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.

Sadness is seldom more unrelenting than on ONE FINE SPRING DAY, a film with no plot and very little dialog. I was riveted by the intelligence and realism depicted on screen, knowing that the film plays differently depending on the viewers own experience. Masterfully done!

An ensemble sad daydream. Death, disease, and heartbreak all around. How to make a sad movie sadder? Make four of them and weave them together into one. The last bit with the videotape is way over the top (ridiculous), but, as sad as things are the film's touchingly cute characters and their scenarios work to hold back tears. It's all just sad. They should call this "Sad Movie."

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

A much better version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses than the USA version. The people are prim and proper with wacky hairdos and and funny hats. All of them are beautiful, much better looking, which makes it more fun and more engaging. It's also interesting as a peek into Korean historical values as they discover Catholicism. Do-yeon Jeon is fabulous.

This came out a year before "You've Got Mail" and is a more somber look at two people who meet over the Internet and develop a bond. Jeon Do-yeon is fabulous, of course.

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.

This is just a bunch of parkas and snow covered goggles barking at one another. I guess I just don't like manly man pictures where manly men do manly stuff like climb mountains with other manly men and during the expedition we find out that one man's neglectful manliness caused his son to commit suicide and consequently all the other men on this man's manly journey start dying mysteriously for some manly reason. Oh, and there's supposedly creepy hallucinations along the way.

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.

Yoon-ki Lee is a slice-of-life, sit back and observe kind of auteur, a method that provided great results when he directed Kim Jisu in "This Charming Girl." There is no one of quite that caliber here. Han Hyo-ju is charming, if perhaps a little too low-key, but the film focuses on many of her ad-lib family members, spreading the interest too thin. Her revelation at the end is like a post-script, an afterthought more than a motivation.

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

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.

Beautifully written, beautifully shot, beautifully acted, and bewildering

sitenoise at the movies: Spider Forest Review

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.

A film like this (boy and girl meet and hate each other then kiss at the end of the film in love) depends almost entirely on performance. Are they quirky and lovable? Average at best. The guy screamed too much and the girl took it too much. The lopsidedness put me off.

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

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

Song Kang-ho as the Weird is great as always, steals the show. Jung Woo-sung is huggable as the Good, though under-developed. But Lee Byung-hun as the Bad has a contemporary look and swagger that are wrong, misplaced As the Bad, he's more arrogant than evil. The cinematography and editing are great and the action is in high gear but the film can't escape the fact that, with very few exceptions, movies with lotsa gun fights are really fucking stupid.

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

How do the Koreans do it? Director Wai-keung Lau takes wacky and plays it straight, creating a touching melodrama full of completely plausible improbabilities. Woo-sung Jung plays the most lovely, sensitive, and attractive professional killer I've seen in a film. All three main characters are weirdly engrossing and beautiful.

This film belongs to Jung-woo Ha. He is engaging and funny, one of those guys who knows how to spin even the worst of interactions into something that makes him seem likeable. Do-yeon Jeon, in heavy eye make-up, pretty much pouts her way through this Yoon-ki Lee film--which means it's low-key, slice of life, simple story stuff.

One of my favorite actresses gets naked and has lots of sex with a 19 year old boy. What's not to like? Well ... maybe the ending but who's counting?

A supernatural romance where the dead come back before their 49 days in limbo are up and bring appropriate living beings into their dreams. Lucky guy (Kyeong-ho Jeong) is torn between Min-sun Kim and Su-yeon Cha not knowing who is alive and who is dead, including himself. The soundtrack is a little too bold at times, but the cinematography an set locations are wonderful.

This film has appalling sexual politics. A repugnant womanizer rapes a student teacher he is supervising. We know they are going to end up together. The guy never redeems himself. The girl appears to hate the man but sleeps with him anyway. Hye-jeong Kang is equally mesmerizing and frustrating as the messed up with baggage girl, but the guy is a complete ass. I can't believe this movie tells the story it does, and to flamenco music no less. wtf?

Every character in this film, except Failan, is a jerk. It's filled with unlikeables yet somehow manages to manipulate a few pretty strong melodramatic moments. "Oldboy" Min-sik Choi is a master technician at melodrama. In the end, however, it seems very cheap, and worst of all ... mean.

Review: sitenoise at the movies: Failan

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.

Not a bad film, but expectations are extremely high for Do-yeon Jeon, and she disappoints; all the characters in the film are cliché.

sitenoise at the movies: The Harmonium in My Memory Review

Good Monster, great humor, excellent drama (if a bit over the top, typical Korean style which morphed it into comedy), decent story, politics. This movie was fun fun fun. It is a well done homage to monster flicks of the way past. Best line in the film is by the little girl as she watches the monster regurgitate bodies for consumption at a later time into the sewer where she is trapped: "I hope one of these guys has a working cell phone." Priceless.

