Review: THREE SUMMER NIGHT Strips Down To Bikinis And Cheap Jokes

By Pierce Conran

Bikini bods, thugs and knuckleheads cross paths under the summer sun in the latest from Korean comedy maestro Kim Sang-jin. Just as chaotic as his earlier output but with less of an edge, Kim brings his trademark cause-and-effect comedy brand to Three Summer Night, a diverting yet forgettable spin on The Hangover.

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Review: INSANE Shoots Down the Middle

By Pierce Conran

Released early in 2016, the surprise hit Insane is the sixth film from versatile director Lee Cheol-ha. Employing a less than original premise, this thriller turns out to be a middle-of-the-road attempt that pales in comparison to a slew of stronger titles in what was a strong year for Korean thrillers.

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Review: UNWANTED BROTHER Puts Onus On Characters In Familiar Setting

By Pierce Conran

After nearly a decade away from the director's chair, Shim Kwang-jin returned with an unhurried take on a common tale of a lowlife manipulating those around him to pay a debt. Propped up by a few fresh spins on the well-trodden material and some earthy performances, Unwanted Brother is a worthwhile character study with subtle yet clear social overtones which debuted at the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2015.

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Review: ISLAND, An Elegiac Arthouse Mystery

By Pierce Conran

A man travels to Jeju Island, planning to kill himself in his grandparents' abandoned home, in the most intriguing Korean film to grace the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2015. A lushly filmed and thoroughly engrossing mystery channeling local family melodrama norms along with surprising genre tropes and themes of the loss in a hermetic urban society, Island is a deliberately paced and ambitious arthouse production from sophomore auteur Park Jin-seong.

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Review: THE DEAL, A Serviceable But Generic Korean Revenge Thriller

By Pierce Conran

Korea delivers yet another serviceable revenge thriller with The Deal, a well-oiled but overly familiar addition to the longstanding local genre staple. With young women violently murdered during downpours and Kim Sang-kyung once again playing a hapless detective at his wit's end, the film immediately calls to mind modern classic Memories of Murder, an inevitable comparison but a tough act to live up to.

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Review: THE HANDMAIDEN, Park Chan-wook's Deeply Engrossing and Highly Sexual Tale of Female Sexuality

By Pierce Conran

Following his Hollywood foray Stoker, Park Chan-wook returns to (mostly) home soil for his sumptuous and sensual adaptation of Sarah Waters' Fingersmith. Transposing the novel's setting from Victorian England to 1930s Korea and Japan, when the former was a colony of the latter, The Handmaiden is a deeply engrossing, highly sexual and at times darkly humorous tale of female sexuality brought to life in spectacular fashion.

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Review: YOURSELF AND YOURS Finds Hong Sang-soo in Wry and Perplexing Mood

By Pierce Conran

Celebrated indie auteur Hong Sang-soo returns to Toronto with his 18th film Yourself and Yours. Once again featuring artists boozing their way through a series of eateries as they lament over their personal woes, his latest work echoes the themes he's repeated throughout his career. Yet there's a darker than usual tone and less humanity on display here in a duplicitous narrative that appears to deliberately toy with its audience.

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Review: THE WAILING, A Bone-Chilling, Thunderous Descent Into Hell

By Pierce Conran

After turning the Korean thriller on its head with The Chaser and The Yellow Sea, director Na Hong-jin has reinvented himself again, aggressively pushing against the boundaries of genre cinema with The Wailing. A deafening descent into hell, it may also be the best Korean film since Lee Chang-dong's Poetry.

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Review: KARAOKE CRAZIES Kills It

By Pierce Conran

In Korea, few things are more important than karaoke. With thousands of karaoke bars, open all hours, littering every corner of the country, it's an activity that reaches every part of society, servicing hoards of stressed salary workers, bored teenagers or oftentimes a more licentious clientele. Karaoke is a frequent feature of Korean films, but in Karaoke Crazies, Korea's national pastime comes out front and center, serving as the focal point of an infectious blend of drama, comedy, thriller and absurdity.

