At the tail end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century, the powers that be in Hollywood discovered something they hadn’t realised before. Which was that there was a real hunger amongst movie-goers to see effects-laden fantasy cinema that was based on prior cultural work. The X-Men, Harry Potter, The Lord Of […]
Following Parasite’s Best Picture win at the Oscars, South Korean cinema is arguably receiving more attention than ever. While the works of Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook are both pretty established cinematic touchstones at this point, it feels important to continue to celebrate South Korean cinema. This list will observe important works little seen outside […]
After Parasite rocked the world last year, people finally started paying attention to South Korean cinema. This is long overdue when you consider the nearly boundless assortment of quality films coming from the area. The average cinephile might be frustrated that it took so long for people to suck it up and read some subtitles, […]
Korean cinema made a name for itself among cinephiles at the turn of the 21st century for original genre film, and in particular with slick, ultraviolet action films, mostly with a focus on the revenge theme. Park Chan-Wook’s Revenge Triology being the ur-text. Seeing as guns are not as readily available in Korea the characters […]
2018 has been a rather interesting year for Korean cinema, which, despite the continuous turn towards Hollywood aesthetics and the non-stop production of crime-thrillers, managed to produce a number of interesting films, headed by the return of two of the contemporary greats, Kim Ki-duk and Lee Chang-dong. The blockbusters were here once more, but the […]
Evidently, two consecutive great years are quite uncommon, even for Korean cinema, particularly because films like “The Handmaiden” and “The Wailing” did not find their equals in 2017. This, however, does not mean that the level of quality fell much lower, since the country’s film industry seems to provide great films continuously, even despite their […]