Jimmy_Mike wrote: ↑Fri Nov 22, 2019 3:42 pm
So I saw Parasite last night. It is excellent. Such a great mix of humor and suspense. The score was pretty dang good too, lots of delicate piano and Johannsson-style drone synth stuff. Will definitely pick up the SB edition.
I've seen Snowpiercer and Oldboy, but I really need to dig more into Korean cinema. Any recommendations?
I have many....
Let's start with Bong Joon Ho (dir. Parasite)
His best film (imo) is
Memories of Murder, it is essential Korean cinema. I would watch this first. After that check out his film
The Host, it's a fun monster run amok film. The main actor from Parasite, Kang-ho Song, is the main star of both of these films. He's incredible and one of my favorite Korean actors. I can't wait to see Parasite myself. Hopefully this weekend. I'm going to watch
Okja tonight. I also recommend
Mother, it's a dark and intense film about a mother trying to find the killer who framed her son for a murder.
Next is Park Chan Wook.
Since you've seen Oldboy you should finish the Vengeance trilogy. They are only related through theme, so watching them in any order is fine. My personal favorite of the 3 is
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance but all three of them are good (I like the fade to B&W version).
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is maybe the most straight forward of the three but it's an intense film. I would say his next required film to watch would be
Thirst, a Korean vampire tale. Really entertaining and starting Kang-ho Song as a priest who becomes a vampire dealing with surviving and the guilt of feeding on others. I haven't seen
The Handmaiden yet but I recently picked it up, just trying to find the time as it's almost 3 hours long, I've heard nothing but good things.
Stoker, his English language film is interesting and well worth a watch but it feels like a mash up of his film influences (you can feel the Hitchcock), it's weird but loses a bit of the Korean cinema charm due to being an American/British production. I highly recommend watching
3 Extremes, it's 3 shorts done by 3 different directors, Park Chan Wook directs the best of the three but Fruit Chan & Takashi Miike make some compelling and strange segments as well. His only film I would say that's not essential but still worth your time is
I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK.
Onto the last director for now, Jee-woon Kim.
A Tale of Two Sisters, a very creepy Korean ghost story. This one was very popular in the early 00's, it even was remade over hear as The Uninvited.
A Bittersweet Life, a really great mob film.
The Good The Bad The Weird, his take on the film with a similar name, it's a blast, a little long though. I saw his film The Quiet Family a really long time ago and can't quite remember much of it. My favorite film of his,
I Saw the Devil, a tense and horrifying serial killer film. Highly recommended. His American film,
The Last Stand, stars Arnold and Johnny Knoxville, it's big dumb fun action. Terrible story but worth watching just for the action set pieces, low priority to the rest of the films though.
The Age of Shadows is a good spy/history film. His newest,
Illang: The Wolf Brigade, I posted about in here earlier this year or last year, is good but I would watch some of his other films first.
Other films worth checking out
The Chaser, Yellow Sea, The Wailing (one of the best Korean horror movies of this decade),
The Man From Nowhere, Secret Reunion, The Villainess and
Train to Busan.
Sorry, that's a lot of stuff. Hopefully it helps :)