Release Year: 2004

If you want to experience a beautiful, touching drama with a dreamlike atmosphere, then ‘3-Iron’ comes highly recommended.

This is a lustrous production that flatters to deceive, aiming for the intellect, but eventually preferring to show empty spectacle and supposed depth.

There are moments of entertainment here, but the flat denouement sums up the lack of real polish that the preceding 100 minutes had provided.

The story is nothing new or revolutionary and takes just a little too long to get where it is going. Still, the film is made with skill and the comedy often hits home just as much as the fights do.

Well worth giving your time to, as long as you’re prepared for things to go out on a whimper rather than a bang.

‘Be With You’ is a Japanese drama that is easy to appreciate on the surface as it is a well-made, well-acted work that skilfully tells a story without ever getting side-tracked in needless sub-plots.

Takeshi Kitano has played a gallery of rogues during his career, but his performance as Shunpei Kim, a brutal Korean immigrant in Yoichi Sai’s ‘Blood and Bones’ is his most powerful.

It’s basically just ninety minutes of acrobatic fight sequences, nail-biting stuntwork and laughable plot devices, so enjoy!

‘Breaking News’ is punctuated by tension-filled action set-pieces, but its main draw is the sharp characterisation and the insightful critique of the media that fills most of the running time.

An unflinching look at a violent part of Korea’s history and how the terror of war really does tear people apart both figuratively and literally.

It’s certainly worth spending some time in even just for the fantastic visuals on offer but may also draw you into the melancholic characters and the sombre story right up to its tragic conclusion.

This is still the kind of delicate drama that has enough of a hook to keep the audience enthralled until the end.