Review: THE RUNNING ACTRESS Dashes to Victory

By Pierce Conran

Ever since picking up a Best New Actor Prize from the Venice International Film Festival for Oasis in 2002, Moon So-ri has been known as one of the top performers in the Korean film industry. Now, after impressing viewers and critics alike over the years, in a range of indie and commercial fare, Moon proves herself to be equally adept behind the camera, following the release of her charming, hilarious and at times poignant feature debut The Running Actress.

Click to read more»

Busan 2014 Review: VENUS TALK Drowns Out Despite Strong Female Stars

Part of MKC's coverage of the 19th Busan International Film Festival

By Pierce Conran

As a fan of Moon So-ri and production company Myung Films, I felt that I should be excited about Venus Talk, their first collaboration since Im Sang-soo’s excellent A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003). But on the other hand, with its middle-aged female cast and heavy Sex and the City parallels, I was never this film’s intended audience. Given the lack of strong female roles in today’s Korean film industry, I’m glad to see a major film like this come along but that still doesn’t mean this particular offering held much appeal for me.

Click to read more»

Busan 2014 Review: HILL OF FREEDOM Proves A Pleasant But Slight Slice From Hong Sangsoo

Part of MKC's coverage of the 19th Busan International Film Festival

By Pierce Conran

It's easy to accuse Hong Sangsoo of doing the same thing over and over again as each of his films revisit the same themes with similar characters, situations and locations. Such a reading can easily miss the point of his constant repetition, which cleverly lays bare the hypocrisy and narcissism of the characters that populate his output. Yet with his latest work, the particularly laid back jaunt Hill of Freedom, the director seems to have less to say than usual. However, with deliberately simple dialogue (in English) and an uncomplicated narrative, as well as a very brief 67-minute running time, the director also appears to be in a playful mood.

Click to read more»

DMZ Docs 2013 Review: Unique Shaman Doc Manshin is a Sensory Thrill

I’ve been a keen fan of Korean films for over a decade and have now spent about a year and a half living within the country’s borders, yet, though I’ve been exposed to it many times, shamanism stubbornly remains a difficult part of the nation’s heritage to get to grips with. Mystical and echoing an ancient way of life, it is not merely something that fallen in stature due to the ravages of time, it is a facet of Korean culture that requires a different way of thinking.

Click to read more»

Review - The Spy: Undercover Operation Should Have Stayed Under Wraps

Korean cinema has gotten very good at staging impressive onscreen spectacle in recent years. Though $10 million budgets used to be a rare thing, reserved for only the most ambitious and promising films, these days an abundance of these pricey projects are flooding the market. As with everywhere else in the cinema landscape, studios feel a need to continually up the ante as they worry about the diminishing attention spans of their audiences. But for every film that spends its money wisely many more appear that could easily be labeled a waste: of the production budget, as well as the audience's time. Which brings us to The Spy: Undercover Operation.

Click to read more»

Lack of Focus Hinders An Ethics Lesson (분노의 윤리학, Boonnoeui yoonrihak) 2013

Ensemble casts and high concept scripts seems to be all the rage these days in Korean cinema and An Ethics Lesson, billed as an erotic thriller, is the latest addition to this trend. But as wonderful as Korea's multi-genre concoctions have been in the past, these days, in an effort to push the enveloped ever further, there has arisen a disturbing trend of films which, through the application of an all but the kitchen sink approach, have become whitewashed and bland.

Click to read more»