The isle (1999) (Korean)

Wednesday, March 01, 2006 @ 9:23 PM



Hee-jin is a mute-girl, that takes care of herself by renting out small floating cottages on a lake, selling food in daylight and her body at night. One day a ex-cop rents one of the cottages and Hee-jin is immediately drawn to his lost soul. When he tries to commit suicide, she manages to safe him just in time and a strange and violent relationship commences.

After watching this movie, I couldn't help it but think that Kim-ki-duk must love shooting movies on the water (e.g. Spring, summer, autumn.... & The bow. The whole atmosphere has kim-ki-duk written all over it tbh. Once again a great plot with weird and violent scenes.

Another thing that really shows the force of Kim-ki-duk is the usage of interaction between two or more characters without talking. Nothing more to add then a great performance of the actors and some very disturbing scenes all mixed up with a good plot and a vsualy relaxing atmosphere. Really enjoyable.

genre: Drama
score 7,5 out of 10 stars




posted by Papigiulio.

Bad guy (2002) (Korean)

Monday, March 13, 2006 @ 6:52 PM

Bad guy is yet another one from Kim Ki Duk's controversial collection.

Han-ki (Jo Jae-hyeon), a boss of a red light district, accidentally meets a beautiful female college student (Seo Won) on the street one day. Intrigued, he stares at her, but she coldly stares back. Han-ki then forces the girl to kiss him, much to her disgust. After the kiss he keeps stalking, eventually kidnaps her and forces her into prostitution in his own red light district.

As you might've guessed, 'Bad guy' is not your usual drama, but sets another undertone to controversial. Kim Ki Duk uses the force of mute characters and shows once again that he boldly goes way beyond where no director dares to go.

"Bad guy" stars both Jo Jae-hyeon the brutal dogkiller from Address Unknown and Seo Won, together since the 1999 release of The isle and both put down a stunning performance.

Apart from their performance, it's Kim ki duk's power that sizzles allover the screen. This amazing director really nows how to grab the audience and pull them into his magical world.

genre: Drama
score 7 out of 10 stars




posted by Papigiulio.

Address Unknown (2001) (Korean)

Wednesday, March 01, 2006 @ 9:21 PM

A movie that leaves you with a bitter sweet flavour and definately NOT a movie for doglovers ...I repeat...NOT A MOVIE FOR DOGLOVERS.

The story tells us about a few people of the village Pyongtaek in the early 70's. A mother has had a relation with one of the American soldiers from a American base, that's situated next to the village, and has had a son Chang-Guk from that relationship. She keeps sending the soldier letters, but they are returned unopened. Even tho she is an emotional wreck she is having an affair with the gruesome dogkiller in the village. Chang-Guk is very annoyed by his mothers behaviour which have some gruesome consequences.

This is just one of the storylines in the once again greatly filmed flick by Kim-ki-duk (Spring, summer, autumn.... / 3-iron ). Another part of the movie shows us the relation between a American soldier and a girl who has lost sight in one of her eyes, and small stories the evolve around the 2 large stories.

I must say Kim-ki-duk has portrayed the violence towards dogs very good in this movie and sometimes even a bit too much. I can't really tell real from fake, but it gives ya a bad taste in the mouth after seeing some of the scenes. The substories don't really add into the main storyline, but still gives the characters a deeper perspective and background and how they are connected to each other.

Still all together it's another great movie by the korean king of filmmakers Kim-Ki-Duk but still not good enough opposite of his other flicks like Spring, summer, autumn.... or 3-iron.

genre: Drama
score 6 out of 10 stars




posted by Papigiulio.

3-Iron (2004) (Korean)

Friday, November 04, 2005 @ 8:58 AM

Another great movie from acclaimed director Kim ki duk (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring, The bow and Old boy).

The story is about a young man, who breaks into houses, but unlike a ordinary thief, doesn't steal anything. He eats something out of their fridge, sleeps over, repairs broken items and sometimes even does the laundry. He captures his visits by making pictures of himself in the houses. One day that remarkable life changes when he breaks into a house of a rich couple and meets the woman of that house. She has a bad marriage and is beaten up by her husband all the time, so she decides to join the young man. This eventually makes their bond stronger.

A true Kim ki duk movie who achieves to make movies with as little conversation as possible. His power is to make the interactions between the characters so that you don't even need words to understand what they are doing or feeling. The 3-iron in this movie stands for the fact that the 'young man' loves to play golf, and somewhat uses it as a instrument to do good and bad, just like we notice in the movie "The bow".

