masterly master lee

a home for forgotten and famous korean pulp, its heroes, its heroines, and its pulpeteers

Archive for nationalist twaddle

Virgin Terrorist Mayumi’s Apocalypse 마유미 1991 review

Mayumi_(film)No, this is not a porn movie. It is as bad as a porn movie, though. Worse actually, because it trades the hanky panky for government rhetoric. It’s propaganda porno. It’s essentially what legendary director Shin Sang-ok 신상옥 had to do before being allowed back into South Korea after his forced stay in the North (no, don’t get the Master started on this). Read the rest of this entry »

Hanbando 한반도 2006

hanbando.jpgThe man who brought us the reasonably enjoyable cop flicks Two Cops 투캅스 I, II, III, the overly nationalist action drama Shilmido 실미도 and the action blockbuster Public Enemy 공곡의적 is back. This time Kang Woo-suk tells a story set in the not-too-distant future in which North and South Korea are planning to reopen the Kyungui Railway that once connected the southern tip of the peninsula with its northern top. But alas, in an act worthy of Emperor Ming the Merciless (and about as plausible), Japan throws a spanner in the works Read the rest of this entry »

Haan! 한길수 2005

HaanHaan. It’s Dutch for rooster or cock. It’s also the slightly unfortunate English title for the Korean version of Pearl Harbour: Han Kilsu 한길수. Based on honest-to-god true facts, this is the story of Han Kilsu, a Korean expatriot in 1940 in Hawai’i. As Korea had been colonized by Japan, Read the rest of this entry »