10 Great Movies With 100% Rotten Tomatoes Ratings You Probably Missed

8. Poetry

When Western audiences think of South Korean cinema they tend to think of the controversial action thrillers which have been huge hits in the West - Old Boy, I Saw the Devil and other hard-hitting movies which impress with their visceral thrills and over the top violence. Lee Chang-dong's Poetry is an altogether different affair, telling the story of an elderly woman Yang Mi-ja (Yoon Jeong-hee) who discovers she's in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and decides to try and write poetry - something she readily admits she has no capacity for - before her faculty for language loses her completely. Adding to her troubles is her wayward grandson, caught up in an incident in which the sexual abuse of a fellow student led to her suicide. If the wonderful camerawork is more fluid and mobile than Japanese master of cinema Yasujiro Ozu, the themes in Poetry make it notable in comparison - this is a thoroughly compassionate portrait of a woman nearing the end of her life finding peace and beauty amidst the imperfections of the world she inhabits.