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Oscar Just ‘Discovered’ South Korea, Which has Cranked Out Great Movies for Years How the Korean Film Industry is Finally Getting the Recognition It Deserves by Chris Hewitt Judging from the South Korean movies that make it to these shores, almost everyone in that country is a murderer.
South Korean excellence for the Oscars to finally take notice, with “Parasite” the first Korean nominee for the international film and best picture prizes. (Those awards will be handed out Sunday night on ABC.)
It probably says more about Americans’ taste than it does about South Korean movies because Korea does make other genres, but we hardly ever see them. (Rom-com “My Sassy Girl” is a rare nongrisly film that made it to the United States.) Korea’s first big splash in America was Park Chanwook’s violent trilogy, “Oldboy,” “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “Lady Vengeance,” and many others have followed that blood-spattered suit. After Park opened up the U.S. for other offerings from his country — including the murder-filled, widely acclaimed, Oscar-nominated “Parasite” — a wave of great filmmakers arrived here.
That means a lot of great movies have failed to get Academy Awards attention. Maybe they’ve flown under your radar, too.
Astonishingly, if we date the start of the wave to 2003’s “Oldboy,” it took 17 years of consistent
“The Age of Shadows” (2016) — The two Kim Jee-woon movies on this list could not be more
So far, Park is the only Korean to make the transition from foreign to U.S. movies, directing Nicole Kidman in “Stoker” and Florence Pugh in the “Little Drummer Girl” miniseries. But judging from the acclaim for “Parasite,” Bong is on deck. While we wait to see what a bunch of interesting Korean directors will do next, here are 10 great South Korean movies you may want to stream or rent:
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14/02/20
