Top 25 Korean Films of All Time

By Pierce Conran

I've thought about doing a list like this for some time but frankly found the task quite daunting. Having seen so many Korean films and there being so many that I love, drawing up a list inevitably meant cutting out a large number of films that I wish could get more recognition. But for our 4th anniversary (it's hard to believe it's been that long) I wanted to do something a little special. It certain did prove to be a difficult task...

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News: KOFA Uploads 15 More of Korea’s Best Films to YouTube for Free

By Pierce Conran

The Korean Film Archive (KOFA) has significantly expanded its YouTube channel, the Korean Classic Film Theater, after adding 15 new titles this summer. Among the new additions are rare titles from Korean cinema masters such as Im Kwon-taek, Yu Hyun-mok, Lee Man-hee, Lee Jang-ho, Kim Soo-yong and Ha Gil-dong.

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Review: Strong Effects Play Second Fiddle to Patriotism in ROARING CURRENTS

By Pierce Conran

When making films based on significant milestones in a country’s history, nationalism can be a great asset in a filmmaker’s arsenal but it’s also a tool that must be handled carefully, as too much patriotic bombast can mar an otherwise captivating story. Alas, the new period epic Roaring Currents, which chronicles one of Korea’s most famed victorious, falls into that category. Formidable effects and a fascinating historical event, akin to a Korean version of 300 on boats, plays second fiddle to sensationalized heroism in this epic war reenactment.

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News: Korean Film Festival in Australia 2014 Lineup Announced!

By Hieu Chau

The Korean Film Festival in Australia returns for its fifth year, bringing with it a slate of the country’s must-see films from the past year. KOFFIA will be touring across six cities this year, and the festival will kick off in Sydney on August 31st and finish up in Adelaide in late September.

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Review - Cool KUNDO: AGE OF THE RAMPANT Has Some Swagger In Its Step

By Pierce Conran

With big stars and a hefty budget, Kundo: Age Of The Rampant marches into theaters with confidence and tongue planted firmly in cheek. This hybrid period film owes more to spaghetti westerns than the history of its Joseon Era setting and some may take umbrage at the film's excessive running time, but with a raucous charm and an array of well-mined genre tropes, it's sure to keep most spectators satisfied.

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News: Korean Films At Melbourne International Film Festival 2014

By Hieu Chau

Australian fans of Korean cinema have much to be excited about as some of MKC's favourite films of the past year will be featured at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).

As part of MIFF's yearly Accent on Asia program, organisers have selected four South Korean features for the annual film event: A Girl At My Door, A Hard Day, Han Gong-Ju and Our Sunhi.

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Cannes 2014 Review: A HARD DAY Is Easy-to-Love Genre Cinema

By Pierce Conran

If you feel that tough genre fare in Korea has been spinning its wheels of late, you're not alone. While generally well made, the élan of yesteryear's hardboiled Korean thrillers has recently been replaced by a growing sense of familiarity and an alarming whiff of complacency. There have been exceptions, but by and large those have come from name directors afforded more creative freedom in an industry dominated by financiers unwilling to give new talent much autonomy. Things started to look a little better last year with the release of Cold Eyes and Hide and Seek and bucking the trend once more is A Hard Day, a terrific new mid-level genre offering that was invited to the Director's Fortnight sidebar at Cannes this year.

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Review: HORROR STORIES 2 Slightly Improves Upon Its Predecessor

By Patryk Czekaj

At first glance, Horror Stories 2 looks like a more mature and self-conscious version of the original film. Though the chapters are still uneven and often come close to being simply absurd, the directors seem aware of the predecessors’ mistakes and ultimately create a gripping and penetrating atmosphere of terror, grounding their visions both in dreams and in a three-dimensional reality. This clarifies the structure of all the segments and gives them a much-needed touch of intrigue. Less cheap thrills based on jumps scares and nonsensical gore material makes Horror Stories 2 a serviceable allegory for the soul and its journey towards redemption.

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Berlinale 2014 Review: NON-FICTION DIARY Offers Captivating Glimpse of 1990s Korea

Part of MKC's coverage of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival and the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

I stepped onto Korean soil for the first time almost 13 years after the end of the 1990s but there's no arguing the otherworldliness of that time, which can still be picked up on today by sampling the available media from that era. These days, some Koreans even reminisce about that special, indefinable feeling if a certain 90s song pops on in a basement bar.

