FIVE STAR FILM REVIEWS
Director: Yu Hyun-mok
Genre: Drama
The desperation of post-war Korea seen through the eyes of two brothers trapped in a powder keg of bleakness
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Genre: Drama-Thriller
Lee Chang-dong adds thriller elements to his slow-burn character studies, producing something truly breathtaking
Director: Jung Sung-il
Genre: Romance-Drama
A lusciously shot 198-minute billet-doux to Seoul profoundly portrays a melodramatic view of romantic angst
Director: Lee Hae-jun
Genre: Comedy-Drama
A man becomes a castaway on a deserted island in this hilarious, touching and stunning off-beat masterpiece
Director: Noh Young-seok
Genre: Comedy-Drama
Charming and hilarious, a lovelorn young man embarks on a disastrous seaside break filled with insobriety and loneliness
Director: Park Chan-wook
Genre: Drama
Smart, sexy, stylish and surprising, a period masterpiece on a con-job gone awry
Director: Kim Ki-young
Genre: Horror-Thriller
Kim Ki-young's masterpiece on morality and lust remains a filmmaking tour de force of festering threat
Director: July Jung
Genre: Drama
This low-budget, big issue tackling directorial debut takes on child abuse and homophobia with superb lead performances
Director: Lee Joon-ik
Genre: Drama
Harrowing and immeasurably powerful, an horrific attack brings a disjointed family together
Director: Park Chan-wook
Genre: Thriller
A touching buddy movie hidden in a military thriller as an incident on the North-South border threatens to spark a war
Director: Park Chan-wook
Genre: Thriller
The final Vengeance Trilogy film amplifies the stylised violence as a wrongly convicted woman hunts the true perpetrator
Director: Lee Jeong-beom
Genre: Action-Thriller
A tense and raw action thriller which stacks the revenge narrative with heart and emotional punch
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Director: Bong Joon-ho
Genre: Crime drama
Bong Joon-ho's first masterpiece is a rural crime mystery about the obsession of the detectives and their fear of failure
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Genre: Crime-Thriller
A murder mystery complicated by the monomaniacal love of a tenacious mother in Bong Joon-ho's masterpiece thriller
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Genre: Romance-Drama
The story of an impossible romance, a powerful piece of breath-taking filmmaking which carves a permanent etch
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Genre: Drama-Comedy
Bong Joon-ho’s dark satire exposes Korea’s class divide and serves up a peerless cinematic masterpiece
Director: Park Chan-wook
Genre: Action-Thriller
A masterpiece of stylised action and a visceral stomach-churn
of ultra-violence that leaves
you utterly breathless
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Genre: Drama-Comedy
Bong's masterpiece gets a monochrome makeover which accentuates the film’s bleak shades of class divide
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Genre: Drama
A reverse chronology plunge into the defining life events of a desperately broken man
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Genre: Drama
A melancholic meditation on aging and death, a grandmother with Alzheimer's struggles against her fading memory
Director: Jang Joon-hwan
Genre: Comedy-Sci-fi
Often disturbing, regularly hilarious and always beautifully crafted, a young man tries to stop an alien invasion
Director: Kim Ki-duk
Genre: Drama
Tranquil beauty combines with a lingering sense of doom in a portrait of human nature and the consequences of actions
Director: Park Chan-wook
Genre: Thriller
Park Chan-wook’s first English-language feature is a gorgeous and mesmerising gothic tale with coming-of-age confusion
Director: Kim Jee-woon
Genre: Horror-Drama
An atmospheric, psychological horror which offers a subtle and dread-building reimagining of an often-told Korean folktale
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Genre: Action-Horror
Rapid-hunt zombies terrorise desperate train passengers in an action-horror mash-up filled with social commentary
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Director: Na Hong-jin
Genre: Supernatural horror
Na Hong-jin’s supernatural horror charts superstition and evil in rural Korea as it builds to a chilling climax
Director: Bae Jong
Genre: Drama-Comedy
Hilarious yet meaningful, soldiers from the North and South stumble into a secluded village during the Korean war
Director: Kim Ki-young
Genre: Drama
Brimming with stunningly shot surrealism, a madcap tale which descends into fear-filled views of death, disease and resurrection