A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Reviews of Korean-language films I find significant or interesting.
Park Chanwook, “No Other Choice” (2025) Behind a convoluted plot in which a paper industry expert, unceremoniously retrenched after 25 years of giving his all to…
Jang Jaehyun, “Exhuma” (2024) It starts innocently enough when a newborn boy contracts a mystery illness and ends up in intensive care in hospital – but…
Kim Ki-young, “Hanyo / The Housemaid” (1960) Delirious and overwrought in its soap-opera melodrama, this cult classic of South Korean cinema works as a satire of…
Hirokazu Kore-eda, “Broker” (2022) A young woman brings her baby to a church’s baby box and leaves her child in front of it. She is unaware…
Noh Doyeon, “Human Form” (2014) A deeply unsettling short film about a teenage schoolgirl’s quest to change her appearance through plastic surgery to attain physical beauty…
Korean Films, North American Films
“The Dark Side of South Korea’s Incredible Economic Success” (Explained with Dom, 1 June 2022) In the space of ten minutes, the Explained with Dom Youtube…
Chinese and Chinese-language Films, Korean Films
“How the Rich Ate South Korea” (Asianometry, March 2022) One paradox regarding South Korea’s economic success over the past 60 years is that (as this mini-documentary…
Korean Films, North American Films
Carlton Meyer, “The United States Started the Korean War” (Tales of the American Empire, 11 June 2021) Most histories on the Korean War (1950 – 1953)…
Hyunsuk Kim, “Pinki” (2018) Initially looking like a Korean mash-up of Neil Blomkamp’s “District 9” and “Chappie” with The Transformers film series and Joonho Bong’s “The…
Korean Films, North American Films
David Yun, “Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in South Korea” (2018) Made by then UCLA undergraduate student David Yun, this short terse documentary challenges the Western narrative…