Though a fan of documentaries, I've remained somewhat on the periphery concerning those from Korea despite my keen interest for the rest of the industry's output. A number of the subjects that they embark on are captivating, even essential at times, but they haven't always been made in the most gripping fashion. Mind you, I'm loath to admit that I still haven't seen some of the major recent successes, such as Talking Architect (2011) and Planet of Snail.

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Berlinale 2014 Review: Subdued yet Powerful, NIGHT FLIGHT Soars

Part of MKC's coverage of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

LeeSong Hee-il returns to Berlin a year after White Night (2012) with his fourth feature Night Flight. While his last film was a subdued but powerful work about lingering memories of homophobia in modern Seoul, his new feature is his most ambitious yet. Retaining queer themes, Night Flight goes beyond the scope of his past works by weaving a wider tapestry of social motifs that touch on many of the issues facing youths and minorities in contemporary Korea.

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News: New Wildflower Awards Recognize Independent Korean Cinema

By Pierce Conran

The Wildflower Film Awards (들꽃영화상), a new audience-led initiative to recognize achievements in independent Korean cinema, is getting underway this month. Launched by Korean film expert and koreanfilm.org founder Darcy Paquet, the awards will be handed out each February to outstanding contributions in Korean cinema's low-budget realm. Winners will be selected in categories for Best Film, Director, Documentary, Actor, Actress, New Actor, New Actress, New Director and Cinematography, in addition to a Documentary Jury Prize.

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Review: Electric Song Kang-ho Leads Courtroom Drama THE ATTORNEY

By Pierce Conran

The combination of politics and cinema has led to some of the most incendiary films the medium has ever produced. Though a tricky balancing act that requires a deft handling of ideologies and a sensitive navigation of contemporary political climates, political works have the potential to transcend both the artistic and diversionary aims of cinema. Be they wake-up calls or calls to arms, or even painful reminders of moments of history that should not be allowed to slip into anonymity, this is one of the few ‘genres,’ for lack of a better term, that can have a real impact on society.

Falling into this new category, or rather bursting into it after swiftly cracking the ten million viewers barrier in Korea, is The Attorney, the promising debut film of Yang Woo-suk, which follows in the footsteps of recent courtroom thrillers Silenced (2011) and Unbowed (2011). The films stars Song Kang-ho, who, following an enormous 2013 that also saw him star in Snowpiercer and The Face Reader, has reclaimed his title as Korea’s biggest star. Fictionalizing the early years of the late President Roh Moo-hyun, when he was a lawyer in the 1980s, this new film, part character drama and courtroom thriller, delicate handles its sensitive subject.

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Review: One-Stop Korean Revenge Shop THE FIVES Is a Bloody Good Time

By Pierce Conran

Aside from the greats of Korean cinema - the Bong Joon-hos, Lee Chang-dongs, Im Kwon-taeks and Kim Ki-youngs - years ago, after I first immersed myself in the country's cinema, there were few things that I preferred doing than putting on a mid-level Korean genre film after a long day. Their thrillers, in particular, weren't always great (in fact a number were bad) but their production values and hard-boiled style were always a wonderful escape for me, even, strangely, a source of comfort. These days the industry still churns out a great number of thrillers, and though many are very strong, they're a different breed from those I would wile away my time with back in those days.

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Review: K-Horror TWO MOONS Scrapes the Bottom of the Barrel

By Pierce Conran

I’m glad that I’m not a particularly big horror buff, because if I was, Korean cinema would seem like a real letdown these days. The last few years have done little to convince anyone of the quality, and frankly necessity, of K-horror. Once a strong niche revenue driver for the industry, with a number of interesting if not always stellar entries finding their way to theaters and DVD, of late about three increasingly lackluster productions get dropped on the marketplace per annum. It’s a story of diminishing returns, as the genre seems to be on the way out. At least until something or someone can come along to save it…

2012’s third K-horror Two Moons, following the soporific Don’t Click and the frustrating Horror Stories, is definitely not the messiah that will save the struggling genre. Director Kim Dong-bin previously made the horrors Ring Virus (1999) and Red Eye (2005), both of which were warmly received by audiences or critics. With pretty much nothing going for it, his latest is one of the worst K-horrors to be released in years.

