William Schwartz
Tomatometer-approved critic
I started reviewing South Korean movies in 2012 for HanCinema (www.hancinema.net) following a lifelong interest in film. I have also done extensive research into older South Korean film as well as North Korean films at the Korean Film Archive in Seoul.
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Devil's Peak (2023) |
The setting of suffocatingly pointless rural America is a timeless one. Jacob McNeeley’s end of the story, by contrast, engages in cliches, and not even very good ones. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 22, 2023
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Miracle: Letters to the President (2021) |
The sentiment in Miracle: Letters to the President is fantastic, as are its performances. - HanCinema
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| Posted Mar 22, 2023
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Ice Merchants (2022) |
Existentialist in its depiction of a father and son in a daily grind to deliver ice from their mountainside home to the town down below…by skydiving. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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The Flying Sailor (2022) |
Brief and existentialist in its depiction of an olde tyme sailor hurtling to and from the heavens in the wake of a massive explosion. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Haulout (2022) |
Very little actually happens in Haulout, but the documentary is fascinating for its live depiction of a giant herd of walruses just overwhelming the little island and being very loud. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Stranger at the Gate (2022) |
Documentaries aren’t generally structured around plot twists. Well, Stranger at the Gate is, to the documentary’s detriment. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Night Ride (2020) |
Awkward both mechanically, since she doesn’t know how to operate the tram, but also socially, since she also doesn’t know how to deescalate scuffles between passengers. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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It's a Wonderful Binge (2022) |
The trouble with It’s A Wonderful Binge is that there isn’t anywhere for the story to escalate to. When we open up with mascots punching kids and the Christmas Owl going on a rampage, there’s not really a more intense setting. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Aurora's Sunrise (2022) |
We actually see Aurora on the run, the genuinely alien nature of this horrifying context aptly reflected through art that’s recognizably human, yet placed from a different era. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Eternal Spring (2022) |
There’s no way to sugarcoat this. Eternal Spring is a Falun Gong propaganda film. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 11, 2023
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20th Century Girl (2022) |
What changes Bo-ra from Kim Yoo-jung to Han Hyo-joo? How did those teenage experiences turn her into the woman she is in the present day? "20th Century Girl" doesn't have a good answer for that. She loved, she lost, and now she sells beauty lotion. - HanCinema
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| Posted Mar 04, 2023
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Broker (2022) |
Despite competency in parts, I found the malaise in "Broker" to be underwhelming overall, mainly because the movie's lacking in any particularly obvious point. - HanCinema
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| Posted Mar 04, 2023
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From Where They Stood (2021) |
From Where We Stood is among the most pretentious and pointless documentaries I have ever seen, and this isn’t a designation I put upon the movie lightly. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 01, 2023
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Decision to Leave (2022) |
Decision to Leave doesn't work well as either a romance, a melodrama, or even a detective story. It's a movie that could only really possibly appeal to people who really, really love film noir. - HanCinema
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| Posted Aug 20, 2022
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RRR (2022) |
Wild, bromantic spectacle. With little more than hand gestures, our swarthy heroes rescue children, wrestle tigers with their bare hands, and even team up piggyback to shoot down their imperial nemeses. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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18 1/2 (2021) |
What matters to 18½ isn’t the exact vibe of the era as it is the greater satire. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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The Will to See (2022) |
Pretty much the only thing you’re likely to learn is that Bernard-Henri Levy is a very cool, very serious dude, especially when he helps Kurdish fighters set up a flag outside of some caves. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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The Roundup (2022) |
I don't think police brutality is all that amusing no matter how much charm and worksmanship is put into it. - HanCinema
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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Marmaduke (2022) |
Just a bad movie, in such a way I can barely even remember what the jokes were supposed to be. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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Charlotte (2021) |
‘Charlotte’ states its thesis clearly enough early on. You can’t expect life to love you. Rather, you have to choose to love life. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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Love and Leashes (2022) |
A fairly wholesome primer on what exactly dom-sub culture is. - HanCinema
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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Shark: The Beginning (2021) |
Woo-sol was bullied because he was scared of being hurt. He can only break free of that fear by accepting pain as a part of life and choosing his battles. - HanCinema
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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Yaksha: Ruthless Operations (2022) |
The plot in Yaksha: Ruthless Operations is quite weak, and the characters rather boring. - HanCinema
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York (2022) |
Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York is a charming story in part because its a depiction of a world where this kind of moralizing from celebrities and media platforms didn’t exist. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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Rifkin's Festival (2020) |
Rifkin’s Festival features a surprising twist on the usual Allen formula...there’s actually a fair amount of humility. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 13, 2022
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President (2021) |
The low-context President...does little to explain what Zimbabwe’s democracy is and why opposition candidate Nelson Chamisa has so much faith in it when the country is notorious for Robert Mugabe ruling it with an iron fist. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 13, 2022
