Top 15 Korean Films of 2017

By Pierce Conran

Following what turned out to be one of the all-time best years of Korean cinema, 2017 had its work cut out for it, and, sure enough, it fell well short of 2016’s benchmark. Yet what could have been a placeholder year was saved by an array of important titles that signalled a changing current in the industry, particularly the mainstream.

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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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Top 10 Korean Films of 2011

All in all 2011 was a bit of a disappointing year for Korean cinema, at least as far as commercial cinema was concerned.  On the other hand, independent films continued to build on their success of the last few years.  However, I'm not overly worried about the state of the industry because at the end of the day it doesn't produce a huge amount of films and is more susceptible to the ebbs and flows of projects than a larger filmmaking centre like Hollywood.  In any case, 2012 looks to be a much stronger year for Korean film.

For a while I was getting very worried about what my top 10 for the year would like, a month ago I'd only seen four of the films listed here.  Thankfully a number of more recent releases became available and things suddenly started to look a lot better.  That being said, I've seen about 45 films from last year but there's a lot that I haven't had a chance to see yet so this list will likely look quite different six month down the line, and if I feel so inclined perhaps I'll change it!

In the below links are my top 10 Korean films for 2011, followed by honourable mentions and my bottom 5.  The only criteria I go by to consider a film from 2011 is if it was released in Korea during that calendar year.

Intro - 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 - Best of the Rest

Top 10 Lists

Year  2020 - 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016
2015 - 2014 - 2013 - 2012 - 2011 - 2010

2010s (Top 50) - All Time (Top 25)

Genre

Gangster - Horror - Revenge

How Korean Cinema Fared on 2011's Year-end Lists

Top 10 or end-of-year lists are one of my great guilty pleasures.  I know that ultimately they don't really mean very much and are guaranteed to be subjective, arbitrary, and divisive.  Yet I am always eager to discover other people's lists come year's end.  To see how my favorites films fared, to discover some things I may have missed and to generally scrutinize the palaver of this enduring critic's ritual.

I thought it would be fun to see how Korean films did on 2011's lists, if only to see what and how many Korean films generated international attention.  So I went ahead and tracked down every list I could find which featured a Korean film.  I found 70, including 7 which only considered Korean cinema, a pretty solid number which is spread over an impressive array of worldwide broadsheets, film websites, and a panoply of blogs.  I was also surprised to see over 30 films make it onto these diverse lists, a reflection of the depth of Korean cinema, from thrillers, horrors, and action films, all the way to melodramas and a large selection of low-budget indies.

The results of this ranking are in no way supposed to reflect some sort of objective standpoint of the best Korean films of last year.  For one thing, only a handful of films got any decent kind of exposure in the west and they were by and large 2010 releases.  Some of 2011's best films were only featured on a smattering of lists as they have not really been seen outside of Korea.  As I've said this is just a little bit of fun!

The system used for the below ranking is very simple.  1 point for making it onto a top 10 list (or the odd top 11), 2 points for a top 5 finish, and 3 points for taking first place.  The lists are available below, divided into Korean-only and international lists.  If you are aware of anything I've missed by all means let me know either here, on twitter, or by e-mailing me at pierceconran [at] gmail [dot] com.

How Korean Cinema Fared on 2011's Year-end Lists

1. Poetry (53)

2. I Saw the Devil (34)

3. The Yellow Sea (17)

4. Sunny (12)
5. The Day He Arrives (10)

6. The Journals of Musan (9)

7. Bleak Night (8)

8. Silenced (5)
9. Night Fishing (5)

10. Arirang (4)

10. King of Pigs (4)
10. Re-encounter (4)

13. Poongsan (3)

13. Punch (3)

15. Bedevilled (2)

15. Come Rain, Come Shine (2)

15. Dangerously Excited (2)

15. Pong Ddol (2)

15. Quick (2)

15. The Front Line (2)

21. Animal Town (1)

21. Barbie (1)

21. Blind (1)

21. Dooman River (1)

21. Haunters (1)

21. Invasion of Alien Bikini (1)

21. Late Autumn (1)

21. Late Blossom (2)

21. Leafie, A Hen Into the Wild (1)
21. Moby Dick (1)

21. Mother Is a Whore (2)

21. Out of the Cave (1)
21. Romantic Heaven (1)
21. War of the Arrows (1)

21. White: The Melody of the Curse (1)

Lists of Korean Films

Asia Pacific Arts - Rowena Santos Aquino

Complex - Jaeki Cho

koreanfilm.org - Darcy Paquet
Modern Korean Cinema - Pierce Conran

Seen in Jeonju - Tom Giammarco

Seoul Beats

Lists Featuring Korean Films

Boston Globe - Wesley Morris

Boxing Uwe Boll

Chicago Reader - Ben Sachs

Chicago Tribune - Michael Phillips

Cineawesome! - Jeff

Cinema Salem - Kereth

Cinema Salem - Peter

Cinetology - Luke

Cleveland Plain Dealer - Clint O'Connor

CNN - Tom Charity

College Times - Aaron Tavena

Culture Mob - Matthew Wayt

Dad's Big Plan - Mr. Sparkles

Film Freak Central - Angelo Muredda

Film Freak Central - Walter Chaw

Film School Rejects - Brian Salisbury

Film School Rejects - Luke Mullen

Film School Rejects - Rob Hunter

Film Threat - Don Lewis

Film Threat - John Wildman

Film Threat - Mark Bell

Film Threat - Noah Lee

firstshowing.net - Jeremy Kirk

Front Room Cinema - Tom Bielby

Hollywood Hubbub - Frantic Monkey

Hydra Mag - Jose-Luis Moctezuma

indieWire - Anne Thompson

insidepulse - Robert Sutton

Left Field Cinema - M. Dawson

Los Angeles Times - Kenneth Turan

Living in Cinema - Michael Phillips

Miami Herald - Rene Rodriguez

Mile High Cinema - Jason Cangialosi

Movie Reviews by Tom Clift - Tom Clift

MSN Movies - Sean Axmaker

NOW Magazine - Radheyan Simonpillai

Palo Alto Online - Susan Tavernetti

playbackstl.com - Pete Timmermann

playbackstl.com - Sean Lass

Rich on Film - Rich

Salon - Andrew O'Hehir

Shock Till You Drop - Jeff Alard

Slant - Diego Costa

Slant - Nick Schager

Sounds Like Cinema - Greg Bennett

southcoasttoday.com - Alexis Hauk

St. Louis Today - Joe Williams

The Austin Chronicle - Marc Savlov

The Cinema Snob

The Daily Texan - Alex Williams

the-dispatch.com - Matthew Lucas

The Globe and Mail - Liam Lacey and Rick Groen

The Guardian - Peter Bradshaw

The Hollywood Reporter - Todd McCarthy

The Montreal Gazette - T'cha Dunlevy

The New York Times - Manohla Dargis

The Screening Room - Mark Humphreys

The Suffolk Voice

Time Out New York - Keith Uhlich

Total Film - Sam Ashurst

Twitch - James Marsh

Twitch - Kwenton Bellette

Wildgrounds - Ki Mun

Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

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