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Review: The Philosophical Mystery A FISH

By Pierce Conran

Independent cinema in Korea has been gaining a lot of steam over the last few years, and now, as filmmakers become bolder or seek to distinguish themselves from the pack, stories are becoming more ambitious and the technical tools used to tell them more sophisticated. Case in point is A Fish, an elliptical shaman mystery shot in 3D. Unlike what we’ve come to expect from the format, this is a far cry from big-budget spectacle. It’s a slow art film with a metaphorical and sometimes impenetrable narrative.

A bold and ambitious debut, Park Hong-min’s A Fish is a challenging work that is certain to infuriate just as many viewers as it may enchant. I won’t pretend to have understood it particularly well, but I can say that I was swept up in the strange world it conjured up on a remote Korean island, full of intrigue, spirituality and unanswered questions. Many times I found myself drawing comparisons to David Lynch, whose dream-like narratives have long fascinated and delighted me. But Park’s film is no mere copy: it is a singular work from an exciting new talent in the field.

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Top 10 Korean Films of 2013

The time has come once again for me to sit down and think about all the new Korean films I had the opportunity to see in 2013 and come up with my favorites. This year, I had a lot to choose from for this ritual as I've seen about 120 local films, so the task proved more difficult than usual.

With 127 million tickets sold and a remarkable nine Korean films featuring in the yearly top ten at the box office, 2013 was a huge year for Korean cinema. Prosperity does not always mean quality and the last few years have been disappointing as far as commercial Korean films have been concerned. Thankfully, in 2013 the industry succeeded in both attracting viewers to multiplexes and putting out high quality fare. That said, I still find myself more partial to the more fertile grounds of independent cinema, as seven low budget films made the list this year. While two films truly blew me away over the last 12 months today's industry still isn't putting out quite the same amount of gems as it was around ten years ago.

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Review: Keeping Up the Bad Fight - Ingtoogi: The Battle of Internet Trolls

By Eugene Kwon

When online feuds lead to conflicts in the real world, things can get pretty ugly. During recent years in Korea, certain online users of computer games and texting services have taken their grudge fights to the streets where they mimic K-1 fighters’ moves and engage in a rough brawl. Such conflicts have even gained the term “hyunpi,” a hybrid neologism of Chinese and English characters that stands for “player kill in reality.” All of this might sound ridiculous to most that are unfamiliar with virtual world culture. Who would go through such a long hassle in venting out their online-anger? In the end, it’s just a game, right?

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Dr. Q's MKC Rants - North Korean Agents: From Creepy Spooks to Pretty Boys

North Korean Agents: From Creepy Spooks to Pretty Boys

By Kyu Hyun Kim, Associate Professor of Japanese and Korean History, University of California, Davis

There were times during my younger days when I wondered whether South Korean filmmakers had to invent North Korean Communists if they did not exist in real life. Of course, the more you actually study the relationship between anti-Communist ideology and the postwar (post-1953, not post-1945) South Korean culture, the more you realize that it was complex, multifarious and full of contradictions. Anti-Communism has never been a monolithic edifice: neither was it a watertight cage from which no fluid leaked. 

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Korean Box Office: Sci-fi AM 11:00 Clocks in Middling Debut

With 1.77 million admissions, business was still a little down from this time last year (when admission topped two million) due to a lack of strong new releases. Though with a 60% market share, local releases are still in good shape. This month's new films have been relatively low profile but things should pick up in the coming weeks with some higher profile domestic films, not to mention the invasion of Hollywood holiday fare.

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Review: This Very Ordinary Couple Aims to Show You What's What

Grand romance, as depicted on screen, written on the page or sung into a microphone, is the stuff of dreams. We crave it and feel it vicariously through surrogate works. It happens in life too but scarcely as magnificently as we imagine it in our minds. Romcoms spoil us in a way, they invite us to expect something that doesn't exist, at least in a form as ideal as that which is represented in these films.

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