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Review: THE HIMALAYAS Swaps Snowflakes For Tears

By Pierce Conran

For those looking for an expedition drama, be warned that despite its title, The Himalayas is first and foremost a melodrama. One concerning brotherhood, family and, above all, coping with grief. Himalayan expedition films seem to be in vogue at the moment, with 2015 already yielding Baltasar Kormákur's Everest and Japanese drama Everest: The Summit of the Gods due out in a few months, but Lee Suk-hoon's picture is more concerned with relationships than it is with the technicalities of mountaineering.

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Review: THE TIGER, A Gory, Gorgeous Battle To The Death

By Pierce Conran

Following the record-breaking success of Roaring Currents, Choi Min-sik returns to screens in another big-budget period epic, this time hunting down the last Korean tiger (as opposed to the last tiger in Korea, because this feline clearly has a national identity) in Park Hoon-jung's end-of-year release The Tiger.

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Review: THE BACCHUS LADY Gracefully Explores Bounty of Taboo Subjects

By Pierce Conran

Veteran actress Youn Yuh-jung, star of such classics as Kim Ki-young's Woman of Fire and The Insect Woman, takes on perhaps her boldest role yet in The Bacchus Lady. Directed by E J-yong, appearing in the Berlinale program for the fifth time, this surprising 3D drama was made within the sanctuary of the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA).

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Review: INSIDE MEN, A Political Thriller That Goes For The Jugular

By Pierce Conran

The year is almost up, the box office has been tallied and the people have spoken. Stories of greedy corporate heirs, crooked clergy, conniving journalists and dirty politicians have risen to the top of the pile, each more acerbic than the last. But 2015 ends with a bang and one of the darkest, most fiercely critical mainstream Korean films of recent memory. Woo Min-ho ably surpasses his previous efforts with third feature Inside Men, which also marks a comeback of sorts for the embattled star Lee Byung-hun, who has spent much of the year in tabloid columns for the wrong reasons.

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Busan 2017 Review: HOME Settles in for Pleasant if Predictable Family Drama

By Pierce Conran

Busan-set family melodrama Home doesn't stray from stock themes of Korean dramas yet its endearing young cast and genuine feelings make it a pleasant debut from newcomer Kim Jong-woo.

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Busan 2017 Review: BLUEBEARD, Ambitious Chiller Lacks Tension

By Pierce Conran

Much like her debut The Uninvited, Lee Soo-yeon's latest film Bluebeard teases a dark genre storyline before turning off into more psychological territory through several layered images and a protagonist who isn't quite what he seems, played by Cho Jin-woong of A Hard Day. Unlike her impressive 2003 horror film, her second work feels less fresh and a lot more contrived.

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Busan 2017 Review: TAKLAMAKAN, Introspective Drama Dashes Dreams

By Pierce Conran

Ko Eun-ki's sixth film Taklamakan, takes its name from a red desert in China which, as legend maintains, won't let you out once you step inside. In this dark and introspective drama, featuring characters that use the word as a metaphor for their everlasting love, we discover on a dusty hill that sets the stage for an irrevocable life choice that Taklamakan is in actuality a point of no return for the three main characters, played by Cho Seong-ha, Ha Yoon-kyung and Song Eun-ji in committed if dour performances.

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Review: FORGOTTEN Mislays Its Mystery after Strong Start

By Pierce Conran

Modern thrillers live or die by their twists, and while an unexpected and well-executed surprise can elevate a film from mundane to memorable, many filmmakers forget that it's the journey there that counts. In his latest film Forgotten, director Chang Hang-jun gets it half right, crafting an effortlessly intriguing mystery --- until he starts to lift the curtain. Once that happens around the halfway point, the film offers one expository scene after the next. These scenes manage to both build an extraordinarily convoluted ruse before boiling it down to wearily familiar points, all the while lifting wholesale from the most devilishly twisted Korean thriller of them all.