Another grasping movie from Kim ki-duk, lets hope we see more of his work in the future.

score 8 out of 10 stars




posted by Papigiulio.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter and spring (2003) (korean)

Wednesday, September 21, 2005 @ 10:55 AM

Another one of Kim ki-duk's astonishing movies. This one is a lot more acceptable to western audiences. Still I don't think you should classify it as a regular asian movie, as it still has the deep visionary of Kim ki-duk. With a great plot, a hidden love story, and once again the little dialog.

The movie is about a young boy and a elder monk. They both live in a cottage that floats on a lake (see pictures below), and if they need to collect herbs or if they receive guests they have a little rowing-boat which they use to transport everyone and everything in. As the seasons unfold we can see big changes happening in every aspect of the monk and the boy's life. From good to bad things, the elder monk tries to eductate the boy in such a spiritual way that the boy leads a clean and decent life. But even for them life has its twists, even they are faced with love, jealousy, hate and off course above all....getting older.

I think this was a beautiful movie. Beautiful storyline, nice sceneries, and even with the little amount of dialog, the movie was still interesting enough to watch. By far one of Kim ki-duks greatest work in my oppinon.

score 4 out of 5 stars




posted by Papigiulio.

Beautiful or sick, take your pick

REVIEW: THE ISLE
Beautiful or sick, take your pick

"The Isle" is a gruesome Korean film that, as our reviewer can tell you from personal experience, is not for the weak of stomach — but it's also a beautiful, haunting parable about a man in a woman's watery world.

By JOSHUA TANZER
Offoffoff.com

(Originally reviewed at the "When Korean Cinema Attacks!" festival in August 2001.)

"The Isle" is the sickeningly gory Korean film that made me unintentionally famous — as the queasy-stomached critic who staggered from the theater and blacked out in the lobby. (See the article from the New York Post's Page Six.) I can't recommend "The Isle" as a gastronomic experience, but believe it or not, as a film it's one of the most beautiful, evocative works I've seen.


THE ISLE
Original title: Seom.
Written and directed by: Kim Ki-Duk.
Cast: Jae Hyun Cho, Hang-Seon Jang, Suh Jung, Yoosuk Kim.
In Korean with English subtitles.



The story takes place on a secluded bay with floating shacks where city folks come in ones or twos or threes for a fishing getaway. An unnamed woman wordlessly minds the bay, boating from guest to guest to provide food, coffee, furnishings and transportation. And that's not all she provides. "Come on up," one customer orders on her delivery run. "We're going to need more than coffee." Without a complaint, she climbs up onto the platform and complies with his wishes. Other times, she merely arranges for prostitutes to come from the outside and do the dirty work.

Who is this mysterious woman? It's soon clear that she's not just a caretaker or a prostitute — she's the spirit of this otherworldly place, both benevolent and vengeful. We feel her presence everywhere, seeing all, protecting her guests and punishing their trespasses. People who do her wrong are liable to find themselves wounded with an icepick by some mysterious underwater force and never know what hit them.


Into this strange sea-goddess's realm comes an anxious young man who's clearly running from some unnamed trouble and wants one of the floating cabins to hide in. The man and the woman eye each other curiously over the following days, and their efforts to get to know each other have both touching and repelling results. He is slow to realize it, but the woman is subtly pushing him to change his life and his inner nature.

This is, I think, a parable for male-female relationships in general. So often, women have to help the men in their lives finish growing up, or else we'd spend the rest of our lives lying on the couch with a sixpack watching wrestling and saying "Whassap" to our buddies. This is that kind of story about how women change men, but it's a parable set in a mythical waterworld, not an American living room. The "isle" of the movie's title (actually, it makes sense to look at the entire bay as an island from the outside society) is a place where men think they can come to indulge their most macho impulses but they're ultimately enveloped in the woman's domain.

"The Isle" is simply not suitable for anyone who isn't extremely comfortable with movie violence. There's a horrible scene in which the man, seeing the police on his trail, attempts to kill himself in an extraordinarily gruesome manner, and that's not the last we see of director Kim Ki-Duk's gory imagination. (I understand that a critic at the Venice Film Festival also became ill, and there was controversy over the film at Sundance too.) Hollywood has long engaged in a deplorable competition to one-up itself with gross-out scenes in violent movies, and now Hong Kong, Japanese and Korean films are heartily joining in.

But that doesn't take away from the beauty of "The Isle." It's hauntingly filmed, with the bay silvery on the surface and murky underneath. Actress Suh Jung (also seen in the great "Peppermint Candy") is like a force of nature — primal, sexy and dangerous. And the allegory of the "isle" is unforgettably powerful, with or without the stomach-churning parts.


