Korean Cinema

South (and maybe some North) Korean

Korean Cinema

The World Before

The only assured truth about summer is that it always comes to an end.

Korean Cinema

Hope

"Holy shibal!"

Korean Cinema

Colony

One of the best films of the year.

Korean Cinema

Bias Wrecker: KATSEYE: Wild Hearts

Best watched with a six-inch rectangular distraction in hand.

Paid-members only

Korean Cinema

Veteran

The revelation of the truth [is] as inevitable as a peaceful peninsula and gun taekwondo in the films of Ryoo Seung-wan.

Paid-members only

Korean Cinema

The Fertilizer Home

Part of the 30th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

Korean Cinema

Savon

Part of the 30th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

Korean Cinema

Bias Wrecker: MAMAMOO: My Con the Movie & Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience

A better propaganda film about power than Melania.

Korean Cinema

The Great Flood

A half-baked Korean science fiction thriller

Members only

Korean Cinema

No Other Choice

Korean Cinema

Good News

Good News’ black comedy cuts with both edges of its katana.

Toronto International Film Festival 2025

Notes from the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival

Reviews on Sacrifice, A Useful Ghost, and Project Y

Korean Cinema

Dark Nuns

The theology of Dark Nuns stands apart from the usually strong Christological theologies that the exorcism genre has stood on for decades.

Korean Cinema

The Old Woman with the Knife

For all their effort to hide age in the action, the filmmakers take the opposite approach to the symbolism.

Reviews

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

12:12: The Day

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."

Essays

The 28th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

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

Reviews

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

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

Reviews

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.

Paid-members only

Reviews

Ruminations on A Taxi Driver

Reviews

The Roundup: Punishment — Heo Myeong-haeng

The copaganda finally outruns the action choreography.

Reviews

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

Among the Korean Wave's heavyweights.

Reviews

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.

Essays

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-

Reviews

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