The 25 Best South Korean Movies of The Last 5 Years. The last five years have been an interesting time for South Korean filmmakers. A slew of debut filmmakers found themselves not only making successful first and sophomore films, but a few actually annihilating the box-office numbers that Bong Joon-ho’s The Host had set almost ten years ago. Speaking of, he along with two of the nation’s best and brightest released their English-language debuts, providing Stoker, The Last Stand, and Snowpiercer. More films are now finding their way to the big-screens internationally, as well as the growing market for video-on-demand. For fans of South Korean cinema, it’s awesome news. Last year alone almost quadrupled the amount of South Korean films I’ve seen in theaters, especially after The Admiral: Roaring Currents carried it’s mainland success overseas.
Select metropolitan areas will also get popular releases, even as far as being covered frequently by major outlets such as Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. 1. 2. Bedevilled is an experience. 3. 4. Taste of Cinema - Check out this list if you are a fan of... Filmmaker Retrospective: The Contemptuous Cinema of Kim Ki-duk. “People have asked me if I am a ‘moral’ person. I usually reply that I am not. I am not perfect. But I am a person who is not afraid to show the dark and poor sides of Korean society. This is my moral cause. I could make much cleaner films than my previous projects, but I am afraid I might be blamed for doing something “normal.”
At the same time, I am afraid that I will not have the creativity to make mainstream films in the future because of my background with controversial subjects.” – Kim Ki-duk in Korean Cinema Today (Oct. 2012: Vol. 14) For Kim Ki-Duk, life has been about proving himself. Between 1990 and 1993, Kim studied art and lived in Paris, before returning to South Korea to make his first feature in 1996, entitled Crocodile.
He, mirroring much of his characters, can be seen as outcast in the Korean film industry. Lately the man’s been much better with critics and the press, but they still need convincing when it comes to his movies. What makes his films so controversial? 1. The 25 Best Films of The South Korean New Wave. The South Korean New Wave began in 1998 when, for the first time, nine home-grown films made it into the top 20 at the South Korean box office. The release of Shiri in 1999 put the South Korean New Wave on the map by becoming the biggest box-office success in South Korean film history with total admissions of over six million.
Prior to Shiri’s release, South Korean films made up just 15% of the domestic box-office whereas in 2001 that number jumped to a staggering 49%. Admissions quickly followed with sales soaring from 54 million in 1999 to 88 million in 2001. In 2004, the market share for home-grown films passed 50% for the first time ever. In addition, South Korean films enjoyed international sales across Asia, Europe and North America for the first time. It is a cinema that challenges audiences through its use of genre bending. This is a list of the twenty five definitive South Korean New Wave Films. 1. 2. In as far as action movies go, this is a tremendous effort. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. The 10 Best South Korean Films of 2015. 2015 was another great year for South Korean cinema, with its financial and artistic growth and being witnessed globally, since South Korean films are getting screened and distributed in a large number of festivals and countries around the world, netting a plethora of awards and grossing enormous sums.
Three titles included here made the top 10 list of the highest-grossing films in South Korea, earning the second, the third and the seventh position on the table, in a trend that also showed that local productions are presently holding the interest of South Koreans, instead of Hollywood productions, as is the rule in other Asian countries.
Due to the delay of some of the titles’ screening in the west, the list took the liberty of incorporating “Ode to my Father”, that was actually screened in December 2014 in Korea, but in 2015 everywhere else. 10. The Beauty Inside (Baik) Eventually he meets a girl named Hong Eun Soo and falls in love with her. 9. 8. 7. 6. Pages: 1 2.