Country: South Korea

Despite not getting the rhythm completely correct throughout, it still reminds the viewer that Korea has an understanding of the quiet desperation of loneliness that has rarely been achieved in the West.

While it relies a little too much on the creepy long haired girl ghost plot device, ‘The Doll Master’ is an entertaining slice of freaky cursed doll horror.

Despite its obvious shortcomings, ‘The Foul King’ is an excellent advert for Korean cinema and retains a strong entertainment value even during its weaker moments.

Under all the zaniness, singing and the odd bit of blood, ‘The Fox Family’ is actually quite a sweet modern fairytale.

Wisely building to the big combat scenes, ‘The Front Line’ lets us, the viewer, get to know the characters and watch them transform through their actions and what they must go through to survive.

Kim Tae-Kyung’s ‘The Ghost’ rises well above the attempts of its contemporaries to cut an individualistic path through legions of countless ‘Ring’ imitators.

Essentially though, it’s a painfully predictable outing that is knocked down a notch or two by its awkward blend of genres.

‘The Good, The Bad, The Weird’ is a great achievement and another success for Kim Jee-woon and is most importantly big, bright and ballistic entertainment that should be seen on a screen as big as possible.

‘The Guard Post’ is a much more successful film than ‘R-Point’, in style, pacing, tension and acting, and a very satisfying and creepy slice of Korean ghostly horror.

However smartly presented this big budget hit is, it is the dry Korean eccentricity, Bong Joon-Ho’s confident orchestration and the actors at the forefront who make this so captivating.

Rittikrai fashions numerous scenes of mayhem and gets the flexible newcomer Na Tae-Joo to perform the kind of outlandish kicks that seem to defy logic.

With its refreshing 90-minute runtime and welcome 1990s action movie approach to delivering as many set-pieces as possible, ‘The Killer’ may lack overall character development, but it delivers stellar done-for-real action.