133 minutes, 35mm, in Korean with English subtitles
Directed by: Park Kwang-Hyun
Starring: Jung Jae-Young, Shin Ha-Kyun, Kang Hye-Jeong, David Joseph Anselmo

Showtimes: June 23, 6:30pm at the ImaginAsian [SOLD OUT!]; July 1, 3:00pm at the ImaginAsian [Buy Tickets].

This is the big one. A massive blockbuster that garnered incredible word of mouth and ran for almost three months in Korea, WELCOME TO DONGMAKOL was Korea's number two movie of the year, selling twice as many tickets as KING KONG and more than HARRY POTTER and MR. AND MRS. SMITH combined. And that's the way it should be. A magical realist, hyper-stylized look at the Korean War, this is a sprawling, epic comedy that more than holds its own against the biggest bullies on the summer movie playground.

A fantasy set during the Korean War, Dongmakol is the name of an isolated village hidden so far up in the mountains that its inhabitants have no idea that Korea is being torn apart by a war just a few miles from their front doors. A band of North Korean ambush survivors, lost South Korean soldiers and a crashed American pilot all stumble across the village at the same time and have to put aside their differences in order to survive. It sounds like the most odious of sentimental clichés but, based on a popular play, the script and characters spin off in directions you would never anticipate and the visual set pieces – a sudden popcorn storm, a defending army of moths - are as gorgeous as anything ever drawn by Hayao Miyazaki. Which means that it's probably no coincidence that Miyazaki's constant collaborator, composer Joe  Hisaishi, has contributed the movie's achingly gorgeous score. By the time this mammoth, big budget, pitch-perfect movie rolls across its bittersweet finish line it's more than earned every laugh and tear it's wrung out of you.