KAFFNY ’11: psychohydrography

Peter Bo Rappmund’s 2010 experimental documentary psychohydrography is a sensory journey along the LA River from the mountains to the sea. It was shot on location at the Eastern Sierra Nevadas, Owens Valley, the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Los Angeles river and the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Korean American Film Festival New York’s Opening Night program on March 17th at 10:45 pm. Tickets for the Opening Night can be bought here and more information about the event can be found here. My thoughts after the break. … Continue Reading

KAFFNY ’11: Wet Sand: Voices From LA

Dai Sil Kim-Gibson’s 2004 film Wet Sand: Voices From LA is her follow up to her 1993 film Sa-I-Gu (reviewed here) and is her attempt at creating a wider picture of the 1992 LA Riots and is screening as part of the Korean American Film Festival New York in their Dai Sil Kim-Gibson retrospective. The KAFFNY will screen Sa-I-Gu: From Korean Women’s Perspectives, Wet Sand: Voices from LA (2004), Olivia’s Story, directed by Charles Burnett (1999), A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans (1995) Motherland (2006) and Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women(1999). You can find the info here. Read my thoughts after the break. … Continue Reading

The Magicians

Song Il-gon’s 2005 film The Magicians began its life as one of the 30-minute short films that make up Jeonju International Film Festival’s “Short Digital Films by Three Filmmakers” omnibus series. Song then expanded it to an a feature film. Filmed entirely in one take, this digital film takes place on New Year’s Eve in a bar on a mountain owned by Jae-sung (Jeong Woong-in) who is meeting with his former band mate’s Myung-soo (Jang Hyeon-seong) and Ha-yeong (Kang Kyeong-heon). The band broke up three years prior when Ja-eun (Lee Seung-bi) killed herself on New Year’s Eve. Now they are back together to drink and talk and reminisce. … Continue Reading

Gagman

Lee Myung-se’s (recently known for his visually stylistic film such as Nowhere to Hide (1999), Duelist (2005), and M (2007)) Gagman (1989) was his debut film, and is about the travails of Lee Jung-sae (Ahn Sung-ki) the titular gagman who has a thing for Charlie Chaplin and cinema. He wants nothing more to escape his current existence by directing a film but the only people he finds to help him are Moon Do-suk (Bae Chang-do) his barber and Oh Son-yong (Hwang Shin-hye) a young head strong (and good looking) female that he meets and ropes into his schemes. And schemes he does, and they turn serious (in a comic way!) when he comes across real guns and decides he will self finance his films. With various banks’ money.

This is not going to end well. … Continue Reading

The Chaser

Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy
My review of Hong-jin Na’s The Chaser

Hong-jin Na’s 2008 thriller, The Chaser, is but a brief glimpse into the chaotic world of pimps, police and killers. Jung-ho Eom (Jun-seok Kim) plays an ex-detective who has turned to the dark side…prostitution.

When we first meet Jung-ho, he is in dire financial trouble as his very talented staff has begun to disappear before clearing their debts with him. There’s almost nothing worse than messing with a pimp’s money, until you start messing with his product. One by one his staff dwindles, and as the pieces from the puzzle slowly fall into place, he realizes that his product is not voluntarily disappearing. … Continue Reading

The Host (2006) Review

Bong Joon-ho’s 2006 monster tale, The Host, brings a level of sophistication to the monster movie genre with a combination of several genres all working to develop the narrative and its characters. The story follows a snack car employee Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), his father, Hee-bong (Byeon Hee-bong),  daughter Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-seong),  sister Nam-joo (Bae Doona), who’s an archer, and Gang-du‘s brother Nam-il (Park Hae-il), an alcoholic former activist who has not done much since graduating.

