SNOWPIERCER, a (mostly) English-language film by Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host, Mother) starring Tilda Swinton, Song Kang-ho and some other people

it should probably arrive in my town around the same time as the immigrant, which is another one the weinsteins are basically dumping.

the weinstein thing makes absolutely no sense, SP made fucktons of money overseas!

the weinsteins lost the battle over which cut of the movie would be released so to "save face" they are giving it a limited release in a handful of multiplexes (or "smarthouses") without much publicity

if you can figure out why the weinsteins repeatedly shoot themselves in the feet, i think we'd all love to know

just watched snowpiercer: enjoyable, but i can't imagine it making much money (or much of an impact on any level) in the states. can easily understand why the producers might have wanted to cut it into something more commercially appealing. not to say that they were right making the attempt, just that it isn't so hard to comprehend.

wanted to like this movie, but it just didn't move me much one way or the other. the allegory was too obvious and simplistic to be interesting, and i agree with millsner that the tonal fluctuations never coalesced into a satisfying whole. the trip through the first-class section was brilliant, but little else in the movie had that sort of magic.

huh, the film did great business in asia and europe. that doesn't mean it's any good, of course, but you'd think it would bode well for an american release.

well, it's sure not an American film, even though it contains American action movie tropes but they're all mixed up in French retrofuture weirdness and a certain kind of Asian action-drama pacing. And bizarro humour that sort of reminded me of Terry Gilliam but more one-dimensional. I was really into it's aesthetics though! And wanted even more train cars to explore! Because with such a ridiculous premise and illogical setting (so to go to the spa car to chill out you need to pass through the tripped-out hoards in the rave car? lol yes), it could've just gone all out fantasy. hey, perpetual motion train around the post-apocalyptic world, who needs explanatory details and deep characters really.

(its, not it's. iPhone.)

Looks kind of fun, anyone know when the UK release is?

Loved this film. Such a terrific concept, just about perfectly executed.

(so to go to the spa car to chill out you need to pass through the tripped-out hoards in the rave car? lol yes),

that's what linearity will get you!

still looking fwd to this, whenever the hell it comes out here in the US.

got tickets on hold for thursday

does Chris Evans have chest hair in it?

I don't remember him being shirtless at any point.

i wouldn't want to imagine anyone having sex in this film

Evans "bony and gaunt," yep no interest

Zacharek:
"Even as dystopian dramas go, the picture is arid and lusterless in its more serious moments and unpleasantly kitschy when it tries to soar over the top. Not even Tilda Swinton, as a ruthless Margaret Thatcher stand-in with a prosthetic overbite, can keep it on the rails."

http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-06-25/film/snowpiercer-movie-review/

what a bummer, this was not good.
overly long, morbid, sadistic, simplistically considered, sophomoric moral issues, far too serious and (sadly and damningly) boring.
some okay costume/set design. pretty great acting from everyone. occasional great visual moments and set pieces. definitely the weakest thing i've seen from bong joon ho. reminded me of watered down bresson or gilliam. not recommended, even for fans of the director.

no way is snowpiercer gonna do well in the us: too wonky for action nerds and too thoughtless for art nerds
this was like ten times better and more or less the same film in some ways
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBlRoYiGrw4

Worth noting that it's brought in $80M on a $40M budget (those numbers from Wikipedia & most recent seemed to be from March) so he'll probably get more money to make more insane things.

i'm usually pretty allergic to the particular flavor of smug eccentricity forks describes above but i thoroughly enjoyed this

naming Hurt's character "Gilliam" was sweet, and it's always nice to see [SURPRISE ACTOR], who kills it as usual and brings a well-observed midwestern pragmatism to a role that could have otherwise gone OTT stalin

Worth noting that it's brought in $80M on a $40M budget (those numbers from Wikipedia & most recent seemed to be from March) so he'll probably get more money to make more insane things.

― with hidden noise, Friday, June 27, 2014 1:43 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wouldn't worry, whatever it ends up making in US$, because it did great business in Asia and Europe.

i liked this movie

why

no one told me this was about chemtrails!!!

Even though the movie had a hatchet fight and a monologue about cannibalism, the singing schoolchildren was still the creepiest scene.

Tilda Swinton's character being this crazy true believer type even though she obviously was old enough to remember the before-train times was great.

pretty much loved this, for a comic book allegory about the stakes for going all the way with violent revolution. you're on a tightrope reducing such issues to metaphor & entertainment, and this film managed to walk it for me.

was initially shocked by just how brutal the violence was, as well as the morbidity of the character development (everyone knows exactly which scenes & monologues were initially on the chopping block for U.S. distribution) -- you'll see that in films like Oldboy, not in a film with mainstream western actors. but I found it all warranted.

how does babby taste

Swift was right

pretty much loved this, for a comic book allegory about the stakes for going all the way with violent revolution. you're on a tightrope reducing such issues to metaphor & entertainment, and this film managed to walk it for me.

was initially shocked by just how brutal the violence was, as well as the morbidity of the character development (everyone knows exactly which scenes & monologues were initially on the chopping block for U.S. distribution) -- you'll see that in films like Oldboy, not in a film with mainstream western actors. but I found it all warranted.

― Milton Parker, Monday, June 30, 2014 1:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

interesting. can't wait to see this.

if anyone who liked this hasn't seen Bong's film "Memories of Murder," I'd heartily recommend it.

