Busan 2013 Review: Personal and Subdued PASCHA Resonates

Part of MKC's coverage of the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Life has a habit of moving on, whether we'd like it to or not. Moments of joy are fleeting and even our most crushing lows are washed away by the waves of time. Our present always leaves us, replaced to perpetuity with new realities: it's gone but never quite forgotten. The new Korean indie Pascha shows us that small moments can be hard to bare and smaller ones still may often be worth cherishing, but it also reminds us that nothing every truly disappears, particularly when it concerns (what else?) love.

Anyone who has kept an eye on Korean cinema over the last few years will likely have encountered more than his or her fair share or bleak narratives, particularly in the independent realm. Though they're not always fun, there is a need for this kind of cinema at the moment. In the midst of Korea's technological advances, it's easy to forget that other areas of the country are in desperate need of attention. That said, a few of the more dour offerings that have come our way could do worse than take a leaf out of Pascha's book, as it explores some of the less salient sides of Korean society in a sublimely low-key fashion.

Click to read more»

Review: One-Stop Korean Revenge Shop THE FIVES Is a Bloody Good Time

By Pierce Conran

Aside from the greats of Korean cinema - the Bong Joon-hos, Lee Chang-dongs, Im Kwon-taeks and Kim Ki-youngs - years ago, after I first immersed myself in the country's cinema, there were few things that I preferred doing than putting on a mid-level Korean genre film after a long day. Their thrillers, in particular, weren't always great (in fact a number were bad) but their production values and hard-boiled style were always a wonderful escape for me, even, strangely, a source of comfort. These days the industry still churns out a great number of thrillers, and though many are very strong, they're a different breed from those I would wile away my time with back in those days.

Click to read more»

Review: Delightful Retro Comedy HOT YOUNG BLOODS Runs Out of Steam

By Pierce Conran

Just as the taste of a madeleine triggers a rush of childhood memories for the protagonist in Marcel Proust’s magnum opus In Search of Lost Time, smells, sounds and images can transport all of us to different times in our lives. This is a trick that can be especially effective in cinema, as it can turn a film into a communal experience for theatergoers. With Lunar New Year just around the corner, the 80s rural-set high school film Hot Young Bloods, the return of Running Turtle (2009) director Lee Yeon-woo, is hoping to do just that.

Click to read more»

Busan 2013 Review: Thoughtful STEEL COLD WINTER Doesn't Stray from Its Comfort Zone

Part of MKC's coverage of the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Sometimes, even the most skillfully assembled volley of words can do little to express our feelings or explain our past experiences. There are moments, so great, that they are beyond words or others, so terrible, that could never truly be conveyed with a the help of a dictionary. Throughout modern Korean cinema we've been introduced to characters so badly scarred that they've lost the ability to speak. In Choi Jin-seong's Steel Cold Winter, the young protagonists do speak, but they do so so reluctantly that it's as though they've been robbed of their ability to do so.

A teenage boy moves with his mother to the countryside, while the father remains in Seoul, after he witnesses one of his friends fall to his death. In a quiet snow-covered village where he will ideally get his mind off the incident, he meets a mysterious girl who he becomes attracted to. She lives with her mentally handicapped father until one day he disappears.

Click to read more»

Review: MAN IN LOVE Loses Focus in Tearful Finale

By Pierce Conran

The Lunar New Year (Seollal) holiday is just around the corner and that means that studios are looking to draw in large crowds, particular families, during one of the peak theatergoing periods of the year. Making a film that can appeal to everyone isn’t child’s play and oftentimes it means that studios will resort to mixing disparate elements to suit varying tastes. It’s a gamble but one that Korean filmmakers have never shied away from. Such is the case with Man in Love (formerly When a Man Loves a Woman), the new film from studio Next Entertainment World (also behind last year’s breakout Seollal hit Miracle in Cell No. 7).

Click to read more»

Review: The Slick But Baffling Thriller GENOME HAZARD

Part of MKC's coverage of the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

By John A. Riley

Illustrator Taketo (Nishijima Hidetoshi) returns home one evening to find his wife’s dead body. The telephone rings, breaking a tense silence, and Taketo is baffled to hear his wife’s voice on the other end of the line. Before he can even properly process this tragedy, men arrive intent on killing him, and he is drawn rapidly into a conspiratorial web where the only person who he can trust is Korean reporter Ji-won (a wide-eyed, incredulous Kim Hyo-jin) who, sensing a story, is dragged into the labyrinthine plot herself.

