I Saw The Devil (악마를 보았다) (Ang-ma-reul bo-at'da) (2010)

I don't mind ultra violence in movies when revenge is being meted out to those especially deserving of it, like in Harry Brown or Bedevilled, The Brave One or a zillion other bloody revenge fests, and for the first hour or so, that's what's on offer here when a secret service agent goes beserk, seeking revenge on a Korean Max Cady serial killer who has horribly killed rhe agent's pregnant girlfriend, but by film's end, when the secret service agent's very short-sighted plan for revenge has resulted in pain, suffering and death for myriad extraneous others and when so much depravity is on show - so much that the serial killer becomes just one part of a greater universal serial killer problem - the thrill of revenge becomes more than absurd: From Dusk Til Dawn presents a more reasonable, grounded world.

★★★☆☆

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Minari (2020)

Too much of this semi-autobiographical family drama is spent trying to be cute rather than trying to develop its themes, with the challenges of farming Korean vegetables in Kansas perhaps meant as an analogy for the migrant experience, except that this family is American - they hail from California and are welcomed into smalltown USA, its church and farming community without much drama beyond the wife's loneliness and the son's health problems - and the farm is just a patch producing a first small harvest once, not back-breaking, soul-destroying labour over ten years producing only failed crops that drive a farmer to suicide, so the punchline at the end of the movie about the effortlesssness of growing minari feels glib, especially after the randomness of a housefire, and might as easily be an indictment on unsustainable agricultural practices or a comment on Steiner child-rearing as much as it is saying something about the perserverence required to successfully plant roots in foreign soil - it isn't clear, but look at how the little boy pouts!

★★★☆☆

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#Alive (2020)

Yoo Ah-in, who was so good in Burning as Lee Jong-su, essentially repeats the performance here playing Oh Joon-woo, the same gormless kid gaping dumbly at a set of circumstances beyond his comprehension - here, a cannibal zombie onslaught in an apartment complex - and it really is this and the performance of his costar, Park Shin-hye as a fellow survivor in an apartment across the way, that help overcome several cheats in the script - zombie hordes who suddenly aren't a threat at a door, for example - and elevates this slight string of zombie survival set-pieces into something human and affecting.

★★★☆☆

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The Villainess (악녀) (Ak Nyeo) (2017)

The opening scene of Byung gil Jung's action movie, about a female assassin hellbent on revenge, is an extended first-person ultra-violent sword massacre of hundreds of suited thugs - a startling and original sequence that has you sitting up, awake, and paying attention (through your fingers) - but no sooner does this sequence end than the movie slips into very familiar territory, not just reminiscent of Kill Bill Vol.1 and La Femme Nikita but using near-exact replica scenes - from the child-under-the-bed moment to the honeymoon-suite bathroom assassination, so that what started so startlingly and originally ends up so generic and well-trodden it almost feels like a fanboy tribute.

★★☆☆☆

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My Dear Enemy (Meotjin Haru) (멋진 하루) (2008)

This meandering Korean drama develops gradually but there is no story to speak of except to say the lead female is an emotionally stunted ice golem harbouring resentment towards her male companion, a happy-go-lucky dolt, after their relationship ended without him paying back a debt; the movie follows them around after their reunion gives her the opportunity to get her money back, but first he has to scrounge around, gathering it bit by bit from various acquaintances on their, well, not exactly enthralling but wry, drily comic travels.

★★★☆☆

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The Chase (반드시 잡는다) (Ban-deu-si jab-neun-da) (2017)

Director Kim Hong-seon's serial killer thriller is best in its first two-thirds as it follows cantankerous landlord Sim Deok-soo around Aridong on his motorised scooter chasing rent from his tenants, encountering goofy hoodlums and stumbling on grisly crime scenes along the way, but the movie becomes less impressive once its not very likely organised/disorganised killer/kidnapper plot kicks in.