Bong's other films and their genrelessness and abrupt tonal shifts interested me than this one. I guess the closest comparison is The Host, but I remember that film so much more fondly than this one.

"barking dogs never bite" is v great and hilarious if u can find it

that's a weird-ass movie.

exactly why i loved it!

i should revisit it. i remember liking it but also finding it too manic.

CGI effects in this are surprisingly bad.

Don't get the hype overall. Some cool ideas/visuals/acting (in patches), but fairly disappointing.

theatre at Universal Studios has it but y'all are making me wonder whether it's worth wasting the extra 20 minutes to get out of the parking lot to see this

It's not awful, and unlike most SF movies it has actual interesting ambitions that it tries to fulfil, but it's pretty flawed.

w/ mr. morrison. fun, nice looking (great design, lighting, character casting, etc.), intermittently gripping, but the whole thing ultimately felt rather pointless. didn't help that the film's peak wasn't the laborious and overdetermined climax, but rather the colorfully absurd ascent through first class that preceded it. favorite bongs are still barking dogs and memories of murder.

Just saw this, hadn't even really heard of it but the bf chucked it on during a lazy weekend. Very korean-film pacing, in that I guess I found some of the fight scenes overly long (is it that and the non-subtitled korean speeches that got cut?). I had trouble suspending disbelief which is my fault, but cmon, that aquarium? The fuck did that fit in a train car?

Also, where the hell did all those sides of meat and chickens (and the eggs, come to think of it) come from? I didnt see them go through any cars with live animals.

In the comic there are 1001 cars. Who has time to show them all?

Yeah I did wonder if thats all it was, but then again I also wondered why the bloody thing hadnt derailed months before it actually did.

I enjoyed the film, really. I liked the way it just jumped right into the story without handholding explanation. And I didnt know it was based on a comic (thought it was a novel!) so now I must look out for that.

This was very good, I thought.

P.S. This movie is available to watch as a streaming rental, if you are into that sort of thing.

this was pretty good. there were some dumb plot holes that could have been dealt with without too much fuss. but as an action-film allegory it was pretty top notch.

btw the film has very little to do w/ the comic other than the very basic premise.

the more i think about this film the less i liked it.
sounds like they're trying to explain the very limited release as a plan to get major critical attention and then go VOD:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-snowpiercer-vod-and-the-future-of-film-distribution-20140710-story.html

i thought the limited release was effectively punishment for bong prevailing and getting his cut. the article quotes a studio guy as saying this isn't true, but i wouldn't be so sure.

this is a movie that really benefits from the /scale/ of a cinema, btw.

I would have thought the big screen would expose the paucity of the CG effects, but maybe they scale up well

especially the feeble train ramming through snowfalls stuff at the end

Yeh the CGI in that last trainwreck (heh) part did look a little...cartoonish?

(I watched it in 1040 HD on a v large TV)

Bong's sense for maneuvering actors in tight, tense spaces remains intact; for me, the problem was the enervated pace. It felt like Bong was carrying the damn train on his shoulder.

Now that I have acclimated to this film's failings, wonder if I would enjoy it more on a second viewing.

yeah, i think part of my disappointment was simply that some of the early raves were so outsized... and given bong's previous films, i had even higher expectations. but i'm not inclined to watch it again. too much to see, too little time, etc.

liked the schoolroom and the sushi bar and, uh...

it was pretty bad for a film with a lot of good ideas.

otm

dunno I really dug this, Evans's bland everybro blankness worked for the role imo, jarred nicely with the outrageous dialogue mentioned above. the Alison Pill sequence is a great corrective to her role on The Newsroom fwiw, nice to imagine the ACN staff on the other end of that Uzi

security technician guy being the actual protagonist is a little underplayed, until it's overplayed

tilda swinton was so bad in this, though not sure how much it was her fault when everyone else's acting was completely all over the place. bad despite good ideas would be my most generous assessment.

just thinking about this film bums me out. i hope dude has another film out soon so's i can see if this was a fluke

exactly the kind of geek shit i expected. laborious.

In retrospect, it had its moments, but yeah, sitting through the whole darned thing.

This guy, who often has interesting things to say, ate it up: http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2014/07/snowpiercer-total-cinema.html

Well, this was awful.

ly great

you ppl who are Bong fans, he is a "fellow" at this place in Pleasantville, NY, and will be doing Q&As after 3 of his films this week and next:

http://www.burnsfilmcenter.org/films/film-series/detail/82997

http://s32.postimg.org/nhriuzpv9/The_Snowpiercer_01.jpg

saw okja last night, imo jake gyllenhaal researched his role by inhaling a mountain of cocaine

Saw Memories of Murder tonight. Mention of Zodiac in the promo blurb got me to drive the hour into Waterloo, and for sure, you can see the influence of Joon-ho's film plainly. I don't think it's nearly as good as Zodiac--a lot of shouting--but I did like it better than Parastite.

Anyone watching the show? Once you accept the goofiness of the premise and the variable acting it's a great time. The not entirely unpredictable end of season 1 twist was pulled off with gusto.

I’m still watching the tv show!

I’m interested in where this new arc from the last couple episodes is going.

I'm not sure we need the introduction of mystical visions 3 seasons in, but I'm still enjoying the hell out of this.

Really intrigued where they're going now that they've been renewed for a 4th season.

the mystical vision thing is kind of evolving plot point!