#comedy #drama #webtoon #Choi Jeong-yeol #Ma Dong-seok(Don Lee) #Park Jeong-min #Jung Hae-in #The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil #2019 #recorded in September, 2021

The film traces out the struggle of two teens who throw aside all decorum and seek to make a new start of their own lives before their adolescence ends.

Ma Dong-seok’s signature humor and slapstick comedy, along with comical chemistry with Park Jeong-min, jazz up the onscreen atmosphere from the beginning as he looks just like a character springing out from a cartoon.

Ma’s role in the zombie film Train To Busan propelled him to international popularity. In 2019, he joined the cast of Eternals as Gilgamesh which is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, also marking his Hollywood debut.

#mystery #thriller #occult #Jang Jae-hyun #Lee Jung-jae #Park Jeong-min #Lee Jae-in #Lee David #2019 #recorded in September, 2021

Svaha starts off in 1999 with the birth of twin girls in a Korean village, one of whom turns out to be possessed by a demon. Paster Park is always looking to make money in running an independent organization that exposes religious cults and groups. Once he begins investigating a new religious group ‘Deer Hill,’ Park stumbles upon a conspiracy involving a series of killings.

The actors are the best part of this film apart from its well-researched material. Lee Jung-jae has an unbreakable star power to carry the movie. Park Jeong-min’s efficiency, complete with a dash of humanity definitely paved the road for bigger things like the hit movie, Time to Hunt.

#comedy #action #remake #Lee Gae-byok #Yoo Hae-jin #Lee Joon #Jo Yoon-hee #2016 #recorded in September, 2021

Hyung-wook is a contract killer with a 100% success rate. One day, he goes to a public bathhouse and slips on a soap bar. Waking up at a hospital, he can’t remember anything, even about himself. Jae-sung, a fledging actor, sees the accident at the same bathhouse, and pretends to be Hyung-wook by switching their locker keys. The two men adjust to their new lives. The twist is that Hyung-wook slowly regains his memories from his past, finds out that he is actually a killer.

Luck-Key was Yoo Hae-jin’s first film that he appeared as a leading role. In the beginning, he ran errands for the other actors which is common for new, young actors. They usually begin as an apprentice and he tried to copy what they did from a distance. Yoo began doing small roles in films and then he took supporting roles where he acquired a reputation as a scene stealer.

The Japanese original for Luck-Key, Key of Life was directed by Kenji Uchida. His theatrical feature film debut, A Stranger of Mine(2005), won four awards at the Cannes Film Festival, which I was very impressed with.

#satire #black comedy #assassination #Im Sang-soo #Han Seok-gyu #Song Jae-ho #2005 #recorded in August, 2021

The film is about the events leading to and the aftermath of the assassination of Park Chung-hee, then South Korean President, by his close friend and Korean Intelligence Agency director Kim Jae-gyu.

I like this film a lot. I know the film took a lot of risks and it paid its price for doing it, but I thought it was worthy. Before this film, we never had a film that specifically centers around this assassination, which I think is the important part of the history of contemporary Korea.

Im Sang-soo is actress Youn Yuh-jung’s favorite director. They did three films together, including The Taste of Money, The Housemaid, and A Good Lawyer’s Wife.

#crime #thriller #love triangle #Jung Ji-woo #Jeon Do-yeon #Choi Min-sik #Joo Jin-mo #1999 #recorded in August, 2021

Married Choi Bora is a successful career woman who becomes involved with her ex-lover. She is unable to stop going back to him even though she seems physically and emotionally damaged by their continued affair. One day, she abandons her infant just to see him and her husband decides to commit a perfect crime killing these two.

Choi Min-sik’s first real success came with his role of a North Korean agent in Swiri. In 2003, he starred in Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, which made him popular not only in Korea but also won him international recognition.

Choi’s movies have been favorites at Cannes. The Cannes Film Festival awarded the Best Director Prize to Chihwaseon where he played a renowned Korean painter and granted the Grand Prix of the Jury to a bloody revenge epic Oldboy.

#mystery #suspense #alibi #Bang Eun-jin #Ryoo Seung-bum #Lee Yo-won #Cho Jin-woong #2012 #recorded in August, 2021

Adapted from Keigo Higashino’s novel The Devotion of Suspect X, it centers around a timid, yet very well mannered, mathematics teacher. He uses his genius mind in meticulously planning the perfect alibi for a woman, who killed her ex-husband.

The film received critical acclaim, especially for the performance of actors.

Known for his manic energy, Ryoo Seung-bum has cemented his status as one of Korea’s top actors. His older brother Ryoo Seung-wan shot his feature directorial debut Die Band starring Seung-bum, and the film became an instant cult hit, earning attention for the Ryoo brothers.

#crime #action #Byun Sung-hyun #Seol Kyung-gu #Yim Si-wan #2017 #recorded in July, 2021

This is a story about the loyalty and betrayal between an inmate leader and an undercover cop, who teams up to prosecute a gang.

Prior to its local release, the film has been pre-sold to 85 countries including France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, Australia, India, Taiwan, the Philippines and Singapore at the 2017 Hong Kong Film Market. A Japanese film distributor called the work ‘the best crime film from Korea in the past several years.’

The relationship between the two main characters and the emotions they show is the man focus of this movie. The director himself described this as a queer romance.

#comedy #action #chicken #Lee Byung-hun #Ryu Seung-ryong #Lee Ha-nee #Shin Ha-kyun #Kevin Hart #2019 #recorded in July, 2021

Captain Ko and his anti-narcotics team runs a chicken restaurant so that they could keep observing a gang. The only problem is that, at some point, the team has to stop turning away customers and actually sell chicken if they don’t want to blow their cover. The chicken they sell becomes the talk of the town and the restaurant gets so crowded that Ko’s team isn’t sure anymore whether they are still working an undercover job or just running a successful restaurant.

Ryu Seung-ryong(a main cast on the Netflix’s Kingdom) headlined Miracle in Cell No.7(2013), and starred in the film Extreme Job, which makes Ryu the first Korean to star in four movies that have drawn over 10 million viewers each.

#child abuse #violence #drama #Lee Ji-won #Han Ji-min #Kim Sia #Lee Hee-jun #2018 #recorded in July, 2021

The film follows a story of a woman who grew up abused and neglected, meets a little girl with similar past whom she is determined to save.

In a recent interview with Han Ji-min, she said she accepted the role because the film deals with the painful subject of child abuse but viewed it with a warm heart and solace.

The gritty, bleak content is supported by Kang Guk-hyun’s equally bleak yet beautiful cinematography, which gives the film a noir-ish look. The fantastic music, another strong high point of the film, by Mowg will tell you why he is one of the most in-demand composers in Korean cinema.

#thriller #history #truth #Jang Joon-hwan #Kim Yun-seok #Ha Jung-woo #Yoo Hae-jin #Kim Tae-ri #2017 #recorded in October, 2021

The film is based on a heroic real-life incident in June 1987, when people took to the streets for about 20 days to end the iron-fist rule of the military regime led by ex-president Chun Doo-hwan. It realistically documents one of the most dramatic chapters in modern Korean history while trying to find as much drama as possible in the story.

Another highlight of the movie is the lead actor Kim Yun-seok’s exceptional performance as Chief Park. In 2019, Kim made his directorial debut with Another Child, a family drama film. His latest film, Mogadishu was the biggest hit film of the year.