peteg's blog - noise - movies - 2014 07 04 Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer (2013)

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This fourth of July I did something that is becoming a mainstream American activity: I gave the Music Box Theatre $10 to watch something a Korean director (Bong Joon-ho) made (with a large CGI budget) that seems beyond Hollywood's grasp. Some fabulous performances here: Chris Evans (Captain America?!?) channels Ben Affleck, Tilda Swinton has a ball, and Ewen Bremner is at his best since Trainspotting, sporting a Jewfro and losing an arm in the process. Ed Harris does his best in the Matrix-Architect role. As always there are some graphic blood sprays and extended rave-style violence. Somehow this got funded/made by the Czechs. I can imagine the pitch to Park Chan-wook: say we took that corridor scene from Oldboy and made a whole movie out of it...

Surprising to me the audience was the largest I've seen yet in the main theatre, and most people sit a long way back. Thinking about it some more, it also evokes the train-future of Wong Kar-Wai's 2046.

A. O. Scott got right into it. J. Hoberman at the New York Review of Books.