There have been some criticisms centered on the drawn-out, exhausting climactic fight sequence. Such underscores the marketing acumen, if not directorial skill, of Kim, a man who has quickly risen, justified or not, to become one of the most recognizable Korean directors throughout the world through his relentless work ethic that enables him to complete projects with a profitable - at least through overseas sales - efficiency that would make the members of many corporate board rooms around the world nod in approval. These movies cater for all tastes ranging from romance and fantasy to suspense and comedy. Watch it to witness a true testament of perfect mix of comedy, romance and melodrama. But adjusting to the sleepy pace of a small fishing town turns out to be more difficult than Hye-jin thought. A love story that one should not miss watching.
Their romantic films have such a magnetic chemistry between the lead pair, that it makes one dream of finding prince charming in real life. That is, his direction of the two ads involving the pop can at the beginning of the film are so well accomplished with a commercial sheen that they disrupt because the ads are so much better than the rest of the film. The Wolf Returns starts off like a formulaic action-comedy, a cops-and-robbers version of My Teacher Mr. I'm sure directing children is not easy, but the child performances in Spring In My Hometown worked, so we know it can be done. Many war films-- Apocalypse Now 1979 comes to mind-- have in fact drawn upon conventions and tropes of the horror genre to depict the cruelty and madness induced by the dehumanizing conditions of an armed conflict.
My personal take on this is that, if you haven't seen any of Hong's previous works, that you are unlikely to get much out of this one. Perhaps courageously for a Korean film, it presents a protagonist who refuses not only to display emotion but also to explain herself. In an interesting opening, the movie has Jeon, standing at the top of a building, attempting to commit suicide, with Jang Hyuk as the background narrator. In particular, I found myself wishing Q was there next to me while watching so I could ask the significance of each Korean movie poster and marquee that briefly appeared. Outside of the excellent climactic scene where the connection between politics, student activism, and Choi's thuggish business practices is underscored, it is the signs and symbols of this Korean era that stay with me most. The movie is about a man trying to save his daughter who was kidnaped by a monster.
Along the way, he befriends a fellow ethnic Korean Jeong Tae-woo who eventually becomes successful running a pachinko parlor, one of the businesses ethnic Koreans are known for in Japan. I am speaking of Pil-gi's three attempts to exorcise the home, with indigenous shaman, Catholic priest, and Buddhist monk. R-Point is highly recommended to those who like intelligent and thoughtful thrillers that have more on their minds than just giving you goose bumps. Characters in this movie are not just dumb, they are irredeemably, incorrigibly stupid. The two main characters survive from the chaos as their city is left in ruins.
It is a line taken from an Louis Aragon poem that Hong saw printed on a postcard in a French bookstore. Her father has re-married and the only thing constant is her sister, Su-Yeon. Heading back to his action genre roots with films like the successful Son of a General franchise, the story begins with Choi Tae-woong Cho Seung-woo - Chunhyang, The Classic entering a rival school and beating up its leaders. To me, it is all that happens around the narrative that is most engaging about Low Life. Mokpo, Gangster's Paradise is a grating jopok comedy almost surrealistic in its extremist, loony-tunes reworking of the once-safe formulae, perhaps revealing more clearly than its subdued predecessors the masculine anxieties that underlie much of what passes for entertainment in contemporary Korea.
He meets a woman who leads him into a cabin, where he finds inhabitants who never age. Go play with your cat! Actresses Lee Kan-hee and Moon Jeong-hee are also quite memorable as two of Poongshik's many dance partners. He is successful in finding Kyung-Chul, brutally beats him up but apparently let him go. A comic Artist is forced into turmoil when she becomes a suspect in two gruesome murders. Despite its admittedly self-contradictory qualities, Arahan is the most fun I have had with a 2004 Korean film so far early September. The second mystery is more abstract, centering around a series of premonitions seen by Yu-jin. She is no less impressive essaying the role of soft-hearted and introverted Na-young than playing an uncultured but spunky Yeon-soon.
One can do a lot with a baseball game to show characters struggling with their egos, their demons, their circumstances, and those of others. To top it off, the film's sock-it-to-you tragedy comes less than two minutes after the opening credits, before we even get to know anything about the main character. Still, when Jae later practically reverse-anthropomorphizes, those eyes rolled back like a gecko, those preying-mantis-y arm movements, Hee's physicality is strikingly well-performed. The plot thickens when the workers at an excavation site accidentally releases the renegade Master Heug-un Jeong Doo-hong. I wish that I could have liked Mr.
He agrees to train Choi in martial arts, but from the teachings of the great swordsman Miyamoto Miyashi. The final image recalls that of Kurosawa Akira's Ran and opens the film up for an allegorical interpretation about the general human condition. De Niro can sing, can't he? As someone who has never made it past the first ten minutes of Kilimanjaro, overwhelmed by Park Shin-yang's spittle-flying histrionics, I was a bit worried about him taking on a dual role again. Although we don't share witness to her struggles, we can infer much about the obstacles she had to face through the brief references to points in her journey throughout the film. The film reaches its climax in a genre-required 'big' game, although not the typical big game we have come to expect. Lee Mi-suk wonderfully portrays all of the above, with minimalism and realism that permeates the whole film. Although the setup is a truly lame parody of a famous scene from Oldboy, it encourages the viewers to laugh at Cha closing his eyes and softly moaning while Jo is, ah, rolling his tongue with loud slurping noises over a thingie jutting out between Cha's legs.
I'm not aware of how much this film needed to gross to end up in the black, but guesstimating about the on site needs required when filming on a mountainside, I'd bet the financiers were not happy with the results. These moments of faulty execution might be better explained by the main reason for my dissatisfaction that I mentioned before - the pace. Most particularly a scene that seriously lessens the theatrical impact. He turns out to be a carpenter who works for her father's construction company. Three Extremes is one such movie which is a collection of three short films; Dumplings: An aging actress wants to make her beauty immortal. Flying Boys is about capturing all the confusion, emotions and energy of this time of life. Despite an A+ soundtrack up to its final scene, Some ends with an ear-grating, chirpy tune that tries to erase the somber mood that pervaded the film.