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Review: THE CHASE Leads Us Down Familiar Path

By Pierce Conran

An intriguing, if admittedly low-key twist on the Korean serial killer chiller never really comes together in the mediocre The Chase, the third film from The Con Artists helmer Kim Hong-sun. Leading man Baek Yoon-sik (of Save the Green Planet fame) lays on a heavy accent as he shuffles through an incongruous medley of gore and levity that rarely strays from its middle-of-the-road trajectory.

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Review: THE SWINDLERS Cons Viewers Out of Their Time

By Pierce Conran

Stars Hyun Bin and Yoo Ji-tae go toe-to-toe in this month's The Swindlers, a loose and jazzy caper thriller that mines Korea's abundant fascination with grifters. Or at least that's what it attempts to do, as this blatant ripoff of the work of director Choi Dong-hoon (Tazza: The High Rollers, The Thieves) is a grating star vehicle that smacks of smug ineptitude and a whole lot of cut corners.

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Review: GONJIAM: HAUNTED ASYLUM May Scare You Away from Hospitals for Good

By Pierce Conran

The history of Korean horror was rewritten this year by the most unlikely of contenders, as a low-budget found footage chiller became one of the top-selling K-horrors of all time. Without the benefit of any stars, Epitaph co-director Jung Bum-sik struck box office gold with Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, which fell shy of only Kim Jee-won's A Tale of Two Sisters on the all-time local horror chart.

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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.

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Review: BE WITH YOU, Pleasant Fantasy Drama Stays the Course

By Pierce Conran

The Korean fantasy romance, a genre that has spawned modern classics such as Il Mare and Ditto, has fallen on hard times in recent years but makes a strong case for a return to form with Be With You, an engaging new vehicle for stars Son Ye-jin and So Ji-sub.

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Review: LITTLE FOREST Will Have You Yearning for the Simple Life

By Pierce Conran

In Korean cinema, when characters retreat to the countryside things generally don't work out too well for them, but in Yim Soon-rye's new drama Little Forest, a young woman regains her spirit, and as she does so, many viewers will leave the theater with a desire for the simple life. This adaptation of a popular Japanese manga (already adapted into a two-part Japanese film) gives Kim Tae-ri her first lead role since her breakout part in Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden and offers a distinct Korean flavor in what is a cinematic love letter to 'slow living'.

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Jeonju 2018 Review: A GOOD BUSINESS, NK Defector Doc Poses Fascinating Ethical Quandaries

By Pierce Conran

Some of the best documentaries are those that don't tell you what to think but choose instead to explore a subject from different viewpoints and angles, let the images speak for themselves and give the viewer a chance to make up their own mind.

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Jeonju 2018 Review: WINTER'S NIGHT Takes a Colorful and Introspective Trip Down Memory Lane

By Pierce Conran

Returning with his third film to the festival where he picked up the top Korean Competition prize for his debut A Fresh Start, director Jang Woo-jin delivers his most carefully designed work to date with Winter's Night, one of this year's Jeonju Cinema Projects at the Jeonju International Film Festival. Yet for all its artistry and clear merit, a film with a strong opening act slowly loses its way as intriguing threads become muddled through thickly layered symbolic overtures that recall a great many similar Korean independent works, not to mention Jang's previous film Autumn, Autumn.

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Jeonju 2018 Review: GRADUATION Scores Top Marks for Its Young Director and Star

By Pierce Conran

Making films is hard anywhere, but in Korea, where so many youths dream of entering what is a successful yet relatively small industry, it's a particularly tricky proposition. Thus it comes as little surprise that so many debut features focus on the hardships of making films. Korean film festivals have provided a platform to many of these works over the years, including Lee Byoung-heon's Cheer Up, Mr. Lee, Park Joon-bum's Director's Cut and Baek Jae-ho's We Will Be OK. Jeonju featured another one this year, but Graduation, from the 23-year-old Hui Ji-ye, offers a unique and refreshing view on the subject, despising hewing to many similar themes.

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