The Grandmaster
Action. Directed by Wong Kar-wai.
Opening Aug. 22
Ip Man (Tony Leung) is a martial arts specialist who enjoys a peaceful life with his wife (Song Hye-kyo) and two children in southern China. While Ip is training, he is challenged to a duel by Gong Yutian, a martial arts master known for his 64 hands technique. Ip wins, much to Gong’s surprise. He later runs into Gong’s daughter, Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), who visits Ip to regain her father’s honor. The two form a special bond through an intense fight and part ways. The country then goes through chaotic times following the Japanese invasion. Ip and Gong Er lead separate lives but are somehow inexplicably connected by a series of unfortunate events.
The Flu
Drama. Action. Directed by Kim Sung-soo.
Opened Aug. 14
A deadly strain of the avian influenza virus H5N1 suddenly spreads, causing widespread destruction in Bundang, a city of high-rise apartments outside of Seoul. The disease infects its victims through the respiratory system and it takes only 36 hours for the infected to die. People are helpless against the airborne disease and the number of infected increases quickly, spreading chaos. As a precaution against the worst-case scenario, the government orders a complete shutdown of the city to protect the capital Seoul from the virus. As the people struggle to survive within those walls, infectious disease specialist In-hye (Soo Ae) and rescue worker Ji-goo (Jang Hyuk) go into the abandoned city to find a cure to control the epidemic.
The Place Beyond the Pines
Crime. Drama. Directed by Derek Cianfrance.
Opened Aug. 1
Motorcycle stunt rider Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling) works in a traveling act for state fairs, barely making ends meet. During the fair in New York, Glanton gets a visit from his ex-lover Romina (Eva Mendes) who recently gave birth to his son. Glanton quits his job as a stuntman to stay in town to provide for his family, but turns to robbing banks. This puts him on a collision course with ambitious rookie cop Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), who is also a new father and seeks to quickly move up the ranks in a police department riddled with corruption. While Cross chases down Glanton, they get in a gunfight and Glanton dies. The sweeping drama unfolds over 15 years as the two high school boys find out their fathers’ tragedy.
The Terror Live
Crime. Directed by Kim Byung-woo.
Opened Aug. 1
Due to an unsavory incident, star anchor Yoon Young-hwa (Ha Jung-woo) is pulled from the TV news and is now hosting a radio show. One day during his live show, Yoon receives a phone call threatening to blow up a bridge in Seoul. At first, he takes it as a joke and tells the terrorist to proceed, but soon he realizes that the threat is real. Realizing this could be his one chance to get back to being a newscaster, Yoon broadcasts the phone call with the terrorist live on TV, unaware that the situation is about to quickly take a turn for the worse.
Snowpiercer
Action. Sci-fi. Thriller. Directed by Bong Joon-ho.
Opened Aug. 1
Based on the French novel “Le Transperceneige” by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette, the film is set in a future where a failed global-warming experiment has killed off almost all living things on Earth with the sudden onset of an Ice Age. Survivors live on the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine. As time passes, a class system evolves on the train: The elites inhabit the carriages in the front while the poor stay in the tail section. Those in the back start a revolution, attempting to kill the dictator Wilford (Ed Harris) and seize control of the engine, which the train’s elite considers “sacred.”
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