Top 10 films of 2016

This is a top 10 list with a pretty big caveat. I simply do not get the time to go to the cinema with anywhere near the kind of frequency with which I used to manage. In total I have managed to see just 27 films first released in 2016, and that really is not any kind of list from which to assemble a legitimate top 10. That said, the 10 I enjoyed the most are all films that I would enthusiastically recommend to others. My recommendation is to view this not as a proper "Top 10" - there are almost certainly films I have not yet seen that would supplant others on this list - but simply as a list of 10 films released last year that I think are well worth viewing.

The list got delayed by about a week because I took a while to successfully see Moana, and given my opinions on other Walt Disney animated features, it seemed a likely bet for a top 10 slot. Let's count them down from #10 to #1, and see if it made the list.

Train to Busan (2016)

Seok-woo is an office-bound Korean workaholic in the middle of an unpleasant divorce from his wife. Seok-woo's daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) is not handling the separation well, and for her birthday persuades him to escort her on the train from Seoul to Busan. On the same day a virulent zombie outbreak spreads across Korea - including onto the train. Now Seok-woo, Su-an and a shrinking group of passengers must fight to stay alive until the train reaches its final destination.

Generally speaking, Asian films do not go too well with English-speaking audiences. Occasionally a film will break out and actually get a theatrical run in the USA, or the United Kingdom, or Australia. These outliers are usually representative of the most effective and crowd-pleasing films the continent has to offer, including films such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero, Shall We Dance, or The Host. Yeon Sang-ho's new zombie thriller Train to Busan is the latest film to join that list. It has already been a massive hit in its own country, and is receiving a proper cinema release in both the USA and Australia. If you are not a fan of zombies, then this is categorically not a film for you. If you are an enthusiast for all things undead and hungry, then rest assured this is the best zombie film in years; probably the best since Danny Boyle remixed the genre with 28 Days Later.

The Handmaiden (2016)

In 1930s Korea a pickpocket named Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) is persuaded by the deceitful Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) to masquerade as a maid to a rich, disaffected heiress named Hideko (Kim Min-hee), in order to help him defraud her of her fortune. Fujiawara's master plan hits a snag, however, when Sook-hee and Hideko begin to fall in love.

In many respects, The Handmaiden is a wonderful oddity. It is the latest film by the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Park Chan-wook, whose previous films - including Oldboy, JSA: Joint Security Area, and Sympathy for Mr Vengeance - have established him a major creative force in his own country and a cult favourite internationally. This new film is an adaptation of the similarly acclaimed English-language novel Fingersmith, by Welsh author Sarah Waters. While the novel was set in 19th century England, Park has relocated the action of 1930s Korea: a country occupied by the Japanese, and where aspiring rich aesthetes seem more interesting in adopting Japanese language and culture than in defending their own heritage.

This film is a genuine surprise, in fact it is one of those films best viewed with as little knowledge about its storyline as possible. What I can say is that it is one of the best films I have seen this year, and showcases one of the world's most talented directors at the height of his powers.

2,000 minutes

Let's say you had 2,000 minutes that you wanted to spend watching movies. That breaks down to 33 hours and 20 minutes, so you could stock up on meals and snacks and run from 8.00am to 12.40am over a weekend. What would you watch with those 2,000 minutes? I am a pretty keen fan of Asian cinema, so let's say you wanted to see some great and entertaining Asian films. You could keep things simple, I suppose, and watch the first 21 Godzilla films in a row. On the other hand you could get an in-depth understanding of a particular director, like Akira Kurosawa: 2,000 minutes would get you from his debut feature Sanshiro Sugata all the way to The Lower Depths (his 17th).

I think a little variety would be better. Under the cut are my picks, pretty much made by browsing along my DVD collection until I hit 2,000 minutes of viewing time. These are not the best Asian films ever made, and they don't really follow any kind of pattern or logic beyond them being films that have really entertained me and that I would enthusiastically recommend to others. 20 movies in all: 12 from Japan, six from Hong Kong and China, and two from South Korea. Watch them over a weekend, or watch them occasionally over the course of a year. Either way, these are 20 Asian films I would wholeheartedly recommend.

Last Knights (2015)

It is obvious from the key art used to promote Last Knights on home video that it is what industry types refer to as a 'europudding'. That is, it's a film project whose budget has been raised by a wide consortium of European screen agencies, financiers, and independent distributors. These kinds of patchwork arrangements inevitable result in a particular kind of movie. With so many different country markets to be catered for, there is usually a desire for action over dialogue - no mass audience likes subtitles that much - and predictable stories over inventive ones. European independent distributors seem to like period action films with plenty of sword-fighting, and each year you can find another few dozen of them released direct to home video and streaming without ever seen the inside of a cinema.