★★★☆☆

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The Beauty Inside (뷰티 인사이드) (2015)

The central character, Woo-jin, a furniture maker, wakes each morning in a different body (sometimes an old one, sometimes a very young one, sometimes a female or a male one, and - at odds with the title and ostensible theme of this South Korean romantic drama - very often a twentysomething and gorgeous one) but forget gender politics or a Benjamin Button study in ageism or anything very interesting at all - the constant Orlando transformations are a mere inconvenience for Woo-jin, who looks forlorn but still manages to clear customs and travel internationally, and are just a hurdle for his new girlfriend to get over as her and Woo-jin's relationship slowly (S - - L - - O - - W - - L - - Y) blossoms.

★★☆☆☆

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Parasite (Gisaengchung) (기생충) (2019)

Like the Shoplifters, the parasites are members of a family trying through criminal means to overcome their bleak social circumstances - here, under false pretenses they inveigle their way one by one into jobs in an upperclass family home - and it's once they are ensconsed that director Bong Joon-ho lets all hell run loose - you won't believe a lot of what comes - but the director's shifts between absurdist black comedy, freak show horror, family drama, crime thriller and social commentary are more awkward here than in his other work, and even though there is a sting in the tail - a decidedly grim punchline that makes you forgive the absurdities of the preceding plot by asking you to consider the alternative - the movie needs a further hour's runtime to make everything fit neatly and to deal with several plot threads simply left dangling.

★★★★☆

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Burning (Beoning) (버닝) (2018)

Lots of thrillers featuring writer's block-stricken main characters are let down when it turns out the thrills are just metaphorical (it was in their imagination, an author's struggle manifest, or worse, just a dream) (Swimming Pool, Secret Window, etc. etc..) but that's not the case here with this beautifully acted, chilling, thrilling Murakami Haruki short story adaptation in which North Korean propaganda announcements, porsches, dilapidated shacks and swanky apartments are the all too real indications of the divides that exist between the have-nots (like wannabe-writer Jong-soo, who doesn't even have a mother in his life and looks like losing Hae-mi, the girl he is interested in) and the haves like Ben (a mysterious playboy who seems to be coming between Jong-soo and Hae-mi) and greenhouses, stones, and fires suggest what is being written is something real that thumps in your chest and strips you bare; the trick in the end is that this thriller leaves you devastated, wishing it were just a metaphor or, even better, just a dream - please, just wake up.

★★★★★

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Forgotten (기억의 밤) (2017)

Two real-life forty-somethings are a Dumb and Dumber pair of teenagers living a very-Brady existence at home with their parents, but after an intriguing first half when you learn that this might not in fact be just a dumb casting choice but part of a sinister thriller with the unlikely family not quite what it seems, things grow very stupid and ultimately your conviction is only strengthened that Netflix is a graveyard of subpar film projects that would otherwise never see the light of day.

★★☆☆☆

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Office (오피스) (2015)

A detective investigating the "Hammer Killer" serial killer case finds inexplicable things going on in the workplace of an office worker who has disappeared after bludgeoning his family to death, in this creepy, horribly violent, peculiarly edited, sloppily-told mystery thriller from South Korea.

★★☆☆☆

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House of the Disappeared (시간위의 집) (Siganwiui Jib) (2017)

I can't vouch for the source material, a Venezuelan horror that took the world by storm in 2013, but this 2017 South Korean remake about a woman who returns after 25 years of incarceration to the house where her husband was one night stabbed to death and her son inexplicably disappeared through a blocked basement doorway is appealing because it stars Kim Yun-jin from Lost (she was the deeply likeable Sun) and because, in the end, after a really very silly story plays out (in a distinctly low budget way with made-for-tv quality make-up and zero special effects), this supernatural mystery thriller manages to be surprisingly, ridiculously touching.

★★☆☆☆

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Train To Busan (부산행) (Busanhaeng) (2016)

This Korean horror starts inventively but as though infected with its own zombie virus grows steadily more rudimentary and sluggish as it goes on, telling the story of a busy and important fund manager who is too wrapped up in his work to be able to meaningfully engage with his young daughter; their train trip to the child's mother's house on the child's birthday is interrupted by a zombie apocalypse (imagine a V/Line country service after an AFL match) leading to some genuinely heartbreaking scenes of the young girl crying amid zombie chaos, but at least the fund manager snaps out of his own zombie-like fugue and starts fighting for his and his daughter's survival.

