Korean Movie Reviews for 2. In early 2. 01. 5, concerns persisted that the mainstream commercial film industry is no longer as dynamic or creative as it used to be. Not only was there a shortage of critically acclaimed films appearing in the first half of the year, but more generally, the increasingly corporatized system for making films seems to favor familiar stories, styles and casting over bold and innovative creative choices.

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Apart from facing great challenges in terms of distribution and marketing, the independent sector is dealing with steep cuts in support from the government (which appears to have adopted its hostile attitude due to the criticism contained in works like documentary The Truth Shall Not Sink With Sewol). Even if the average Korean film is perhaps not as interesting as it was a decade ago, the highlights are still worth following. Gangnam Blues takes place in 1. Korean title is simply . Jong- dae (popular singer/actor Lee Min- ho) and Yong- gi (Kim Rae- won) are two young men who enter adulthood as destitute rag pickers, but through a combination of ingenuity, skill, violence and grit start to rise within the heirarchies of rival gangs. Eventually, they become minor players in the drama of Gangnam's transformation. Apart from these surface details, the genre is also particularly well suited to depicting the mechanics of power: how one person outstrengths, outsmarts, buys or seduces another, within a complex overall heirarchy of power relations.

The best gangster movies are just as much about money and politics as they are about violence. A Dirty Carnival (2. Once Upon a Time in High School (2. Gangnam region in the 1. Both films present violence not as isolated acts, but as part of an overall system in which people are driven by need, ambition and fear to exploit the weak and seek out vulnerabilities in the strong. Gangnam Blues also proves to be a showcase for Director Yoo's vision and talent.

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Although it requires some concentration to follow its complex plot, the film imparts an impressive depth to the violence and deception shown on screen, as if it were all a part of a tense chess match. At the same time he devotes considerable attention to the surface: the look and energy of the film is thrilling, and the crowd fights in particular are as painful to watch as they are impressively choreographed and executed. The end result, as with his previous films, is that Gangnam Blues addresses the topic of violence in a sophisticated way, but never fully de- glamorizes it either. You could flag this as one of the work's faults, or you could argue that the contradictory feelings that the film gives you - - of being simultaneously repelled and seduced by violence - - is what makes it interesting. But in many ways the development of Gangnam, which was driven forward by a mixture of corruption, greed, and violence, parallels the way in which South Korea as a whole achieved its economic miracle in the second half of the 2.

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So as specific as this film might be in terms of its local details, the story it is telling is the story of a nation. Here he gives a convincing performance as an outwardly good cop, generous with his underlings and always maintaining calm exterior, yet seething with societal anxiety and moral guilt inside. Conversely, some viewers enamored of the excess emotional gymnastics of a typical Korean TV drama might find it bland and dry. The president of the academy (Uhm Ji- won, Like You Know It All), glamorous and suave, is allegedly running a military- sponsored educational program that will result in two students to be sent to Tokyo on full scholarship. Kazue (Park So- dam, Ingtoogi), a star athlete of the school. It starts off pushing all the expected buttons for a young- girl- in- school- uniform K- horror, but then it veers sharply off into a completely different sub- genre (to concretely name that would in fact constitute a major spoiler), ironically one that you might easily expect from Japan (Kaneko Shusuke, one of the doyens of the Japanese tokusatsu cinema, in fact recently made one film in this mode).

Among the cast members, the strongest impression is left by Park So- dam, whose earnest, slightly quizzical expression is sometimes heart- breakingly attractive. Alice in Earnestland is a bit creepy, a bit gore- y. Thankfully, in this case, the gore is not overdone. We are not pummelled with punished characters but with plausibly paced plow throughs. Still, the film is not for the easily squeamish. We first meet her through her sartorial and transport choices. We witness both as the camera focuses on her foot as she parks her motorized scooter before we see her face.

Like the gore, her quirky outfits are not overdone, but her clothes and her primary mode of transportation puts her outside the mainstream. We immediately peg Soo- nam as strange.