Keeping all those international funders happy also requires a pretty internationalised cast. That is certainly the case with Last Knights, which makes use of Morgan Freeman and Clive Owen as its stars and then adds in actors from New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Israel and Iran, and I am certain many other countries. Get a semi-noted actor from as many countries as possible and you have a marketing hook in each of those countries. For the record, this is officially a United Kingdom/South Korea co-production.

The last feature of the europudding is that, generally speaking, they're rarely very good. Script quality seems to follow very distantly behind if the cast's names can sell the movie at a film market, or if there are plenty of action bits, and so on. That in mind, Last Knights is something of a surprise. I think it is really rather good indeed. It's that rare unexpected gem from the DVD library's weekly shelves.

Asako in Ruby Shoes (2000)

U-In (Lee Jung-jae) is a disenfranchised Korean public servant who has a boring life, constantly under-achieves and spends most of his spare time masturbating to Internet pornography. Aya (Misato Tachibana) is a depressed Japanese health centre employee who buys shoes he can't afford and plans to commit suicide by holding her breath. To earn some quick money Aya turns to performing for a soft-core pornographic web site - at which point her and U-In's lives collide.

I really don't know quite what to make of Asako in Ruby Shoes. It is a 2000 comedy drama from Korean writer/director E. J-yong. It effectively tells two stories in parallel. One of them follows an endearing and rather funny young woman struggling to find her place in the world. The other follows a pervert and sex pest, the sort of man who hides in the women's toilets in the hope of glimpsing whatever woman he is currently fixated upon. Lee Jung-jae gives a great and rather engaging performance as Korea's worst slacker, but in truth he's almost too ugly a character to like.

Portrait of a Beauty (2008)

Shin Yun Bok (Kim Min-sun) is a painter-in-training in 18th century Korea. While skilled and creative, he has two problems. Firstly, he is constantly driven to explore unconventional styles and subject matters for his art - matter which is oftentimes controversial and obscene. Secondly, he is actually a young woman, disguising her true identity to maintain her family's honour within Korean society's strict gender expectations.

Portrait of a Beauty is a sumptuously staged historical drama. It looks great, with colourful costumes and sets, beautifully composed camera angles and reasonably strong performances. It's also a pretty awful film: twisting history for entertainment purposes, titillating audiences with regular and lengthy sex scenes, and indulging in exactly the kind of typically over-the-top and overwrought melodrama that makes so much Korean entertainment a chore through which to sit.

Wonderful Days (2003)

By the mid-22nd century, environmental pollution has all but wiped humanity from the face of the Earth. Now two communities remains: the rich, powerful elites of the city Ecoban and the "diggers" outside, who are exploited to mine for the resources needed to keep Ecoban's high-technology paradise working. Childhood friends Shua and Jay meet one another for the first time in a decade - only this time she works for Ecoban security, and he leads a growing revolution agains Ecoban's control.

Wonderful Days, released in some markets as Sky Blue, is a 2003 animated feature film from South Korea. It tells a fairly familiar science fiction story, and certainly keen fans of anime are unlikely to see any kind of story here they haven't already seen before - although it is well-expressed. Where animation fans are likely to find more worth is in the astounding manner in which the film has been animation - a process that involved traditional cel animation, computer-generated graphics and physical model work.

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

A family arrives in an isolated country house: a father, stepmother and two teenage sisters. From the outset it is clear that something is wrong. The father is having difficulty talking to his daughters, the stepmother appears to resent their not immediately accepting her in place of their mother, and the sisters themselves seem withdrawn and traumatised. As their backstory is gradually filled in, and the reasons for each of their behaviours become clear, tensions in the household increase to breaking point.

A Tale of Two Sisters is a South Korean horror film written and directed by Kim Jee-woon (The Good the Bad and the Weird, I Saw the Devil). It loosely adapts an old Korean folk story, "Red Flower, Red Lotus", and indeed that's the direct translation of its Korean title. This isn't a surprise from watching the film: between the woods, the creepy house, the evil stepmother and the two fearful sisters it has all of the trappings of a fairy tale from any number of nations or cultures.

It is also, by the way, utterly superb. This is one of my favourite Korean films: perfectly paced with a constant rising tension, and beautifully shot and edited.

The 14 best films of 2014

Unless you're a professional film critic, and can dedicate much of your working year to seeing every major and independent film release, compiling a 'year's best' list is a problematic task. Inevitably there are going to be critically acclaimed films that you miss, turning any amateur list into essentially a 'year's best... except for all of those other movies'. I missed quite a lot of films in 2014 that I expect could have made my list, including Whiplash, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Wind Rises and The Raid 2. I'll catch up with them all in due course, but for now they're out of contention for the list.

Take the list below not as some attempt at an authoritative 'best', but simply 14 films released in Australia for the first time in 2014 that I think are well worth your time in tracking down and watching.

