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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: The Park family in Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite

The impoverished Kim family – father Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho), mother Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin), daughter Ki-jung (Park So-dam) and son Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) – infiltrate one by one the household of the wealthy Parks. The Parks – father Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun), mother Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jeong), daughter Da-hye (Jung  Ji-so) and son Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun) – are […]

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Feature Four Frames

Sociopolitical reality as horror: Joon-ho Bong’s The Host

The Host (Gwoemul, South Korea, 2006) starts with gloomy images in a morgue at an American military base in South Korea. Evil is predicted when a pathologist orders his assistant to dump a large amount of formaldehyde in a drain at the base. A few years later, a monstrous creature emerges from the River Han […]

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Feature Reviews

Recommended: The Message (Chen Kuo-fu, Gao Qunshu, 2009)

Asian film enthusiasts will surely find their interest piqued by East Winds: A Third Window Film Festival which takes place at the Warwick Arts Centre from February 11-13 and includes titles from China, Japan and South Korea. The closing film of the festival will be Chen Kou-fu and Gao Qunshu’s excellent espionage thriller The Message, […]