The American remake of famed Korean auteur Park Chan-wook’s iconic 2003 film “Oldboy” is finally arriving in Korean theaters, after suffering a box office disappointment in the U.S.Directed by Spike Lee, whose works include “Do the Right Thing” (1989) and “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Kills You” (2011), the film stars Josh Brolin as Joe Doucett, the American version of Park’s Oh Dae-soo (played by Choi Min-sik back in 2003), who becomes imprisoned in a hotel room for 20 years without even knowing

Jan. 12, 2014

 Miss Granny (Korea)Opening Jan. 22Comedy. Drama. Directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk. Oh Mal-soon (Na Moon-hee), a 70-something grandmother, lives with her son and his family. She is controlling and shameless, and has a difficult relationship with her depressed daughter-in-law. She is proud of her son, who is a university professor, and that she managed to raise him by herself against all odds. One day, Mal-soon’s daughter-in-law gets hospitalized after suddenly collapsing, and doctors strongly advise

Jan. 10, 2014

Leonardo DiCaprio’s most charismatic performance ever anchors Martin Scorsese’s robust and raunchy low lifes-of-high-finance comedy “The Wolf of Wall Street.” This is their greatest teaming, a veritable “Citizen Kane” of the post-“greed is good” era ― three hours of cocaine and orgies and high-living by the sorts of gauche gamblers who brought that age, and the world economy, to its knees.It is Scorsese’s “La Dolce Vita,” a manic, coke-fueled stock market “Goodfellas” following the rise and epic

Jan. 10, 2014

Cinephiles in Seoul will get a rare chance this month to watch films selected by some of the most celebrated cineastes in the country, including Lee Jun-ik, Kim Jee-woon and Lee Dong-jin.The annual Cinematheque Friends Film Festival opens next week, celebrating its ninth edition. This year’s lineup consists of 23 films, including opener “Spring in a Small Town.” Selected by Korean-Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu for the festival, the opening film is a 1948 work by Chinese filmmaker Fei Mu. The film r

Jan. 9, 2014

Filmmaker Hwang Dong-hyuk’s latest protagonist Oh Mal-soon (played by veteran actress Na Moon-hee) is the kind of old woman whom you don’t want to have as your mother-in-law.She is shameless and controlling, complains about your food, and is not afraid to belittle you in front of your children. Mal-soon’s biggest pride is her son, who is a university professor, and that she managed to raise him by herself, against all odds. The real story of the film, “Miss Granny,” begins with Mal-soon suddenly

Jan. 7, 2014

“The Dinner,” the closing film of last year’s Busan International Film Festival, is finally hitting theaters this month, according to its distributor IndieStory.Directed by Kim Dong-hyun, the film is a drama about an ordinary Korean family facing a series of financial and other misfortunes. It was screened as a world premiere during BIFF last year.The film features an old married couple, who are financially dependent on their children. Yet all of their children have their own problems, often fin

Jan. 5, 2014

 Blue is the Warmest Color (France)Opening Jan. 16Romance. Drama. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos), an ordinary high school girl, falls for a woman with blue hair while walking on the street one day. The two run into each other again at a lesbian bar, and Adele learns that the blue haired girl’s name is Emma (Lea Seydoux) and that she is a college student majoring in fine art. Adele, who has never dated a woman before, eventually moves into Emma’s place, stating a rel

Jan. 3, 2014

“August: Osage County” travels from the stage to the screen with much of its theatricality intact. Too much. For all the scenic prairie panoramas and lived-in look of the big, rural Oklahoma house that is the setting, it still feels like a play ― with Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts and pretty much everybody else projecting to the back row.It’s a sharp-tongued melodrama of cruelty, comical cursing, “big scenes” and shocking revelations. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts kept it all in th

Jan. 3, 2014

Though director Yang Woo-seok’s latest film “The Attorney” specifies in the very beginning that it is “fiction,” it is hard to separate Song Woo-seok, the protagonist of the film and a fierce Busan-based lawyer in the 1980s, and the late President Roh Moo-hyun. Starring Song Kang-ho, of “Snowpiercer” and “The Face Reader,” who is undoubtedly one of the most famed and respected actors today, the film, which hit its 5 million viewers mark in just 12 days of its release on Monday, revisits Roh’s ea

Jan. 1, 2014

 Beatles fans, rejoice: Box set from the BeatlesThe Beatles “On Air ― Live At the BBC, Vol. 2” (Universal)Beatles fans, rejoice: More live rarities from the Fab Four are on the way to stores.Nearly 20 years after the first volume of long-lost BBC recordings sold millions of copies, a second volume is here, and with it, a coffee table book with rare photos and heretofore unseen historical documents chronicling the band’s interaction with the BBC.Like the first volume, “On Air - Live at the BBC, V

Dec. 27, 2013

 Finding Mr. Right (China), Opening Jan. 1Romance. Comedy. Directed by Xue Xialou. Jiajia (Tang Wei), a pregnant woman from Beijing, arrives in Seattle to have her rich, married lover’s baby. Upon her arrival in the U.S., she heads to an illegal but comfortable maternity house run by a Taiwanese lady, where she intends to stay until the baby is born. For the first few months, Jiajia continues to enjoy her lavish lifestyle, thanks to her “unlimited” credit card provided by her lover back in China

Dec. 27, 2013

Dinosaurs rule the earth in this big-budget 3-D feature update of the late ’90s TV show.A supersized riff on the acclaimed BBC series of the same name, “Walking with Dinosaurs” takes rewarding advantage of a much bigger budget and state-of-the-art technology to bring its impressive collection of Cretaceous creatures to vivid life.But while the walking part’s pretty impressive, the talking part ― not so much.Apparently convinced that the film’s young target audience wouldn’t be sufficiently engag

Dec. 27, 2013

The Korean film industry attained a meaningful achievement this year by selling more than 200 million tickets for the first time in history. Following this year’s success, the country’s major film producers recently announced their lineups for 2014. And it seems like local moviegoers will be bombarded with period blockbusters next year.Some of the most anticipated films of 2014 are period dramas, including Cannes-winning actress Jeon Do-yeon’s upcoming martial arts flick “Hyeopnyeo” and “Battle

Dec. 26, 2013