Korea

3 Ninjas

A slightly better movie than you might think, this variation on The Karate Kid finds three youngsters helping out their grandfather in his fight against evil ninja warriors. The real secret weapon here is director Jon Turtletaub, paying some dues on this 1992 family feature; he's since gone on to direct John Travolta in Phenomenon and Sandra Bullock in While You Were Sleeping. --Tom Keogh

Here's the exciting action-adventure hit that sparked ninja-mania with audiences everywhere! After an organized crime ring proves to be too much for the FBI, it's time for the 3 NINJAS! They're three brothers trained in the ways of the ninja. And the fun kicks off when the action kicks in! Using their martial arts skills, they team up to battle the crime ring and outwit some very persistent kidnappers! Mixing the high-kicking fun of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES with the humorous pranks of HOME ALONE, 3 NINJAS creates a high-energy, fun-filled treat for everyone!

Oldboy

In the realm of revenge thrillers, you'd be hard pressed to find more ultra-violent vengeance and psycho thrills than in the creepy story of Oldboy. This Korean import made a pop splash at the Cannes Film Festival and during its limited theatrical run thanks to the imprimatur of Quentin Tarantino, who raved about it and its visionary director, Chan-wook Park, to anyone who would listen. It's easy to see why QT fell in love with the grindhouse attitude, fast-paced action, violent imagery, and icy-black humor, but it's a disservice to think of Oldboy as another Tarantino homage or knockoff. The darkly existential undercurrent in the themes that Oldboy traces over its life-long narrative arc is much more complex and deeply disturbing than anything of its kind. The movie's tagline is, "15 years of imprisonment... 5 days of vengeance." The imprisonee is Oh Dae-Su, an ordinary Joe who is snatched off a Seoul street corner and locked away in a dank, windowless fleabag hotel room for the aforementioned 15 years. Just as abruptly he is released, and thus the five days begin. Why did this happen to Oh Dae-Su? Ah, but that would be telling, and in fact we don't know ourselves until the final wrenching scenes.

Oldboy breaks into a classic three-act saga, the first of which details the hallucinatory period of imprisonment in which Oh Dae-Su wades from mild insanity to outright psychosis in the hands of unseen yet attentive captors. Act 2 is the revenge, when an entirely different tone takes over and Oh Dae-Su moves with single-minded purpose and clarity. It's this section that has gained the most notoriety, primarily for the claw-hammer dentistry scene, the one-man-army tracking shot, and the wriggling octopus that Oh Dae-Su consumes in a sushi bar (he's been dead so long he simply needs life back inside him in any way possible). In act 3, answers finally start to emerge and the sinister atmosphere grows even more profound--not without a healthy dose of extra bloodletting, of course. Oldboy is an undeniably poetic masterpiece of tension, fury, and dynamic craft. Ultimately, its epic cycle of tragedy is of the sort that mankind has been inflicting upon itself for all time. Some of the images may be gruesome, but all converge into a kind of beauty. It's in the telling of this lurid tale that these details become one and the memories of pain ultimately heal. --Ted Fry

Oh Dae-su is an ordinary Seoul businessman with a wife and little daughter who, after a drunken night on the town, is abducted and locked up in a strange, private prison. No one will tell him why hes there and who his jailer is and his fury builds to a single-minded focus of revenge. 15 years later, he is unexpectedly freed, given a new suit, a cell-phone and 5 days to discover the mysterious enemy who had him imprisoned. Seeking vengeance on all those involved, he soon finds that his enemys tortures are just beginning.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring

A tiny Buddhist monastery floats on a raft amidst a breathtaking landscape tended to by a solitaryMonk. Into this serene setting comes a young child who will become the Old Monk's protege... and so begins a lifelong journey of hope despair passion and redemption in a film hailed as "A triumphof sheer cinematic craft" (Rene Rodriguez Miami Herald). From the brash actions of youth through the dawn of adolescence and the fullness of adulthood one man's life lessons are learned as seasons pass his emotional inner life changing as the landscape around him. Award-winning Korean writer/director/editor Kim Ki-duk has crafted a lushly exotic yet universal story about the human spirit and its evolution from Innocence to Love Evil to Enlightenment and ultimately to Rebirth that Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News calls "A beautifully composed canvas the sort of film one falls into resurfacing at the end with great reluctance."SPECIAL FEATURES: Previews Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 (Korean) English French SubtitlesSystem Requirements:Running Time 103 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN/LATIN Rating: R UPC: 043396041271 Manufacturer No: 04127

