Top Ten Korean Movies of 2018 (Sort of)

In 2018, I definitely saw fewer Korean movies than in previous years but I also saw more current releases, and made it a habit to check out the foreign film lineups at the multiplexes. And while I had less to choose from for this list come December, I still had more than enough for my ten top picks. In truth, I feel bad about not including the Korean-American Gook, the artsy doc Factory Complex, and Hong Sang-soo's On the Beach at Night Alone. Well, you can check out these three runners-up if you're using this post as a what-to-watch guide and have already seen the others.

1. Burning: Lee Chang-dong's best film since Oasis finds Steven Yeun playing a soulless rich boy who treats his friends as playthings.

2. The Great Battle: Few things please me more than a well-told "David and Goliath" tale. Here it's about a small village against a massive army.

3. The Royal Tailor: A tragedy for the fashion set, this period drama brims with unexpected compassion for the bad guy.

4. Unstoppable: I've been waiting for years for someone to cast Ma Dong-seok as a vigilante hero and so now all I can say is "Thank you!"

5. Right Now, Wrong Then: If there's a director eliciting as nuanced performances from actors as Hong Sang-soo does, let me know asap.

6. The Day After: Oh, the lies that cheaters tell themselves. Just ask the bookseller in this exquisite chamber pic, also from Hong Sang-soo.

7. Runaway From Home: This brom-com about two men tracking down a wife on the lam injects the right amount of seriousness into its silliness.

8. Swing Kids: Two teens at the theater reveled at how many times they cried during this war pic with tap dance. Bring tissues.

9. Default: Q: Can hand-drawn flowcharts and stacks of financial docs simulate the tension of South Korea's 1997 financial crisis? A: Yes.

10. The Red Chapel: Documentaries about North Korea constitute a sub-category of their own; this strange comedy tour stands out from the pack.

The Day After: Seeing Theater

How did Hong Sang-soo manage to make three films in a single year? It certainly wasn't by sloppily running from one to the next. For there's nothing messy or rushed about The Day After, the third of his 2017 trilogy of sorts that also includes Claire's Camera and On the Beach at Night Alone. But it probably helps that he brought in some of the same actors for each film which, because of their intimate nature, concentrates all the action among a very small cast. For The Day After, he also shoots in black and white (which simplifies the design elements) and shoots many of the two-person, largely interior scenes in extended, medium long shots with no cuts and only the occasional zoom, all of which heightens our sense of eavesdropping on a very personal conversation (or perhaps a master class in acting). Indeed Hong's choice to have so much of the action filmed in profile turns the face-to-camera shot into something remarkable since it's only when a character looks away from whomever she's talking to that we see her face directly. And what faces these are to look at.

As Song Areum, a young woman who is starting a fraught new job at a book publishing company, Kim Min-hee constantly delights us with her asides of impatience, distress, confusion. For when she turns away from the other character, she's in some ways shielding her face, meaning that these shots of Kim turning aside are shots of her face unshielded. It's the hidden exposed! As a despairing wife, actress Cho Yun-hee similarly is constantly flashing her hidden self to the camera as she struggles to get her husband to admit that he's been seeing another woman while he noisily slurps his soup. If Kim Sae-byeok shares less, it's because her role as the other woman demands that she generally be on her guard. The only time we truly see her psychologically naked is when she's drunk. Life's tough that way. At the center of it all is Kim "The Boss" Bongwan, the book publisher played by Kwon Hae-yo with an honesty that makes him both impossible to like or dislike. As for the movie as a whole, I liked it very much. I'm so appreciative of the Museum of the Moving Image for programming this trilogy.