South Korean cinema has been a global force since the late 1990s New Wave, producing directors like Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook whose genre craft carries genuine weight. Memories of Murder and The Handmaiden are just two examples of what this cinema does so well: unsettling, meticulously constructed stories that reward close attention. Browse Macca's Korean reviews below.
Rating: 3.5★
Hong Sang-soo has been making films in South Korea since the mid-1990s, and by the time The Woman Who Ran arrived in 2020 he had settled into a mode of working that is essentially his alone: low-budget, shot quickly, built around conversation, and shaped almost entirely by
Country South Korea
That corridor. You already know the one I mean. If you've seen Oldboy, it's probably the first image that flashes into your head. One man, a hammer, and a hallway absolutely packed with people who want him dead. No wirework, no quick cuts to spare anyone&
Rating: 2.0★
I should say at the outset that I am plainly the wrong audience for Past Lives, and I know it. That admission feels necessary before anything else, because what follows is going to read as a minority report on a film that a great many people I respect absolutely adore,
Rating: 3.5★
Few things in a thriller satisfy quite like being unable to guess what comes next, and A Tale of Two Sisters kept me wrong-footed almost the whole way through. I'd settle into what felt like a firm theory, the pieces seeming to click into place, and then
Rating: 4.0★
Few premises could feel more of the moment than this one. A man gives a quarter of a century to the same company, and then, one day, new owners decide that AI and automation can do his job for less. He is out. Just like that. No sentiment, no severance
Rating: 3.5★
There's a shot early in A Bittersweet Life where the camera simply holds on the protagonist, standing in the rain outside a restaurant, suit immaculate, face unreadable. Nothing is said. Nothing needs to be. Kim Jee-woon is already telling you everything about this man, his world, and
Genre Crime
★★★★ — Memories of Murder (2003)
Genre Horror
★½ — Peninsula (2020)
Genre Animation
★★★½ — Lost in Starlight (2025)
Genre Thriller
★★★★½ — The Handmaiden (2016)
Genre Drama
★★½ — Yellow Colt (2014)
Genre Animation
★★★ — Seoul Station (2016)
Film images and data courtesy of TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
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