The Day He Arrives (2011)

If you wanted to write an instruction manual on how to produce the most archetypal bad arthouse movie, you could do a pretty good job just cribbing every creative choice from The Day He Arrives. It's a 2011 independent drama from South Korea, and pretty much nails every cliche it can on its way through.

The film, which is written and directed by Hang Sang-soo, follows morose film director Seong-jun as he returns to Seoul to catch up with old friends and confront his past. He meets his friends, drinks in a few bars, reunites briefly with an old girlfriend, wanders the streets, and has a generally depressed and high introspective time of it. There's more than a little of Samuel Beckett to the film, since he pretty much does the same things with the same or similar people twice.

It's worth running through all of the ways in which this film irritated me, not for the purposes of review but as a warning for future filmmakers to aggressively avoid this sort of thing. Reviewing the film is actually pretty easy: it's a boring, self-indulgent waste of time, and thankfully its obscurity will make it unlikely that many will have the misfortune of stumbling upon it.

JSA: Joint Security Area (2000)

Park Chan-wook remains one of South Korea’s most acclaimed directors – and deservedly so. JSA: Joint Security Area would seem almost inarguably to be one of his best works.

A shooting has occurred across the demilitarised zone that separates North and South Korea. With both nations on high alert, an investigative team is dispatched on behalf of the United Nations. They are ordered to interview those soldiers involved and establish exactly what transpired that led to the fatal event. The diverging accounts, and the truth behind what happened at the titular “joint security area”, form the basis of this exceptional, unexpectedly human drama.

It is easy to fall into the assumption that there are two Koreas – the pro-US, democratic South and the anti-US, militaristic North. Korea is, culturally at least, still the one nation. Families and friends are separated across seemingly arbitrary border. The Korean War never actually ended – there was a cease-fire, but certainly no formal declarations or treaties exist. The demilitarised zone between the two Koreas remains a tense, rigorously monitored and patrolled border, and as such makes for a remarkable setting for a motion picture. It gives JSA an edge, as well as political machinations, the military and a constant sense of urgency.

Snowpiercer (2013)

17 years after a catastrophic accident freezes the surface of the Earth, the last survivors of the human race live on the Snowpiercer, a high-tech passenger train in perpetual motion. Those in the train's front carriages live decadent lives of luxury and comfort. Those in the tail live in cramped conditions and abject poverty, exploited by those in the front and kept in charge by violent armed guards. One tail-ender, Curtis Everett (Chris Evans), inspires a popular revolt. If he and his friends can take over the train's engine, they take over the world.

Snowpiercer is one of those marvellous kind of international productions that gets me tremendously excited: it's an English language science fiction thriller directed by a Korean, shot in the Czech Republic and based on a French graphic novel. It is also the best new film I have seen this year. It is tense, intelligently performed, inventively staged and emotionally powerful. Its director, Bong Joon-ho, has previously directed some of the best contemporary films of his home country, including Memories of Murder (2003), The Host (2006) and Mother (2009). They're all pretty much masterpieces of cinema. Snowpiercer is better.

Treeless Mountain (2008)

Two young girls, Jin and Bin, are unexpectedly sent to live with their aunt while their mother leaves to find their absent father. Before leaving she gives her daughters a piggy bank: when they behave, their aunt will give them a coin. When the piggy bank is full, their mother promises she will return. Left to their own devices with an aunt who does not particularly want them in her house, and with the piggy bank slowly filling up, Jin and Bin begin to question whether or not their mother will return at all.

Treeless Mountain is a South Korean drama by writer/director So Yong Kim. How the viewer will respond to the film is likely due to what sort of film they are expecting to see. It is a very slow, measured film, filled with small moments of character. It is shot in a very matter-of-fact, stripped-down manner. It exclusively follows the two protagonists, seven year-old Jin (Hee Yeon Kim) and five year-old Bin (Song Hee Kim). It does not follow a Hollywood-style three-act structure. Instead it’s more like a window into people’s lives. Alfred Hitchcock once famously stated that films were essentially life with the boring parts cut out. Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain is simply life.

I'm a Cyborg, but That's OK (2006)

Park Chan-wook remains a critical darling with international audiences, many of whom have experienced South Korean cinema either wholly or partially through his works. His third film, Joint Security Area, was one of the first films of the South Korean new wave to be widely seen outside of its home country. Further hits such as Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Oldboy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and Thirst have cemented Park’s position as the pre-eminent director of Korean film.

Wedged in the middle of this impressive resume is Park’s surreal 2006 comedy I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK. It was produced between Sympathy for Lady Vengeance and Thirst – both of those films gained a fairly wide international release. I’m a Cyborg mysteriously did not. It made me keen to track the film down and have a look.