Don't be sucked in by the Kim Ki-duk production if you're a fan. It's stupid and poorly acted. Zero value here.

Do-yeon Jeon is excellent in this film as the cheating wife. She reels you into her life to the point where you stop judging her. That's good actin'. There were a few inexplicable plot wonders, but who cares? The ending is abrupt and ambiguous, seems to happen a lot in Korean films, but not too frustrating. I was pleased to discover that this actress, Do-yeon Jeon, went on to receive best actress honors at the 2007 Cannes for her performance in SECRET SUNSHINE. She's very engaging.

The script for this one is ... well ... let's call it inexpensive. It uses the K-melodrama template where the girl dies after teaching the boy to love. Lee Yeon-hee is as cute and as adorable as they come, so I wish in this one she didn't have to die, but then it wouldn't be the template. I really enjoyed spending time with her but I can't OK the script.

I kept deducting points as this devolved from mediocre mystery to gruesome gore. I gave one back for Seon Yu's performance, both beautiful and evil, but took it back when she participated in the ridiculous endings, yes, endings.

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.

You have to like films about crazy, beautiful, young, lovable, destructive women and the men who become poetically addicted to them. And you have to see this film as surrealism or it doesn't work. Or, you have to enjoy watching a couple of very attractive people get naked, make love, fight, kiss and make up. Either way.

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.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. Full sweetness and light comedy is dragged down by the adolescent humor of the younger brother only occasionally. It teeters on the edge of melodrama without ever getting there but the dashed expectations don't disappoint. The "two different views of the same events" technique is subtly done. Nice job. Different.

This is a fairly intelligent film with smart dialog about two women living on different sides of adultery and how it affects their relationships with each other and their partners, but it's shot and scored like a made-for-tv lightweight drama. It could have been so much better. Tae-ran Lee is a hidden gem: smart, sophisticated, and gorgeous with a million dollar head of hair.

This one has a "Free Hugs" character and another character who claims the idea is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize ... just so you know the terrain here. Four couples, two win, two lose. There's death and crying and violins. Standard Korean multi-romance with melodrama and cuteness. Main reason to see: you need to see everything Yeon-hee Lee does. She's fabulous.

It's a bit of a challenge to stay with the back and forth through time and hair styles, as well as the to and fro among different characters revealing the same narrative points simultaneously, but the plot is simple enough to just let it go. It's a nice romantic series of snapshots with very likeable characters and a happy ending.

Mildly interesting concept: a girl sleepwalks a boy's dreams. Fine acting, but who are these people? Kim's characters don't inhabit the real world so it's difficult to get inside them. They're two isolated beings who exist in a 'what if?' universe. They must fall in love or never sleep at the same time. Nothing special nor thought provoking for me here. Just another movie, which is a bit of a let down from Kim.

Too dark, hard to keep track of who is who and whether they are dead or not, so some of the scares were deflated due to confusion. And then the J-Horror-Goth-Chick shows up amongst all these men. Not enough focus to this decently concepted ghost story.

Meandering and uneventful, although Ji-hyun Jun isn't bad.

Usually I don't go for movies about sublimated machismo, but the story here is engaging and the 'family' relationship is a lot of fun. In-jae Heo is surprisingly good in bringing a heartfelt character to life. This film is touching and sweet until the big fight at the end. I didn't completely hate it though because it was done in a fantasy sort of way. Good movie.

A cheap idea for a film full of bad ideas. Director Jin-ho Hur explores love and death, and the birth and death of love, in his films but just because the concepts are highfalutin doesn't mean you can just throw on a violin track and make a meaningful movie. Stoicism in the face of death is good but here it's negated by selfishness. The guy did wrong and the girl's happiness is a failed manipulation.

An enjoyably goofy romcom for the first hour then the guy dies and the flick falls off a cliff and should have died but doesn't and instead tries to milk sentimentality from every film genre available. Horrible. The dead guy shows up at the end and says "Go out with this guy" (the guy from My Sassy Girl) and the girl is all like, "OK." Cheap and Painful.

This Jin-ho Hur film seems contrived and a lot less compelling than "One Fine Spring Day." In fact, it isn't really compelling at all. The mood shots and the long takes don't work here. They're a little boring and manipulative.

Lush cinematography and luscious Kim Hye-su, but that's all. The film plays out like a high end real estate promo. A slow pace and long shots that are supposed to infuse us with psychological tension fail because there are no entry points to the characters. They look like actors acting tense, trying to method act some history. The short cgi climax is a yawner.

