South Korea
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It has been a good year for South Korean cinema, producing everything from sumptuous erotic costume dramas ( The Handmaiden ) to adrenaline-fuelled zombie thrillers ( Train to Busan ).… Read More
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Following the critical and commercial success of his surveillance thriller Cold Eyes – a remake of the Johnnie To-produced Hong Kong film Eye in the Sky – director Jo Ui-seok… Read More
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Na Hong-jin returns with a brilliant and deeply unsettling thriller about small town paranoia and grisly murder. Listen to my review (at 34:00) Read More
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Following the disappointment of his Hollywood debut The Last Stand, director Kim Jee-woon returns home with a riveting espionage thriller that taps into Korea’s recent trend for patriotic Occupation-era period… Read More
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Hot on the heels of monster hit Train to Busan, which is on track to become the most successful Asian film of all time in Hong Kong, it’s no surprise… Read More
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After a brace of gritty, socially charged animated films, director Yeon Sang-ho’s live-action debut proves a commercial juggernaut on its way to setting box office records in his native South… Read More
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Park Chan-wook returns to his homeland with this deliciously knowing and ridiculously camp tale of deception and seduction. Listen to my review (at 29:55) Read More
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Hot on the heels of the excellent Veteran , Inside Men is a similarly slick South Korean thriller exposing high-level corruption in equally brutal and compelling fashion. Read my review Read More
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A renegade cop takes on the spoilt heir of a family-run conglomerate in Ryoo Seung-wan’s tightly-paced and sharp-witted crime thriller Veteran. Read my review Read More
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Since his 18th birthday, Woo-jin has awoken each morning as a different person. His age, gender, even race can change. He has no way of controlling it and there is… Read More
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The New York Asian Film Festival kicks off tomorrow, boasting an impressive array of selections from the best of Asian Cinema past and present. Below I’ve collected together my reviews… Read More
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This week on Radio 3 I talked about local action thriller Helios, featuring a star-studded cast that includes Jackie Cheung, Nick Cheung, Chang Chen, Janice Man and Choi Siwon. The… Read More
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South Korean indie provocateur Lee Sang-woo returns with the third and final instalment in his thematic “bad family” trilogy, which follows three grown up brothers, reunited when their pedophile father… Read More
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Following the success of Masquerade last year, South Korea has rediscovered its taste for period drama chamber pieces, and Lee Jae-gyu’s The Fatal Encounter more than delivers, both in dramatic… Read More
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Following the success of Masquerade last year, South Korea has rediscovered its taste for period drama chamber pieces, and Lee Jae-gyu’s The Fatal Encounter more than delivers, both in dramatic… Read More
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Packed with violence, humour, machismo, revenge & more quirk than most Korean revenge thrillers, but the anarchic genre-bending spirit of the director’s almost indefinable previous film, Save The Green Planet,… Read More
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10 years after he is colluded into participating in the gang rape of a classmate, a young man is still haunted by his crime. Approaching a Christian support group in… Read More
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When her grandfather dies, 15-year-old Wei Wei (Xu Jiao) inherits his circus, particularly their star attraction: a baseball-playing gorilla, Ling Ling. Unfortunately, she also inherits his huge gambling debts and… Read More
The James Marsh film review archive 