As Mickey 17 takes audiences into Bong Joon Ho’s singular world once again, we dive into the Letterboxd community’s ranking of the director’s entire filmography from best to worst.
It’s been six long years since the Bong Hive was born, and thrived so much, with the world premiere, Palme d’Or and eventual Best Picture win of Bong Joon Ho’s masterpiece Parasite. It was a film that stole the hearts of the Letterboxd community and reminded us just how rich the South Korean writer and director’s oeuvre to that point already was.
The cast of Mickey 17 knows this: the actors bringing to life Director Bong’s latest picture, his first entirely English-language film which adapts Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, are, like us, cinephiles first and foremost. “He was always one of those directors—I had a similar experience with [David] Cronenberg—who was on such another level that they’re not accessible,” Robert Pattinson, who plays Mickey Barnes in the film, tells Letterboxd at the world premiere in London. “When I heard [Director Bong] was doing a movie all in English, was in LA, wanted to do meetings… I just felt like meeting an alien. I was so excited about it, he’s so wonderful.”
Steven Yeun, working with Bong Joon Ho for a second time after starring in 2017’s Okja, agrees that the filmmaker exists in a league of his own. “I love getting notes from Director Bong,” he says. “He’s so generous, he loves his characters. When he talks about them, it’s not through judgment, it’s this little aspect of that character that he really likes.” Both Pattinson and Yeun name the director’s sophomore feature, 2003’s Memories of Murder, as their favorite of Director Bong’s works. Yeun summarizes the magic of it all: “You just want to live in his frames—you want to contribute to that frame.”
The Letterboxd community wants to live in so many of Director Bong’s frames, over and over again—whether the chugging dystopian train only moving in one direction in Snowpiercer; the peaceful, distant Korean mountaintops of Okja; the rain-soaked streets of small-town southern Korea in Mother and Memories of Murder; and, of course, that house in Parasite. That Oscar winner remains our highest-rated of the decade (and one of our top 10 highest-rated titles of all time, and soon one of two pictures that are part of the Five Million Watched Club!), and Mickey 17 was the most anticipated movie of 2025. So, without further ado, we present all the films directed by Bong Joon Ho in order of their average Letterboxd rating, from lowest to highest.
“Rough around the edges in many ways and far more cynical than other work from Bong Joon Ho, Barking Dogs Never Bite stares directly at our self-manufactured problems and allows them to spiral out of control in a film that is far funnier than it has any right to be.” —Movie Good or Movie Bad?
“Yoooo this is obviously not everyone’s cup of tea (or, uh, brick of insect-mush) but I loved it so much. Bong Joon Ho’s movies really all revolve around the same ideas, but they approach and tackle those ideas in very different ways. This makes such an interesting double feature with Parasite, because Bong is the kind of director who feels like his distinct personality and soul are carried over between every movie, but his actual stylistic approach often changes drastically from film to film. It’s also the rare feat of storytelling that manages to function as both a surface-level thriller AND an entirely allegorical parable; though I think the parable part works a whole lot better, because if you take everything literally as it is on the page here, you’ll find plenty of CinemaSins nonsense to nitpick. I don’t care in the slightest.”—Houston Coley
“This film is like an R-Rated Miyazaki. It’s a good film that’s so heartfelt and sweet, but most importantly is extremely well made. Bong Joon Ho is such a meticulous artist and it really shows on screen. Everything looks so clean and smooth and the story has great pacing. Also, I unhappily it that in the third act of this I was eating an Italian sub with salami. Talk about a mood killer.” —Levi
“Very happy to report that this is yet another Bong hit. Such a delightful time at the movies. Hilarious and strange and consistently surprising. Works as a goofy out-and-out comedy, a heady sci-fi blockbuster with ideas on its mind, an obvious but effective political satire, and a sweet and affecting romance. Pretty rare these days to see a major studio movie as zany and inspired and go-for-broke as this. Loved it and it only gets better the more I sit with it.”—julie
“On one level obviously just works as a thrilling environmental anxiety monster blockbuster, that opening chaos is loud and gnarly and has some of the cleanest camera movement you could hope for out of a sequence like that, but it wouldn’t truly be a Bong Joon Ho movie without smuggling in some genuinely affecting generational class drama (‘you can hear a parent’s heart break for miles‘) and satirical bureaucratic cynicism. A lot more Romero in this than I ed; The Crazies especially. ‘Morons, to the end.’”—Josh
“Powerful portrayal of unconditional love, shocking and heartbreaking from beginning to end. That’s a given, this is a Bong Joon Ho murder mystery we’re talking about, where your prediction does not mean shit and any plot progression can be massively derailed with each tiny bit of information revealed. Not the revenge thriller I was looking for but ended up absolutely loving it anyway. Going to make it a tradition to watch this on every Mother’s Day for the next few decades.”—Yi
“The film ends, but its weight lingers. The unanswered questions, the quiet desperation, the rain-soaked silence, it all feels too real. It’s not just a story, it’s a wound that refuses to heal. Some truths remain lost, and that is the saddest part of all.”—Zeeshan
“You know that feeling when the movie is so good that when it ends, you feel as though a large part of your self has also departed from your body and eventually left behind a void inside you? That’s exactly how I felt after watching Parasite. I will be picking this out of my teeth for weeks, maybe months, or even years to come. If you think you know what’s coming or what Bong Joon-ho has in store for you? Maybe think again. Probably my favorite ‘ghost’ story out there. Best to watch with your whole family. #BongHive”—Hungkat
‘Mickey 17’ is in theaters globally now courtesy of Warner Bros.
