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10 Reasons You Should Get Your Ass to a Movie Theater and See 'Snowpiercer' This Weekend

By Rebecca Pahle | Film | June 26, 2014 |

By Rebecca Pahle | Film | June 26, 2014 |


Alternate titles for today’s post: “If You Don’t See Snowpiercer, I Will Kick Your Dog” and “If You Don’t See Snowpiercer, You Hate Movies. Here’s Why.” I really, really want there to be a lot of eyes on this movie.

  1. First and foremost: It’s good. Really good. You can read my (spoiler-free) review at The Mary Sue. But, to get more specific…
  2. Chris Evans turns in an amazing performance as Curtis, the leader of a band of merry dystopian future revolutionaries. The Captain America movies only give you a hint of what a genuinely good actor he is—and now, between Snowpiercer and Sunshine, he’s been in two of the best sci-fi movies from the past ten years. And let’s not even talk about Iceman, where he manages to hold his own—even outperform, in some scenes—scenery-chewing dynamo Michael Shannon, for Chrissakes.
  3. And the wizard behind the curtain is Bong Joon-Ho, who directed the excellent Mother and The Host. Ditto Memories of Murder and Barking Dogs Never Bite, which I haven’t seen and thus cannot personally attest to, but still. The man is good.
  4. Tilda Swinton. Tilda Goddamn Swinton, playing a super-awkward government official who takes her dentures out at one point. If that’s not enough to get you there, then I don’t know.
  5. Did you see the thing where Bong Joon-ho had to convince her not to wear a pig nose? How do you not want to see the movie after that?!
  6. You may think, from the trailers, that you know where Snowpiercer is going. You don’t. It may look all grimdark and gritty—and it’s certainly thematically very bleak, but there’s a ridiculousness to Snowpiercer that makes it… lighter, in a way, than many “blah, blah, everything sucks” dystopias. It’s a genuinely enjoyable, entertaining movie.
  7. There are children in Africa who won’t get to see Snowpiercer! Or, er, moviegoers outside major markets. It opens this weekend in five cities—New York, Austin, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco—and will expand to other cities throughout July, but there are still states with zero scheduled screenings. Who are you to look a brilliant cinematic gift horse in the mouth, you jerk?! Do a solid for your brethren in Idaho, Mississippi, and the Carolinas by helping this movie get so much money that the Weinstein Company has to open it within driving distance of everyone. Speaking of which…
  8. The Weinstein Company doesn’t think you want to see this movie, which is reason enough that you should. The much-publicized controversy over whether Snowpiercer would be dumbed down for American audiences—because we all spend our days watching Michael Bay movies and playing with snot bubbles, clearly— ended in the film trading an uncut version for a limited release, but even so… has anyone seen the Snowpiercer trailer actually in a theater, and not online? The movie’s been done for months, so it could have been released right after Winter Soldier to capitalize on Chris Evans mania… but it wasn’t. I live in New York, but I haven’t seen any posters. I haven’t seen a single version of the trailer that utilizes any critics’ quotes—things like “An enormously ambitious, visually stunning and richly satisfying futuristic epic” or “an intellectually and artistically superior vehicle to many of the end-of-days futuristic action thrillers out there.” Put simply, Harvey Weinstein seems to be trying to leave this one by the wayside. Don’t let him get away with it. Damn the man!
  9. How many sci-fi movies that aren’t sequels, reboots, or part of a franchise do you get to see in a theater each year? Enjoy it while you have it. And finally:
  10. What else are you going to go to this weekend? Transformers: Age of Extinction? I’ve seen it. (It was free. Don’t judge me.) There is a line of dialogue that goes—and I quote—“We don’t have a home, Dad! It blew up!” You don’t want to go there.

Rebecca (@RebeccaPahle) interviewed Bong Joon-ho, and he ate ice cream through the whole thing. It was kind of magical.