As the year comes to an end, anybody and everybody are posting their best of the year lists. Most of these lists contain variations of the same 15 or 20 films. To break the mold, some are even posting lists of the best films of the year that you probably haven’t seen. I find that even these lists are filled with the same movies. And if you’re a film geek reading a site like /Film, chances are you know about most of the movies on these lists.
I wanted to do something different and compile a list of the best films of the year that you’ve never heard of. The selections should be movies that (for the most part) none of your family or friends have heard of, and you might even have to do some extra legwork to get your hands on.
Read More »
.
Please Recommend /Film on Facebook
Violent revenge flicks are pretty much heroin for most film fans. We inject the works of Park Chan-Wook and Takashi Miike directly into our veins, swooning in the delights of violence and hyperkinetic cinema. In comparison, Kim Jee-woon is relatively new to the scene. His film, The Good The Bad and the Weird, certainly made a significant blip on film fan’s radar and now with his latest film, I Saw the Devil, Jee-woon has crafted an even more visceral experience. After getting rave reviews as a secret screening at Fantastic Fest 2010, I Saw the Devil has taken the Sundance Film Festival and in turn it’s taken the revenge film, turned it on its head and drenched it with blood. Read more after the break. Read More »
Kim Ji-woon‘s bloody, intense thriller I Saw the Devil (Korean trailer here) is playing Sundance later this month, and through the magic of Magnolia’s genre arm Magnet will also hit US theaters on March 4. It is a serial killer story that has drawn comparisons to Seven and endured criticism in South Korea for the level of violence depicted. After seeing the film at Fantastic Fest, Peter said, “the movie is a brutal experience, and while I highly recommend it, I don’t ever see myself watching it again.”
See the entire poster below. Read More »
Wednesday, the 2011 Sundance Film Festival announced the 58 films in four categories that would be eligible for awards. Today, they’ve announced the next slice of their line up – 57 out of competition films in the Premieres, Next, Spotlight, New Frontiers and Midnight categories. This is generally where you get many of the bigger name projects and this year is no exception. We already knew that Kevin Smith’s Red State would be on the list, but there’s also Tom McCarthy’s new film Win Win, Morgan Spurlock’s documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, the highly buzzed-about Submarine, Fantastic Fest darling I Saw the Devil as well as Hobo With a Shotgun and a whole bunch more including films with Al Pacino, Tobey Maguire, Jeremy Piven, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Paul Rudd and others.
As we said yesterday, the announcement of the movies playing the 2011 Sundance Film Festival is like looking into our film futures. While many of the films are unknown now, playing at Sundance sets off a snowball effect that continues throughout the year and eventually, these movies become an integral part of popular culture.
Check out out write up of the competition movies by clicking here, but hit the jump to see the full list of out of competition films as well as our early highlights. Read More »
It’s only day two of Fantastic Fest, and I’m already falling behind (which might have more to do with being at the tail end of a 30 day film festival trip than anything else).
Read More »
It’s been a big Toronto Film Festival for Harvey Weinstein, as The Weinstein Company picked up films like Dirty Girl, Sarah’s Key and the surprise hit of the fest, Submarine. But there’s another Harvey-related buy that might not make him as happy: IFC has picked up Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project, a documentary about the industry titan.
The Barry Avrich-directed and produced film is said by IFC to be “a powerful, uncensored, no-holds-barred account that traces Weinstein’s path from concert promoter on the cold streets of Buffalo to his first trip to the Cannes Film Festival, where he arrived with one pair of pants and closed his first movie deal, to winning an Oscar, and breaking the bank with his first $100 million film.” Avrich previously claimed the film would be balanced, rather than a hatchet job.
The film isn’t yet finished, and a release date hasn’t been reported.[Deadline]
After the break, sales deals for John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole, the Korean thriller I Saw the Devil, and pre-sales for Almodovar’s next and Dredd. Read More »
UPDATE: Thanks to a couple comments and emails, we now know that the first reports about alterations to the film were exaggerated: I Saw the Devil has been trimmed via seven cuts, not minutes. So things aren’t as severe as first reported, which is excellent. Original article follows.
A few weeks ago I showed you the trailer for I Saw the Devil, a crime thriller from The Good, the Bad, the Weird director Kim Ji-Woon. The trailer is loaded with atmosphere and visually impressive. And the film has a great cast: Lee Byung-hyun of The Good, the Bad, the Weird and Choi Min-sik from Oldboy.
But earlier this week the film ran into trouble: it was given a harsh rating in Korea, effectively banning it from most Korean cinemas. Cuts have now been made and the film will be given a general release. But how much was lost? Read More »
If The Good, the Bad, the Weird had received any sort of extensive release in the States, I’d just pitch this trailer for I Saw the Devil as being from the writer/director (Kim Ji-woon) and star (Lee Byung-hyun) of that film. But a lot of you have probably only heard of The Good, the Bad, the Weird, if even that.
So I’ll take the easy route and say that, for this film, which looks like a gorgeously shot tale of criminal actions, Kim has brought together Choi Min-sik, aka Oldboy‘s Oh-dae Su, and Lee Byun-hyun, who was in J.S.A.: Joint Security Area long before being in The Good, the Bad, the Weird. The combination looks great, and the film looks like it could be a good one…maybe even a lot more than that. Read More »
Cool Posts From Around the Web:
