I’m not sure quite how to assess Kim Ki-young’s adaptation of Yi Kwang-su’s 500-page serial novel The Soil (흙, 1932-3). At 125 minutes, it doesn’t sound particularly long. But as we got up from our seats at the KCC last Thursday at around 9:15pm, it felt much later – maybe around 10:30pm. And that wasn’t … [Read More]
Category: Film reviews and comment (page 7)
Yongsoon (용순, 2017) review: adolescent anger, grief, and the cost of defiance
With Yongsoon, director Shin Joon presents a story of a young woman with such realism that viewers who have dealt with sometimes sullen, often surly adolescents in their own lives will almost feel they’ve actually met the titular character before… [Read More]
Sea Fog (해무, 2014) review: desperation and the fog of self-interest
Based on a real life shocking tragedy, Sea Fog is a truly dark tale both gripping and shocking, and having been co-written by Bong Joon-ho frankly guaranteed the narrative would also be thematically rich with social commentary and indeed critique. [Read More]
A Woman Judge (여판사, 1962) review: gender, power, and a pioneering voice in Korean cinema
Hong Eun-won’s A Woman Judge examines a professional woman’s struggle against entrenched gender expectations in Golden Age Korea. Though tonally divided, the film remains a vital, forward-thinking work—made all the more significant as only the second Korean feature directed by a woman. [Read More]
[Updated] A further look back at movies from 2017
![Thumbnail for post: [Updated] A further look back at movies from 2017](https://londonkoreanlinks.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2017filmcollage2herp-120x120.jpg)
Two Korea-based critics have published lists of their top movies of the year. Many of them were screened in London this year and merited a mention in our own roundup which you can find here. And while the two critics have a lot more enthusiasm for Okja than I do both of them highlight some … [Read More]
A look back at some of the films of 2017
A review of some of the films that screened in London during the 2017 – another busy year. For me the undoubted highlight of the London film year was the Bae Chang-ho retrospective at the London Korean Film Festival: a chance to see a couple of his movies – including the classic Whale Hunting (1984) – … [Read More]
Bae Chang-ho retrospective: the highlight of LKFF 2017
For me, the highlight of this year’s London Korean Film Festival was the brief retrospective of some of Bae Chang-ho’s early output. I’ve had a soft spot for Director Bae’s work for over 15 years now: My Heart was one of the first Korean movies I saw, back in the London Korean Film Festival in 2001. … [Read More]
Memoir of a Murderer (살인자의 기억법, 2017) review: unreliable memory, moral ambiguity
Director Won Shin-yeon takes Kim Young-ha’s story of an ex-serial killer suffering from dementia and successfully elicits both viewer sympathy for the character in his fight to retain his memories and indeed himself and empathy, to as much a degree as possible, for him in his battle against an even greater monster. [Read More]
Festival film review: Bae Chang-ho’s The Dream
Bae Chang-ho’s The Dream is based on a story from the Samguk Yusa, a story that Yi Kwang-su worked up into a short novel. Although the tale is set in the late Silla dynasty, its message is timeless. The story starts with a weary and impoverished traveller (played by Ahn Sung-ki) trudging through the snow … [Read More]
Festival film review: Bae Chang-ho’s Whale Hunting
Based on a story by long-standing collaborator Choe In-ho, Whale Hunting is one of Korea’s seminal road movies. Hunting the whale, in the dark days of the dictatorship, was symbolic for yearning for things beyond the day-to-day. In Bae Chang-ho’s 1984 movie it represented the search for the things that give life meaning; in a … [Read More]
Festival film review double bill: Two Doors / The Remnants
As part of the Documentary strand of the 2017 London Korean Film Festival Lee Hyuk-sang of the activist documentary makers PINKS presented a pair of films on the Yongsan tragedy. The context of the tragedy was the plan to redevelop the Yongsan area as the US army prepared to move to their new base in … [Read More]
One Day (어느날, 2017) review: a nuanced and affecting study of grief and abandonment
With One Day, director Lee Yoon-ki uses his almost trademark ability of showing characters’ innermost thoughts and emotions within outwardly simple stories to create an intelligent, nuanced and genuinely affecting tearjerker that deftly discusses abandonment, both perceived and actual. Understated performances and minimal special effects complement this classic melodrama. [Read More]
Festival film review: Bae Chang-ho’s People of the Slum
Bae Chang-ho’s debut feature, People of the Slum (1982), is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Lee Dong-chul. The film tells the story of a complicated love triangle. Myeong-sook, played by Kim Bo-yeon, lives with her second husband, the idle and dissolute Tae-seop (played by Kim Hui-ra). Living in the same house in the run-down … [Read More]
Festival film review: Becoming who I was
Nine years ago Moon Chang-yong and Jeon Jin were in Ladakh, Kashmir – a mountainous region 100 miles or so northeast of where the Dalai Lama lives, and less than 50 miles from Tibet’s westernmost extremity. They were filming a documentary about practitioners of traditional medicine in the various regions of Asia. Their subject was … [Read More]
Does the Cuckoo Cry at Night (뻐꾸기도 밤에 우는가, 1980) review: innocence, desire and a changing Korea
Jung Jin-woo’s classic film, following the idyllic but threatened lives of a charcoal maker and his wife, dissects themes of traditional versus modern Korea, while its veiled eroticism predates the more overt “Three S” cinematic period. Its use of cuckoo symbolism to reveal the protagonist’s tragic family legacy is inspired. [Read More]
Festival film review: The Mimic
I don’t quite know how you go about reviewing a film like The Mimic. As I watched its early sections, enjoying the ride reasonably enough, I nevertheless thought back to some of the Whispering Corridors series (and sadly the weakest of them, Blood Pledge) in which plot is subservient to gratuitous scares. Probably if you … [Read More]