South Korea

  • Joon-ho Bong – Snowpiercer (2013)

    Joon-ho Bong2011-2020ActionSci-FiSouth Korea

    Summary: In a future where a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet, a class system evolves aboard the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine.Read More »

  • Dae-seung Kim – Beonjijeompeureul hada AKA Bungee Jumping of Their Own (2001)

    2001-2010Dae-seung KimDramaRomanceSouth Korea

    Synopsis
    This critically-acclaimed supernatural love story from Korea beings with In-woo (Byung-hun Lee) and Tae-Hee [Eun-ju Lee), a pair of college students, meeting and falling in love in 1983. After following the development of their relationship, the plot jumps ahead seven years In-woo is now a high school teacher, married to a different woman, and still displaying the emotional scars of whatever happened between him and his former lover. The remainder of the film fills in the blanks in his life, and resolves his heartbreak in a truly surprising way.

    Star Lee Eun-ju committed suicide in 2005.Read More »

  • Kwon Min-pyo & Han-Sol Seo – Jong chak yeok AKA Short Vacation (2021)

    2021-2030DramaHan-Sol SeoKwon Min-pyoSouth Korea

    Four first-grade middle school students in the same class are members of a photography club. Before leaving for summer break, the teacher hands out an old-fashioned analog camera to each of them and asks them to take pictures with them as a summer assignment. The assignment topic is the “end of the world.” What does the end of the world mean? What on earth are they supposed to take pictures of? They all have different opinions on it, but as one of the girls suggests, they decide to take a subway to Sinchang Station, the last station on Seoul Metropolitan Subway Line 1. That is the end of the world for these girls. They doze off on the subway, stop for a while due to rain showers, and feel drawn to an unfamiliar world.Read More »

  • Sang-soo Hong – Inteurodeoksyeon AKA Introduction (2021)

    2021-2030ArthouseDramaSang-soo HongSouth Korea

    Youngho is summoned by his father, who is a doctor. Finding him busy with his patients, one of whom is a famous actor, Youngho has to wait. When his girlfriend Juwon moves to Berlin for her studies, Youngho shows up in the city to surprise her. Through her mother, Juwon has found accommodation at the home of an artist whose beauty intimidates her. Some time later, Youngho goes to lunch with his mother who wants to introduce him to a colleague – it is the same man Youngho met at his father’s clinic. Youngho asks his friend Jeongsoo to accompany him, and after lunch they go to the beach. Youngho falls asleep, and dreams of Juwon. When he wakes up, he braves the considerable cold and goes swimming, while Jeongsoo watches.Read More »

  • Il-gon Song – Geomi sup AKA Spider Forest (2004)

    2001-2010Il-gon SongMysterySouth KoreaThriller

    Synopsis:
    Television producer Kang Min (Kam Woo-seong) wakes in Spider Forest and is shocked to discover his girlfriend (Kang Gyeong-heon) slowly dying, along with the brutally murdered body of a stranger. While pursuing who he believes is the murderer, Kang is hit by a car and later wakes up in a hospital. After undergoing surgery, Kang describes the scene to Choi (Jang Hyeon-seong), an investigating police officer who’s also his friend — but soon, Kang becomes the lead suspect.Read More »

  • Chang-dong Lee – Bakha satang AKA Peppermint Candy [4K Restoration] (1999)

    1991-2000Chang-dong LeeDramaSouth Korea

    Shown in reverse chronological order, Peppermint Candy is the tale of a solitary man’s painful growth in life set against the back drop of nearly three decades of Korean history. A distraught and weathered man, Yong-ho stands on the rails of a train track staring oncoming death in the face. Through divided sequences we retrace the steps that brought him to this place and this state of mind. From his failed marriage and unsuccessful career, to his first love and his traumatizing experience in the army, we are shown all of the elements that went into the psychological demise of a broken man.Read More »

  • Chang-dong Lee – Shi AKA Poetry (2010)

    2001-2010ArthouseChang-dong LeeDramaSouth Korea

    Mija lives with her middle-schooler grandson in a small suburban city located along the Han River. She is a dandy old lady who likes to dress up in flower-decorated hats and fashionable outfits, but she is also an unpredictable character with an inquisitive mind. By chance she takes a poetry class at a neighborhood cultural center and is challenged to write a poem for the first time in her life. Her quest for poetic inspiration begins with observing the everyday life she never intentional took notice of before to find beauty within it. And with this, Mija is delightfully surprised with newfound trepidation as if she were a little girl discovering things for the first time in her life. But when she is suddenly faced with a reality harsh beyond her imagination, she realises perhaps life is not as beautiful as she had thought it is…Read More »

  • Hae-jun Lee – Kimssi pyoryugi AKA Castaway on the Moon (2009)

    2001-2010ComedyDramaHae-jun LeeSouth Korea

    Quote:
    A man named KIM jumps into the dark, quiet waters of the Han River. He wakes up and finds himself lying on strange ground, covered with sand. For a second, he thinks he is in heaven, but soon recognizes that he simply drifted to a nameless island in the river. In one of the riverside apartment buildings, there’s a girl who hasn’t ventured out of her room for years. With her dishevelled hair and in the same old clothes she’s worn for years, she looks just like a castaway. Then one day, she catches sight of a man living alone on an island through her binoculars. Day after day, his lonely but seemingly contented life triggers her curiosity and compels her to step out of her room after so many years. KIM’s extraordinary life becomes the inspiration for change in this girl’s lonely, detached life.Read More »

  • Hong-jin Na – Chugyeokja AKA The Chaser (2008)

    2001-2010AsianHong-jin NaSouth KoreaThriller

    Quote:
    Possessed of the same bloody fatalism that pulses through many a Korean crimer, and topped by Kim Yoon-suk’s star-making performance as a lowlife racing to save a woman’s life, “The Chaser” is a grisly serial-killer thriller that develops into a howl of outrage at the ineptitude of the system. Drawing both white-knuckle tension and moral anguish from a maddening succession of red herrings and wrong turns, Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser (Chugyeogja) “tells the story of a detective turned pimp who finds himself in trouble when several of his girls disappear without paying him.” The film was released in its native South Korea in February and was a good-sized hit.Read More »

Back to top button