Click to read more»

Review - FRIEND: THE GREAT LEGACY Shares Little with Original

By Pierce Conran

12 years is a long time in the film world but for Korean cinema it seems like almost an eternity. In 2001 I had yet to seen an Asian film, let alone was I aware of Korean films. Yet when I did dip my toes in two years later, Friend (2001) was among the first Korean films that I saw. With its nostalgic air and easily relatable theme of friendship, delivered through a conflation of coming of age, high school and gangster tropes, it wasn’t hard to see why it became the most successful Korean film of all time. Though its record has since been broken many times over, the film’s reputation lives on.

Click to read more»

Review: K-Horror TWO MOONS Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel

By Pierce Conran

I’m glad that I’m not a particularly big horror buff, because if I was, Korean cinema would seem like a real letdown these days. The last few years have done little to convince anyone of the quality, and frankly necessity, of K-horror. Once a strong niche revenue driver for the industry, with a number of interesting if not always stellar entries finding their way to theaters and DVD, of late about three increasingly lackluster productions get dropped on the marketplace per annum. It’s a story of diminishing returns, as the genre seems to be on the way out. At least until something or someone can come along to save it…

2012’s third K-horror Two Moons, following the soporific Don’t Click and the frustrating Horror Stories, is definitely not the messiah that will save the struggling genre. Director Kim Dong-bin previously made the horrors Ring Virus (1999) and Red Eye (2005), both of which were warmly received by audiences or critics. With pretty much nothing going for it, his latest is one of the worst K-horrors to be released in years.

Click to read more»

Review: The Philosophical Mystery A FISH

By Pierce Conran

Independent cinema in Korea has been gaining a lot of steam over the last few years, and now, as filmmakers become bolder or seek to distinguish themselves from the pack, stories are becoming more ambitious and the technical tools used to tell them more sophisticated. Case in point is A Fish, an elliptical shaman mystery shot in 3D. Unlike what we’ve come to expect from the format, this is a far cry from big-budget spectacle. It’s a slow art film with a metaphorical and sometimes impenetrable narrative.

A bold and ambitious debut, Park Hong-min’s A Fish is a challenging work that is certain to infuriate just as many viewers as it may enchant. I won’t pretend to have understood it particularly well, but I can say that I was swept up in the strange world it conjured up on a remote Korean island, full of intrigue, spirituality and unanswered questions. Many times I found myself drawing comparisons to David Lynch, whose dream-like narratives have long fascinated and delighted me. But Park’s film is no mere copy: it is a singular work from an exciting new talent in the field.

Click to read more»

Top 10 Korean Films of 2013

The time has come once again for me to sit down and think about all the new Korean films I had the opportunity to see in 2013 and come up with my favorites. This year, I had a lot to choose from for this ritual as I've seen about 120 local films, so the task proved more difficult than usual.

With 127 million tickets sold and a remarkable nine Korean films featuring in the yearly top ten at the box office, 2013 was a huge year for Korean cinema. Prosperity does not always mean quality and the last few years have been disappointing as far as commercial Korean films have been concerned. Thankfully, in 2013 the industry succeeded in both attracting viewers to multiplexes and putting out high quality fare. That said, I still find myself more partial to the more fertile grounds of independent cinema, as seven low budget films made the list this year. While two films truly blew me away over the last 12 months today's industry still isn't putting out quite the same amount of gems as it was around ten years ago.

Click to read more»

Korean Box Office: Song Kang-ho Proves He's B.O. King with The Attorney

With the help of a homegrown offering's huge opening, business came booming back by soaring over the three million mark for the first time in months. The pre-Christmas weekend saw 61% of tickets got to local films.

Click to read more»

Review: Jeon Do-yeon Shines in WAY BACK HOME

By Pierce Conran

Following a two-year break after the disappointing Countdown, Jeon Do-yeon makes an exceedingly welcome return to the big screen in Way Back Home. With a role that suits her to a tee and under the considered direction of Pang Eun-jin, fresh off last year’s Perfect Number, Jeon is a marvel in what may well become an end-of-year hit for CJ Entertainment.

Click to read more»