And there are other movies I’d like to mention…

Okay, I also like them.

 Let’s see. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” gives a very memorable heroine and it is followed by two good sequels. Clari Denis’ “35 Shots of Rum”, a warm human drama, gave me a pleasure of seeing an electronic rice cooker in the European movie, and I also find her next work “White Material” as enigmatically fascinating as its lead actress Isabelle Huppert. Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank” has a wonderful performance from a newcomer Katie Jarvis, and “Red Riding Trilogy” can be called “Yorkshire Confidential” with its vast portrait of the corrupted power intermingled with the serial killing. I don’t think “Shutter Island” is Scorsese’s best, but it has terrific atmosphere based on a preposterous story with haunting performance by Leonardo DiCaprio surrounded by the first-rate cast. Despite having the MacGuffin exposed to nearly everybody from the start, “The Green Zone” runs furiously into the final destination. “Cell 211” is a taut prison thriller, and “The Square” is an equally suspenseful thriller about when everything goes wrong. “Vengeance”, my first experience with the director Johnnie To, has many stylish sequences I will not forget easily. And “Winter’s Bone” is a cold, bitter winder tale of desperation and determination with the excellent performances from Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawk. Oh, and there is a scary movie named “Buried” – I really hate to be buried alive.

If you ask me, I’ll say I like them – with my warm 3-star-love.

 I liked “Toy Story 3“, but I don’t think it’s not the best of the series for several reasons. “Salt” is a well-made action movie with Angelina Jolie, and “A Solitary Man” has one of Michael Douglas’s best performances. “Carlos” was more than 5 hours; it was exhausting but rewarding with the terrific central performance by Edgar Ramirez. “The American” is coldly fascinating observation on the professional who came in from the cold. In case of “The Town”, it is well-made action movie and I love the performances, but it was not as good as “Heat”. In case of “Monsters“, I apologized for not liking it after that horrible experience with “Skyline”.  In case of comedies, there are lots of good movies that made me laugh. “Hot Tub Time machine”, “Date Night”, “(Untitled)” “Death at a Funeral”, “Cyrus”, “Easy A”, “I Love You Philip Morris”, “Four Lions”, and “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World”. Ah, and, in case of “The Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past”, I was distantly absorbed in these beautiful images.

Yes, these are my favorites, but they are late in South Korea

 My god, it took more than a year to release “The Class”, “Milk”, and “Synecdoche, New York”. “A Serious Man”, “Up in the Air”, “Crazy Heart”, and “An Education” were released in this March, and “The Hurt Locker” was released in the next month. In case of “The White Ribbon”, it was released in this summer. At least, “(500) Days of Summer” was released in this January, but “Precious” has not been officially introduced to South Korea yet.

About documentaries and animations

  In January, I wrote Korean reviews for “Collapse”, “September Issue”, and “Anvil!: The Story of Anvil”. Like “The Social Network”, “We Live in Public” points out the rapid change in our global society. Thanks to my fellow critic Grace Wang, I watched a vivid documentary about the great migration of Chinese people during holiday seasons in “The Last Train Home”. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is one of the funniest documentaries regardless of whether you believe it is a true story or not, and “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” is as funny as that with its real-life subject. And don’t forget “Restrepo”, which is a very good war-documentary.

 Animations of this year are relatively weak compared to last three years. Like I said, “Toy Story 3” is not the best in the series despite that moving finale. I enjoyed “How to Train Your Dragon”, but it’s not great either. “Despicable Me” is a nice one, but I did not recommend it. While waiting for “Megamind”, I came to know “Mary and Max”, and, as you saw, it’s in my top 10 list.

Then what about South Korean movies of this year?

 It will take some time to get released in your regions. But I want to say few things about the movies I think you must see.

1. Poetry

 Lee Chang-dong’ new movie won Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film festival in this year, and I was glad that the juries honored that subtle simplicity of this movie. An old lady, played by Yun Jeong-hie, wants to learn how to write a poem. While diagnosed that she is in early stage of Alzheimer’s disease, she learned that her grandson is involved in the tragedy others. She at first goes along with others to cover the incident, but her brain cannot help her. She keeps attending her poetry class and tries to write a poem as the final homework. The movie is slow, but it is quite absorbing. Though I still don’t understand poetry, I could feel about it at least during watching movie. In the rhythm of daily mundane life, the story slowly moves on with its heroine, and there is a memorable scene in front of the apartment building where she lives. And then it is followed by a powerful ending many audiences remember.

2. Bedevilled

 “Bedevilled” is another simple story, but it is direct about its purpose. There will be blood, and, before that, there will be cruel abuses committed to a poor island woman named Bok-nam(Seo Yeong-Hee). She wants her old friend, who returns to the island for vacation, to help her and her little daughter escape from those disgusting villagers who exploited her as a sex/labor slave. However, her trial only results in heartbreaks, and she is now as mad as Sweeney Todd – with her sharp sickle. Seo Yeong-Hee’s fearless performance imbues equal amount of emotions into the bloody brutality; it is really cathartic experience to see this harrowing bloody aria bursting out on the screen.

3. Hahaha & Oki’s Movie

Hong Sang-soo is not my favorite director, but I am getting to like his movies. And he made two good films in one year. “Hahaha” is a delightful movie about how two stories are interconnected and overlapped without the characters’ knowledge. And “Oki’s Movie” is equally delightful. There are four short stories, but are they related? Or, are they series of variations? Never mind, but, with these two pleasant movies, I began to laugh for the first time with Hong Sang-soo’s movies. What an achievement.

4. The Housemaid

 The original version of “The Housemaid”, made in 1960, was a thriller about “A Housemaid from the Hell”. Now, in case of the remake version, the director Im Sang-soo has his own story to tell based on his idea – and his sets to dazzle us. This time, it is “Revenge of the Rich”, and Jeon Do-yeon gives a solid lead performance which the other supporting actors walk on. They are as good as Jeon Do-yeon, and Yun Yeo-jong steals the show as the old maid.

5. The Unjust

 From showing the complex relationship between the police, the public prosecutor’s Office, and the people who deal with them, “The Unjust” tells us a bitter story about how this unjust system works. Under the director Ryoo Seung-wan’s competent direction, we come to understand how they affect each other as well as their motives. The Korean audience will feel lots of familiarity to the society shown in the movie thanks to the recent big scandals associated with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but the message is universal: there is no way for its individuals to remain clean when the system is corrupt. Inexorably, they always get dirty while trying to do the right thing – or believing that they’re trying to do the right thing.

Special mention: The Yellow Sea 

  It is more languid and more heartless than the Na Hong-jin’s first movie “The Chaser”, but “The Yellow Sea” is filled with grim vigor while dripping with exhaustion and chaos. And it also has terrific action scenes with real vehicles. I have doubts and questions about this big movie, but I am sure I was not bored.