Artificially tense and hip cop and killer thriller that threatens to go over the top throughout, but gets stuck motorcycling around the rim of its contrived story, complete with coincidental fireworks over a broken bridge in the climactic scene. Min-Sun Kim was fun albeit paint-by-number.

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.

The Red Shoes uses every Asian Horror motif we've seen many times before. Most notably the young, attractive, professional female lead who's got a cheating husband and a daughter that goes freaky. Its plot is constructed around some 'thing' that connects the natural and supernatural worlds via the kid. There's a hip, interested, and understanding 'other man' hanging around, helping when he can. The infamous J-Horror Goth Chick even makes appearances. If all this is a deal breaker with regards to your viewing pleasure, skip this one. If it's not, then add it your queue immediately.

The red shoes, usually referred to in the singular in this film, are really more of a fuchsia pink set of come find me pumps. The "Red" is surely meant to symbolize blood, as in "blood on your hands", but I digress.

It's the production values of The Red Shoes that make it worthwhile. This is a good looking film whose creators clearly cared about doing it well. The cinematography is creepy and creative, accentuating the sense of dread with distortions, colors and inspired scene locations. The soundtrack is understated and almost peaceful--it's not used to create tension where none exists. And the script, typical of Asian Horror, is loose enough for the viewer to choose from a number of interpretive styles: is it a dream, a figment of some dreadful imagination, or is everybody a different aspect of a multiple personalty?

The Red Shoes doesn't break any new ground but if you are a fan of the genre this is a professionally put together package.

Ha Ji-won shines in her role as the young police officer who plays the mouse to the Duelist cat. She gets to be goofy, girly, and kick ass all at once. You can tell she is doing most of her own stunts and she's got surprisingly good comic timing. This film is also quite funny at times. A lot of the humor is of the bumbling kind but it's not cheap slapstick. It's more good natured (unfair to characterize it as) loser type struggle. Veteran actor Ahn Sung-Kee, who elevates every film he is in, plays mentor to Ha Ji-won, and he's just great. Supermodel Kang Dong-Won plays the Duelist, named "Sad Eyes", and does a respectable job of playing a hairstyle with depth.

Duelist is a beautiful, if loosely constructed film that won't satisfy hardcore action fans. For me, even though the fighting scenes were mostly stylized dance pieces, and the film wouldn't work without them, there were just too many of them for me to want to watch the film again and enjoy all the other good stuff about it. Take a look at the clip below to see how awesome this guy is at shooting film and marrying music to it.

sitenoise at the movies: Duelist

this is the strangest, silliest romantic melodrama I think I've ever seen. If you decide to watch it, approach it like a train wreck. It's not that it's bad in a cheap way ... it's just wrong at every turn.

Two good actors in the leads. Kyung-gu Sol as the guy, he's from "Oasis" and such. I think he's one of the best Korean actors behind Song Kang-ho, from "The Host" and "Thirst" and such.

The girl is his real life wife, Yun-ah Song. Haven't seen her before but she's cute enough and I liked her acting.

But geez, this film plays the most sentimental music at all the right times ... which means all the wrong times ... it's unabashedly blatant and tries but fails to be manipulative. It's basic blunder of a story is so ill-conceived, and executed so ridiculously, it will make you laugh.

I guess the characters are supposed to be proletariat types because they use foul language when it's not called for and the guy has bad table manners. The girl's mom doesn't wear a bra and she has sex and rides a motor bike scooter thing.

No tears but it's good for a gawk.

This is a film, nominally, about bigamy with the added twist that the bigamist is a woman. But that's just the schtick. It's really just another film about a man's obsessive desire for a beautiful, care-free, intelligent, independent, quirky, sexually confident, and slightly crazy woman. The setup doesn't require exposition, just a good actress. Son Ye-jin fills the role here admirably. When her first husband asks her how she can divide her love between two men she responds, "I don't think of it as dividing. It's doubling it." How do you respond to that?

Don't go into this looking for social commentary or deep thoughts on the complicated nature of modern romance. It's just a Rom-Com with a delicious performance from Son Ye-jin. It ultimately stays on the safe side of the road and only hints at being risqué, such as when Son Ye-jin fulfills her first husband's sexual fantasy of performing oral sex on him and keeping his penis in her mouth until he wakes up in the morning. Son Ye-jin!

sitenoise at the movies: My Wife got Married

Ha Ji-won is fabulous here, playing a Korean JHGC (J-Horror Goth Chick) with bangs and neatly combed hair. Just a little black around the eyes and she's as creepy as they come. And quite beautiful too. In fact, the only redeeming quality of this attempt to jump on the I Know What You Did Last Summer style of horror bandwagon is that all the female players are gorgeous. And they do a fine job acting. Beyond that, compliments are hard to muster.

