PiFan 2014 Review: MY ORDINARY LOVE STORY Is Not Your Ordinary Rom-Com

By Pierce Conran

Expectations play a large role in how we consume and react to cinema, particularly in the commercial realm. Genre formulas are so clearcut than any deviation is immediately noticeable. Some variation is required to prevent things from getting stale but anything too jarring and you run the risk of alienating your audience. The new Korean romcom (or is it?) My Ordinary Love Story takes such a risk as it veers way off course, but this is one gamble that pays off in spades.

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News: ROARING CURRENTS Lays Waste to Korean Box Office Records

By Pierce Conran

Roaring Currents has turned the Korean opening weekend record to rubble with 3.34 million admissions ($25.65 million) during its first weekend, which accounted for 65.7% of the marketplace. That represents a 41% increase over the former record, set by Transformers 3 in 2011 (2.37 million). The film has already banked 4.75 million viewers and $35.4 million since its debut five days ago.

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News: Korean Film Festival in Australia 2014 Lineup Announced!

By Hieu Chau

The Korean Film Festival in Australia returns for its fifth year, bringing with it a slate of the country’s must-see films from the past year. KOFFIA will be touring across six cities this year, and the festival will kick off in Sydney on August 31st and finish up in Adelaide in late September.

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Review - Cool KUNDO: AGE OF THE RAMPANT Has Some Swagger In Its Step

By Pierce Conran

With big stars and a hefty budget, Kundo: Age Of The Rampant marches into theaters with confidence and tongue planted firmly in cheek. This hybrid period film owes more to spaghetti westerns than the history of its Joseon Era setting and some may take umbrage at the film's excessive running time, but with a raucous charm and an array of well-mined genre tropes, it's sure to keep most spectators satisfied.

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Review: Bleak And Gripping, HAEMOO Prizes Character Over Spectacle

By Pierce Conran

To date, the summer of 2014 has seen the majority of mainstream Korean films fall into either of two categories: the noir thriller or the period blockbuster. While a handful of terrific genre pieces, namely A Hard Day and Confession, have succeeded in spite of this inertia, it's been high time for something a little different. Along comes Haemoo, a character-driven blockbuster set on a boat that is based on a play which is itself drawn from a real life incident.

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News: Korean Films At Melbourne International Film Festival 2014

By Hieu Chau

Australian fans of Korean cinema have much to be excited about as some of MKC's favourite films of the past year will be featured at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).

As part of MIFF's yearly Accent on Asia program, organisers have selected four South Korean features for the annual film event: A Girl At My Door, A Hard Day, Han Gong-Ju and Our Sunhi.

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News: A GIRL AT MY DOOR acquired by UK's Peccadillo Pictures

By Hieu Chau

After an impressive showing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, July Jung’s film, A Girl At My Door (Doheeya), has been picked up by independent UK distributor Peccadillo Pictures, according to Screen Daily.

Competing in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes, the film stars MKC favourite Bae Doo-na and Kim Sae-ron, with acclaimed auteur Lee Chang-dong serving as producer.

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Cannes 2014 Review: A HARD DAY Is Easy-to-Love Genre Cinema

By Pierce Conran

If you feel that tough genre fare in Korea has been spinning its wheels of late, you're not alone. While generally well made, the élan of yesteryear's hardboiled Korean thrillers has recently been replaced by a growing sense of familiarity and an alarming whiff of complacency. There have been exceptions, but by and large those have come from name directors afforded more creative freedom in an industry dominated by financiers unwilling to give new talent much autonomy. Things started to look a little better last year with the release of Cold Eyes and Hide and Seek and bucking the trend once more is A Hard Day, a terrific new mid-level genre offering that was invited to the Director's Fortnight sidebar at Cannes this year.

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Cannes 2014 Review: A GIRL AT MY DOOR Is Korean Cinema At Its Finest

By Pierce Conran

Screening in the Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section this year is A Girl at My Door, a film that is so well-wrought that one can't help but be swept up in its artistry, which effortlessly plunges us into an intellectual reverie. The film features the return of Bae Doo-na, following back-to-back Hollywood blockbusters, and teenage actress Kim Sae-ron. It also boasts Lee Chang-dong as a producer, whose influence over the film will not go unnoticed.

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Review: Lee Jang-ho's Mysterious and Magnificent THE MAN WITH THREE COFFINS

By Pierce Conran

Though oppressed by Chung Doo-hwan's administration throughout much of the decade, the Korean film industry was nevertheless able to produce some remarkable films in the 1980s. However, for all their social gravitas and literary refinement, rarely was it the case that films from this period were praised for their technical achievements. Classics from this time such as The Ball Shot by a Midget (1981), The Oldest Son (1985) and Chilsu and Mansu (1988) shone a sober and somber light on the nation's dark social realities but few sought to experiment with the medium. However, this past Sunday, following a special screening at the Korean Film Archive (KOFA), I discovered that within all the weighty and poignant films of the era, there were indeed some people attempting to redefine the boundaries of cinema.

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Review: Strong Scenes Doth Not a Narrative Make in Genre-Hopping COMMITMENT

By Pierce Conran

Following on from this year's Secretly Greatly, another action-drama featuring Korean idols playing young North Korean spies who stay undercover in the south only to be targeted by their homeland, Commitment announces itself as a medley of genres, as commonly witnessed in commercial Korean film. Both works hail from Korean studio Showbox, but while Secretly Greatly starts out as a neighborhood comedy-drama, this new effort reserves its opening beats strictly for the thriller genre.

After his father's failed mission in the South, Myung-hoon and his sister are sent to a prison camp in North Korea. Accepting his own mission as an undercover spy to protect his sister from further harm, Myung-hoon infiltrates the south, where he poses as a high school student. He ends up helping a bullied girl in his school while going out interrogating people to learn what happened to his father during his free time. Soon his government learns what he is up to and sends someone to kill him.

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Review: Bat-Swinging Gorilla Feature MR GO Is Hit and Miss

By John A. Riley

The premise of Mr Go is that a trained gorilla from China becomes a major league baseball star in South Korea. On paper, this sounds like one of the parodic Troy McLure vehicles from The Simpsons. Mr. Go does indeed paint in broad strokes, seeking wide appeal. It’s a rare Korean film, and is also a co-production with China.

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