MikePadgett.com

• Director: Bong Joon Ho
• Korea, 2003
• 

Korean cinema is alive and kicking, emboldened and naive like a headstrong teenager with something to prove. One driver is undoubtedly a gutsy brew of high melodrama and truthful acting. Another might be that uniquely Korean gift for all things epic: simple, emotive storytelling with a keen directing wit.

Song Kang Ho runs the whole gamut as a twitchy detective who finds a sort of nobility in Memories of Murder, elevated by the soul searching investigation of a series of killings. Together with out-of-towner Kim Sang Kyung, Song grinds painfully through crime scenes and suspect interviews, finding few clues yet finding himself. Based on a true story, the film plays it humble with excellent humour and fine performances but classic status seems assured within minutes.

Bong Joon Ho here deserves a place on the growing list of talented directors to emerge from the peninsula during the last decade. He deals sensitively with provocative content and provocatively with scenes of rural Korea: it’s a subtle, successful contrast like the perfect balance embodied in the national flag. This is a beautiful film about the preservation of humanity in the face of inhumanity and it’s a triumph of style and substance.

• Director: Joel Coen
• United States, 1996
• 

Despite the Coen Brothers’ claim as the movie opens, Fargo is not a true story. That’s just as well, because this savage, bleak and ugly little tale is surely far too clever, funny and heartwarming to be true.

Jerry Lundergaard (William H Macy) can’t keep his debts secret for much longer, so he arranges to have his wife kidnapped and returned for a ransom paid by his father-in-law, which he intends to split with the kidnappers. Unfortunately, the plan goes horribly wrong and police officer Marge Gunderson (an Oscar-winning Frances McDormand) steadily tracks down the culprits.

For me, this movie is the Coens’ best to date. Their scripts are often sharp (another Oscar here), the direction is usually tight and the acting is always good, but on Fargo it all dovetails nicely.

• Director: Roger Donaldson
• New Zealand / United States, 2005
• 

The “Indian” is a vintage motorcycle modified by a vintage eccentric, New Zealander Bert Munro. His dream is to break a land speed record on the salt flats of Utah, but first he has to get there.

A gear change for Donaldson, who brought us such bloke-ish blockbusters as Species and Cocktail, Indian is more than just a man’s movie.

Indeed, this film is an uncomplicated triumph in several ways: it’s based on a wonderful true story, it took twenty-five years to get it made and Anthony Hopkins’ performance must be a career best.