the birth of Korean democracy. Following a slew of other politically-minded films, the sprawling protest drama 1987: When the Day Comes caps off what has been a tumultuous year for Korea that began with millions on the streets and resulted in the scandalous downfall of a polarizing head of state.

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Review: THE FORTRESS, Sublime Political Allegory Closes Its Doors to the Uninitiated

By Pierce Conran

One of the most impressive casts of the year lines up in the austere and languid period siege drama The Fortress. Led by Lee Byung-hun, Kim Yun-seok and Park Hae-il, performances are strong all around in this magnificently shot and movingly scored but admittedly unhurried meditation on the nature of duty and hierarchy in Korean society. Heavy on political metaphors, this powerful film has found favor with local critics but may prove difficult for the uninitiated.

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Review: C'EST SI BON Trades Rich 60s Music Setting for Dull Romance

By Pierce Conran

A terrific period setting is squandered in the disappointing C'est si bon, a twee and lethargic romance masquerading as a dynamic folk music biopic. Programmed as one of this year's two major Lunar New Year holiday releases (the other being period action-comedy sequel Detective K: Secret of the Lost Island), Kim Hyun-seok's sixth film seeks to expand on the director's proven credentials in the rom-com field (Cyrano Agency, 2010) by enticing older viewers with music and period detail designed to evoked their youth.

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Review: Kim Yun-seok on Form in SOUTH BOUND

By Pierce Conran

Normally, when a Korean film's characters decamp to the countryside, we can expect terrible things to happen. But Yim Soon-rye's new film offers a refreshing take on this standard formula. While bad things also befall the characters in South Bound, there's a welcome levity to the proceedings.

A family man decides to move his family to an island when life under the finger of the government becomes too much for him. He smashes CCTV cameras in his neighborhood, refuses to have his fingers printed at the police station (during one of his many visits), and thumbs his nose at politicians. Along with his wife and his two youngest children, he moves to a small island off the southern coast to begin a new life in a dilapidated hut, free from the shackles of oppression.

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Review: Jang Joon-hwan Returns With Dark Thriller HWAYI: A MONSTER BOY

By Pierce Conran

Korean cinema has become known for its thrillers, and though the genre is one that is popular around the world, there is one particular take on the genre that Korea has excelled at: let's call it the emotional thriller. By blending thriller and action elements with melodrama, a cultural mainstay, the emotional thriller is something we come across time and again in Korean films. Characters in these films are often scarred by their pasts, which are invariably colored by events from Korea's dark contemporary history. Coinciding with narrative elements, these backstories invariably play a central role and prime the gears for enormous emotional releases in the final act.

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