THE MOON (2024)

Everyone and their space-traveling dog know about NASA and Soviet nostalgics may look back fondly to Roscosmos, but KARI? Big chance you’ve never heard of South-Korea’s space agency before and you’d be forgiven for it. In the global Space Race Korea is like a runner whose left leg is shorter than his right. And things don’t improve in the future. Narae-ho, their first bid to put their first men on the moon, ends up in flames seconds after being launched. Five years later, in 2029, they attempt a second mission, which is only slightly more successful. Yes, the launch flies by smoothly, but things go horribly awry when a solar flare heavily damages their spacecraft and kills two of the three crew members. The sole survivor? Trained army man Hwang Sunwoo whose training, unlike his two dead crewmates, didn’t include handling the ship’s controls… Luckily he’s getting a crash course on how to, well, crash on the moon by an expert flight director that KARI brings out of early retirement, Kim Jaeguk aka the guy that was in charge of the catastrophic Narae-ho mission. How could that possibly go wrong?
KARI may be a poor man’s NASA, but over the past decades big-budget Korean blockbusters have proven again and again they have nothing to envy from Hollywood. Spacecrafts spiraling madly out of control, all-obliterating meteor showers… Director Kim Yong-hwa (ALONG WITH THE GODS 1 & 2) flexes his muscle in terms of stargazing spectacle, but that’s not all you can feast your eyes on. There’s also Do Kyong-soo (or for all of you K-Pop connoisseurs, D.O. from the band EXO). He’s pitch-perfect as a terrified but bold (and beautiful) space cadet facing almost certain death.