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

OK in fairness I really like Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, and Alison Pill

fuck me if this doesn't look amazing: http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-bong-joon-hos-snowpiercer

teaser trailer leaves a bit to be desired I suppose:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dd4pogcc4Y

same governing allegory as elysium (and probably a bunch of other movies this/next year), but c'mon this will be better

of course the weinsteins are busy mangling it for US theaters: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Weinsteins-Think-Americans-Too-Dumb-Bong-Joon-ho-Version-Snowpiercer-38871.html

so goddamn pissed about the editing thing

i'm just going to have to download (or buy, if I can) a copy of the international version before I see it in the theater.

also, is it just me or have trains been featuring (as crucial plot elements or just major parts of mise-en-scene) in more and more movies these days?

harvey cut like 15 mins out of the new WKW movie too

!!

jesus

the thing is, does he think any of this matters? these films are not going to be huge hits anyway, and he's just alienating more people than he's likely to pull in through a few cuts

he's probably just got delusions of directorial grandeur and this is how he (temporarily) exorcises them

love that tilda appears to be playing the villain as a version of thatcher who espouses social darwinism

I can't work out what I am more excited about, seeing this or contemplating The Host sequel he is working on. Harvey should be embarrassed at having the audacity to fuck with such a great director. He could edit 2 hours off the next Tarantino movie for me. The guy is toxic and needs to fuck off out of movies.

i can see harvey being a selznick type, someone genuinely gifted who directors grudgingly respect for their useful input (tarantino has said he feels like this) but that doesn't mean weinstein and selznick both didn't manage to seriously fuck up movies by great directors

it's one thing to play scissorhands with some middlebrow euroschmaltz but they should know better than to let Comic-Con types hear they're not getting the real thing.

then again I can't think of any sci-fi off the top of my head that weinstein's even had the CHANCE to fuck with

it's one thing to play scissorhands with some middlebrow euroschmaltz but they should know better than to let Comic-Con types hear they're not getting the real thing.

― da croupier, Wednesday, August 7, 2013 6:16 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they've been doing this to asian movies since forever, though.

Weinstein looks like the monster in The Host

also, is it just me or have trains been featuring (as crucial plot elements or just major parts of mise-en-scene) in more and more movies these days?

oh my god AYN RAND WAS RIGHT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAKIlPjGbwU#t=96

John Hurt grouses about Harvey the Hutt

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/harvey-weinstein-trust-directors-trust-audience/#FyJWXRREsqcwJeqF.01

Distributors recutting foreign releases for domestic audiences can be problematic, sure, and the fan outrage makes for a nice angle to run with. Still, my thoughts on the film after seeing it during its initial Korean release were how much it would be improved by a tighter cut. I wasn't surprised when the "Weinstein butchers film for US audiences omg!" stories hit the web.

Uh right this has gone straight to DVD, 126 minutes so it isn't the Scissorhands version.

anyone read the original comic? any good?

Got a June 27th scheduled release in the US but it is...available.

Very curious to hear some other ilxors' opinions on this.

It is very average, overlong sci-fi nonsense, which is quite disappointing considering the personnel involved. Tilda Swinton puts in a good shift though.

That's roughly how I feel. Barring one or two odd reviews, every other impression I've read has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic, which really threw me. The picture is a tonal mess, and the heavier dramatic elements feel completely out-of-place next to the black humour in other scenes. Chris Evans a total blank.

I thought it was brilliant.

"A tonal mess" sounds like someone who just doesn't like Bong - certainly shifts in tone with comedy, tragedy, horror are signature features of his works. I appreciated the warmth relationships here were painted with, like the father daughter mirroring The Host, inbetween the comic book absurd and the dark humour.

As I've said before I think it's risky and ambitious in scope, and it ends up working. Inventive action and visuals, manages to use the train effectively and gradually open up the story more and more despite claustrophobic settings. Would've been impossible without steel-eyed direction.

I quite like his other films, so it's not that I don't appreciate Bong's style.

It's certainly ambitious, but the shifts in tone end up pitting the bits that work (most of the stuff with Swinton, the black humour) against the bits that don't (the action scenes, inscrutable pacing decisions, Evans's development as they move up the train), cheapening the former. I love the concept — everything looks and sounds great from the head of the train, if you'll forgive me — but it really left me cold. (I'll show myself out.)

