The Thieves

An all ensemble cast forms the backbone of this heist film which was the top grossing South Korea film in 2012. The target of the theft is a diamond owned by a top Chinese mobster in Macao. Two teams from China and South Korea, with intertwined pasts and romances,  join forces to pull it off. It is very obvious that the film has been heavily influenced by the Ocean's Eleven series of movies but you still have to execute well to make it a watchable movie. Director Dong-hoon Choi has done exactly that as you spend couple of hours watching beautiful people acting cool and pulling off insane stunts. Neeraj Pandey can learn much from this film.

Rating: * * +

Poster Via Wikipedia.

Breathless

Watching this movie can leave you breathless, as you follow Sang-Hoon and his violent temper. He is a loan shark with a tendency to beat people up at the slightest provocation. But as you venture in to his life you find a troubled man with goodness buried deep down inside. His past has filled him with so much darkness that for any kindness to bubble up is also disguised by some roughness. Another well done Korean drama that explores child abuse while flirting with loan sharking. Yes, only the Koreans could have come up with that combination.

Rating: * * +

Poster licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Snowpiercer

Global warming was imminent and humans in their infinite wisdom decided to fix things. The result is a sudden ice age and the only escape is being on a self sufficient train that runs endlessly on a round the world trip. Even in these close confines of a train, a class system arises and there is the inevitable revolt. The film evoked critical response regarding how this a reflection of current society and class division. However, the point is lost of people that there is nothing original in this route and is a topic revisited over and over again. And if you sit through to the end, you will definitely be reminded of Omelas if you have read it. In fact, if you haven't read it go pick up a copy and ignore the film.

Rating: * +

"Snowpiercer poster" by impawards.com. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Missing

Another film in the endless parade of South Korean thrillers, sees a supposed feeble old man in the outskirts of a sleepy South Korean town picking up young beautiful women as his pets. The only difference being that he treats his dogs and chickens with way more empathy. More torture horror than thriller, the film's production quality is on the lower side but the atmosphere created by the director does keep you taunt and guessing.

Rating: * * 

I saw the Devil

How the South Korean cinema maintains this kind of consistency in the psycho thriller genre is a mystery to me. Yet again, here is a film that takes the age old genre and adds a slightly new twist to it. Kim Soo-hyeon is inconsolable as he finds his pregnant fiance brutally murdered. Unfortunately for the killer, Soon-hyeon is a top secret agent who takes matters in to his own hands. He tracks down Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi), a human flesh crazy psychopath and starts to give him a taste of his own medicine. But like in the wild it does not take long for the hunter to become the prey. A film that is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Rating: * * *

Chaser

Joong-ho is an asshole of a pimp who used to be a police detective in another lifetime. He finds himself in deep shit when some of his prostitutes start running out on him. He suspects that someone is kidnapping them so he puts on his detective hat to get to the bottom of it. As he scratches the surface he finds someone way more sinister beneath. Unlike many psycho thrillers, this one is not a whodunnit. You are shown the identity of the killer right from the start. Rest of the film is about apprehending him. The way Joong-ho is portrayed is also very interesting. At one side he is ruthless and works his girls to the bone while at the same time he cares deeply for their well being. Director Hong-jin Na throws all this in front of you with zero melodrama and lets you be the judge. Another brilliant addition to the South Korean crime genre.

Rating: * * *

Going by the Book

Sampo, a small South Korean town is assaulted by a spate of robberies. The new police chief decides to shake things up by performing a realistic drill of a bank robbery that will help train the police force in catching the real suspects. But he makes the mistake of picking Do-man, a straight laced cop, to play the role of the robber and hilarity ensues. Another classic comedy from the South Korean film industry.

Rating: * * *

War of the Arrows

When a friend claimed the movie was the highest rated on Netflix, it seemed like a no brainer to watch it in spite of dark forebodings in my mind. Set in Korea at the onset of the second Manchu invasion, the film centers around a brother - sister pair. The brother is a master archer and when the Manchurian army kidnaps his sister on her wedding day, he sets off in pursuit taking them off one at a time. There is not much else to say about the film which has high production quality but it does not help overcome the poor story line and screenplay of the film. The moral is to never trust Netflix rating and recommendations of a certain friend.

Rating: *

Dance Town

The movie opens with a slice of life in North Korea. A husband and wife furtively watch porn with some fear and exaltation. It might have been cool to dwell a while longer in that mysterious country but director Kyu-hwan Jeon, races across the border to the south as the wife, Jung-nim Rhee (),  escapes on Chinese fishing boat soon after her husband is arrested. Rhee soon is soon faced with a land with “freedom” abound. But being “free” does not equate to contentment and happiness. She is soon confronted with demons called loneliness and despondence. Like it was said in Into the Wild, happiness is only real when shared.

Rating: * * *

Tokyo!

