Continues a long-present Hongian motif: a fascination with the camera’s function as a tool for chronicling, if not quite correcting, emotional ruptures and patterns of personal failure.

A genuine sense of change and progression from the more serious-minded, self-critical films that preceded it.

These are the best films of 2016.

With each new movie from Hong Sang-Soo comes the possibility, however slight, that the minutely-focused Korean craftsman is going to finally drop the ball, finally lose the fine balance of replication and experimentation that’s by now become a trademark of his canon. Averaging roughly one movie per year for the last decade or so, Hong remains less prolific than consistent, …

[xrr rating=4.5/5]Considering the subject, the best way to review Hong Sang-soo’s latest might be to rephrase Trevor Link’s excellent summation of Oki’s Movie, which came out last week and, unsurprisingly, involves many of the same themes, moods and methods as this film. There are crumbling relationships, college professors and students, filmmakers and actors, off-kilter zooms, as well as the requisite …

[xrr rating=4.0/5]By now, critics have noted Hong Sang-soo’s tendency to repeat himself, in plots, themes, character types, style and tone. His harshest critics might say he’s making the same film over and over again, an exercise in redundancy, but two factors mitigate Hong’s repetitiveness. First, the film that he’s been making and remaking is a good one. Second, Hong transmutes …