Millsner's critique generally otm, but I enjoyed it anyway. I wouldn't call Evans a total blank -- I do think he managed to sell Curtis's backstory. Ed Harris is the one whose triple helping of ham threw me out of the movie.

this was fantastic

when da fuck is this getting a wide release in US?

next month i think. i torrented it.

i'm gonna wait to see it in a theater.

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)

yeah it wasn't the best CGI, but it all transpires so fast I didn't really scrutinize it.

Thinking about my complaints, I suspect part of it is my expectations were raised by all the recut foofaw so that I had some idea this was going to be a Blade Runner-style masterpiece mangled by a scared, money-centric studio, when in fact it was just an above-average SF action movie

yup

Still an interesting premise all that said!

lol you guys know studios demand recuts of about everything, let alone foreign films. sometimes the recuts are... better

lol why would you assume we don't know that

wow -- Tilda Swinton is fitfully entertaining w/out being much good, is she?

if you're constantly worried about everything having to be "tasteful", yeah

who sez I am? I love Bong's movies.

Oh I really want to see this.

Coming from the director of Memories Of Murder, The Host and Mother - how the fuck can anybody not be disappointed with this half arsed, bodge-job of a movie?

I like all four of them, sorry fella

xp i am also haunted by that question. I think in comparison to most any other big budget scifi dystopia fantasy that's come out this year, this is good enough. compared to anything bong's done, it's utterly disposable.

It disappointed me -- his worst film. Chris Evans is a large part of the problem.

I liked it enough, but thought the pacing and over long fight scenes were not great.

any ideas how i can see this in the UK?

its leaked fwiw

i think i just glanced at a torrent that said Korean DVD

subbed?

its in english and yeah it leaked a few months ago iirc

Weinstein will also be releasing "Snowpiercer" in several hundred theaters in the UK, which has less sophisticated VOD apparatus

“Snowpiercer wouldn’t, really, be worth writing about at all, except that a number of prominent critics… seem inexplicably convinced of its virtues.”

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/babies-taste-best#

I enjoyed this well enough. A few big plotholes and inexplicable moments (what was the Andrew kid doing at the end? Why would gilliam be in cahoots with Wilford?) And the jumps in tone were indeed jarring too but it was watchable and I never got bored. Thought the soundtrack was especially good too.

Just saw this and thought it was great. Euro as FUCK, tho, with the premise being a post-apoc class system based on a train.

Didn't realize until an IMBD lookup that the Korean father/daughter team was the same pair as the The Host.

Disappointed that the Weinstein Bros didn't open the film wider; this is destined to be the other scifi flick of 2014 tht you have to evangelize to all your friends to see.

what's the first?

Edge of Tomorrow

^^^yeah saw that last night and was really srsly surprised/impressed

I still need to, thanks for the reminder

i went into it knowing that it starred cruise and had a groundhog's day premise and that was about it

Watched the first half of this last night before falling asleep. Do I need to watch the second half?

If you didn't get to the classroom scene, yes. Highlight of the film, feel free to give up if it leaves or left you unmoved.

Thanks! Clicked it on and it was iced up exactly at that scene and you are right.

Lol autocorrect. "Cued up."

All right, reading this thread beforehand helped me make it through the rest of this movie. Some good stuff here and there but not quite enough to make up for its flaws as noted by many above. Definitely would check out director's other work though.

Is it naive to think the thing would have been better if it wasn't in English?

So was Ed Harris reprising his role in The Truman Show, this time in bathrobe instead of beret?

So liked all the exteriors and agree that the classroom scene was the best and that the front of the train was better than the back. As a whole this film was unsatisfying, just couldn't suspend disbelief or stop mentally comparing it to things that covered somewhat similar territory much better such as Dark City or Inverted World. The tone ran the A-B gamut from heavy-handed to uneven.

And yeah, Cap'n Save-a-Train was a cipher.

I noticed, albeit from sketchy details on his imdb entry that Joon-ho's next project could possibly be a Gwoemul sequel. I hope that doesn't mean a bland re-make because it is one of the greatest multi-genre Comedy|Drama|Horror pics of all time and shouldn't be fucked with.

continuing the murder of cinema

So why dump such a promising movie onto VOD? Because it made economic sense. When you see a production budget for a film, roughly $40 million in this case, you need to almost double that to account for prints and advertising — the cost of rolling the film on in thousands of theaters.