A trifecta of directors, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Joon-ho Bong set their lens on Tokyo in this omnibus. Gondry shows us a couple moving to Tokyo, that starts off by showing them staying at a friend's cramped apartment. He slowly drifts in to a realm of magic realism. Carax begins in the realm of quasi realism and stays there with his tale of "the creature of the sewers". The two pieces could have been set in any city and it would have made sense. But it is Joon-ho Bong who captures an essence of being Japanese as he reveals a hikikomoriin who falls in love. A film that excels in bursts but is placid as a whole.

Rating: * *

Treeless Mountain

Two sisters are abandoned to whims of relatives as their mother floats away. Quite desperation is mingled with hope for the sisters as they pray for their mother's return. A film that is dominated by women but it is the men who decided path of the story. The film is intense but less penetrating when compared to Nobody Knows, which deals with a similar situation. Maybe it is because of the latter that the film had less of an effect on me.

Rating: * +

The Host

A strange creature emerges from the Han river and causes havoc on its banks in Seoul. It then proceeds to make off with a teenage girl, Hyun-seo Park (Ko Ah-sung) much to the horror of her family. The Park family is determined to bring her back no matter the cost. A brilliant satirical take on the political climate in South Korea is couched in this bizarre monster flick by Bong Joon-ho.

Rating: * * +

Real Fiction

An artist stoically paints portraits at a park. His customers abuse him and the local thugs bully him. Suddenly he snaps and goes off on a revenge rampage against all the souls that ever hurt him. A woman follows him around recording every second of the carnage. Kim Ki-duk's revenge "thriller" shot in real time lacks his trademark calmness and surrealism and turns out be one of his weakest offerings.

Rating: *

301/302

Song (Eun-jin Bang) in 301 is obsessed about food and loves to cook. Her neighbor, Yun (Sin-Hye Hwang ) in 302 is anorexic and can barely keep any food down. In spite of being polar opposites a tenuous friendship ensues. When Yun mysteriously disappears it is this friendship that is under suspicion. Cheol-su Park twisted thriller delves into human being's association with food. Quirky as that might sound the film fails to engage the viewer.

Rating: * *

Never Forever

The film begins with a funeral and its pall continues to weigh down on the proceedings. Sophie (Vera Farmiga) is a trophy wife who dotes on her husband, Andrew (David Lee McInnis). But her inability to get pregnant seems to have sucked the desire for living from him. So when the pregnancy clinic also fails her, Sophie in her desperation seeks out Jihah (Jung-woo Ha), a illegal South Korean immigrant, to "help" her. Sophie is dull and Jihah is bland. But as they touch something within them awakens...

Rating: * * *

The Woman on the Beach

Director Jung-rae (Seung-woo Kim) has run into the writers block, working on the script of his next film. To get over it he decides to head to a beach resort. He drags his friend, Chang-wook (Tae-woo Kim) along with him. Chang-wook's flame, Mun-suk (Hyun-jung Go) also tags along. Jung-rae like many of Sang-soo Hong's protagonists is a complete jerk which of course prompts Mun-suk to feel attracted to him. They jump into bed and the minute Mun-suk turns away, Jung-rae tries to repeat the encounter with another woman (Seon-mi Song). All the while he searches for that elusive script.

The film is well directed and filled with wry cynicism but there is nothing new forthcoming in this film when compared to Hong's prior films. He continues to harp on the fact that women have a tendency to fall for unmitigated assholes. Hong needs to get over that and move on.

Rating: * *

In Between Days

An overtly close look at a sullen relationship between two South Korean immigrant teenagers. A film so swollen with teenage angst that one would expect it to explode.

Rating: * +

The Classic

The film opens with Ji-hae (Ye-jin Son) stumbling across her mother's old lover letters. As she loses herself in her mother's past, she finds the present mirroring it. Ji-hae finds herself helplessly attracted to her friend's boyfriend Sang-min (In-seong Jo). Her mother's first love was also in a similar predicament involving his best friend. The director, Jae-young Kwak, effortlessly flits between the past and present in this typical melodramatic South Korean love story. If only he had the good sense to end it sooner it would have ended up being a cut above the rest.

Rating: * *

Il Mare

Yet again the South Koreans show us that they have the romance genre down to pat. Eun-joo (Gianna Jun) leaves a note behind in the postbox of Il Mare which is the name of a quaint little cabin that is the vortex of this film. Little does she realize that note makes its way through the time space continuum to Sung-hyun (Jung-Jae Lee), a resident in the past. The wheels of time start to spin and a romance ensues across time-scapes.

It is evident that this film's echo is heard very clearly in Ditto but Il Mare speaks more eloquently to the viewer. The only knock against the flick is the poor soundtrack.

Rating: * * *

Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors

The film shows the modern courtship between young South Koreans from two perspectives shot in black and white. Soo-jung (Eun-ju Lee) is a young script writer who falls for Young-soo (Seong-kun Mun) who is affluent in a subdued way. Like other Sang-soo flicks, this film too introduces a sense of competition and forced issues in the dating play. After watching this third flick of Sang-s00, it almost seems that his best is just around the bend.

Rating: * *