Popular reviews

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★½ 1

  Wow. This is the most straightforward Hong film since The Day He Arrives, it has a two-part structure and occasional repetitive echoes, but it remains focused and direct in a manner he rarely goes for. The only distancing effect here is the one the audience brings with their likely awareness of the Korean tabloid coverage of Hong and Kim romance. As usual with Hong he is operating into the dual modes of his careful attention to the small time minutiae of his character’s interactions and the large demonstrative feeble-like quality of the tale his editing brings together about them. Here that means Kim Min-hee character has an inevitable destination on the beach at night alone as the title promises. Her…

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 5

  this film is a flat out blessing; cinema this potently personal, profound and parked on the edge of reality & the moving image. docufiction as fiction, and the tragedies of life seeping their way into the Projections of our Selves. the life becomes the screen and the screen, before us, which is part of All Lives, transports us into the lives & tough times of those willing to shed their skin, and stand Naked in honesty of the hurt they've caused. the love they've found, and the feeling of sinking your feet into the beach's sand during the evening, as you ponder the friendships; the relationships that Dissolved over time or, worse yet, popped like balloons suddenly swept so swiftly into the past -- best of friends dissipate into faceless silhouettes.

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  Review by Michael Sicinski ★★★★ 16

  [8]

  "The man who asked the time, later on the window-washer...these guys popping up. Do you think that's Death?"

  This was a question posed to me by The Perspicacious Shelly Kraicer, who has had the good fortune to see Hong's latest film twice. It's highly plausible, especially given the way the window-washer is just hovering on the balcony toward the end of the film, his task completed but staring into the hotel room like a creep. But what's more significant than the particular details is the fact that this is a question that can be legitimately posed in a Hong film. The man who for so long has drawn comparisons to Rohmer is now possibly incorporating elements of Buñuel or…

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  Review by deah

  someone needs to tell Hong sang-soo that making a movie about an actress who had an affair with a married filmmaker with the actress you cheated on your wife with irl is a level of self indulgence to rival woody allen’s lmao..

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  Review by Arthur Tuoto ★★★★★

  Bem a cara do Hong Sang-soo fazer o filme mais impiedoso da sua carreira justamente quando é pra tratar sem muitos rodeios da própria vida pessoal. Não que todos os outros já não fossem em algum nível sobre isso, mas aqui parece que o próprio espírito de Maurice Pialat deu uma assombrada gostosa no cara. Mesmo pra quem não tá ligado no relacionamento dele com a Kim Min-hee é um dos filmes mais desoladores nessa relação entre romance e isolamento, nessa culpa implícita que acaba destruindo todo círculo social possível. Tem uma desesperança tão franca, tão não hesitante e livre de qualquer projeção distanciadora que a única coisa que sobra é uma morbidez muito bruta. A própria figura que persegue…

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  Review by dylan gelula ★★★★★ 4

  I like how if you like one of his movies you will like all of them. And I do. Appreciate its realism in depicting how many times someone talking to Kim min-hee would just be like “you’re so pretty”

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  Review by vanessa ★★★★★ 2

  "Where's love? It's not even visible. You need to see it in order to search for it."

  I actually watch this movie 5 times over the years, I just hesitated to write a review about it, because I didn't know how to put it into words my feelings about him, but the film explores the power dynamics between colleagues, acquaintances, friendship and gossip. This is the beauty and strength of Hong Sang-soo’s filmmaking; he gently moves the viewer into witnessing basic everyday occurrences and conversations. We witness the intricacies that take place during cigarette breaks, long drunken dinners, awkward cups of coffee, walks in a park, visiting tourist attractions, lonely film festivals and cold grey walks on the beach at…

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  Review by Muriel ★★★★★

  let’s get rid of all the men and love each other 

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  Review by Diogo Serafim ★★★★★ 2

  an open wound, those who dream to love and those who dream suicide are but one. sang-soo goes pialat, modulating his formal emphasis not towards a specific expansive cosmology as he usually does, but towards a more unswervingly frontal exposition of his efforts. the arrogance of a tormented man, his need to palliate his pain with expression, bumptiously maneuvering the object of his suffering as a means of reconciliating himself with existence.

  young-hee tries hopelessly to consociate reality by clinging to nature, but she only finds a self-destructive state of frustration, regret and holistic anguish. while she drifts further into oblivion, forever fleeing afar, until she permanently leaves his sight and he weeps behind the camera. because some wounds simply won’t heal.

  ‘i can just die anytime. i’d like to just fade away graciously.’
  ‘but isn’t it better to live?’
  ‘you can’t love, so you cling to life, right? because you can’t love for real, you take that at least.’

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 2

  Early thoughts..

  I never understood when Hong said he was more influenced by Cezanne than any other filmmaker, until now...

  And even outside of its considerable formal/structural merits, this is personal filmmaking taken to an almost unparalleled degree of self-inquiry, both for its director and lead actress - it's perhaps necessary to be aware of the South Korean media circus surrounding Hong Sang-Soo and Kim Min-Hee's affair in 2015/6 to fully understand what is happening here...also because of this it seems more collaborative than HHS's prior efforts, lending itself to a sense of equality between performer and director which I haven't experienced before. Truly remarkable...I've always liked HHS but admittedly considered him a bit slight (but that was always his…

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  Review by Wes ★★★★★ 1

  "It was the same thing every day. But it was peaceful."

  what i love about hong sangsoo is that his films are like having conversations. each of them unique, inviting, revealing. On the Beach at Night Alone however goes deeper in that it feels like hong sangsoo is having a conversation with himself, his relationship to film and the actors that occupy them, and with us, creating a text that is frighteningly vulnerable. vulnerability of course isn't a new concept to his films, but the meticulous camerawork that i can always expect from him blurs the line (much like he did with Right Now, Wrong Then) between audience and director. it is a fascinating conversational type of filmmaking that will never not pull me in again and again.

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  Review by KYK ★★★★★

  wait...tha fuk... the director she had an affair with looks exactly like the older lady friend she hangs out with in germany