I hesitate to single out someone for deep ridicule but the guy who plays the lawyer in this flick, his acting is so bad it's painful. He ruins the film.

There are buckets and buckets of blood spilled and some of the kills are pretty good, and, much to my surprise as it's unusual in Korean cinema featuring young starlets, there's brief nudity, Ha Ji-won included. All in all there is some enjoyment to be had from watching a handful of attractive young Koreans go through the horror motions, but I can pretty much guarantee you will be groaning and moaning and pointing fingers and poking fun at this flick before it's over.

sitenoise at the movies: Nightmare

This little blurb will contain spoilers but it doesn't really need them because the film was rotten before I got here. It's ninety minutes of name calling punctuated by ass-kicking.

Breathless tells the story of the cycle of violence: that kids who grow up watching their fathers beat the crap out of their mothers grow up to beat the crap out of people too. Then somebody comes along and beats the crap out of them. In the first fifteen minutes of this film the main character spits on two women and hits them in the face. The second of the two women is a high school girl and she gets hit hard enough it knocks her unconscious. She wakes up and responds to it like some sort of pick-up line because, guess what? She's also grown up watching her father beat the crap out of her mother. So the two of them form a friendship.

In the end, the cycle continues. Yes, we all know this story, but we know the stories ahead of time of many of the movies we love. The trick is to create characters we care about and tell the story in some imaginative way. This film doesn't do that, in my opinion.

sitenoise at the movies: Breathless

We had a THIRST party and we're all sitting there silently in shock and awe for the first thirty minutes or so and then someone asks "Why is this film so annoying?" Another responded: "For one thing, the sound design is childish at best." What's with all the slurping sounds? Someone else offered: "If they don't kill that one guy pretty soon they better at least teach him to wipe his nose or I'm gonna puke." Well, one of those things happened. I won't spoil it by saying which one, suffice to say it had no impact at all. This film has low-budget written all over it. Sure, Park spent a few bucks on a couple scenes but overall it feels cheap. And don't go suggesting that someone drive in here with the metaphor assistance team to give it some depth and all will be well, because it is still unpleasant to endure. The only good part is Ok-bin Kim's lust towards her newfound lifestyle but then even that comes too late and plays itself out way too long to the point of indifference. Yike-o-rama! This film is awful.

sitenoise at the movies: Thirst (Bakjwi) [2009]

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)

Tsunami is a great big huge gigantic disaster. The first ten minutes introduces about a dozen characters all of whom you'll hope are dead in the next ten minutes. It's the strangest character development I've ever seen. There's no subtlety or differentiation to them. They're all loud, extremely loud, obnoxious idiots. There are three things at play here: stupid, godawful, and annoying as hell. The director of the film, in a pre-emptive strike sort of way, has acknowledged that the special effects aren't very good (or very expensive) so he's going to treat us to some good ol' Korean charm. FAIL. I hope this film never sees the light of day outside Korea because it could set back by decades the good reputation of that country's cinematic output. The acting is bad, the myriad plot lines are predictable and groan out loud awful, the special effects are cheesy, and, well .... you get the point.

sitenoise at the movies: Haeundae

So-Hyun is a thirty-eight year old woman unhappy with her life. We can see it in her eyes but nowhere else. The only clue we get is that her husband fails to notice that the electrical wiring in her kitchen needs a complete overhaul. Never underestimate the bond between woman and kitchen, I guess. When her more than a decade younger sister's fiancé shows up things get tense. Her sister and the fiancé had been living in the States but the sister has not returned to Korea just yet. This gives So-Hyun the opportunity to have sex with the fiancé.

I suppose we're to come away with the notion that it wasn't him she fell in love with as much as the idea of falling in love, of falling in love with someone before she gets any older and the possibility of requited love eludes her. In a scene harrowing for its gross out factor the fiancé pretty much lays out this argument for her: "You'll get old. No one will pay you any mind. You'll be sick with no one to tell you they love you. And you won't have any more chances to love. Tell me you love me ." Eew.

