Busan 2014 Review: A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION Is David Lynch Meets Hong Sangsoo

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

By Pierce Conran

Following his terrific debut Romance Joe (2011), Lee Kwang-kuk is back in Busan with A Matter of Interpretation, a breathless play on dream logic with smart plotting and a great script that proves he's no fluke, and then some.

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Busan 2014 Review: Lame Leads Sink THE PIRATES

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

By Pierce Conran

Fast on the heels of Kundo: Age of the Rampant and Roaring Currents, the summer’s latest period blockbuster enters a crowded field in a market that has of late become oversaturated with similar fare. With lowbrow, poorly executed humor tucked into an uninspired medley of rote genre mechanics, The Pirates fares the worst among this year’s large-scale Korean productions.

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Busan 2014 Review: A MIDSUMMER'S FANTASIA Effortlessly Draws You Into Its Subtle Tale

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

By Pierce Conran

Taking place in the quiet town of Gojo in Japan, an ageing community tinged with a lingering sadness and marked by stillness, A Midsummer's Fantasia is a wistful, hopeful and nostalgic third feature by rising Korean indie auteur Jang Kunjae.

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Busan 2014 Review: Cool KUNDO: AGE OF THE RAMPANT Has Some Swagger In Its Step

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

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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Busan 2014 Review: ENTANGLED Gets Caught Up in Its Own Depressing Narrative

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

By Pierce Conran

Following the blistering debut Fatal, a gritty rape-revenge thriller that bowed at the Busan Film Festival in 2012, Lee Don-ku returns to Busan with the disappointing family drama Entangled. Though it seeks to inspire a similar sense of shock and outrage with its raw family dynamics and desperate plot turns, Lee's matter-of-fact mise-en-scene and his narrative's inherent histrionics combine to form a humdrum and overly familiar Korean indie.

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Busan 2014 Review: GIFTED Takes an Interesting Turn Before Veering Off Course

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

By Pierce Conran

Taking its cue from the common social grievances often found in Korean indie dramas, Gifted, the sophomore effort of Poongsan (2011) helmer Jung Jai-hung, examines the friction between unemployment and consumerist ambitions in modern Korea. Slight and familiar, the film doesn't immediately stand out but when its narrative starts to deviate off the standard template, it isn't long before it goes in a surprising direction.

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

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

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

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

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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Busan 2014 Review: Bleak and Gripping, HAEMOO Prizes Character over Spectacle

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

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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Review: Unsettling I AM TRASH Revels in Depravity and Dysfunction

By David Bell

Following earlier instalments of Mother is a Whore (2010) and Father is a Dog (2012), Lee Sang-woo completes his thematic trilogy of family dysfunction with I Am Trash (2014), an unflinching depiction of a Seoul street sweeper’s plight to liberate his brothers from sexual deviance after their convicted-paedophile father returns home from prison.

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Watch Free Korean Films on Drama Fever!

While many Korean films are available to buy through specialty Asian retailers, options are still frustratingly slim in individual markets outside of Korea. A few local distributors specialize in Asian film distribution but broad selections of easily accessible Korean films (with subtitles) have been hard to come by. But now the online streaming service Drama Fever has expanded into Korean films, and they boast an impressive lineup of free to watch Korean movies that is growing by the week.

Currently featuring 58 titles (54 of which are Korean), Drama Fever showcases the best in commercial Korean cinema and has also been dipping its toes into acclaimed independent cinema. From recent commercial hits such as Very Ordinary Couple, Architecture 101 and The Man From Nowhere to cult favorites such as Antarctic Journal (2005) and The President's Barber (2004) and arthouse fare including Barbie, Vegetarian (2009) and Tale of Cinema (2005), Korean films fans (or indeed any fan of well made cinema), should have no trouble finding something to suit their tastes.

Here at MKC we're very pleased to announced a partnership with Drama Fever, which will include previewing some of the great films they have on show and we may even have a few titles available to view directly on the site before long. Drama Fever titles are only available to viewers in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Click here to see what else they have on offer. Happy viewing!

KOFFIA 2014 Review: THE DINNER Offers Too Many Cold Servings

By Hieu Chau

Creating a compelling domestic family drama is never an easy task mainly due to the stories these films have to tell. The narrative of a family drama is almost never about something new but it definitely takes a certain type of filmmaker to be able to evoke something profound and invigorating out of typically ordinary circumstances. Director Kim Dong-hyun tries his hardest to be that type of filmmaker with his latest family drama, The Dinner, but unfortunately lacks the astute direction and strong scripting that a poised filmmaker such as Japan's Hirokazu Koreeda possesses.

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