After the fatal shooting of two North Korean guards by a South Korean soldier at the Demilitarized Border between the two adversarial nations, an independent body of Swiss and Swedish officials are sent in to investigate the crime and contain the potentially explosive political situation. So begins Park Chan-wook’s Joint Security Area [Gongdong gyeongbi guyeok JSA], a 2000 film that combines an intricately assembled mystery with absorbing human drama. Artfully [...]

South Korea’s A Barefoot Dream [Maen-bal-eui Ggoom] is so saccharine that it almost gave me a toothache. Based (one suspects loosely) on the real life story of a former Korean soccer player who coached the East Timorese children’s team to an unlikely international championship, everything in the film, from the over-the-top performances, cliché-riddled script, made-for-TV direction and syrupy musical accompaniment is so farcically sentimental that it makes you wonder whether [...]