I’m also a fan of rewatching the VODs to soothe me to sleep. It’s not weird.

I went through a phase of watching South Korean thrillers and gangster movies/crime movies. They are REALLY good, like big budget and long - about an hour longer than US movies on average - with good camera work, scripts, effects and story lines. I watched probably 10 of them in 6 months a couple of years back and all…

You told us that The Chaser was a rescue-fail. Does the Man from Nowhere save the girl?

In I saw the devil he’s not a cop, he’s a government assasin whose prego wife was rapped and murdered by a serial killer.

Is Train to Busan good? I keep meaning to watch it but I have to be in a certain mood to want to see movies like that.

Well, it’s from five years earlier than this one, and also it’s a completely different kind of film.

That movie does for knife play what the first John Wick did for gun play. It is inspired work: the way he drags the guy while evading and slitting his wrists as a means to an end, but also an act of intimidation; the way he uses the one guy as a shield and then triple taps him in the chest while staring at…

Have you seen The Raid 2? The last fight scene is my favorite scene of any movie so far. The music in the background starts going faster as the fight goes to the distance.

I loved it even though i wanted to hate it. How great would it be if Netflix/Amazon turned that into a limited run series or straight-to-streaming series. I even liked Hugh Grant in that, and i despise him.

2005: A Bittersweet Life

One thing you failed to mention was just how unapologetically sentimental ‘The Man From Nowhere’ could be at times. This is a crucial difference from American action films where grim (or hip ironic) stoicism predominates. In Asian cinema ‘melodrama’ is not considered a dirty word, the emotional arc of a character is…

Hands down best knife fight ever. The choreography of that scene paired with the music is inspired. South Korean action movies are amazing. Also great, from memory at available (at least in the recent past) on Netflix and in no particular order:

The Raid is a must watch every other month, subtitles>English voice over

Sure, but you’ll never be able to subvert it better than Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or, at least, you’ll never be able to subvert it without being accused of ripping off Raiders of the Lost Ark.

This is the kind of cheating we can all get behind! Seriously Tom, thanks for this feature—the other notables for this year looks like a required viewing list for me.

The hit zombie film ‘Train to Busan’ could be seen as a perhaps unintended allegory for South Korea’s anxiety about unification.

I’ve always taken the extremity of their dramas in whatever genre, and black, black humor, as coming partly from the existential threat that hovers over South Korea. Uncertainty is still in the air after all, and no matter how powerful they become, it’s still requires someone else (the US) to face. Combining with the…

I’ve only watched the first one, but I was super excited for it at the time. I don’t know what turned (me, mostly), but by the time they were napalming the henchmen and placing C4 every 4 feet I actually started feeling bad for the bad guys and stopped caring.

I saw Man From Nowhere and don’t agree with any of this. It was sloppily told, sentimental, self-serious, and I don’t remember anything about the action. Next to Park’s work, it’s amateur hour. The Chaser, though, is just awesome.

A Bittersweet Life is better than Man from Nowhere in almost every possible way. No mention of that movie?