But her strangeness is tempered somewhat since she is quickly placed in a dyad with Kyung- sook (Seo Young- hwa - 4 Hong San- gsoo films, including Hill of Freedom & Right Now, Wrong Then), a counselor whose manner of speaking and facial grooming presents her as strange in her own way as well. We immediately begin to wonder what Soo- nam's beef is with Kyung- sook when we witness Kyung- sook tied up in her chair and across from her desk sits Soo- nam eating a boxed lunch. A nicely edited back story takes us through Soo- nam's adolescence and young adulthood to where she marries Kyu- jung (Lee Hae- young - Glove & The Himalayas). After putting themselves in debt by buying a house, Kyu- jung develops hearing loss. Rather than encouraging the learning of Korean Sign Language, the couple is pushed towards a cochlear implant, and hence further debt, but are warned that the procedure isn't perfect. There might be consequences.

Alice in Earnestland proceeds to deliver on those consequences, much of which has to deal with housing speculation. If there isn't already a film studies scholar writing a book on the presentation of the housing market in South Korean cinema, all I ask is the eventual writer of such a treatise thank me in the acknowledgements for the idea. As an actress who was thrust on South Korean screens as the metaphorical ghost of the Gwangju Massacre in Jang Sun- woo's masterpiece A Petal, hers was one of those roles that made me apprehensive of such a young performer in such a horrific role. Knowing Jang was quite the bad boy of South Korean cinema, one could think of no more daunting of a debut character for such a young actor.

Thankfully, Lee appears to have weathered that role well, going on to be an early K- pop star and continuing to act in powerful adult roles such as the mother in Juvenile Offender. Lee is the spark that keeps re- lighting some of the best moments of Alice in Earnestland. Other performances stand out as well.

Seo plays Kyung- sook as nightmarishly creepy, but so is the character of her husband Do- chul (Myung Gye- nam - A Petal & Thuy), a nightmare of a different kind. And after finding myself unconsciously smiling when Ji Dae- han (Peppermint Candy & Juvenile Offender) entered the frame as Detective Park, I realized Ji has been growing on me as an actor. Generational Sins (2017) Full Movie here. The film's cliched reliance on the disability- as- tragedy trope (twice!) to suspend the disbelief of the audience on the trajectory of the plot is the one complaint I have about this otherwise engaging film. All of the horrors that happen to Soo- nam and Kyu- jung and the miscreants and cops she leaves in her wake would not need to happen if Korean Sign Language were considered an available option. It would have taken some time and money to learn, but nothing like the cost of the cochlear implant presented in the film. Still, issues confronting the disabled and the Deaf do intersect.) It's easier to communicate by sign languages from a distance, say across the street, where people can't hear you well. You can use sign languages at loud venues like concerts.

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Yearly Box Office Results. Total Grosses of all Movies Released in 2. Previous Year. Next Year > Rank. Movie Title (click to view)Studio. Total Gross / Theaters.

Opening / Theaters. Open. Close. 1Star Wars: The Force Awakens. BV$9. 36,6. 62,2. Jurassic World. Uni.

Avengers: Age of Ultron. BV$4. 59,0. 05,8. Inside Out. BV$3. Furious 7. Uni. 3.

Minions. Uni. 3. 36,0. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2. LGF$2. 81,7. 23,9. The Martian. Fox$2. Cinderella (2. 01. BV$2. 01,1. 51,3.

Spectre. Sony$2. 00,0. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. Par. 1. 95,0. 42,3. Pitch Perfect 2. Uni. The Revenant. Fox$1.

Ant- Man. BV$1. 80,2. Home (2. 01. 5)Fox$1. Hotel Transylvania 2. Sony$1. 69,7. 00,1. Fifty Shades of Grey.

Uni. 1. 66,1. 67,2. The Sponge. Bob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. Par. 1. 62,9. 94,0. Straight Outta Compton. Uni. 1. 61,1. 97,7. San Andreas. WB (NL)$1. Mad Max: Fury Road.

WB$1. 53,6. 36,3. Daddy's Home. Par. The Divergent Series: Insurgent. LG/S$1. 30,1. 79,0.