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sitenoise at the movies: An Affair

I don't want to go on record as saying this is a good film but I enjoyed it. It's a toned down Korean version of Thelma and Louise with hotter chicks and twice as many of them. A couple girls borrow a car for a weekend getaway and discover two revolvers in the back seat. They initially think the guns are toys but when a trigger is pulled, blowing out the windshield, we know it's going to keep getting pulled. The guns belong to a cop and a gangster who want them back and don't want it known that they lost them, so there will be chasing. The film's got pretty girls robbing places, sticking it to the Man and other icky men, shooting guns but never killing anyone, and getting makeovers. Min-sun (aka Gyu-ri) Kim looks awesome with blond streaks in her long hair. Young-jin Lee, who usually plays brooding and intense, seems a little out of place but it's nice to see her trying to have fun. I actually enjoyed the shenanigans of the cop and the gangster more than the girls. All in all, a decent popcorn rental.

The title A.F.R.I.K.A stands for "Adoring Four Revolutionary Idols Korean Association".

sitenoise at the movies: A.F.R.I.K.A

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

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]

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

I don't understand why funny, dumb, and unattractive always come as a package in movies. Pretty people can be funny too. And dumb. But anyway ... this little film is an entertaining ride. It's got funny, dumb, and unattractive people in it along with a giant pig that likes to dine on human beings. It's not a horror movie at all, except in concept. It's a comedy and it is quintessentially Korean. It's cast very well and everyone is earnest in their portrayal of absurdities. The cops are macho bumbling idiots and people, and the pig, fall down a lot. As with most every South Korean film the production values are great but don't go in expecting a lot of good monsterness. The film is more about the people and the community than it is about the boar. The creature alternates between a couple guys in a furry jumpsuit and medium grade CGI but it gets the job done and doesn't look cheap. Chaw doesn't take itself seriously and if you don't, you will enjoy it.

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sitenoise at the movies: Chaw

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

This is a Hollywood style cat and mouse buddy flick with good action sequences, good acting, and a thick plot with international intrigue which ends happily ever after. It stars a couple of South Korea's top box office attractions in Kang-ho Song and Dong-won Kang. Song plays his usual bumbling yet lovable and competent self, and Kang ups his acting ante from stud muffin to scary good hit-man. They have great chemistry together. It's gritty and bloody and, because it seems to follow Song wherever he goes, it's sprinkled with bits of humor throughout.

South Korea has a tradition of ending films a little differently than most Hollywood films. People usually die instead of flying off into the sunset. I say it's no big deal and there is a lot f fun to be had with Secret Reunion. Just close your eyes, stop the DVD Player, or walk out a few minutes early f you don't want any cheese in your omelet.

sitenoise at the movies: Secret Reunion

Choi Min-Sik reaches a Hannibal Lecter/Anthony Hopkins level of creepy evilness but the film sort of ruins itself by pretending it's more than just a bloodbath. Gore-hounds and violence enthusiasts should enjoy it, though. Great production values.

No synoptical sentence necessary other than to say it's another HONG Sang-soo film. It didn't irritate me. I liked the guy and one of the girls. For almost every winning scene there's a companion scene of superfluous indulgence. I keep trying. Even tried to follow up with HaHaHa but recognized I need recovery time to cleanse the palette.

The film has a slow pace and treats some of the edgier elements with a gentle touch. It never becomes darkly uncomfortable and that's it's charm. It's got quirky characters and a subtle, light sense of humor. Not completely art-house fair but certainly not mainstream. Recommended for those who like films slightly off the beaten path.

Except for the sex scenes this comes off like a made-for-TV flick.

This is the stupidest, most puerile piece of crap I think I've ever seen. Whoever made this film should be arrested for crimes against film making. There's nothing but infantile cliches piled up pretending to be character development. There's no acting, just people playing stupid. Nothing is the least bit believable, or stomach-able, at the suspension of disbelief level. There is no evil in this film just assholes.

There are a few good kills and lots of messy blood at the end but I suggest fast-forwarding to get to them. There is nothing worthwhile at all to learn or enjoy before them. This film doesn't push buttons by pushing any ethical envelopes. It's just low-rent, poorly done, unimaginative, middle-school-dropout-level acting and scripting.

This one's very funny, one of those films in which the director and the actors do a dance of comic timing. Hye-jeong Kang is always good but Shin Hyeon-Jun turns out to be a real comic treat. This is an action flick with lots of humor.

The film's ending unravels instead of tying things up but it's not a deal breaker. In a way, the whole film can be seen as a series of sketches that just parade by instead of building upon one another to form a cohesive whole, and that may be a valid criticism depending on the angle of entry the viewer chooses. Thriller? Romantic Comedy? Action flick? It's all of those, and it's one of the things I like about South Korean cinema. They do mashups, and they do them well, always playing with expectations and throwing in surprises.

If you are a fan of either of the two leads you will enjoy Kiss Me, Kill Me. It's fun and entertaining precisely because it's full of not what you'd expect.