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HanCinema

HanCinema is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Panos Kotzathanasis, William Schwartz.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Bogotá: City of the Lost (2024) William Schwartz It's hard to watch Kook-hee's story unfold with any real sympathy. He's not even very competent at being a gangster.
Posted Aug 06, 2025  Edit critic review
The Priests 2: Dark Nuns (2025) William Schwartz A very apt example of smothering its interesting ideas in the service of overly complicated worldbuilding.
Posted Aug 06, 2025  Edit critic review
You Will Die In 6 Hours (2024) William Schwartz Adapted from a Japanese mystery novel, You Will Die In 6 Hours renders itself needlessly boring by going out of its way to give the viewer too much information nullifying too many other possibilities.
Posted Jun 21, 2025  Edit critic review
The Third Way of Love (2014) William Schwartz It doesn't take long for this romance to get extremely trite and dull.
Posted Jun 21, 2025  Edit critic review
Hidden Face (2024) William Schwartz Even the queer ending is oddly believable, because all of these people are just so...weird, in a way that defies clear categorization.
Posted Jun 21, 2025  Edit critic review
Oldboy (2003) William Schwartz I don't think I can write in good conscience that this is a bad movie. The camerawork is excellent, as are the performances. There's just not much of a point to it.
Posted Jun 21, 2025  Edit critic review
Searching for the Elephant (2009) William Schwartz Weird for the sake of being weird, but in contrast to more typical weird films of this era, writer/director Jeong Seung-goo makes it fairly clear that this weirdness is largely self-imposed.
Posted Jun 21, 2025  Edit critic review
Love in the Big City (2024) William Schwartz A wedding isn't a wedding unless the people you platonically love and get impulsive tattoos with are there too
Posted Jun 21, 2025  Edit critic review
Harbin (2024) William Schwartz Jung-geun and his compatriots struggle to believe in something, to do something, simply because the alternative is complete despair. And that's no way to live at all.
Posted Jun 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Decibel (2022) William Schwartz For a movie that's supposed to be about sound-sensitive explosives, Decibel is also quiet, with almost no music or sound effects to speak of but lots of fairly uninspired dialog that doesn't do much except repeat information that the viewer already knows.
Posted Jun 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Devils Stay (2024) William Schwartz The twists are pretty obvious. I feel like simply writing out the plot like that is enough to spoil the entire movie, really, since it's so obvious that So-mi isn't really dead there's not a lot of tension.
Posted Jun 18, 2025  Edit critic review
The Peter Pan Formula (2006) William Schwartz This movie doesn't really go anywhere. Which is sort of the point- Han-soo doesn't see any sort of future for himself, which makes it awfully difficult for him to motivate himself to do much of anything except masturbate.
Posted Jun 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Confidential Assignment 2: International (2022) William Schwartz A smarter script would comment on the irony of Cheol-ryong supposedly living in a police state yet it's Jin-tae who's used to taking advantage of ubiquitous CCTV cameras to hunt down crooks without having to actually chase them.
Posted Jun 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Count (2020) William Schwartz A surprisingly cogent theme of Count is that unearned victories damage the winner as much as the loser, because they can never live down the idea that they're a cheater even if what happened wasn't their fault.
Posted Jun 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Hansel & Gretel (2007) William Schwartz As the days goes on, Eun-soo slowly starts being less scared for himself and more scared for the children, despite how explicitly frightening they are.
Posted Jun 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Love Reset (2023) William Schwartz The script is remarkably inventive and funny, self-consciously loaded with romantic comedy tropes yet never being overly self-congratulatory about them.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Handsome Guys (2024) William Schwartz As a horror comedy, what Handsome Guys really needs are solid jokes- and it has plenty of those. The script even manages some excellent ones in the flashback scenes with no major cast members and a frankly terrible white actor.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Troll Factory (2024) William Schwartz If you didn't like the prologue, everything that follows is working under the exact same logic of attributing borderline magical powers to Internet posts.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Victory (2024) William Schwartz Instead of dealing with the more interesting worldbuilding, Victory deals a lot more with comparatively contrived drama, like a mostly pointless love triangle or one of the girls leaving the team.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Uprising (2024) William Schwartz More perceptive readers might be annoyed that I'm discussing popular cultural trends about the Japanese invasion of Korea more than I am Uprising proper, and there's good reason for that. Aside from the metatext, this movie is surprisingly forgettable.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Usu (2021) William Schwartz To the extent Usu has an interesting idea, it's that this is a road trip movie which aims to replicate the actual circumstances of a road trip as opposed to the romantic idea of a road trip as it's more commonly seen in popular culture.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Killer Toon (2013) William Schwartz Cool concept and cool execution. I would welcome more movies with its sense of innovative visual design.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