The Peanuts Movie. Fox$1. 30,1. 78,4. Kingsman: The Secret Service. Fox$1. 28,2. 61,7. The Good Dinosaur. BV$1. 23,0. 87,1. Spy. Fox$1. 10,8.

Trainwreck. Uni. 1. Creed. WB (NL)$1. Tomorrowland. BV$9. Get Hard. WB$9. 0,4. Terminator: Genisys. Watch Thy Fathers Chair (2017) Free there. Par. 8. 9,7. 60,9.

Taken 3. Fox$8. 9,2. Sisters. Uni. 8. 7,0. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. Fox$8. 5,8. 86,9. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.

Fox$8. 1,6. 97,1. Ted 2. Uni. 8. 1,4. Goosebumps. Sony$8. Pixels. Sony$7. 8,7. Paddington. W/Dim. The Intern. WB$7.

Bridge of Spies. BV$7. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. Sony$7. 1,0. 38,1. The Big Short. Par. War Room. Tri. S$6. Magic Mike XXLWB$6. The Visit. Uni. 6.

The Wedding Ringer. SGem$6. 4,4. 60,2. Black Mass. WB$6. Vacation. WB (NL)$5.

The Perfect Guy. SGem$5. Joy. Fox$5. 6,4. 51,2. Fantastic Four. Fox$5. The Hateful Eight. Wein. 5. 4,1. 17,4. Focus (2. 01. 5)WB$5. Southpaw. Wein. 5.

Insidious Chapter 3. Focus$5. 2,2. 18,5. Poltergeist (2. 01. Fox$4. 7,4. 25,1. Jupiter Ascending. WB$4. 7,3. 87,7. 23. Sicario. LGF$4. 6,8.

The Man From U. N. C. L. E. WB$4. 5,4. Spotlight. ORF$4.

Mc. Farland, USABV$4. The Gift (2. 01. 5)STX$4. Everest (2. 01. 5)Uni. The Night Before.

Sony$4. 3,0. 47,3. Krampus. Uni. 4. 2,7. Max (2. 01. 5)WB$4. The Age of Adaline. LGF$4. 2,6. 29,7.

Brooklyn. Fox. S$3. The Longest Ride.

Fox$3. 7,4. 46,1. The Boy Next Door. Uni. 3. 5,4. 23,3. Pan. WB$3. 5,0. 88,3.

Hot Pursuit. WB (NL)$3. Concussion (2. 01. Sony$3. 4,5. 42,4. The DUFFLGF$3. 4,0. Woman in Gold. Wein.

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Fox. S$3. 3,0. 78,2. Unfriended. Uni. 3. Entourage. WB$3. 2,3. Paper Towns. Fox$3.

Chappie. Sony$3. 1,5. Crimson Peak. Uni. A Walk in the Woods. BG$2. 9,5. 04,2. 81. Point Break (2. 01. WB$2. 8,7. 82,4. 81. Sinister 2. Focus$2.

The Last Witch Hunter. LG/S$2. 7,3. 67,6. No Escape. Wein. 2. Ricki and the Flash. Tri. S$2. 6,8. 22,1. The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death.

Rela. 2. 6,5. 01,3. Run All Night. WB$2. Love the Coopers. LGF$2. 6,3. 02,7. The Lazarus Effect.

Rela. 2. 5,8. 01,0. Ex Machina. A2. 4$2. In the Heart of the Sea. WB$2. 5,0. 20,7. 58.

The Gallows. WB (NL)$2. Hitman: Agent 4. 7Fox$2. Project Almanac. Par. Black or White. Rela. Aloha. Sony$2. 1,0. Summary of 7. 05 Movies on Chart: Totals: $1.

Averages: $1. 5,7. Previous Year. Next Year > #1–1. Note: RELEASE DATE shows all movies that opened in a given time period and their total grosses. WIDE RELEASES shows only movies released in 6. LIMITED RELEASES shows only movies released in less than 6. CALENDAR GROSSES shows all movies playing during the indicated time period, both new and holdover, and their grosses (or estimated grosses) during that time period. Movies released outside the indicated time period are shown in italics.

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