Amazo Korean Films

Absolutely beautiful! Brilliantly assembled simple story of a writer in search of his muse, told with rich colors and lots of black, dream logic, humor, inspired editing, and a soundtrack that matches it beat for beat. I wanted to applaud almost every scene. Arty without pretension and a poet's attention to detail.

sitenoise at the movies: M (2007)

This is a painful and gorgeous film. Not sad. Painful. And gorgeous. And painful. Be advised that there are a couple scenes in this film that rank up there as a couple of the most difficult scenes to endure in cinematic history. You don't actually see anything, but it's clear what's going on and it is essential to the meaning of this movie. You will squirm in your seat. Guaranteed. And if animals being harmed in the making of a film bothers you, and you consider fish and frogs animals, stay away.

An amazing love story. Outstanding performances!

Jong-du is a social misfit, heading for retarded. When his brother tells him he should think before he acts, he responds "I don't know what you mean", and he doesn't. He can't see the need to.

Gong-ju has cerebral palsy. Jong-du doesn't see it, or he sees right through it. Clearly. It registers nothing in him.

Great idea, great script, great direction; 5 for being a good film about male bonding; 5 more for the political content, and for the boundaries and taboos it broke with regards to historical Korean film; 5 more for the way the story is told. It unfolds like a classic who-dunnit. I paced around after seeing this film wondering how it could be so good.

This film stars two of my favorite Korean actors, Do-yeon Jeon and Kang-ho Song, and is written and directed by Chang-dong Lee, of OASIS fame.

The plot in a nutshell: Jeon's character moves with her son Jun to Miryang, the town where her recently killed husband was born. As she tries to start her new life another tragic event turns her world upside down. She looks for comfort in god and religiousness, and then turns a critical towards that.

The scene where Jeon's character goes to the prison to forgive the man who committed the most heinous of crimes against her is one of the strongest and smartest statements on religious belief I've seen.

It's a long, slow paced film, but the performances are extraordinary. Do-yeon Jeon won best actress at Cannes for her performance.

About a girl whose father discovers she is prostituting herself ... OR ... a movie about a guy who discovers his daughter is prostituting herself. Either way, this is a very touching film ... from Kim Ki-Duk. There are two different worlds going on trying to find bridge through pain or kindness. For those who think it starts off like an after school special, yep, that's the point. I think this is KKD in top form. Sex, Violence, Misunderstanding, Love comingling in bizarro-land.

Beautifully written, beautifully shot, beautifully acted, and bewildering

sitenoise at the movies: Spider Forest Review

It's a buddy cop comedy mystery thriller melodrama. Typically over-the-top Korean style done very very well. World of Silence peels off layer upon layer, uncovering about five film's worth of internal demons and other dramatic tragedies, but it ends, and it seems to end a few times, like a sportscaster screaming "No! No! I don't believe it! Don't ..." and then "Great shot!" when it goes in.

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sitenoise at the movies: World of Silence

After JSA, the Vengeance Trilogy was a bit of a yawner for me. This restored my faith in Park Chan-wook. Funny. Surreal.

Hye-jeong Kang is not only cute beyond words she's one of Korea's best young actresses. From "The Butterfly" and "Oldboy" to this ... Wow! "Love Phobia" is standard Korean melodrama which is very cute and funny for an hour and then slowly makes you cry for an hour without dashing your hope for a happy ending. It's executed extremely well with quirky cute bits throughout. Seung-woo Cho is also very good. If you like this kind of movie this is a home run. Interesting allegory as well.

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sitenoise at the movies: Love Phobia

A ridiculously tearful melodrama. Despite the medium grade writing and direction, picking nits with this film is useless. It is so well-acted by two beautiful Koreans it's freakish. First half is smiley RomCom, second half is face dripping, and I mean soaking wet, sad.

A gripping thriller with a bewildered sense of humor made possible by the kick-ass performance of Yun-seok Kim. Highly recommended. There are a handful of groan out loud plot moves in The Chaser, but so what. There are also more than a handful of plot moves this film doesn't do, moves that most people will be guessing it will do, that it more than makes up for it. This is a film I know I'll watch again just for the performance of it. The plot won't matter. It's that good.

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sitenoise at the movies: The Chaser

Do-yeon Jeon fans, add this one to your queue. She plays both mother and daughter in this touching film about a woman who goes back in time and befriends her mother and witnesses the courtship between her mother and father. Great location, cinematography and acting.

There are problems with this film by CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST and ONE FINE SPRING DAY director Jin-ho Hur ... virgin purity with terminal disease falls for stereotype hard-drinking jerkball guy and dies happy 'cause he's there at her deathbed ... but it's engaging, well shot and well acted.

Korean comedy, of the mildly mature kind, at its finest. The casting made this loads of fun. Jin-seo Yun as the innocent who wants an affair but comes up with a reason to postpone consummation every time is desirable in spite of it and genuinely adorable. Hye-su Kim enjoys her virginal conquest and her sexual maturity shines. Easy to share why the male characters didn't just hang up.

Thoughtful K-comedy, slightly risqué, wins with wit, good acting, and a good (award winning) screenplay filled with surprises. There is adult humor in the presence of a child so delicacy is warranted. Props to young actress Woo Seo for taking it all in stride, reminding us that kids are usually hip to the things adults think they should be protected from. Hyo-jin Kong, as the frumpy high school teacher is surprisingly accomplished in her comic timing. The director seems aware of all the cheap ways to make us laugh but instead of utilizing them he steps back and winks at them. This is smart and funny ... not a goof-ball comedy even though it plays like one on the surface. NY Asian FilmFest 2009.

