Reel Talk: Korea's Lunar New Year Contenders

Every Friday I appear on a segment called Reel Talk for Arirang TV on the 2 o'clock news, mostly covering Korean cinema.

The Lunar New Year, one of Korea's major holidays, takes place next Thursday so local studios are pitting their biggest releases against each other to capitalize on the busy theatergoing period. This week I talked about this year's holiday releases, C'est si bon and Detective K: Secret of the Lost Island.

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News: ODE TO MY FATHER Becomes 2nd Most Successful Korean Film of All Time

By Pierce Conran

Yesterday, JK Youn's Ode to My Father surpassed The Host (2006) and The Thieves (2012) to become the second most successful Korean film of all time. Still in third place on the charts in its eighth week, the blockbuster melodrama added 89,809 viewers on Saturday to bring its total to 13.02 million admissions ($92.16 million). Including foreign films, the film is in third place, behind Avatar's (2009) 13.62 million viewers.

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News: GANGNAM BLUES Targets Lee Min-ho Fans with New Edit for China

By Pierce Conran

Yoo Ha's gangster epic Gangnam Blues will be released in China next month but local viewers will be treated to a different cut of the film. In order to capitalize on star Lee Min-ho's big fan base in the region, changes were made affecting his character.

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News: Record Sales & Slim Profits for Korean Film Industry in 2014

By Pierce Conran

South Korea's film industry topped the two trillion won mark for the first time in 2014, reaching 2.03 trillion won (USD 1.84 billion), which was a 7.6% improvement over the previous year. Growth was recorded overall in exhibition sales, the digital online market and overseas sales, yet within those figures Korean admissions, online streaming sales and film exports were all down. Worryingly, despite some record-breaking local hits, the return on investment rate for Korean films almost fell into negative figures.

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Review: Grand and Mysterious, THE AVIAN KIND Soars

By Pierce Conran

A great many gems have emerged from the Korean independent scene of late, but some worry that the milieu lacks the unique voices that it used to cultivate 10 to 15 years ago. Director Shin Yeon-shick may already be on his fifth film, but with his latest work The Avian Kind, the filmmaker has positioned himself as a fresh and distinct voice, challenging the realist aesthetic that defines the contemporary indie field.

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Review: CASA AMOR: EXCLUSIVE FOR LADIES, But Really Just a Man's World

By Pierce Conran

Every so often, Korean cinema presents us with a new film, filled with the promise of titillating erotica. Invariably, these turn out to be rather chaste affairs and Casa Amor: Exclusive for Ladies (the original title of which is Working Girl, in English but spelt in Korean), proves to be no exception. However, stylish though it may be, this new work proves more egregious than most, as it hints at the freedom of female sexuality yet ultimately sinks into woefully patriarchal archetypes.

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Review: The Past is Present in Lee Yoon-ki's THIS CHARMING GIRL

By Rex Baylon

We love to watch. It’s impossible to deny that fact as advances in technology has made people-watching a popular guilty pleasure. As more and more of our gadgets and software are built to not only connect everyone but also document every banal detail of our lives, it’s become quite easy to learn everything about someone without every meeting them face-to-face. In the realm of cinema, the concept of voyeurism has always been a popular topic for filmmakers. Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, the Maysles brothers, Michelangelo Antonioni, Michael Powell and many others have devoted entire films or, in rare cases, entire careers to utilizing voyeuristic techniques to arrive at some sort of truth.

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Korean Box Office: Heroes Top Fathers and Gangsters (2015 WK 5)

By Pierce Conran

A Hollywood film topped the Korean box office for the first time in 2015 while a pair of Korean blockbusters battled for second place. Local films did hold a combined advantage though with a 55% market share in a weekend that saw 2.08 million spectators visit theaters.

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News: All Aboard! SNOWPIERCER Spoof Coming This Year

By Pierce Conran

The most well known Korean film of the last few years is coming back to screens, reimagined as an erotic parody. Bong Man-dae, the director of Cinderella (2006) and Playboy Bong (2013), though most well known as a purveyor of softcore erotica, is turning Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer into Rice Cake Soup Train (Ddeok-gook-yeol-cha, 떡국열차). That title's a bit of a mouthful (sorry, had to do it) but it makes more sense in Korean. If and when they decide this could target a foreign audience, I'm sure they'll come up with something better.

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Review: Stylish And Well Performed, SCARLET INNOCENCE Surprises And Delights

By Pierce Conran

Adapted from a Korean folk tale and starting off as a softly lensed romantic melodrama, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Scarlet Innocence, the latest work from noted visual stylist Yim Pil-sung, must be primed for a local audience. Yet this surprising genre-bending effort, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, holds off from showing its true colors until it has lulled you into a comfortable reverie. A successful exercise in subverting expectations, Scarlet Innocence may also prove a watershed moment for Yim, an acclaimed director whose high profile and gorgeously designed works have so far failed to translate into box office returns.

