Tag: Korean

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Features Live Action Movies

The Shrouds

Director – David Cronenberg – 2024 – Canada, France – Cert. 15 – 120m

*****

An entrepreneur who has created graveyard corpse-viewing technology to cope with his late wife’s death by cancer finds his inner world disrupted when his creation is vandalised and hacked – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 4th

She (Diane Kruger from The 355, Simon Kinberg, 2022; Disorder, Alice Winocour, 2015; Inglorious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, 2009; Joyeux Noel, Christian Carion, 2005; Troy, Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) lies dead on a slab suspended on air in an underground cave. He (Vincent Cassel from A Dangerous Method, 2011; Eastern Promises, 2007, both David Cronenberg; Default, Choi Kook-Hee, 2018; Trance, Danny Boyle, 2013; Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky, 2010; Mesrine, Jean-François Richet, 2008; La Haine, Matthieu Kassovitz, 1995) screams. He is Karsh, an entrepreneur who has set up the first in a projected series of high-tech cemeteries. Thanks to his proprietary technology GraveTech, clients can install the body of their loved one in a shroud, a wraparound artefact resembling clothing fitted with cameras which record images of the deceased’s decaying body in real time, accessible for viewing by the client whenever they wish.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Return to Seoul
(Retour à Séoul)

Director – Davy Chou – 2022 – France, Belgium, Germany, South Korea – Cert. 15 – 118m

****1/2

A woman born in South Korea and fostered by parents in France unexpectedly returns to the land of her birth – on MUBI from Friday, July 7th

Although it looks at first glance like a South Korean movie, this is actually a predominantly European production, and within that, predominantly French. Its central character is South Korean by birth, but adopted at a very young age and raised by foster parents in France, who she considers her parents. She also may look Korean, but considers herself French. She speaks French, and English too, pretty well, but no Korean. (In South Korea, English appears to function as the go-to language for communicating with foreigners.) She feels French. The film takes place in South Korea, and most (but not all) of the characters are South Korean.

Freddie aka Frédérique Benoît (Park Ji-min) sits chatting in the restaurant of the Francophile guest house with her new-found friends Tena (Guka Han) and Dongwan (Son Seung-beom). They explain you don’t pour yourself soju – you wait for your friends to pour it, because if they don’t keep you supplied, what kind of friends would they be?… Read the rest

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Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Free Chol Soo Lee

Directors – Julia Ha, Eugene Yi – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 83m

****

Imprisoned for a murder he did not commit, Korean American Chol Soo Lee became a figurehead for a protest movement, something he felt unable to live up to – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 19th

In San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1973, Korean loner Chol Soo Lee was arrested and subsequently convicted for a gang murder. While it’s true he had foolishly borrowed a gun off a work colleague a few days previously and accidentally discharged it into his apartment wall giving himself a police record, he was not the murderer. He was identified on the flimsiest of premises by unreliable witnesses, possibly not helped by white cops who wanted to convict a felon for the crime and consign the case to history.

On what was to be his last journey through the outside world before many years in prison, he heard the Tower of Power song “You’re still a young man” on a car radio crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. It resonated. As the years passed in prison, his mother abandoned him. He had fallen for a Japanese American girl he’d met Jean Ranko who subsequently told him in a letter that she had no romantic interest in him.… Read the rest