Hong Sangsoo remains an enigma of South Korean cinema. While Park Chan-wook, Kim Ji-woon and a host of copy cat directors fill big box theaters with copious amounts of violence and stylized shock tactics (to often brilliant effect, let’s admit), Sangsoo continues to work the art house crowd with his classically influenced brand of off-beat humor that subtly plays with the conception of form on the fly, calling into question the validity of previous actions. The 2011 Cannes (Un Certain Regard) selected The Day He Arrives sees its familiar characters continually wander the awkward landscape between opposing sexes that the auteur seems to be so fascinated by, but it is in the seemingly minute details in which Sangsoo’s playfulness becomes the real fascination.
Like many of the Korean helmer’s previous works, his lead seems a piece of the filmmaker himself, a former director by trade, a bit of...
Like many of the Korean helmer’s previous works, his lead seems a piece of the filmmaker himself, a former director by trade, a bit of...
- 11/20/2012
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Welcome to the second edition of the best of Korean new wave cinema, here on sound of sight. A running series of articles that comes out every two weeks, in it we look at the best 21st century Korea has to offer on cinema screens. Whether that is big names like Park Chan Wook and Kim Jee Woon or unknown curios that deserve the coverage. Each article will cover two thematically similar films, this time its two films from 2011 in Sang-Soo Hong’s The Day he arrives, and Sung-Hyun Yoon’s, Bleak Night.
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The Day He Arrives
Directed by Sang-Soo Hong
Screenplay by Sang-Soo Hong
2011, Korea
The Day He Arrives is a 2011 film by director Sang-Soo Hong about a director who now teaches in the Korean Countryside returning to Seoul for a weekend. At first Sungjoon (Jun-Sang Yu) wanders around town, phoning people and happens upon an actor he worked with,...
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The Day He Arrives
Directed by Sang-Soo Hong
Screenplay by Sang-Soo Hong
2011, Korea
The Day He Arrives is a 2011 film by director Sang-Soo Hong about a director who now teaches in the Korean Countryside returning to Seoul for a weekend. At first Sungjoon (Jun-Sang Yu) wanders around town, phoning people and happens upon an actor he worked with,...
- 9/20/2012
- by Rob Simpson
- SoundOnSight
Director: Dong-won Kim. Review: Chris Sawin. If South Korea had an answer to "Red Tails" from earlier this year, then "R2B: Return to Base" would be it. Many of its plot points are similar including a reckless pilot being selfish (Rain as Captain Jung Tae-Hun), another pilot doing everything by the book yet facing tragedy (Jun-sang Yu from "Moss" as Major Lee), those two pilots being the best in their class, that recklessness hurting the character but then being relied upon, and women eventually caving into selfish yet persistent behavior. That actually sounds a lot more like "Top Gun" and Tae-Hun and Lee have a relationship similar to that of Maverick and Iceman. "This is a top secret doc!" "R2B" is really ridiculous for at least an hour. The first five minutes of the movie feel like a music video. There really isn't a storyline other than training...
- 9/3/2012
- 24framespersecond.net
The primary reason why "Groundhog Day" works (besides the casting, pacing, easygoing charm and humor) is that the little town of Punxsutawney is the physical embodiment of what we all feel occasionally: a startling inability, even for a moment, to tell one day from the next. Call it a forced sense of deja vu, it's what Seongjun (Jun-Sang Yu), the lead of Hong Sang-soo's patient and trying "The Day He Arrives" is experiencing.
Seongjun, a film director who's uneasily transitioned to teaching, is listless in a way that seems to impact not only his everyday, but also that of his friends and lovers. In the course of 79 minutes, Hong Sang-soo's film lays out several days (but how many?) starting with Seongjun's visit to Seoul. The character keeps running into the same people, going out for drinks at the same place and romancing women in the same way. Intentional? Naturally, but...
Seongjun, a film director who's uneasily transitioned to teaching, is listless in a way that seems to impact not only his everyday, but also that of his friends and lovers. In the course of 79 minutes, Hong Sang-soo's film lays out several days (but how many?) starting with Seongjun's visit to Seoul. The character keeps running into the same people, going out for drinks at the same place and romancing women in the same way. Intentional? Naturally, but...
- 4/21/2012
- by Mark Zhuravsky
- The Playlist
"Not many people have seen my films," says Seongjun (Jun-Sang Yu), the impulsive filmmaker at the center of "The Day He Arrives," the latest characteristically rambling character study from Korean director Hong Sang-soo. In one of many cases where art imitates life in a Hong movie, Seongjun's complaint reflects the general unfamiliarity with Hong's work in the United States. Churning out curiously structured narrative experiences in a roughly one-film-a-year cycle, Hong has crafted a dozen features since 1996's "The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well" (his next one, "In Another Country," is expected at Cannes next month). Despite the sizable filmography and a distinctive voice holding it together, festival awards and plenty of critical acclaim, Hong remains a storyteller whose talents are known only by a privileged few. Fortunately, "The Day He Arrives," the first Hong movie released in the U.S. since "Woman on the...
- 4/16/2012
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
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