#crime #heist #Choi Dong-hoon #Lee Jung-jae #Gianna Jun #Kim Hae-sook #Kim Soo-hyun #Kim Hye-soo #Kim Yun-seok #Secretly Greatly #2012 #recorded in December, 2021

Popie, Yenicall, Chewingum and Zampano are a team of professional thieves in Korea. After they score a valuable antique vase, they are proposed from Macao Park to join a highly lucrative new job in Macau. All of them, including Macao Park’s ex-lover Pepsi unexpectedly, head off to Hong Kong, where another four Hong Kong thieves awaits for them.

In terms of the film’s plotting, it’s difficult to differentiate The Thieves from any other heist film. But director Choi along with scriptwriter Lee Gi-cheol collectively put together a dynamic script full of wit and energy.

Actress Kim Hye-soo was in awe when she first read the script, saying, “It was a product of great effort, genius ideas and a detail-oriented, calculative thought. I think he knows who he is, the exact kind of films that he wants to make, and how to make them. The Thieves proves it.”

#horror #mystery #exorcism #Na Hong-jin #Kwak Do-won #Hwang Jung-min #Chun Woo-hee #Kunimura Jun #Kim Hwan-hee #2016 #recorded in December, 2021

The Wailing is an expansive and often excruciating horror film. Na Hong-jin’s 2009 debut feature, the action thriller The Chaser, made a huge impression not least for its almost staggering flouting of genre convention. The Wailing, about demonic possession, is similarly uncompromising.

This film received universally positive reviews-‘operating on a level that makes most American cinema seem clunky and unimaginative,’ ‘By turns funny and despairing, this village noir brings the horror of uncertainty.’

Cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, who lensed Na Hong-jin’s and several Bong Joon-ho’s works, shot extensively in natural light, yielding a dusky, mist-shrouded texture. He evokes a sense of obscurity by showing human figures and clues from afar, without closeups or sharp focus.

#drama #history #suicide #Lee Chang-dong #Seol Kyung-gu #Moon So-ri #Kim Yeo-jin #2000 #recorded in December, 2021

The film is a model of ‘national cinema,’ narrating the past 20 years of South Korean society through the saga of its main protagonist. Lee Chang-dong reminds his audience that the postwar history of military rule and repression cannot be so easily forgotten.

On the railroad, Young-ho screams, “I want to go back again!” His scream breaks through the deafening roar of an approaching train, and the film begins a journey from his suicide to the past.

This is Lee’s most formally innovative work. He based the film’s structure on Harold Pinter’s 1978 play Betrayal, which charts the dissolution of a marriage, beginning with the divorce. The scenes that follow, each going back in time, climax with some further indication of the already foretold disaster.

#drama #love #Lee Kyoung-mi #Kong Hyo-jin #Lee Jong-hyuk #Seo Woo #Miss Carrot #Family Ties #2008 #recorded in November, 2021

This is the feature film debut of director Lee Kyoung-mi, and also the first film produced by Park Chan-wook. She was Park’s assistant director for Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and is well-known for Netflix’s The School Nurse Files.

The character Mi-sook should be a hard character to be loved. Her character is profoundly unattractive because she has transformed herself over the years into a person who is so ground down by failure and disappointment. She insists to the world that being number one is for suckers. And still, I want to spend a couple of hours with this character.

In 2019, Kong Hyo-jin starred in romantic comedy film Crazy Romance and made her small-screen comeback in When the Camellia Blooms alongside Kang Ha-neul. Both hit commercial success, and solidified her position as a romantic comedy queen.

#political #crime #action #Woo Min-ho #Lee Byung-hun #Cho Seung-woo #Baek Yoon-sik #webtoon #The Man Standing Next #2015 #recorded in November, 2021

The film has very graphic scenes of violence, and high level of sexual representation that you might think is too much. But from my perspective, I thought it justified these scenes and choices through its plot.

Comparable with Ryoo Seung-wan’s The Unjust in its canny grasp of how the country’s venal social hierarchy thrives, Inside Men represents a classy example of the genre thanks to unpredictable character arcs and a judicious use of sex and violence in an otherwise talky and convoluted screenplay.

Inside Men represents a more raw, faithful, and ultimately poignant narrative than any other Korean political thrillers. Also, it is much more mature; a piece that’s not just entertaining, but also imbued with rich socio-political commentary and relevance.

#mystery #thriller #psychology #Lee Chang-dong #Yoo Ah-in #Jeon Jong-seo #Steven Yeun #Hong Gyeong-pyo #Murakami Haruki #2018 #recorded in November, 2021

The plot depicts a young deliveryman, Jong-su, who runs into his childhood friend, Hae-mi. They soon meet an enigmatic young man named Ben, who Jong-su becomes suspicious of and begins to believe Hae-mi is in danger.