Working miracles with only a single set and a handful of characters, Korean director Kim Ki-Duk creates a wise little gem of a movie. As the title suggests, the action takes place in five distinct episodes, but sometimes many years separate the seasons. The setting is a floating monastery in a pristine mountain lake, where an elderly monk teaches a boy the lessons of life--although when the boy grows to manhood, he inevitably must learn a few hard lessons for himself. By the time the story reaches its final sections, you realize you have witnessed the arc of existence--not one person's life, but everyone's. It's as enchanting as a Buddhist fable, but it's not precious; Kim (maker of the notorious The Isle) consistently surprises you with a sex scene or an explosion of black comedy; he also vividly acts in the Winter segment, when the lake around the monastery eerily freezes. --Robert Horton

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Before he made the notorious cult hit Oldboy, South Korean director Chan-wook Park created Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, an equally gruesome yet elegant meditation on revenge. Desperate to get a kidney transplant for his dying sister, a deaf and dumb young man named Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin, Save the Green Planet!) kidnaps the daughter of a wealthy industrialist named Park (Kang-ho Song, Shiri). Despite Ryu's best intentions, things go horribly awry, setting in motion a series of escalating revenges--to describe the plot in more detail would undercut the movie, because much of its power comes from the spare and skillful storytelling. Chan-wook Park is careful to ground the audience in the characters' emotional lives; when the violence begins, the bloody events unfold with the hypnotic power of the revenge tragedies of the Shakespearean era, which had over-the-top plots and littered the stage with bodies, yet were full of rich poetry. Park's eye for startling images and careful editing creates a visual poetry, grotesque yet often haunting. Certainly not a film for everyone--squeamish viewers had best beware, while anyone who wants their violence flagrant and guilt-free will be disappointed--but cinephiles looking to have their hearts squeezed along with their stomachs will enjoy Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. --Bret Fetzer

Unable to afford proper care for his sister dying from kidney failure, Ryu turns to the black market to sell his own organs only to end up cheated of his life savings. His girlfriend urges Ryu to kidnap the daughter of wealthy industrialist Dong-jin, who recently laid him off. Ryu agrees, but unforeseen tragedies turn an innocent con into a merciless quest for revenge. Bound by their personal losses and deep-seated anger, the two men are thrust into a spiral of destruction.

Together

Director Chen Kaige moves from the epic sweep of Farewell My Concubine to a small, intimate story about a boy and his father--but creates just as rich an emotional impact. Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi) takes his 13-year-old son Xiaochung (Tang Yun) to Beijing in the hope of finding a teacher who will foster the boy's talent on the violin. The adolescent boy soon becomes infatuated with one of their neighbors, a golddigger named Lili (the lovely Chen Hong), and becomes a pupil of Professor Jiang (Wang Zhiwen). But Liu discovers that a good teacher is not enough; if Xiaochung is to succeed in the world, he must have a teacher with connections--even if this ambition threatens to pull father and son apart. Together would be sappy if it weren't for the emotional honesty of the actors; under Kaige's clean direction, the movie is graceful and deeply moving. --Bret Fetzer

Chen Kaige, director of the OscarÂ(r)-nominated* Farewell My Concubine, composes a richly imagined and 'tender symphony (Screen International) about love, ambition and destiny in China's high-pressure world of classical music. Surging with warmth, humanity and a sense of humor (The Hollywood Reporter), this lyrical, enchanting heartwarmer (Variety) is a 'sure-fire crowd-pleaser (Los Angeles Times)! When violin prodigy Xiaochun and his father headto Beijing seeking fame and fortune, they soon discover a fierce world of cutthroat ambition. But when Xiaochun is adopted by a famous music tutor, success finally seems within reachuntil a shocking discovery begins to unravel his entire world and the boy must make the most difficult choice ofhis life. Can he achieve the fame his father had always hoped for without losing the extraordinary passion that sets him apart? *1993: Foreign Language Film