The Puppet (2013) William Schwartz Ostensibly, the story is about Ji-hoon abusing hypnotherapy for selfish ends- but I constantly found myself wondering exactly who was actually puppeteering who.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Horror Stories II (2013) William Schwartz From shock, to introspection, to humor, the movie anticipated my mood and delivered.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Secretly, Greatly (2013) William Schwartz There's only really one joke- contrasting the super-cool Ryoo-hwan with his retarded alter ego. This actually works a lot better than it should.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Born to Sing (2013) William Schwartz A feel-good movie in the best sense of the term- a reminder that most of our problems are pretty small and can be dealt with if we only have enough courage.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Forest Dancing (2013) William Schwartz There is, in fact, very little literal dancing in this film. The rhythm moves at its own sensual, visual click. It's a place to unwind- much like the actual Seongmisan Village.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Montage (2013) William Schwartz The terror mainly comes from the quiet moments, where the audience has no idea what will happen next, and even a fakeout ends up leaving us in a mildly panicked state.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Happiness for Sale (2013) William Schwartz Not an especially innovative or inventive film. But it has excellent camerawork, beautiful set design, good performances, a charming script, likable characters, and is just overall extremely well-done.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Boomerang Family (2013) William Schwartz I counted over half a dozen narratives that could be described reasonably well as being a plot. But none of them are really explored.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Running Man (2013) William Schwartz As long as Jong-Woo's running, we've got a good movie. But once he starts acting on his own, everything that was so special about the first part just sort of evaporates away.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Gyeong-ah's Daughter (2022) William Schwartz A remarkably strong expression of familial estrangement.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Pilot (2024) William Schwartz This basic farce, this mockery both of traditional media and social media in terms of image-making, is what makes Pilot a genuinely funny movie with a lot of great gags.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Officer Black Belt (2024) William Schwartz At first glance, probation officer in training isn't really a very strong film premise. And at second glance it...still isn't much of a film premise.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Revolver (2024) William Schwartz As motivations go, aspirational homeowner isn't a very good one, which probably goes a long way to explaining why "Revolver" had such a lukewarm performance at the box office.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
12.12: The Day (2023) William Schwartz Hwang Jung-min is borderline genius in the way he presents General Chun as a surprisingly apolitical figure whose main grievance is his belief that other people are belittling him behind his back.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Dream (2023) William Schwartz by and large, "Dream - 2020" is the exact same kind of inspirational story it seems to be trying to parody, where homeless people pull themselves out of poverty, or at least misery, by just working hard.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
By the Stream (2024) William Schwartz For nearly his whole career, Hong Sang-soo has made films about pathetic men in artistic circles and the women who inexplicably love them. Somehow, he always comes up with a distinct variation on this theme, and "By the Stream" is no exception.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Mission: Cross (2024) William Schwartz Despite being billed as a comedy, "Mission Cross" isn't really funny. I don't mean that it's unfunny, exactly, the script just doesn't really put that much of an emphasis on humor.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Project Silence (2024) William Schwartz Infrastructure disasters are pretty scary and dangerous without needing to throw murderous assassin dogs in there. There was already a collapsing bridge and a toxic gas leak. What do the murderous assassin dogs really add?
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Following (2024) William Schwartz So-ra is an implausibly successful social media influencer, and the more "Following" gets into her backstory the sillier the whole plot becomes.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Cobweb (2023) William Schwartz Focuses mainly on the absurd dramas of film production, with Director Kim's legitimacy as an artist rather paradoxically confirmed by his genuine obliviousness to everything that's going on with his cast and crew.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Gentleman (2021) William Schwartz The concept is extremely obligatory, like some producer somewhere just really wanted to make a cerebral crime thriller with stylish characters and didn't especially care whether any of their actions made sense.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Motherland (2022) William Schwartz A tremendously sweet, accessible film. Even if the story beats aren't exactly ambitious, it's always a joy to see stop motion in action.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Hijack 1971 (2024) William Schwartz Very little even really happens. Despite several passengers getting named parts I can barely remember anything about any of them.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Wonderland (2024) William Schwartz Despite the big budget pretensions, Wonderland is very much an emotional melodrama about coping with loss and appreciating how even a perfect facsimile of a loved one can distort a person's perspective about what their relationship really was or is.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Alienoid: Return to the Future (2024) William Schwartz At times managing to be science fiction, wuxia swordplay, action cop, and oriental fantasy. In practice this looks about as silly as it sounds, which is pretty much the whole point, yet the internal logic is always remarkably sound.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Escape (2024) William Schwartz The text uses such archaic stereotypes about North Korea that until a cell phone pops up at the halfway point, I didn't even know what decade the story was supposed to be taking place in.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Big Match (2014) William Schwartz A very long and very arbitrarily paced movie that never really seems to go anywhere and keeps delivering big climaxes only to assert that no, the movie's still not over yet.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Horror Mate (2023) William Schwartz Despite only being ninety minutes along, Horror Mate so often feels like it's trying to drag its feet trying to get anywhere that the movie felt a lot longer than that.
Posted Nov 05, 2024  Edit critic review
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