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News: Lotte Picks up TERMINATOR, Still No Release for MEMORIES OF THE SWORD

By Pierce Conran

In an unusual move, Paramount announced earlier this month that their summer tentpole Terminator: Genisys would not be distributed by their usual partner CJ Entertainment in Korea. That position has now been filled by Lotte Entertainment, which will release the film in July.

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News: HAN GONG-JU Named Best Film by Korean Film Reporters Association

By Pierce Conran

Lee Su-jin's Han Gong-ju has been named the Best Korean Film of 2014 by the Korean Film Reporters Association. The group also voted the film's star, Chun Woo-hee, as last year's Best Actress, while veteran Choi Min-sik was deemed Best Actor for his performance in the record-breaking period smash Roaring Currents.

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Review: Straightforward Action in NO TEARS FOR THE DEAD

By Hieu Chau

Writer-director Lee Jeong-beom made a big splash in 2010 when his confidently made action feature The Man from Nowhere became a box office hit in South Korea. It made a believable action star out of its lead, Won Bin, and had an emotional core that helped it lean closer towards other, well-established action films of its ilk such as Luc Besson’s Leon: The Professional (1994) or Tony Scott’s Man on Fire (2004). Lee follows a similar format with his newest ultraviolent follow up, No Tears for the Dead, which at times feels like it could have been another Tony Scott film.

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Review: GANGNAM BLUES, a Gorgeously Overwrought Gangster Classic in the Making

By Pierce Conran

Yoo Ha returns to gangster cinema and knocks it right out of the park with his latest, an evocative and immensely entertaining saga that pits a common tale of brotherhood and betrayal against a thrilling period setting mired in violence and corruption. Nine years after A Dirty Carnival, Yoo has maintained his knack for combining genre filmmaking and subtle symbolism, while also elevating his craft to encompass the full range of Korean cinema’s technical knowhow in Gangnam Blues.

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Discover a Wealth of Upcoming Korean Releases in MKC's New Database

It's taken some tinkering but, finally, we've finished the new Upcoming Releases page. While many excellent databases exist online with information on future Korean films, many are hard to navigate or far from comprehensive. We wanted to provide an easy to use resource listing all Korean films on the horizon and we believe we've been able to do that.

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Review: THE ROYAL TAILOR Spins a Colorful Period Yarn

By Pierce Conran

Period dramas are all the rage in Korea at the moment, but while some have been setting records at the box office (such as Roaring Currents), not all have been successful. No film is a guaranteed hit but period productions are a costlier gamble than most and with those risks come certain strings. The Royal Tailor, a King’s court drama with a penchant for colorful fashion and plenty of humor, is a fine sophomore effort from Lee Won-suk, if one that feels bound by certain restrictions and obligations, particularly in its final act.

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News: Gong Yoo Joins Yeon Sang-ho's Live Action Zombie Thriller BUSAN-BOUND

By Pierce Conran

Yeon Sang-ho has come a long way in just a few years. After two highly acclaimed animations and another in post, the filmmaker will be making his live action debut this year, with the big-budget zombie thriller Busan-Bound. The Suspect's Gong Yoo has already confirmed his appearance, while Ma Dong-seok (One on One) looks set to sign on beside him.

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Review: THE CON ARTISTS Aims Right Down the Middle and Is All the Better for It

By Pierce Conran

There are many things we demand from films, good stories, strong characters, style… the list goes on. However, more than everything else, there is one thing people clamor for the most, particularly in its absence: originality. We readily point out clichés and stereotypes and are quick to lament the prevalence of the done-to-death scenarios that litter today’s multiplexes. This applies to most films, but there are some, particularly within the heart of the mid-level commercial field, that can sometimes get away with it. The Con Artists, released last month, is such a film.

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Coming Attractions: THE DEAL Offers Familiar Thrills

By Rex Baylon

First-time director Son Yong-ho will debut his film The Deal in March of this year. The film stars Kim Sang-kyung, Park Sung-woong, Kim Sung-kyun and Yoon Seung-ah in a story that revolves around a detective and a civilian who have had no prior connection to each other except for the fact that both men have lost loved ones at the hands of serial killer Kang-cheon.

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Review: CHRONICLE OF A BLOOD MERCHANT Favors Strong Cast Over Plot

By Pierce Conran

Outside of indie cinema, actors directing themselves in leading roles are quite rare in Korean films,  making Ha Jung-woo’s Chronicle of a Blood Merchant something of an oddity. One of the country’s biggest stars, Ha surrounds himself with a wealth of acting talent in an unassuming period-set comedy-drama that ultimately steers into histrionics. 

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