By releasing the film on VOD, Radius and TWC avoided almost all of those costs. Advertising consisted of partnerships like Chris Evans welcoming San Diego hotel guests during Comic Con on the hotel VOD systems and suggesting they rent his new movie, Snowpiercer.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorothypomerantz/2014/09/08/what-the-economics-of-snowpiercer-say-about-the-future-of-film/

"When you see a production budget for a film, roughly $40 million in this case, you need to almost double that to account for prints and advertising"

Well it's already made 80+ million dollars in 'foreign' markets.

idk if cinema as much as movie theater attendance is the victim here

yeah, if you watch at home, it's not cinema. (seeing Flowers of Shanghai and Wings on big screens this weekend reinforced this)

bringing up the budget is kinda dubious when weinstein wasn't on the hook for it, and they don't even acknowledge that part of Weinstein's lack of enthusiasm was his inability to get cuts.

what about really big home screens tho?

I have a couple friends with home digital projects and nice sound, and the experience is better than a number of independent cinemas I've been to. In larger cities where home space is at a premium that doesn't happen, but it's viable for a surprising number of people elsehwere.

projectors, that is, not projects

when i saw The Trip at the IFC Center it basically felt like I was in someone's shitty private screening room for sure

nice to know this movie didn't bomb financially
lol, otm on many small theaters being as shitty or shitter than a friend's home theater setup

The Trip is a UK TV sitcom reassembled for foreign theatrical exploitation tho!

i assume they show other movies on that screen

they made it extra shitty to add authenticity

There is a logic to shortening the window between theaters and VOD, since a lot nerdlingers across the US who want to see Snowpiercer might not wait until it gets near their university. But when you see a film released day-and-date (not sure why that's the term they use in the industry for films released simultaneously on VOD and in theaters) that definitely means the studio assumes the audience is scattered nerdlingers. see Veronica Mars.

when i saw The Trip at the IFC Center it basically felt like I was in someone's shitty private screening room for sure
― da croupier, Monday, September 15, 2014

why did i trust thomas piketty's taste in films

this film was so bad but luckily it revealed itself as hilariously so early on, so i could just gawp in amazement at the hammy acting, reductive script written by a 10-yr-old and plot illogic. THE SCRIPT THO, SERIOUSLY. so wooden and insistent on spelling everything out for you. thought i would never stop laughing at the "babies taste best" climactic line. i hadn't realised chris evans was such a terrible actor, either.

a shame because the premise was so great and i was hyped up for a bit of insurgent class warfare

ugh I disliked it too. Chris Evans was miscast or misdirected.

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

i did think the ending was ballsy, even if it didn't quite work as well in execution than in concept.

It played like Bong and producers thought, "We've got Tilda Swinton! With funny teeth! In a train! It'll work!"

i think that's kind of unfair. if anything i think it was a victim of being overstuffed with ideas, and could have stood to be streamlined (see what i did there?). some of the ideas were good, a lot of them bad. narratively speaking, the cliimax was really guilty of 'blockbuster time' where the different lines of action seemed to be proceeding at radically different paces, which kind of fucked up its impact ("inception" thematized this of course).

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!

I guess we're finally getting that 4th season of the tv show after it was finished, edited, and shelved by the geniuses at Warner Brothers Discovery for over a year. In the US, it'll be on AMC in July

I heard they're going to run the first 3 seasons this year and season 4 next year, but I read that a couple of months ago, so things may have changed.

Daveed Diggs is so good

xp that was the original announcement. now it's July 21st!

The second season of this was sick, the third a bit of a let down (don't ask me to remember exactly why!)

Wouldn’t a bunker with nuclear power have been easier than a train running around the world?

Wilford wasn't in the bunker industry

I've been watching s4 week-by-week as AMC has been releasing them and I'm pleasantly surprised so far. I think they have one episode left, so we'll see if they stick the ending

at first I thought it'd get corny, but I get a little adrenaline rush at the end of every intro when they end whatever the narrator is saying with "...on Snowpiercer, 867 <or however many they're currently at> cars long" and then slam into the theme music. Whoever came up with that framing device, good work!

They probably were inspired by the Battlestar Gallactica remake where they have the number of humans left as a framing device each episode

This is still on? Maybe I shouldn't have stopped watching. Loved the movie, found the first half of S1 a little slow and heavy-handed.

it hit a groove at some point. you can follow the drama involved when WB Discovery decided they were no longer releasing original content on TNT upthread. s4 sat, unreleased yet completed, for a while

the BSG intro comparison is one I hadn’t thought of!