Chan-wook Park, Lady Vengeance

No less a critic than Dave Kehr of The New York Times considers Chan-wook Park's Lady Vengeance to be the film of the year. Shown in the Venice and New York Film Festivals, the film confirms the South Korean Park as one of the world's great living filmmakers. Park's ascension began with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, a brutal film that was followed by the equally violent Oldboy, an international success. This year, the U.S. saw the release of the horror triptych Three... Extremes, with offerings from three of Asia's famously edgy directors: Hong Kong's Fruit Chan (Dumplings), Japan's Takashi Miike (Box) and, easily the most disturbing of them all, Park's Cut, where a famous, handsome film director arrives home to find a stranger has tied his wife, a pianist, to the piano, and will slice off her fingers one by one unless he follows orders and murders the small child he's kidnapped.

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