Ahn is a suicidal saxophonist, Mun is a violent simpleton with an I.Q. of 80, and Maria is a single mother with dreams of becoming a nun. Ahn has tried numerous times to kill himself but nothing has ever worked. When he witnesses his wife’s infidelity, it is the last straw. He gets a call from Mun, and both decide to take things into their own hands by robbing a café at gunpoint. They run into Maria, who is determined to find her baby who has been taken from her. Maria decides to use the two men to get her baby back and joins the team.
Tag: SOUTH KOREA
The Magicians were a rock band. The guitarist of the band committed suicide three years ago. Several other members of the band that has meanwhile split up meet each other on a cold New Year’s Eve. It’s snowing. They hang around in a bar. Thinking of better times. The film was made in one shot. A filmic bravura piece. Maker Song Il-gon profited from the freedom of his commission to experiment with making a film without editing. This resulted in a beautiful play with the unity of place and action, as in the theatre, and a reflection on the time past of the story.
This innovative and darkly humorous Korean outing features neither pigs nor wells. The film was written by four writers, each of whom was in charge of developing one character apiece. After each basic plot was created, the director allowed the actors to improvise. The four characters are an unsuccessful novelist who hates himself, his icy girlfriend, her salesman husband, and a pretty ticket taker at the local cinema who secretly loves the writer.
A big fan of Chow Yun-Fat who works in an illegal arms sales shop finds one day a huge jar that allows him to transform snails into humans…
A schoolgirl goes from braids to bouffant when her mother makes her a bar hostess/prostitute. She cures impotence for Professor Lee and becomes his concubine. His entrepreneurial wife is initially shocked but soon accepts the arrangement and even gives the girl an allowance.
This film concentrates on a group of people who have trouble adjusting to mainstream society. From a woman running away from her previous life, to a man with a terminal disease, to a pop artist misunderstood by his contemporaries, the film looks on with sympathy and compassionate humor on a set of people who, for whatever reason, just don’t fit in.
Moon Chae-Ku and his friend Kim Chul try to bring the body of Moon’s father back to his native Kwisong Island for burial. Their ferry is intercepted by resentful islanders who will not let the boat dock, because of the father’s political activities in the 1950’s, informing on Communist sympathizers. Kim Chul, through flashbacks, recalls people and events from his island childhood.