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The thing is, that isn't really a theme of the movie. It's much more focused on the admiral himself, and the primary theme is how a person of character behaves in desperate circumstances, and how that can inspire courage in others. The Japanese are necessarily the villains, but their evilness is mostly important to provide a real threat and instill a sense of hopelessness among the Koreans. That said, they aren't treated exactly even-handedly -- being ahistorically poor at on-ship fighting is to be expected, though, as it adds dramatic tension. It is distracting that 'Japanese'= 'Korean actor with really bad eye makeup'. I think if you have to force a comparison thematically, The Patriot works better, although the cultural context can't be denied -- there isn't any real animosity in the US towards the British these days. And even though the stated similarities to 300 are there, I didn't really think of any of these films while watching it; it's pretty well done in its own right. I do think that you end up wishing the director had a few more tricks to pull aside from slow-motion shots and swelling music, because that does eventually get old. Kangra fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Aug 30, 2014 |
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Aug 30, 2014 02:50
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 07:13 |
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Saw that The Pirates (it has some subtitle about Sea Bandits I think) was out here in the US this week. Looks like a standard sea adventure, but I wonder if it's worth seeing. Or is this actually some older film being released to cash in along with The Admiral?
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Sep 20, 2014 07:10
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Some Guy TT posted:By the way, where are you getting showtimes for Pirates? The only theater chain I've known to regularly screen Korean films stateside is AMC. I'm in San Jose, and I'm pretty sure the theater that's showing it is Cupertino Square, which is AMC and seems to have a pretty regular selection of East Asian movies. I think there are places in Berkeley and Oakland that show Korean movies now and then, and they probably aren't AMC but I don't know how regularly they screen them. Camera cinemas (in SJ and Campbell) has had them but they're more likely to be the ones with more indie appeal (e.g. I saw Treeless Mountain there). Semi-related to Korean cinema, I saw the poster for The Interview (not the Korean Dogme 95 film, but a Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy that's presumably about North Korea). Does the writing on the poster mean anything interesting? Kangra fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 15:16
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What about Assassination? Sounds like it could be a lot of crazy action but might also be a mess.
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Aug 15, 2015 21:55
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Last night I went to a showing of the film Night Song (Sam-nye), which I liked well enough but more importantly I found it to be fantastically put together; you could tell there was a lot of care and craft in it. I doubt this film will ever be released in many places (I saw it at a film festival) but I'm wondering if maybe the director is better known in Korea, and if there are other films I might be able to find by her. Her name is Lee Hyun-Jung and without knowing Korean there's no way I can search for her (since every search engine is convinced I'm an idiot looking for Lee Jung Hyun). Is she well-known at all?
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Mar 11, 2016 06:27
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Seems like the biggest results for that are an actress/comedian , so there's even more name confusion. I had the idea to go with the movie's stars: Kim Bo Ra and Lee Sun Ho, but there doesn't seem to be a listing yet (still looking on Bo-ra's site). I don't know if this is too new (or too small?) to show up. There was another actor I recognized in a bit part as a movie producer, but I don't recall his name. I'm pretty sure they mentioned her having directed other films, but I missed part of the post-film discussion. The director was actually there herself (and I spoke a few words of thanks to her but wasn't thinking to ask about anything at the time). I've been looking through the image search and nothing rings a bell so far, but it's hard to tell between a photo and a person met briefly in a dim theater. The film itself was sort of a strange drama/uncertain romance, a mix of optimism with a sense of foreboding, deliberately ambiguous and a little disorienting at times.
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Mar 11, 2016 08:37
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Thanks for the help in finding her, I'll definitely check out Virgin Forest. Night Song has grown on me the more I think about it. It could be characterized as sparse and moderately slow, and confounding at times, there is a definite sense that it's not just thrown together. The sound design in particular is amazing. It seemed clear that she created the film meticulously but she said she really wants it to be open to audience interpretation. For instance, there are odd 'dream' sequences of a star/eclipse/something cosmic that lend to the portentous feeling. Like many elements it is never fully explained, although in response to a question she revealed that the protagonist is reading Hermann Hesse's Demian and those shots are meant as an egg/rebirth symbol inspired by the book. There is a fair amount of social commentary sprinkled in as well. The opening has some drunk guy in a bar arguing about racial purity and it would not be out of place in an American context. Although the story seems slightly self-indulgent (a filmmaker is struggling to come up with a script, goes to the countryside where he meets a vibrant teenage girl) it pushes beyond that in showing how a young woman like that might actually feel and be treated. I kind of liked that it wasn't just trying to subvert the 'manic pixie dream girl' formula outright.
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Mar 11, 2016 20:25
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 07:13 |
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Finally caught Train to Busan this weekend. Maybe there isn't anything especially novel about it, but it executes really well, and it doesn't feel like it derives too much from any one source. I thought the characters were especially well drawn; even those that had little characterization still felt like real human beings. It pulled off tension in short bursts really well. I preferred the first two acts that were more thriller to the more horror-like third act. One question I had: When I hear 'the one safe place in the country is Busan', as someone who's never lived in Korea, I can't help but think of 1950. Would it be thought of that way by modern Koreans, or is Busan for most people just a nice coastal town to escape to? I felt the metaphor was very clear in the movie itself, I'm just wondering how familiar the general public would be with it. Kangra fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Sep 11, 2016 |
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Sep 11, 2016 04:48
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