Kyung-taek Kwak’s “Friend” is a memoir, a recollection of memories about 4 friends and their divergent paths from childhood to school to adulthood. The film is narrated by one of the 4 friends, middle-class Sang-taek (Tae-hwa Seo), the smartest kid in the bunch. The rest of the friends...

“Musa” tells the story of an official government convoy from Korea making its way to Nanjing, China; the convoy is under the leadership of young General Choi (Jin-mo Ju), a nobleman with a lot to live up to. Along for the ride is Yeo-sol (Woo-sung Jung), a slave for one of the government...

I was hesitant to watch Sorum, simply because I’ve seen too many Asian horror films that just didn’t, well, horrify me all that much. The Slow Bore Horror genre, in particular, is wearing thin, and I’ve gone out of my way to avoid them. I suppose it’s a case of too much hype and...

The most extraordinary thing about My Wife is a Gangster isn’t how well it manages to balance its serious side, its comedy side, and its action side, but how effective the whole thing is. As Gangster opens, we hear someone telling a story about one rainy night when a legend was born. It’s...

“Memento Mori” is a South Korean movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be, and when it finally decides what it should be, it makes the wrong choice. “Memento mori,” for those who don’t know, is a Latin phrase that, loosely translated, means “images of death.”...

The oddest thing about Jae-young Kwak’s “My Sassy Girl” is that its entire premise of a young, 20-something woman acting outrageous and going against the norm of how a “young woman” is supposed to behave is not, well, all that outrageous. Perhaps in Korean society, which...

There is very little doubt that writer/director Jin Jang (”No Comment”) has a firm technical handle on his new movie, “Guns and Talks”, but I doubt if he knew what he wanted to say, or if he had anything to say at all. “Guns and Talks” is a South Korean movie that...

Love hurts. That simple statement expresses everything there is to know about Jin-ho Hur’s One Fine Spring Day, a movie that is about the awkwardness of attraction and the pain of a burning passion suddenly doused. It is about love found, love enthralled, and finally love lost. Sang-woo lives...

Kang-Jae is not much of a man. In fact, he’s not much of a human being. He’s boisterous and loud, a tough guy without any toughness in him. His boss abuses him and his fellow gangmembers have no respect for him whatsoever. The first time we meet Kang-Jae (Min-sik Choi) he’s just been...

Ahe plot of “Gas Station” is a simple one. Four robbers, whose name escapes me, (and maybe that’s because they’re rarely mentioned in the movie) have come to a gas station to rob it for the second time that day. The station’s manager, believing there is no way the robbers...

Have you ever seen an Asian gangster movie? No? Well, have you ever seen any gangster movie? If the answer is Yes, then you know how this one will end because it’s simply a South Korean version of the very, very familiar “young tough rises through the criminal ranks through courage and brains...

Shin plays the main character, a protagonist with an amazing martial arts prowess that allows him to fight as if he was “flying.” It’s a sword technique that gives Shin the power to explode bodies with a slash of his sword. Yes, I kid you not. He did this throughout the movie. (Although...