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There Were No Gods Left

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Korean Cinema

A collection of 30 posts

REVIEW: Harbin (2024) dir. Woo Min-ho

REVIEW: Harbin (2024) dir. Woo Min-ho

The opening foreshadows the scale of the task ahead: to assassinate their colonizer and the Prime Minister of Japan, Itō Hirobumi

Interview: 12.12: The Day Director Kim Sung Soo

Interview: 12.12: The Day Director Kim Sung Soo

"This is how history continues its ongoing dialogue with the present and reflects why I continue to make films based on history."

The 28th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

The 28th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

BIFAN’s embrace of sexuality is one example of its willingness to reach for something extra.

12.12: The Day — Kim Seong-su [NYAFF ’24 Review]

12.12: The Day — Kim Seong-su [NYAFF ’24 Review]

“In the end, they swallowed up the nation as a whole.”

Review: Road to Boston (2023) dir. Kang Je-kyu

Review: Road to Boston (2023) dir. Kang Je-kyu

Road to Boston tells the story of marathoner Suh Yun-bok (Im Si-wan) and his senior coach turned surprise teammate Sohn Kee-chung (Ha Jung-woo) as they compete in the 1947 Boston International Marathon.

Ruminations on A Taxi Driver

Ruminations on A Taxi Driver

The Roundup: Punishment — Heo Myeong-haeng

The Roundup: Punishment — Heo Myeong-haeng

The copaganda finally outruns the action choreography.

GO TO: Train to Busan (2016) dir. Yeon Sang-ho

GO TO: Train to Busan (2016) dir. Yeon Sang-ho

Among the Korean Wave's heavyweights.

Review: In Our Day (2023) and In Water (2023)

Review: In Our Day (2023) and In Water (2023)

In Our Day Few filmmakers can pop out feature films like bunnies in a petting zoo. Hong Sang-soo is one of the few. Keeping up with his release schedule might as well be a hobby, and even then a new title can come like a thief in the night. That

The 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PӦFF)

The 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PӦFF)

The only International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) A-list film festival in Northern Europe or the Baltic, Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival just wrapped up its 27th year and celebrated by breaking all major attendance records from the festival’s history, as PӦFF director Tiina Lokk-Tramberg shared

Badland Hunters — Heo Myeong-haeng

Badland Hunters — Heo Myeong-haeng

Ma Dong-seok does it again in Netflix’s Badland Hunters. Like most of his notable roles post-Train to Busan (2016), he plays a haymaking Byronic hero with a pained past, this time around as the star of the very loose sequel to last year’s Concrete Utopia. The post-apocalyptic landscape

Concrete Utopia (2023) dir. Um Tae-hwa

Concrete Utopia (2023) dir. Um Tae-hwa

At its most political, Concrete Utopia finds the fascist project essentially anti-life and destined for a systemic collapse.

Interview: Concrete Utopia director Um Tae-hwa

Interview: Concrete Utopia director Um Tae-hwa

"This movie deals with the disaster, but the disaster itself is not the focus."

Kim Seong-sik Debuts with Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman

Kim Seong-sik Debuts with Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman

I may be basic, but when it comes to Korean cinema, I’m a sucker for both Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. (On the actor front you can add Gong Yoo and Kim Tae-ri, but that’s a different story.) Kim Seong-sik, the first-time director of Dr. Cheon and the

A Normal Family and Normality

A Normal Family and Normality

In a movie titled A Normal Family, one thing can be certain: the family is obligated to abnormality. Hur Jin-ho’s newest film, an adaptation of the Dutch novel The Dinner by Herman Koch, attests to this. The source material’s title explains why the film’s early marketing so

The Basic Predicament of The Moon

The Basic Predicament of The Moon

Many of the best survival-oriented movies work like a line of dominoes: their best bits catalyze one another, the action of one is impossible without the drama of another. In Uncut Gems (2019), a lightly disguised survival film, each and every action by Howard (Adam Sandler) is a reaction to,

Notes on the 27th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

Notes on the 27th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

We live in a digital, uber-modern world: that’s the message from the 27th Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival. Following the global trauma of pandemic isolation, the films I viewed at this year’s festival overwhelmingly pointed to the shared anxieties of a post-pandemic world, including but not limited to the

The Post-Colonial World of Bong Joon-Ho

No Gods Left Original Piece

The Post-Colonial World of Bong Joon-Ho

Bong's films are postcolonial in the sense that they often reflect the Korean context by depicting the United States as a neo-colonial empire; however, his postcolonial messages are largely dependent on a reversal of American genre expectations, and, as a result, his films still dialogue with the co

Netflix's Kill Boksoon and Wicksploitation

Netflix's Kill Boksoon and Wicksploitation

Netflix’s most recent South Korean action assassination flick, Kill Boksoon, will inevitably be compared to the John Wick franchise. Indeed, it already has. To quote The Hollywood Reporter, who seem somewhat confused about the difference between then and than, “If John Wick were a middle-aged single mom whose teenage

“Glorious” and “Gloomy”: The Drug King and President Park Chung-hee

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“Glorious” and “Gloomy”: The Drug King and President Park Chung-hee

Broker is Kore-eda’s Anti-Manichean Masterpiece

Broker is Kore-eda’s Anti-Manichean Masterpiece

Despite being completely snubbed at the 43rd Blue Dragon Film Awards, South Korea’s more popular film award ceremony, the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker stood an excellent chance to snag a few categories at the 58th Grand Bell Awards—roughly the Korean equivalent to the Academy Awards. And

My Top Ten Films of 2022

Damn, it was a good year for the movies. 2022 was my best year with new releases since at least 2018, if not longer. The gleeful time-travel Japanese comedy Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, produced in 2020 but not released on US streaming until 2022, was particularly painful to leave

Special Delivery is Serviceable but not Special

Special Delivery is Serviceable but not Special

An intentional riff on Baby Driver staring Park So-dam and Jung Hyeon-jun, two of the most internationally recognizable faces working in Korean cinema thanks to the globally acclaimed Parasite, Park Dae-min’s Special Delivery first came onto my radar in July when it made the rounds on Film Twitter thanks

Emergency Declaration, The Best Covid Movie?

Emergency Declaration, The Best Covid Movie?

Emergency Declaration, the 2021 Korean plane disaster movie, is the Covid film I’ve been waiting for. Most of the major Covid-era films so far have catered too strongly to the fleeting and frequently changing aspects of pandemic life: lockdown, mitigation, quarantine, technology’s reimagined role in connecting us. The

'Seoul Vibe': Takes Inspiration in 'Extreme Job' and 'Baby Driver'

'Seoul Vibe': Takes Inspiration in 'Extreme Job' and 'Baby Driver'

Unfortunately, Seoul Vibe’s action isn’t as slick as Baby Driver; nor is it as funny as Extreme Job.