The film owes most of its success to brilliant casting. The film's first casting coup, Lee Mi-Suk, turns in a solid performance as a forty-one year old stage designer confronted with 'early onset' menopause. The film's second casting coup was landing Ahn So-hee of the popular K-pop group, the Wonder Girls, to play Lee's teen-aged daughter. Finally, the biggest and most welcome surprise is the performance of Twiggy model Kim Min-hie who anchors and narrates the film. Her performance is genuine, pulling off the impossible: acting drunk and shrill without losing any of her charm. She's not drunk all the time. It's only a few scenes, but under normal circumstances this is enough to ruin a role, if not a film, for me.

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sitenoise at the movies: Hellcats

In many ways this is a natural, and equal, followup to "Memories of Murder". It's every bit the 'caper' film that one was, and, although slightly more somber in tone, the film keeps unraveling in directions you don't expect making it much more a plot driven movie than a character study. Kim Hye-ja is magnificent as the mother. There is a scene in this film where she tells the family of the victim her son didn't do it and her eyes are so electrically charged it made me jump back from the screen. This film fires on all cylinders. The direction, cinematography, script, and acting are all grade A. It's one of those films where each of the secondary characters steals the show for a brief period. Bong Joon-ho does a remarkable job of populating the world of the film with real people and manages to give them depth and development in a very short period of time. It's too bad that because this film is ostensibly about an old lady it must be considered a 'smaller' film in his oeuvre. It's not. It is every bit as brilliant, and as large, as "Memories of Murder".

sitenoise at the movies: Mother (Madeo)

Possessed is more thriller than horror. It's got some scares and a few jolts here and there, but it's really more eerie than frightening. The story concerns a girl who returns home from college when she learns her younger sister has gone missing. She discovers her mother has become a religious fanatic who believes only prayer will bring her sister back. But back from where becomes the big question. People all around her commit suicide. There's a cult, a Shaman, and a handful of freaky people who engage in weird ceremonies with a hope for salvation or cure from disease. It's not a pedantic essay on religious belief but that is the main theme of the film and it serves to give the proceedings some depth. It also situates the film on a terrain of the supernatural which, when you make a film, gives you license to bend realities and play visual tricks from time to time. But nothing is cheap here. The intended audience isn't the summer of fear kids. It's more serious than that and it never gets close to outrageous.

sitenoise at the movies: Possessed (Bulsinjiok) Living Death ? Disbelief Hell [2009]

I sat for two hours loving this woman, and feeling sorry for her, hoping for her. That's what is supposed to happen when you watch a well-executed character study.

If you were to look up "boring art house film" in some film dictionary you might find the plot synopsis for This Charming Girl listed as the definition: The film follows Jung-hye?s quiet life and reveals the landscape of the character?s inner feelings. We watch her feed her cat, cook herself meals, go to a job at an uneventful workplace, go shopping for shoes. This is not an action movie.

If you like well-written, well-acted, meticulously directed character studies This Charming Girl is one of the best ones out there. Even though it is art house to the max, there isn't a pretentious moment in the film.

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sitenoise at the movies: This Charming Girl

This is in the same league as A Moment to Remember ... if you like this kind of stuff. It uses pretty much the standard terminal disease of the week Korean melodrama template: the first half is fun and lighthearted (to set context and set up the sadness); in the first two-thirds of the second half, we watch the knife go in; and in the final third of the second half, the knife is unmercifully twisted.

Strange thing though. The film didn?t make me cry. I found myself thrusting my fists in the air, in a very sports-like manner, at how well directed, and how well acted were the scenes that were supposed to make me cry. Once this film reaches the second half and leaves the detritus behind it?s like floating on a cloud.

If you think the twists work they?ll seem brilliant. If you don?t, you may frown upon the whole thing. I?m, of course, not going to say what they are, except to say I think they work and give the film a unique spot amongst the ranks of Korean high-art melodrama.

sitenoise at the movies: More Than Blue

This film blew me away. In a nutshell the film is about a thirty years young Korean man in search of his biological mother. With extras.

Having said that, and saying that this film touches on many of the related topics of child abandonment, identity, adoption, loss, being young and pregnant and alone (not to mention some very pointed exposition on Korean nurseries and clinics), in very powerful ways, it's not a message film nor an after-school special level catharsis. It's way weirder, and more literary, and much more poetic. The film is more like a painting than a story. The second act is pretty much a riff on Albert Camus' Le Malentendu.

sitenoise at the movies: A Blind River

Two very genuine performances allow for Wanee and Junah to reach some peaks of emotional sadness on the level of One Fine Spring Day--one of the best films ever made about love evaporating for no reason (or for so many reasons it's too complicated to parse), just like it does in real life. This is the kind of sadness that doesn't make you cry, it makes you mad. It makes you want to rebel against it because it seems so unfair, so not right.

Wanee and Junah is a pretty remarkable film. Good performances, good cinematography and score compliment the ambitious, if not always successful, directorial choices in both structure and content. I was frustrated many times along the way but not too many films can tie your guts up into a knot the way this one does. Color me impressed with that. Wanee and Junah, like the aforementioned One Fine Spring Day, is a film that depends a lot on what you bring to it, what your own experiences are, and where you sit with regards to some of the delicate circumstances it operates in.

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sitenoise at the movies: Wanee and Junah