★★★★☆

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The Interview (2014)

I had assumed the controversy surrounding its release - because it centres on a plot to assassinate a living leader - was a marketing ploy to overshadow the fact James Franco and Seth Rogen's comedy was a laughfree bomb, but in fact, despite myself, I enjoyed this audacious - and immature and unnecessarily violent - comedy greatly boosted by the genuinely touching relationship that develops between Randall Parks' Kim Jong-un and Franco's dopey celebrity shockjock, Dave Skylark, enlisted by the FBI to kill the leader during a staged, ratings-boosting interview.

★★★★☆

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Old Boy (올드보이) (2003)

Upon his release from 15 years of captivity in a small hotel room, a man sets out to discover the identity of his captor and the reasons for his imprisonment, in Park Chan Wook's neo-noir mystery based on a Japanese manga which, from this implausible set-up, becomes in turns hilarious, ridiculous, tragic, fantastical, moving and disturbing, and is distinguished by its featuring the most harrowing scene of mental collapse ever committed to screen.

★★★★★

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A Million (10억) (2009)

Eight strangers believe they have been chosen to compete in a televised Survivor-style game in the Australian outback but once the game begins, they realise it is a sick game of life and death, in this intriguing but really very stupid And Then There Were None reiteration featuring lots of screaming, a bad guy who is able to magic himself to wherever the contestants happen to be - it doesn't matter how far they've stumbled through the desert that day, he's there - and webcams which broadcast the grim events from even, say, a billabong or a random sand dune, a dead tree or at The Pinnacles.

★★☆☆☆

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Bedevilled (김복남 살인사건의 전말) (Kim Bok-nam Salinsageonui Jeonmal) (2010)

Great revenge thrillers have you feeling so strongly for wronged heroes that no amount of brutal retribution is too much - there is perverse pleasure in indulging in a revenge fantasy and seeing justice doled out in a violent way not allowed in real-life - but in this 2010 South Korean revenge thriller, the woman with the sickle (pictured) has thirty years of good reasons to hate her enemies (the villagers of Moo-do Island) but the reasons for her insane rage at all of the people on the island isn't made completely clear until after the bloodbath and so the violence is  joy-free and horrific; you can't shake the idea, too, that some of the enemies are women who share in the heroine's plight, and several clumsy plot advancements also detract from what really could have been, with a few slight changes, a perfectly grisly pleasure.

★★★☆☆

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The Handmaiden (2016)

The trouble with Park Chan-wook's movies like Old Boy and Stoker is their gleefully twisted plots tend to be detached, joyless affairs populated with cold, heartless characters, but not so this sumptuous thriller inspired by Sarah Water's "The Fingersmith" about cold, heartless swindlers enacting a cold, heartless plot - the fear halfway through is this thriller will also remain a detached robotic affair but the twist in the end is that there is heart, just not where you expect to find it.

★★★★☆

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Truck (트럭) (Teu-reok) (2008)

South Korean movies, after the success of Squid Games and Parasite, are enjoying popularity, all of them, so I watched Truck, a thriller with the promising premise of a deliveryman coerced by mobsters into a body disposal job - he has a sick daughter, needs the money, and doesn't have much choice in the matter - but when his dire situation is compounded by a serial killer hitchhiker, multiple car accidents, and one body in the back of his truck that turns out to be not a body but a live woman, it becomes harder and harder to remain patient with the impossibly unfortunate roadtrip.

★★☆☆☆

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The Wailing (곡성) (Gokseong) (2016)

The thing that makes Korean film so compelling is that no matter the genre - mystery, drama, horror, comedy, or in the case of this masterpiece, a mystifying, indefinable blend of all four - what resonates most deeply is the human condition: grubby, lovely, messy, profound, absurd, and while some viewers will dismay at the whole once all is said and done, they will certainly have laughed, cried, and been thoroughly wrung of emotion - anger, fear, sadness, joy, all of them - thrilled and disturbed by the story of a Korean village and a policeman's family rocked by inexplicable - and decidedly grisly - goings-on.

★★★★★

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