Entries Tagged 'Park Chan-wook' | Indie Eye

Entries tagged “Park Chan-wook”

Cannes 2009: "Thirst."

By Alison Willmore on 05/16/2009

Filed under: Reviews

"Thirst," Park Chan-wook's plague-vampire-priest-black-comedy-gothic-family-drama-noir, has enough going on for at least an entire other movie, if not two. Its developments are impossible to predict, but that's because half are unnecessary -- by the time clergyman-turned-secular-bloodsucker Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) and his lover Tae-joo (Kim Ok-bin) are hiding a body in the closet before hosting their weekly mahjong game, I could barely remember how everything started (Sang-hyun volunteers to be part of an experiment to cure a virus killing celibate male missionaries in Africa, and is unknowingly given a transfusion of vampire plasma that staves off the sickness). The disinterest in the... MORE »

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Cannes do.

By Alison Willmore on 04/23/2009

Filed under: Festivals

The competition line-up for this year's Cannes Film Festival has been announced! A fair amount of Euro provocateurs -- Lars von Trier, Gaspar Noé, Michael Haneke -- and France in general, and only two American films, the expected Tarantino and the unexpected Ang Lee comedy, which hopefully has more to it than its trailer would indicate. New films from Jane Campion and Pedro Almodóvar and Ken Loach, plus Park Chan-wook's vampire drama (left), whee! Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" will screen out of competition, as will Alejandro Amenabar's "Agora," with Sam Raimi's "Drag Me to Hell" as a... MORE »

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NYAFF 2007: "I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay."

By Alison Willmore on 06/18/2007

Filed under: Festivals, Reviews

Park Chan-wook (mostly) trades in the vengeance for offbeat romance in "I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK," a love story set in the most adorable mental institution in all of Korea. Lim Su-jeong plays Young-goon, who's committed following a possible suicide attempt after she's convinced herself that she's actually a cyborg and therefore do not need to eat. Pop star Rain is Il-sun, who suffers from the delusion that he's disappearing and that he also has the ability to steal aspects of people's personalities. It's meant to be fanciful, but Park both engages the fact that little sympathy or... MORE »

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NYAFF 2005: Three...Extremes.

By Alison Willmore on 06/24/2005

Filed under: Festivals, Reviews

The ostensible sequel to earlier multi-director Asian horror anthology "Three," "Three...Extremes" is another trinity of shorts from three different directors: Fruit Chan of Hong Kong's "Dumplings," Park Chan-wook of Korea's "Cut," and Takashi Miike of Japan's "The Box." Presumably more edgy than the original "Three," "Three...Extremes" has garnered considerably more international attention than the first film due to the fact that this set of directors are particularly hot shit right now. Sharing nothing thematically to string them together, the films are a mixed bag best taken in pieces. "Dumplings," from the least well known director of the bunch, is also... MORE »