Succeeds in repulsing and enlightening viewers simultaneously, even if its views on self-sacrifice and redemption are cynical.

| Nov 4, 2013

Nasty is as nasty does, and this lurid if aspirational potboiler does its thing, but the camera could have been let in on the joke.

| Original Score: C | Sep 11, 2013

Oedipal metaphysics give way to something altogether more mundane, but Jo and Lee are committed leads, the former carrying the burden of the movie with motherly care and attention.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 9, 2013

Kim intends a parable about capitalism run amok, which is about as subtle as a wrecking ball aimed at the World Bank.

| Sep 6, 2013

The film is far from a masterpiece ... but it bristles with Kim's trademark anger and agony.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 5, 2013

Repellent on every level.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 5, 2013

There is a touch too much of the handheld camera, but in general one senses that the very quality of the way this film was made is one of its justifications for being and for its raw moments.

| Jun 17, 2013

After being subjected to disturbing scenes of abject cruelty, rape and torture, my reactions shifted from squeamish revulsion to a reluctant yet growing appreciation for Kim's thematic ambition.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 13, 2013

The film's big reveal may not come as that much of a surprise; you may figure out where it's going well before the end. But it's the getting there that is, if not exactly fun, then certainly hypnotic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 31, 2013

Fascination returns at the stirring climax, when the plot neatly twists and the film's apparently simple message turns deeper, and blacker.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 31, 2013

A mother's love for her child takes on brutal new meaning in Pieta, a film by Kim Ki-duk that's as hard to watch as it is to forget.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 30, 2013

May not rank with the operatic madness of Park Chan-wook, or the visceral overkill of Kim Jee-woon, but if you're still not sick of feeling sick, then Pieta might be the movie for you.

| May 17, 2013

The performances of these two leads are compelling and the Cheonggyecheon area can almost be seen as another character in Kim's morality tale.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 17, 2013

Expectedly gruesome in some of its details. But it's the explicitness about capitalism's emotional wreckage that gives this micro-budgeted drama a gut-punch heft.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 17, 2013

The newest masterpiece of sex and brutality by South Korean wild man Kim Ki-duk.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 17, 2013

Filled with feisty women and cowering men, "Pieta" twists human emotions into pretzels of perversion.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 16, 2013

Kim offers no easy answers, and never backs away from the toughness of the questions, in a film that's ugly in both its material and its presentation.

| May 16, 2013

Thou shalt not borrow, nor maim those who owe interest, preaches this obsessive auteur, offering one more near-mute seeker of justice. The tragic perversity is gripping.

| May 16, 2013

For all its cringe-inducing horror, "Pieta" is visually restrained, striking visceral blows with psychological precision while making little use of gore.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 16, 2013

This is brilliant in some stretches and deplorable in others, with the director's usual extreme violence and depraved sexuality.

| May 16, 2013