Decision to Leave
A homicide detective (Park Hae-il) falls for a victim’s widow (Tang Wei) in this unprocedural thriller. For his 11th feature, Park Chan-wook makes the bold decision to leave behind the […]
Tag Archives: South Korea
The Villainess
As far as opening action sequences go, South Korean actioner The Villainess might just have the best: a first-person, single-take fight through corridors packed with scores of assailants, like Oldboy meets […]
Memories of Murder
Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder would have passed most of us by in 2003, coming a few months before South Korean cinema had its international breakthrough with Oldboy. Following Parasite‘s Oscar […]
Thirst
As the pubs reopen, we turn to the South Korean story of a Catholic priest (Parasite‘s Song Kang-ho) who contracts a vampiric disease and starts drinking as though the blood […]
A Tale of Two Sisters
Two sisters (Im Soo-jung and Moon Geun-young) suspect there’s something off about their stepmother (Yum Jung-ah) when they open the fridge door to find a bloody fish next to the peanut […]
I Saw the Devil
I sometimes wonder what Secret Cinema would be like in South Korea. Do they put you in a box for 15 years then feed you a live octopus and chase […]
Lady Vengeance
Lady Vengeance is not a gender-swapped version of the Vengaboys, but the third installment in Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy. Lee Young-ae is superb as Lee Geum-ja, another brilliantly ambiguous character from […]
The Handmaiden
From Park Chan-wook, the South Korean mastermind behind Oldboy and Stoker, comes the best film about a handmaiden since The Phantom Menace. Ostensibly the story of a pickpocket (Kim Tae-ri) […]
Screen Goblin 