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7 Grandmasters (1978) |
7 Grandmasters is a better film simply because it promises seven fights right there in the title and gives us plenty more besides. - SupChina
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| Posted Jul 08, 2022
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The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979) |
Even trying to look past these flaws, the movie isn’t particularly good. - SupChina
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| Posted Jul 08, 2022
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Out of the Blue (1980) |
The film begins and ends with her yelling about punk music into a ham radio to whatever person out there might be listening. Cebe is angry and frustrated in a way not that different from how a lot of people are today. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Apr 07, 2022
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Chernobyl 1986 (2021) |
High marks for backdrop and characterization but low marks on the climax having anything approaching an actual point. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Mar 25, 2022
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Shock Wave 2 (2020) |
Yau opens the movie with a glorious and hilariously pointless explosion of Hong Kong International Airport, mostly just to prove that he can put it to film. - SupChina
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| Posted Mar 25, 2022
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How They Got Over (2021) |
People who actually like to listen to the music in their music documentaries will appreciate that, whenever possible, director Robert Clem, lets us listen to almost an entire song. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jan 24, 2022
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Found (2021) |
Rather than getting into proper research centered around Liu, whose explanations of her investigative process are genuinely interesting, Found falls back on cliches. - SupChina
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| Posted Jan 24, 2022
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Maria Chapdelaine (2021) |
[Maria Chapdelaine] dedicates so much screen time to the greater Canadian landscape. In the early 20th century, nature was still a very dangerous place. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Dec 27, 2021
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Where Is Anne Frank (2021) |
Forman calls out the image of Anne Frank as being a kind of Magical Jew who believes people are inherently good rather than as a crabby teenage girl. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Dec 27, 2021
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The Survivor (2021) |
The Survivor is a bit of a mess structurally, using non-chronological ordering for no good reason, and Danny DeVito is barely even in it at all. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Dec 27, 2021
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The Odd-Job Men (2021) |
A senior plumber in Barcelona resists a new Moroccan apprentice. Partially this is because of racism but mostly because he's just a grumpy guy who hates change on general principle. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Dec 27, 2021
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Cinderella (2021) |
Amazon Studios' Cinderella is far from boring. It is, in fact, endearingly stupid in a way that's very easy to nitpick and mock. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Dec 27, 2021
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The Medium (2021) |
Genuinely intriguing presentation is mostly ruined when the story moves on to more boilerplate exorcist stuff. - HanCinema
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| Posted Dec 27, 2021
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Vivo (2021) |
Vivo is clearly aiming for the same pseudo-educational cultural experience that has become Lin-Manuel Miranda's calling card. Yet, in many ways, it's actually an even more antiquated view of Cuban culture than the stereotypes it's aiming to replace. - HanCinema
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| Posted Oct 02, 2021
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One Second (2020) |
Movie night is a huge community event in One Second because it's the only chance for the people to access the outside world. They convene not out of love for film, but community. - HanCinema
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| Posted Oct 02, 2021
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Nightmare (2000) |
You can also see flashes of tragic resignation in Ha Ji-won's performance that were much more effectively utilized in her later melodramatic career. - HanCinema
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| Posted Oct 02, 2021
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Phone (2002) |
Phone is at best a historical curiousity...it's not a movie that's much worth watching in any case. - HanCinema
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| Posted Aug 04, 2021
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Dragon Wars: D-War (2007) |
D-War is a complete waste of time that shouldn't be watched by anyone, for any reason. - HanCinema
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| Posted Aug 04, 2021
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Mr. Go (2013) |
Mr. Go is a delightfully whimsical movie, noteworthy mainly for its surprisingly sincere depiction of a generally absurd situation. - HanCinema
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| Posted Aug 04, 2021
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False Positive (2021) |
That's just the endpoint of Lucy's bizarre adventure, where she has to rationalize the fact that she feels like garbage with the fact that she's following her doctor's orders and that's what respectable people are supposed to do. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 30, 2021
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Scenes from an Empty Church (2021) |
Scenes from an Empty Church is immediately distinctive as a snapshot of COVID culture that's already unrecognizable, despite most of us having lived through it. - Book & Film Globe
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| Posted Jul 30, 2021
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The 8th Night (2021) |
The 8th Night is not a particularly weird movie, although there's definite menace in the atmosphere. - HanCinema
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| Posted Jul 30, 2021
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Inside the Red Brick Wall (2020) |
Pre-familiarity with the subject matter is clearly assumed with the editing, to the point that the documentaries are nearly useless to viewers hoping to be educated. - HanCinema
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| Posted Jun 26, 2021
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Plan B (2021) |
While Sunny and Lupe may have their typical teen girl insecurities, they're for the most part cheerful relatable characters who use modern buzz words they don't totally understand to try and make sense of a world to which they're still trying to adapt. - HanCinema
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| Posted Jun 26, 2021
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