Gwoemul (The Host)

Bong Joon-ho's 2006 monster tale,  The Host, brings a level of sophistication to the monster film genre with a combination of several genres all working to develop  the narrative and its characters.  It's about a family that becomes torn through this huge fish-monster crawling out of the water and killing/taking people back to his short of sewer-lair. The story follows a snack car employee Park Gang-Du , his father  Hee-Bong , daughter Hyun-Seo ,sister Naam-joo ,who's an archer , and Gang-du's brother Nam-il , an alcoholic who has not done much since graduating.  The monster takes his daughter Hyun-seo seemingly killing her until Gang-du recieves a call from Hyuen-seo informing him that she was in fact still alive but trapped in the monster's sewer-lair.  Gang-du and his family set out to save his daughter but they face strong opposition from the government.  The leads are good,  particularly the young girl, Park Hyun-Seo played by Ah-Sung ko, who is very convincing and strong in character.    The other characters continually walk that fine line between comedic and serious performances.  That raises another interesting aspect, instead of following a standard route with the characters, their development follows the unusual turns of the film itself and we're treated to surprises and failures when we don't really expect them.  The monster is really well-designed and doesn't look like any other screen monster that i have seen.  The animation of it is excellent too , and the creature does almost feel like it's alive!  The strongest aspect of this film has to be it's cinematography.  The audience gets to visually see a dark world created in Korea as a result of a Foreign monster who creates a domestic threat to Korean life.

Madeo (Mother)

Mother is a murder mystery, a melodrama, a black comedy, a keen social satire and much more.  Bong's work is layered with the skill of comedy and drama ,both often so dark and thick that you can put ur hand in and not feel the bottom.

              An unnamed widow,living alone with her only son,sells medicinal herbs in a small town in    Southern  South Korea while doing unlicensed acupuncture to the town's women on the side. Her son Do-joon is shy, but prone to attack anyone who mocks his intellectual disability. A school girl has been found murdered,her body dangled off a roof for the whole town to see. With only circumstantial evidence placing Do-joon near the scene of the crime, the police are happy with their investigation and arrest the boy. The police trick Do-joon into signing a confession, leaving him facing a long-jail sentence. Her quest to prove his innocence forces her to take up arms against an all male-establishment ,the dead girl's enraged family and Don-Joon's duplicitous pal Jin-tae,an amoral layabout who provides some of the films shocking moments. 

 Kim's performance captures perfectly the sense of a woman at odds with a society she can't or doesn't want to understand,her doomed quest leading her into even more uncompromising situations. Bold,unpredictable and quietly devastating,Mother is Bong's great creation.