Jin Goo 진구

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The Showdown is set in 1615, where soldiers of Joseon are sent to China coerced by the Ming dynasty and fight for their lives. Hyeon-myeong, a Joseon general with a dangerous ambition (PARK Hee-soon, A Barefoot Dream), Do-yeong, son of a fallen noble family (JIN Goo, Mother), Du-su, a soldier who ran away from the field against orders (KOH Changseok, Secret Reunion) lead the story. Totally defeated in a fight with the Qing, they encounter each other at a tavern in Manchuria. As the Qing army continues to chase after them, they eventually become an unforgivable enemy to each other. Producer KIM Su-jin had explained when they were preparing this film that they had wanted to make this “as similar to a KUROSAWA or TARANTINO film as possible." The key to the plot is the ironical drama where "there is an enemy approaching from the outside while on the inside each of the three characters have their own reason to have be on guard against each other and there’s not knowing who will kill who." Hyeon-myeong and Do-yeong are from the noble class and become brothers during the battle. Yet soon they confront each other because of their varying ambitions and desire for power, and when Du-su who’s dragged to the army because he is poor, joins them the conflict only intensifies. The movie discusses their life stories, trauma, friendship, conspiracy, betrayal of friends during fight for power and enmity, and conflict of class.

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Kimchi Wars is about Seong-chan, a cooking genius and advocate of tradition, who must compete against Jang-eun to make the best kimchi dish. Jin Gu follows in the footsteps of Kim Kang-woo and Kim Rae-won, who played the lead in the first film and TV series, respectively. "I felt pressured because the previous works were hits and both actors received favorable reviews as Seong-chan. But my worries disappeared once I saw the script, because it features more dramatic elements, such as Seong-chan's dark past. And I think my image works as a plus in that regard," said the 29-year-old, who is known for playing strong, moody characters, most notably his critically acclaimed supporting role in Bong Joon-ho's "Mother." He added that the film was a great pleasure to make since cooking is a hobby of his, though emulating a professional chef meant undergoing "200 hours of chopping radishes" in order to perfect the motion. After the filming he was able to make kimchi with his mother, which proved to be a memorable experience.

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Do-joon's Mother (Kim Hye Ja) lives with her son Do-joon (Won Bin) behind the murky shop where she sells medicinal plants and roots, and practices acupuncture without a license on the side. Do-joon is very good looking (he's played by Won Bin, after all), but he's not quite right in the head, rather like Song Gang-ho's character Gang-du in The Host, and like Gang-du, there is a hint that his impairment is his mother's fault. He's not retarded, but his dullness is difficult to define: he has no attention span to speak of and a poor memory; at twenty-seven he still sleeps with his mom, with a hand on her breast. He hangs around with Jin-tae (Jin Ku), who's also good-looking in a bad-boy way, and is a bad boy - a tough, cynical hustler who feels constrained by his small-town life and dreams of adventure. Jin Ku plays Jin-tae energetically, full of frustrated vitality, and by the end turns out to be a bit more sympathetic than you'd expect. koreanfilm.org

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A college boy Su-min is looking around paintings in a gallery when he hears someone screaming for help. That's where he first meets a high school girl, Hyun-jin. They soon meet again in a park, and she realizes he is gifted; he can read people's mind. He doesn't want to be near her but somehow he happens to talk with her all the time, which makes him confused. They unexpectedly run into a kidnapping case and she is getting sure about his supernatural power. Hyun-jin tags after him, and tries him in many different ways to figure out his gift. He thinks she is so annoying and frustrating; however he finds strangely himself feeling something about her. As he is entangled in Hyun-jin's test, he ends up cleaning a restaurant to cover for expensive lobster dishes. Later on Su-min and Hyun-jin go to an amusement park with the money from Su-min's cleaning work and surely she never stops testing him even at the park. Since they see the kidnapping suspect by chance at the park, they get a step closer to real state of the kidnapping.

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Chul-min is a simple truck driver transporting liquor, vegetables and other necessities. When his daughter is diagnosed with a congenital heart disease, he scrambles to borrow money from his friends to pay for for the operation but cannot raise the necessary amount. He follows a friend to a gambling house to raise the outstanding money, but luck deserts him and he loses everything. In a further bout of bad luck, he enters the wrong room in the gambling den only to witness a gang boss stabbing several victims to death in a murderous rage. After his friend begs for Chul-min's life, the gang boss sends him to a faraway province to dispose of the corpses.
Carrying the dead bodies in his truck, Chul-min listens to the radio for company on the nerve-racking journey. The news program is about extraordinary serial killer Young-ho who is under police escort to a mental asylum. As Chul-min passes a country lane, he spots a car that has fallen into the ditch. Inside, he finds the bodies of several murdered policemen. After some hesitation, he leaves to complete his duty to bury the corpses. However, a policeman unexpectedly flags his truck down and orders him to drive him to the exact province that he is heading to. As Chul-min unravels the real identity of his passenger, his nightmare really begins...

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Epitaph, the debut film of the Jeong Brothers (Jeong Beom-sik and Jeong Sik -- "Jeong Brothers" is how they prefer to be listed in the credits), is a refined, intelligent and surprisingly effective Gothic horror. Well cast and acted, Epitaph is particularly notable for its close family resemblance to the slightly pale and artificial exquisiteness of certain Japanese genre films: it in fact can be favorably compared to the high-end Japanese adaptations of the willfully perverse but sparingly beautiful Edogawa Rampo mysteries (Tsukamoto Shinya's Gemini, Kawashima Toru's The Man Who Travels with Picture Relief). Epitaph has a convoluted (but currently fashionable) multiple flashbacks-and-time lag structure, but does not devolve into a confusing mess, which is a huge relief. The story is roughly divided into three segments. In the first, the young Jeong-nam/Masao (Jin Ku, who played Jo In-sung's young punk lieutenant in Dirty Carnival) finds himself attracted to a stunning-looking young girl's dead body, allegedly a victim of a failed double suicide.