Country: Korea
Genre: Comedy/ Action
Director: Jin-gyu Cho
Year: 2001

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
In my experience, Korean women have a tendency to be more coarse and blunt than most other Southeast Asian women. I wouldn’t want to piss one off. Now, imagine the most lowclass, least feminine version of the species. You’ve just met Cha Eun-jin (Eun-Kyung Shin), […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Horror/ Suspense/ Comedy/ Drama/ Action
Director: Hong-jin Na
Year: 2008

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE
American critics are fond of saying that today’s movies are “dark.” The Dark Knight Returns is dark. Sin City is dark. Watchmen is dark. Bullshit. You want dark? Watch Korean movies.
A case in point is Chaser.
After Joong-ho Eom (Yun-seok Kim) was […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Action/Drama/Comedy
Director: Ha Yu
Year: 2006

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK
Considering that there are a number of brutal and well-choreographed brawls in A Dirty Carnival utilizing baseball bats, pipes, and knives, why is it that the dominant emotional tone isn’t excitement but rather overwhelming sorrow?
Kim Byung-doo (In-seong Jo) may be a gangster, but his life seems awfully […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Action/Comedy
Director: Seung-wan Ryoo
Year: 2002

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
You think women have it tough in the United States? They should be grateful they don’t live in Korea.
Kyeong-seon (Hye-yeong Lee) looks to be in her early 40s. Her degenerate gambler husband has left her with a mountain of debt, which his loan sharks are continually […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Drama/Action/Comedy
Director: Woo-Suk Kang
Year: 2003

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Public Enemy follows the separate stories of two men, but you just know that they’re fated to meet.
Cheol-jung Kang (Kyung-gu Sol) is a screwed up cop, the type who robs drug dealers of their product so he can sell it himself, but Internal Affairs can’t pin […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Horror
Director: Joon-ho Bong
Year: 2003

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK
Alert readers might recall that I recently reviewed director Bong Joon-ho’s creature feature The Host. I thought it was an interesting deconstruction of a typical monster movie. Later on, when I became aware of another Korean movie called Memories of Murder, I noticed that Bong Joon-ho was […]

Country: United States
Genre: Drama
Director: Chan-wook Park
Year: 2005

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Lady Vengeance is the final entry in director Chan-wook Park’s vengeance trilogy. It is the least powerful of the three, which is actually kind of a relief. The psychological effect of the other two was a bit like being stuffed into a canvas bag and […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Director: Chan-wook Park
Year: 2003

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE
Oldboy is the second installment of director Chan-wook Park’s darkly comic vengeance trilogy, in which Park poses philosophical questions related to the pursuit of vengeance.
Amazingly, Oldboy is even more brutal and pitiless than Sympathy For Mister Vengeance, the first entry in the series.
When we meet him, […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Director: Chan-wook Park
Year: 2002

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Ryu’s sister is dying from kidney failure. Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin) has been let go from his soul-killing factory job and has no way to find a donor or pay for the operation even if he does. Finally, he runs out of options and decides to arrange […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Comedy
Director: Ji-woon Kim
Year: 1998

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Korean comedies tend to be very dark, and The Quiet Family is no exception. Usually, Korean black comedies tend to be horror movies first and comedies second, like Oldboy, but The Quiet Family reverses that priority.
The movie starts oddly, concentrating on one of the most bored […]