Movie: The Host (Gwoemul)

The Host (Gwoemul)
Dir. Bong Joon-ho
w/ Song Kang-ho
Byeon Hie-Bong
Bae Du-na
Ko Ah-sung
Sometime last week I considered doing my Nashville buds a solid and doing a review for the incredibly engaging and entertaining movie The Host that opens here this weekend.  Now that I think about it, every turbo-geek with access to the Internet has done a review [...]

Samaritan Girl

Samaritan Girl (Samaria)
Dir. Kim Ki-Duk
I began to wonder if I was insane. I found that, contrary to the few critics who watched it, including one of my faves Johnathan Rosenbaum, I quite liked Samaria. Though, after reading the piece on the film at Senses of Cinema, I feel writing any kind of review would be [...]

movie review: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (The Kind Hearted Mrs Geum-ja)
Tartan Films
Dir: Park Chan Woo
Lee Yeong-ae
Choi Min-sik
Park’s last crimson art-house marvel, Oldboy, Cannes runner-up, sparked an ill-conceived attack on the film’s fans from New York Times critic Manohla Dargis, whose opinions on the movie (hated it) ran secondary of importance to sticking it to some bloodlusting cult [...]

Movie Review: Three Extremes

Three Extremes
Directed by
Takashi Miike
Fruit Chan
Park Chan Wook
Three shorts from the mavericks of East Asian cinema. Takashi’s first up to, his “Box” plays like a suburban, snow capped remake of Audition. A young woman (Hasegawa Kyoko), an author, lives a waking dream, haunted by a childhood of abuse and the possibly accidental death of her father [...]