Tae Guk Gi - The Brotherhood of War

A big, bruising epic of the Korean War, Tae Guk Gi smashed box-office records when it played in South Korea in 2004, almost as though the country needed to re-live the trauma at a 50-year distance. For the rest of the world, this movie looks like a ground-level reckoning in a melodramatic key, with an authentic feel for battle lines as well as home front. Tae Guk Gi follows two brothers--one uneducated and forceful, the other intellectual and reserved--as they are united and then divided by the conflict. The broadly emotional story has some of the power of tales of the American Civil War, when family members found themselves on opposite sides of a battle. Director Kang Je-gyu , who made the lively female-assassin hit Shiri, takes a blunt approach to the material (including a Saving Private Ryan-style framing device). And at 150 minutes, he has plenty of time for head-splitting, blood-spraying combat. This movie is meant as a punch in the stomach, and it connects. --Robert Horton

In the powerful tradition of Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers comes this box-office hit from Korea.From the director of Shiri comes the epic tale of two brothers. Jin-tae, a shoemaker, has worked tirelessly to provide money for the younger Jin-seok to go to college. But each of their hopes and dreams are shattered when both are forced to join the army against their will. Torn away from home and family, Jin-tae vows to protect Jin-seok despite the dangers-and the cost. In the searing crucible of battle, fate intervenes, forcing their bonds of faith, love and trust to be tested time and again in this suspense-filled, action-packed war drama.

Oldboy (Three-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition)

In the realm of revenge thrillers, you'd be hard pressed to find more ultra-violent vengeance and psycho thrills than in the creepy story of Oldboy. This Korean import made a pop splash at the Cannes Film Festival and during its limited theatrical run thanks to the imprimatur of Quentin Tarantino, who raved about it and its visionary director, Chan-wook Park, to anyone who would listen. It's easy to see why QT fell in love with the grindhouse attitude, fast-paced action, violent imagery, and icy-black humor, but it's a disservice to think of Oldboy as another Tarantino homage or knockoff. The darkly existential undercurrent in the themes that Oldboy traces over its life-long narrative arc is much more complex and deeply disturbing than anything of its kind. The movie's tagline is, "15 years of imprisonment... 5 days of vengeance." The imprisonee is Oh Dae-Su, an ordinary Joe who is snatched off a Seoul street corner and locked away in a dank, windowless fleabag hotel room for the aforementioned 15 years. Just as abruptly he is released, and thus the five days begin. Why did this happen to Oh Dae-Su? Ah, but that would be telling, and in fact we don't know ourselves until the final wrenching scenes.

Oldboy breaks into a classic three-act saga, the first of which details the hallucinatory period of imprisonment in which Oh Dae-Su wades from mild insanity to outright psychosis in the hands of unseen yet attentive captors. Act 2 is the revenge, when an entirely different tone takes over and Oh Dae-Su moves with single-minded purpose and clarity. It's this section that has gained the most notoriety, primarily for the claw-hammer dentistry scene, the one-man-army tracking shot, and the wriggling octopus that Oh Dae-Su consumes in a sushi bar (he's been dead so long he simply needs life back inside him in any way possible). In act 3, answers finally start to emerge and the sinister atmosphere grows even more profound--not without a healthy dose of extra bloodletting, of course. Oldboy is an undeniably poetic masterpiece of tension, fury, and dynamic craft. Ultimately, its epic cycle of tragedy is of the sort that mankind has been inflicting upon itself for all time. Some of the images may be gruesome, but all converge into a kind of beauty. It's in the telling of this lurid tale that these details become one and the memories of pain ultimately heal. --Ted Fry

Tartan's top selling Asia Extreme title gets the deluxe treatment with this ultimate collector's set. Oh Dae-su is an ordinary Seoul businessman with a wife and little daughter. After who, after a drunken night on the town, he is locked up in a strange, private "prison" for 15 years until he is unexpectedly freed. He's determined to discover the mysterious enemy who had him locked up.

Zen Buddhism: In Search of Self

The Guyver

Natural City

Rebuilt after a devastating war, the world of 2080 has given rise to advanced technologies including the creation of cyborgs. Created with artificial intelligence (AI), human-like emotions and great strength, they serve one master for their entire lifespan. When the cyborgs revolt, R (Yoo Ji-tae)and Noma (Yoon Chan), Rs best friend and commander, lead an elite military squad ordered to eliminate the rebellion. Unbeknownst to anyone, R has fallen in love with Ria (Seo Rin), his cyborg, and is illegally harvesting AI chips from dead cyborgs in order to save her life. Torn between his love for Ria and the battle to save mankind, humanitys fate hangs in the balance.