Eom Ji-weon Movies

A string of serial murders rock Seoul, Korea, forcing a medical physician and an aspiring detective to undertake their own amateur investigation, in this offbeat period mystery-thriller. The year is 1910, the place, the heart of the Joseon Dynasty. Hong Jin-Ho (Hwang Jeong-min) longs to establish himself as a private detective - and sees a move to America as his ticket out of Korea. Meanwhile, a local medical intern, Kwang-soo (Ryoo Deok-hwan), discovers a corpse in the woods and steals it to practice routine dissection - but it so happens that the body in question belongs to the son of the most powerful figure in Seoul. For this reason, Kwang-soo's possession of the body soon puts him at risk for being tagged as the murderer. Kwang-soo contemplates stealing away in the dead of night, but his path soon criss-crosses with that of Hong, and Kwang-soo asks him to find the murderer. Soon, a second body turns up, murdered in exactly the same way; the gentlemen then team up and use a cloth found in one victim's hand as a clue to track down the killer. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo generally tells the same story twice, and his work often involves people working in the film industry. His sixth feature, Tale of Cinema, follows this pattern, but Hong adds a new wrinkle. In the first half, we're introduced to Sang-won (Lee Gi-woo of The Classic), who seems to be a ne'er-do-well, and happens to run into Yong-sil (Eom Ji-weon), whom he had a crush on back when they were in school. While she finishes out her workday, he goes to see a play. The two spend the evening together, getting very drunk. After an abortive effort at lovemaking ("Why insist when it doesn't work?" says Yong-sil), Sang-won tells Yong-sil that he'd like to "end with a flourish." She agrees, and the two forge a suicide pact. Their plan goes awry, and Sang-won is hospitalized. He returns home and has a big argument with his angry mother. We next see a new character, Tong-su (Kim Sang-gyeong of Memories of Murder and Hong's Turning Gate) as he exits a movie theater. It soon becomes clear that the first half of the Tale of Cinema is the short film that Tong-su has just watched, as part of a retrospective of the work of a peer from film school. The filmmaker has fallen ill and his classmates are having a get-together to raise money for his family. Tong-su doesn't seem interested in going until he runs into Yong-sil, the actress from the short film, who has had some success in the intervening years. He stalks her for a while, and eventually introduces himself and explains to Yong-sil that the filmmaker stole the story of the film from Tong-su's stories of his own life. Tale of Cinema was shown at the 2005 New York Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

The director of one of South Korea's most successful films ever at the box office (2001's Friend), Kwak Kyung-taek returns to the screen with this remarkably personal drama addressing the issues of father-son relationships and parental expectations. A small town police chief in the remote Gyeongsang Province, Cha Cheol-min's father (Kim Kab-soo) has been pulling double duty in raising and supporting his son since the death of his wife long ago. Cha Cheol-Min (Jeong Woo-seong) himself emotes the air of an uninspired slacker, having earned the nickname "Mutt Boy" after befriending a pup from the police pound when he was a young boy. Though Cha Cheol-Min's father's last ditch attempt to reform his son by adopting young female offender Jeong-Ae is unarguably well intended, her presence seems to have little effect on the seemingly disaffected youngster. What Cha Cheol-Min's father doesn't realize, however, is that beneath his son's lazy façade lies a man equally dedicated to fighting crime in his own unique way. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi