This year, Goran Topalovic’s team has partnered with Korea’s Mise-en-scène’s Genres Film Festival (MGFF) to bring over a variety of horror, comedy, melodrama, sci-fi and action short films, selected by MGFF’s prestigious committee/jury members, including directors Park Chan-Wook, Ryu Seung-Wan, E. J-Yong (whom I had the pleasure and the honor to interview yesterday at the IFC Center’s café... our exchange will find its way on line pretty soon), Bong Joon-Ho (The Host), Kim Jee-Woon (A Bittersweet Life), and Jang Joon-Hwan (Save the Green Planet).
The festival offers a sizable, strong and eclectic selection of Korean films, which I guess owes a lot to chief programmer Grady Hendrix’s taste for Asian genre cinema and a penchant for oddball filmmaking and weirdness in general (which I partially share, if I may say so myself):
- Ryu Seung-wan’s The City of Violence (2006). Not his best work, but a decent action flick, strongly reminiscent of Hong Kong’s golden age (the early 90’s as well as the Shaw Brothers era). It feels a little derivative, but has a couple of long action sequences that are, in fact, so raw and intense that they make the film more than worth the price of the admission: the central piece where the main character, played by Jeong Du-Hong, is confronted with dozens (50? 100?) of hostile youths from all over the city, and the final showdown with the white-clad bodyguards in a Dragon Inn look-alike mansion, are anthology pieces. By the same director, I much preferred Crying Fist, a superb boxing film, and Arahan, a reworking of the wuxia in modern-day Seoul. Having said that, The City of Violence will certainly please audiences familiar with Chang Cheh's The Boxer from Shantung, among other films.
Him against the world... or at least, a whole bunch of juvenile deliquents
- Two gangster dramas, Cruel Winter Blues (2006) by Lee Jeong-Beom and The Show Must Go on (2007) by Han Jae-Rim, which both stand out of the standard neo-noir fare that has been all the rage for quite a while now, because of the performance of the main actors, Seol Gyeong-Gu (Peppermint Candy, Public Enemy, Oasis, etc.) and Song Kang-Ho, arguably South Korea’s most popular actor.
- A disorienting madhouse love story signed by Park Chan-wook, I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK (2006). The film divided both critics and audiences in Korea (and elsewhere), but is still highly recommended for the visuals and the performance of the actors. Formally speaking, I thought it was a masterpiece. For the rest, it really is up to the sensibility of the viewer. Warning: UFO (Unidentified Film Object).
- Kim Dae-Seung’s mushy drama Trace of Love (2006). Not sure why they picked up this one.
- Yoon Jae-Kyeong’s unusual, bittersweet boxing/gangster/social comedy, Miracle on 1st Street (2007). A surprisingly good film, especially coming from the trio that was behind Sex Is Zero, which was not exactly a masterpiece of Korean cinema (but still a good piece of entertainment). And Ha Ji-Won is in it. Not to be missed.
- Joe Beom-Jin’s scatological post-apocalyptic animation Aachi and Ssipak (2006).
- E. J-Yong’s socio-sexual black comedy Dasepo Naughty Girls (2006), voted “worst Korean movie ever” by the peninsula’s netizen community, and to my mind, the best work of this year’s Korean selection and a bizarrerie destined to become, sooner or later, a cult classic.
- The sci-fi oddity Never Belongs to Me (2005) by Nam Ki-Woong.
Check out Subway Cinema's NYAFF calendar here