The story focuses on the family dealing with an unexpected attack by a mutated amphibian monster that emerged as a result of dumping formaldehyde in the Han River. The monster takes Hyun-seo seemingly killing her until Gang-du receives a call from Hyun-seo informing him that she was in fact still alive but trapped in the monster’s sewer lair.Gang-du and his family set out to save his daughter but must get by the government and the monster in order to do so. … Continue Reading

The Man From Nowhere

The Man From Nowhere (dir. Lee Jeong-beom, 2010) is about a man, Cha Tae-sik (Won Bin), who wants to be left alone to dwell in his mysterious past, his next door neighbor Hyo-jeong (Kim Hyo-seo) who is a drug addict and involved in VERY BAD THINGS, and her daughter Soo-mi (Kim Sae-ron) who has no one to talk to except for this man. As in any crime/thriller movie, stealing from gangsters is bad and when Hyo-jeong and her junky boyfriend steal from the wrong people Soo-mi gets taken and Tae-sik must rescue her. With shades of Leon: The Professional (dir. Luc Besson, 1994), there is even a cactus that Tae-sik takes care of, this film became the biggest hit of the year even knocking aside Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2010) with 6.2 million people seeing the film. Just released on DVD and Blu-ray by Well Go USA, I decided to pop it in my Blu-ray player and check it out. Here’s what I thought. Some minor spoilers, although spoiled on the synopsis on the back of the box, follow so don’t click if you really want to remain surprised by the all too obvious mysterious past. … Continue Reading

The Good The Bad The Weird Review

Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, The Bad, The Weird is a South Korean spaghetti western that opens up in China with three opposing parties bearing down on the same train, each with varying motives: Park Chang-yi, the most renowned bandit/killer in all of Manchuria is sent to pilfer a particular cargo – a treasure map leading to a vast fortune. A bumbling yet insanely agile thief named Tae-goo is also after the same item, looking to change the fortune of his life as well as his grandmother’s. Last but not least, the veteran bounty hunter Park Do-won, hungry for the chance to capture Park Chan-yi. When the bumbling thief makes off with the map – amid a great shootout scene – he discovers that the map he holds leads to a treasure that will affect not only his life, but the fate of nations. The film plays out like an enormous chase/race to the finish, with tons of firefights and a body count that sprawls all across China.

On a side note, I now need to purchase a kick ass duster coat and a matching vest.

… Continue Reading

KAFFNY ’11: Sa-I-Gu

Dai Sil Kim-Gibson’s Sa-I-Gu (1993, 3/4″ video 36 minutes) is a documentary focusing on the 1992 Los Angeles Riots from the perspective of Korean women shopkeepers. Broadcast on PBS’s POV September 1993, this documentary takes these women’s personal stories and explores race relations, poverty, and the immigrant experience as well as the media’s portrayal of the event as a Black v. Korean conflict. This film will be part of the Korean American Film Festival New York, which is largely documentary heavy. Dai Sil Kim-Gibson came to the US in 1962 to pursue graduate studies and after receiving a Ph.D. in religion from Boston University and teaching at Mount Holyoke College she began a career working at National Endowment for the Humanities and was director of the media program of the New York State Council on the Arts. In 1988 she left to pursue a film career and has since produced a series of provocative and important documentary works. The KAFFNY will screen Sa-I-Gu: From Korean Women’s Perspectives, Wet Sand: Voices from LA (2004), Olivia’s Story, directed by Charles Burnett (1999), A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans (1995) Motherland (2006) and Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women(1999). You can find the info here. … Continue Reading

The worst movie ever (no, really) – A review of Skyline

(Reviewer’s Note: the repute of the following film was already well-known prior to viewing; sometimes we just like to see train wrecks.)

Let me make this as short and (un)sweet as possible for you: if you’d planned on seeing Skyline, don’t.

It sucks. Majorly.

In probably what will be the shortest review in Cineawesome history, I will break down 2010 worst movie of the year (no contest) for you. Here goes:

Aliens (with ideas stolen from every big budget sci-fi flick of the last 20 years including The Matrix and Independence Day) attack Earth to steal humans and use our brains to power their bodies. The main characters – all morons – are trapped in a condominium complex, trying to find a way past the aliens to safety, wherever that may be.

The first half an hour is pointless filler and boredom, followed by over the top action, followed by more uneccessary boredom, then ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS action sequence followed by horrible cliffhanger ending, which we will never have answers to because this movie stinks and will never get a sequel. If it does, I may need to be institutionalized.

That’s it. Save your money, don’t even Netflix this when it releases; it’s two hours you could spend doing worthwhile things. Like living.