This film has been widely regarded by several critics to be one of the best films of the 21st century, among with it being voted the all-time best Korean film by Korean Screen, with over 150 critics from 28 countries. Director Lee urges the viewers to explore the dark, unknown parts of our minds and to question whether every motive and behavior is just and ethical in the face of uncertainty.

Jeon Jong-seo started her acting career for Burning. She won the competition and landed the lead role at her very first audition. Director Lee said about her audition, “When I saw her, she seemed to have this very childlike sense of innocence, but at the same time, she carried this sense of duality—as if something much bigger was on the other side of that innocence.“

#animal #drama #adventure #Bong Joon-ho #Jon Ronson #An Seo-hyun #Byun Hee-bong #Steven Yeun #Tilda Swinton #Lily Collins #Choi Woo-shik #2017 #recorded in October, 2021

A Korean farm girl named Mija, an orphan, lives with her grandfather in a rainforest. Her constant companion is Okja, a pig with a soft pink belly and trusting eyes, which is one of the prototype pigs that the Mirando Corporation seeded the world with.

This is an international co-production of South Korea and the United States, and it stars an ensemble cast headed by Korean actors An Seo-hyun, Byun Hee-bong, and Choi Woo-shik, and Hollywood actors Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Steven Yeun, Shirley Henderson and Jake Gyllenhaal.

All the film’s many threads ultimately come back to questions of trust: what it means to keep or betray trust, whether there are circumstances where betrayal is necessary, and whether the trust between people is more meaningful than the one between human and animal.

#crime #gambler #manhwa(cartoon) #Choi Dong-hoon #Cho Seung-woo #Kim Hey-soo #Baek Yoon-sik #2006 #recorded in October, 2021

The film, arguably one of the best Korean motion pictures based on cartoons, is a film about gamblers. It boldly anatomizes and exposes the underworld of gamblers which seems to epitomize our greedy capitalist society. Director-cum-screenwriter Choi Dong-hoon weaves together all the characters and their stories in a seemingly effortless manner, showing his brilliance.

Cho Seung-woo is a screen and musical actor. He is best known for his leading roles in the films The Classic(2003), Malaton(2005), Inside Men(2015) as well as in the stage musicals Jekyll & Hyde, Hedwig And the Angry Inch, and Man of La Mancha.

Choi Dong-hoon is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. He ranks as one of the most consistently successful directors working in contemporary Korean cinema, with all five of his films becoming commercial hits—The Big Swindle, Jeon Woochi: The Taoist Wizard, The Thieves, Assassination, and Tazza: The High Rollers.

#comedy #drama #radio #DJ #rock star #Lee Joon-ik #Park Joong-hoon #Ahn Sung-ki #The Book of Fish #2006 #recorded in October, 2021

Once a superstar with a music award on his belt, rocker Choi Gon now sings in a rundown cafe. His manager for more than 20 years, Min-soo makes a deal with the radio station producer to have Gon DJ at a remote radio station in the suburbs. Reluctant to work at first, Gon soon finds out that the little things matter the most, and his attitude towards his pal and manager Min-soo gradually changes.

Like King and the Clown, Lee Joon-ik wanted his next film to also be about the lives of outsiders, saying, “I think the tragedy of capitalist society is that so many people endlessly struggle to become part of the mainstream. I want to keep showing that those outside the mainstream of society can also be happy.“

Park Joong-hoon and Ahn Sung-ki had starred together in three previous films, namely, Chil-su And Man-su(1988), Two Cops(1993), Nowhere To Hide(1999). Ahn said, “If we did not sustain our 20-year friendship, we could not have done justice to the touching scenes in Radio Star.”

#space #Sci-Fi #humanoid #Jo Sung-hee #Kim Tae-ri #Song Joong-ki #Jin Seon-kyu #Yoo Hae-in #Hellbound #2021 #recorded in September, 2021

It’s 2092, and the earth is dying. The sky is full of dust, the soil is burned and acidic, and humanity is masked up and barely getting by. A massive conglomerate called UTS has developed a floating paradise in space. Terraforming and colonization of Mars is next, but many people live their lives as ‘sweepers,’ scavenging for space debris they can salvage for hard cash.

Song Joong-ki was first included in the Forbes Korea Power Celebrity list in 2013. The success of his works internationally established him as a top Hallyu star and one of the highest-paid actors in Korea.

In 2016, Kim Tae-ri made her feature film debut in Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, where she was chosen from 1,500 actresses who auditioned for the role. Park recounted his first impression of Kim reminded him strongly of his first meeting with actress Kang Hye-jeong, who had her career breakthrough in his 2003 film Oldboy.