Young-goon (Im Su-jeong) is a young woman who believes that she is a cyborg. After an attempt to ‘recharge’ that involves cutting her wrist, inserting some wires into her arm and electrocuting herself, she is committed to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. There she meets a succession of odd and delusional patients, and enters into a strange romance with Il-sun (Rain) – an anti-social kleptomaniac with a penchant for wearing hand-made rabbit masks.

The Host (2006)

Let me tell you about The Host. If you’re a fan of monster movies or South Korean cinema, it’s very likely that not only have you heard of, you’ve almost certainly seen it. You probably even own the DVD. And so you should, because this South Korean monster movie is one of the best motion pictures you’re likely to find, both in its home country and its genre.

There’s a creature stalking the Han River. Some people it kills and eats. Others it captures, and drags back to its lair, so that it can kill and eat them later. It’s an absolutely nightmarish creature, all legs and teeth and tentacles, too odd to fully identify and too fast and violent to see properly. Making a decent movie monster is hard work. It’s easy to make it look ridiculous, or unintentionally funny. The monster of The Host isn’t funny or ridiculous. It’s one of the scariest-looking things ever committed to film.

Its entrance, slipping down from under a bridge before rampaging across a local park, is a masterwork of action and suspense. I don’t think there’s been a scene as good as this since Jurassic Park, and I don’t think there has been a scene to equal it since The Host. A lot of people like Jurassic Park, as well as Jaws, and The Host is as effective and entertaining a thrill ride as both of those films.

The Restless (2006)

Originality may take a back seat to the visuals in The Restless, but when they're visuals as pretty as these it's sometimes difficult to mind that much.

Yi-gwak (Jeong Woo-seong) is a demon hunter on the run from the corrupt authorities in ancient Korea. A group of villagers slip him a sleeping potion in an attempt to capture him, and claim a much-needed reward. Yi-gwak does escape their trap, but falls into a deep sleep. When he awakes, he isn't in Korea at all, but rather the supernatural world of Midheaven - a place where the souls of the dead wait before they are reincarnated. There he is reunited with two people from his past: Yon-hwa (Kim Tae-hee), the love of his life, and Ban-chu (Heo Joon-ho), his former general and mentor. The problem is that the former has no memory of who she was, and the latter is leading a revolt in Midheaven to lead an army of souls into the material world.

Natural City (2003)

This is hell of a fun movie. Natural City is a Korean sci-fi action flick, boasting buckets of CGI backgrounds, slow-motion kung fu gunfights and impassioned melodrama. It's set in the near future, where the rich are heading off to off-world colonies and the poor are living out what life they can in the rain-slicked, neon-lit streets of a huge expansive city.

That all might sound a little familiar to you. Never mind. The film is based around a police officer employed to kill rogue cyborgs who - with an artificially induced shortened life-span - tend to go a little crazy in the final days before their de-activation. This too may sound a little bit like you've seen it before.

Okay so here’s the deal: Natural City is, for all intents and purposes, the Korean remake of Blade Runner. I use the word ‘remake’ rather than ‘homage’ deliberately. This is not simply a case of one film heavily inspiring or influencing the other. As far as Natural City and Blade Runner are concerned even individual shots and scenes are damn-near identical. Sure, the plot is slightly different and there are a bunch of neat new ideas thrown in, but this is not a film that can deny its pedigree – not while keeping a straight face anyway.

Quick (2011)

Former bike gang leader Han Ki-Su (Lee Min-ki) works as a motorcycle courier. One day, when unwillingly hired to escort his ex-girlfriend Chun-shim (Kang Ye-won) to a pop concert in which she is performing, he finds himself the unwilling accomplice of a mysterious figure who forces Ki-Su to deliver one bomb after another with the police in hot pursuit.

Quick was a smash hit in South Korea back in 2011, and thanks to Madman Entertainment it is now available on DVD in Australia. It's a very silly film: high on melodrama, over-the-top explosions and exaggerated performances. How much you enjoy the film likely depends on how you enjoy this sort of South Korean entertainment. It's a film culture that's very distinct, and often difficult for uninitiated viewers to digest.

For my part the film doesn't succeed. This is largely because it's just a bit too silly for me to take seriously, it's more than a little unfocused, and it has some fairly dubious gender politics at work.

The Last Stand (2013)

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the biggest name in cinema. He was one of the most iconic figures in American film, guaranteed to draw in an audience with his over-the-top muscular screen presence, thick Austrian accent and canny choice of populist action thrillers and comedies in which to star. Through The Terminator, Predator, Twins, True Lies, Kindergarten Cop and a string of other films, he firmly cemented his place as one of cinema's most recognizable - if not always most appreciated - actors.

Then he shifted into politics and - a few cameos aside - quit acting altogether. Now, to use a phrase that Schwarzenegger himself is fond of using, he's back, starring in his own action film again. He is 65 years old. He hasn't starred in his own action film in ten years; not since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003. So how did he fare?