Director Sang Sun-Woo has been the guiding force behind a series of often visionary films notable for their willingness to take chances. A PASSAGE TO BUDDHA was the stroking updating of a Buddhist scripture; LIES, conversely, was his unrated tale of sexual perversion; A PETAL is one of the more shocking stories of childhood lost; A ROAD TO THE RACETRACK is a penetrating battle of the sexes. With MATCH GIRL, Jang updates the legend to modern Korea - of course, with a differences. A clumsy, dull man in his early 20s is a social failure and probably doomed to poverty and loneliness, but in a Seoul rippling with video game parlors, he finds a game that operates on a different level. Giving away more would take away from the surprise to be enjoyed here.Jang keeps his allegory cooking with a striking set of characters (all of them after the Match Girl), and a playful humor that works even on multiple viewings. Each of Jang's film's has a sense of visual freshness. but this one is a complete surprise.

What kind of movie is this? Ummm.. well it's... weird. It's VERY weird actually... It's like someone wanted to make mixture of Fallen Angels, Nowhere to Hide, Avalon, Matrix, Unreal Tournament, Rainbow Six and... Little Matchgirl!I have to say that I liked this movie. It was beautiful, strange and full of humor and spectacular action. The actors were good and the effects were mostly brilliant.I'm not going to tell you anything about the plot, because... it's so strange, twisted and complicated and you don't really need to know it before you see the movie.I think that the weirdest thing in this movie is that they used NYLON BEAT'S song in the movie! It was quite surrealistic to watch a South-Korean movie and listen to a FINNISH popmusic! I have to say that I HATE Nylon Beat, but somewhy their music worked in this movie... and actually all music in this movie was quite good.I would recommend this movie to anyone who likes to watch original an different movies..... this definitely is a DIFFERENT movie...

RESURRECTION OF THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL is an oddball of a movie. It's half satire, half parody, and sometimes plain silliness. The director is an Indie favorite, but for some reason he was given a lot of money and told to make a movie out of it. Well he did, utilizing every single cent, but the problem is that he didn't have his heart in it. As a result, MATCH GIRL is visually competent and even terrific, but narratively speaking, it's a total mess.There are some good ideas here, such as the mocking of Hollywood films driven by special effects. And yet the movie never really makes you laugh. There are no chuckles to be had, and if anything the film just feels incredibly half-hearted on just about everything it attempts. Again, there just doesn't seem to have any focus to the picture, or any actual WILLINGNESS to make a good movie.For what it is, MATCH GIRL certainly looks nice. It's just not worth talking about that's all.4 out of 10(go to www.nixflix.com for a more detailed review of this movie or reviews of other foreign films)

... the makers watched Matrix? perhaps Avalon? thinking: we can do that, too? well... cut out all those oh so funny scenes, focus on the story-line and you get a nice and interesting movie. Still fun to watch, just don't expect too much and try not to compare this one to any other movie...