AUGUST 14, 2001
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK

The bow (2005)

The bow (2005) (Korean)
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 @ 9:50 AM

Okay this movie was a bit weird. I think you really need to open up your artistic views for movies like this one. The movie, directed by Kim Ki-duk, one of Korea's most promising and most original and visionary directors, is a movie that really brings up a lot of questions. I haven't seen all of Kim ki-duk's movies. But from what I've seen, his movies have very little dialog, and much of the emotion is conveyed solely by glances, gestures or actions. This particular movie is also unique as it has been shot on one location only.

The story evolves around a man of 60 and a girl of 17 who have been living together on a fishingboat. The old man regularly receives guests-fishers on his boat and we learn that he is a splendid marksman with his bow. He's also known for his unusual way of prediciting the future. If he needs to predict the future, he makes the girl swing on a "swing" that is hanging on the side of the boat in front of a drawing of a mystique god. He then aims and shoots 3 arrows on that picture while the girl swings across it. When all 3 arrows have been shot into that picture, she whispers something in his ear and that supposedly is the prediction he can tell to that fisher.

As the story develops we also learn that the old man is counting down days until the big wedding day. As the girl becomes 18 soon, he has marked that day to be their wedding day. Until she meets a young guest fisher and falls in love with his charms. The old man gets jealous and problems arise.

Even tho this was a very weird movie for me (maybe cus im western), I liked the way the story unfolded and how it was all shot in the open sea.

score 3 out of 5 stars
posted by Papigiulio.

SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER ... AND SPRING

REVIEW: SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER ... AND SPRING

Lake Superior

Kim Ki-duk, director of "The Isle," scores another triumph in the same kind of remote lake setting in which mythical stories can be told, in the captivatingly beautiful, deeply touching "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring."

By JOSHUA TANZER
Offoffoff.com

Here's what Kim Ki-duk's latest film doesn't have: defecatory closeups, icepicks in the tuckus, inappropriate use of fishhooks, audience members puking, or critics passing out in the theater lobby. "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring" is not the gruesomely captivating "The Isle" by a longshot — you could take a mature kid to it, if your kid reads subtitles — but there's no mistaking it as one of Kim's spectacularly beautiful, immensely moving, magically macabre creations.


SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER ... AND SPRING
Written and directed by: Kim Ki-duk.
Cast: Oh Yeong-su, Kim Jong-ho, Seo Jae-kyeong, Kim Young-min, Ha Yeo-jin, Ji Dae-han, Kim Jung-young, Kim Ki-duk, Park Ji-a.
Cinematography: Dong-hyeon Baek.
Edited by: Kim Ki-duk.
In Korean with English subtitles.


With more images than words, "Spring, Summer" is like the world's most beautiful National Geographic photo montage, except on film. In the middle of a remote mountain lake is a lonely Buddhist shrine, a serenely floating cabin of centuries-old wooden beams adorned with Chinese characters. A slender, white-haired old master worships there with the help of his child protégé.

Although we eventually discover that the story is set roughly within our lifetimes, the first chapter, titled "Spring," could have taken place in any era. The little boy, just big enough to run around by himself and look for trouble, is growing up in a state of nature, with only the old man's gentle guidance to hold him back. He may know little about the greater world, but tramping through the wilderness and performing the day's religious rituals are two things that come to him naturally. What we see is only the smallest of stories, but it's full of feeling, wisdom and beauty. After a day in which the boy has splashed around the lake making trouble — gleefully tying rocks to the backs of a fish, a frog and a snake to watch how they struggle. The old man is a subtle teacher, however, and rather than punish the youngster, he teaches him a deeper lesson. "If any of those creatures are dead, you will carry a stone in your heart for the rest of your life," he admonishes.

The following chapters, one for each season of the year, also trace the seasons of this young fellow's life. We see him as a handsome, strapping, if naive teenager in the "Summer" chapter, doting on a sick girl who is brought to the shrine to heal her spirit. Salvation and seduction get intertwined, and soon the young fellow needs another of the old man's roundabout lessons. We see him three more times, always older, wiser, and yet still thickly enmeshed in spiritual crisis. Each chapter has its own spirit, surprises and resolution — in each, a kind of spiritual peace is achieved by the end, and it's a peace that spreads over the theater, not just on the screen.

In the end the film is not only a celluloid coffee-table book. When we gaze at the elegance of the calligraphed characters carved into the ancient beams, when we listen to sounds of the rippling lake, when we enjoy the lush density of the forest and the playfulness of the creatures who live in and around the water, each sensation embodies a whole cacophony of conflicting memories. Although the stories here are simple, they give us a rich sense of the generations of souls that infuse this place, and every one of the lush visions before our eyes is a reminder of the continuity and variety of life.