Busan 2020 Review: VESTIGE Ponders the Ineffable with Grace and Mystery

Part of MKC's coverage of the 25th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Two Korean masters of arthouse cinema join forces for one of Busan's most intriguing offerings this year. Commissioned by the Muju Film Festival, Vestige features two mid-length films from Kim Jong-kwan (Worst Woman, 2016) and Jang Kun-jae (A Midsummer's Fantasia, 2014), which both deal with death and the afterlife in lyrical and understated ways. Though this light brush with horror is new territory for them, both directors retain elements of their trademark styles, while also hinting at new stylistic directions in their work.

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Busan 2020 Review: YOUNG ADULT MATTERS, An Explosive and Frequently Engrossing Runaway Teen Drama

Part of MKC's coverage of the 25th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Three years after his abrasive debut Park Hwa-young (2017), director Lee Hwan returns to Busan with Young Adult Matters, an intense and frequently engrossing follow-up set in the same world of foul-mouthed, unpredictable and violent runaway teens. While it inherits many of the same problems that plagued his first effort (at least for this reviewer), Lee has grown in leaps and bounds as a stylist and crafted something fresh and vibrant, while lead Lee Yoo-ri - reprising her supporting role from Lee’s earlier film - is manic and magnetic as a character that could easily be at home in a Tetsuya Nakashima film.

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Top 50 Korean Films of the 2010s

By Pierce Conran

With a few hours left in 2019, it’s time to look back at the decade that was for Korean cinema. The industry really came into its own in the late 1990s and most of the names the world is familiar with now first gained notice in the 2000s, but it soared to new heights in the 2010s, becoming one of the largest film industries on the planet, responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed films of the decade.

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Top 10 Korean Films of 2019

By Pierce Conran

You won't find any big surprise at the top of this list, but beyond the obvious choice for best film of the year, the sad truth of the matter is that 2019 was a very poor year for Korean cinema overall. As the industry has tried to course-correct from the blockbuster-heavy lineup of the last year or two, a great number of very watchable but not altogether memorable mid-level films have emerged. It's the same story within the indie industry which has grown stale with a great many competent films appearing at festivals that cycle through the same social themes but precious few among them generating genuine excitement.

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Top 15 Korean Films of 2018

By Pierce Conran

Thanks to Lee Chang-dong and a few late year surprises, 2018 saw the Korean film industry churn out enough quality product to merit a strong Top 15 once again, but the truth is that, for the commercial industry at least, the past 12 months have raised a lot of questions regarding the sustainability of the current marketplace.

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Review: BEAUTIFUL Explores the Ugly Depths of Desire

By Pierce Conran

Beauty and obsession go under the knife in Juhn Jai-hong’s debut Beautiful (2008), a clinical observation of desire that was both produced by Kim Ki-duk and based on his original story. Lensed with a scopophilic yet detached gaze, it is more than a little reminiscent of the controversial auteur’s body of work.

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Review: SPECIAL ANNIE Awkwardly Switches From Subject to Artist

By Pierce Conran

Ten years after her feature debut What Are We Waiting For?, documentarian Kim Hyun-kung returns with an intimate film that is both a portrait of a HIV-positive New Yorker and a filmmaker uncertain of her aims. Awkwardly straddling the border between human interest story and self-interest, Special Annie is a lively if curiously narcissistic sophomore effort.

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