7/5/15 (Part Two): A Jackrabbit in a Den of Wolves

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Andrew Robertt, Ben Mendelsohn, Best of 2015, betrayal, bounty hunters, Caren Pistorius, cinema, class systems, dark humor, directorial debut, father-daughter relationships, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, flashbacks, greenhorns, Jay Cavendish, Jed Kurzel, John Maclean, Kodi Smit-McPhee, love story, Michael Fassbender, Movies, optimism vs pessimism, outlaws, Robbie Ryan, Rory McCann, sardonic tone, set in 1860s, Silas Selleck, Slow West, the Beta Band, the myth of the Old West, the taming of the Wild West, the Wild West, UK-New Zealand films, upper vs lower class, voice-over narration, Westerns, writer-director

There’s a point in writer-director John Maclean’s instantly classic feature-debut, Slow West (2015), that just may be one of the subtlest, most cutting bits of insight into the human condition that I’ve seen in some time. As they recover from the aftermath of a particularly chaotic, violent robbery attempt at a general store, 16-year-old Scottish greenhorn Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) looks past the stack of still-smoking corpses and right into the eyes of the dead robbers’ now-orphaned children. The children are impossibly young and innocent, their wide eyes seemingly unable to process the complete upending of their world, as they stand silently, gripping each others’ hands tight.

Feeling the instant onus of responsibility, Jay tells his travelling companion, hardened, sardonic gunfighter Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), that they’ll just need to take the kids with them. It’s the only thing that makes sense, after all: Jay and Silas weren’t responsible for the death of the urchins’ parents but they would be complete monsters if they just left them there, on their own, to die. The kids can just hitch a ride with them as they proceed on their mission across the frontier wasteland, in search of Jay’s beloved Rose (Caren Pistorius). Jay is eager to help, his eyes bright and determined, until Silas take all the wind out of his sails with one off-handed response: “And then what?” Silas, you see, is nothing if not a realist and knows one very important fact above all else: the desire to do good just isn’t enough…without the ability to follow through, it’s all just stuff and nonsense…smoke and bullshit. He accepts the fact that Jay won’t: taking the kids with them would be as sure a death-sentence as leaving them there to rot, good intentions be damned.

It’s precisely this level of insight and intelligence that makes Slow West not only the best Western to come down the pike in years but also one of the very best films of this still-in-progress year. A mature, darkly humorous and gorgeously shot character study that has little use for easy stereotypes or empty action, Maclean’s debut is the perfect antidote for overwrought, multiplex inanity, the very antithesis to the gazillion-dollar superhero films that currently clog cinematic arteries. Featuring a fantastic cast, a brilliant script and images lovely enough to frame, Slow West should be a poignant reminder of a time when cinema didn’t need to rely on shouting and CGI to slug audiences right in the solar plexus.

Plotwise, Slow West is the very definition of streamlined efficiency. The aforementioned Jay Cavendish, the son of a Scottish lord and lady, travels to the untamed chaos of 1860s frontier America in pursuit of his beloved Rose and her father, John (Rory McCann), after a terrible accident finds the father and daughter forced to leave their native land one step ahead of a lynch mob. With only the vaguest idea of where to look for his beloved, Jay sets off across the plains, so wet-behind-the-ears that he practically leaves a puddle wherever he goes.

In no time, Jay finds himself in the crosshairs of a group of miscreants hunting a fleeing Native American, one short step from getting his naive brains blown out all over his citified duds. At the last-minute, however, a mysterious gunman appears and blasts everyone but Jay straight to hell: this is the silent, contemplative Silas, a character who would’ve been played by none other than Clint Eastwood were this about four decades older. Silas knows that Jay is an accident waiting to happen, a plucky little chicken traipsing his way through an entire country full of hungry foxes, and he offers to be his bodyguard, in exchange for a little cold, hard cash. Jay heartily agrees, although he’s completely unaware of the other half of this particular coin: there’s a huge bounty out on Rose and her father (dead or alive) and Silas wants Jay to, unwittingly, lead him right to a much bigger payday.

As the two ride across the Old West, they encounter an almost endless variety of outlaws, wandering musicians, grizzled bounty hunters and foreign immigrants, each individual following their own particular path to salvation or destruction. Chief among these unique characters is Silas’ former gang leader, the extraordinarily lethal Payne (Ben Mendelsohn): Payne and his gang also have their sights set on Rose and her father and certainly won’t mind burying an old colleague, if they have to. As Jay and Silas continue to bond, they get ever closer to the beloved Rose, albeit with some suspiciously gunfighter-shaped shadows following behind. Will Silas be able to overcome his patently cynical nature in order to help his young charge? Will Jay ever reunite with Rose? Will true love really save the day or it just a myth as fanciful and false as Jay’s sunny view of this “brave new world”?

First off, let’s make one thing clear: Slow West is just about as perfect a film (certainly as perfect a full-length debut) as I can recall seeing, the kind of movie that hits you immediately and keeps you rapt right through the closing credits. From the genuinely stunning cinematography (if Robbie Ryan doesn’t get nominated for an Oscar, I’ll punch a hole in a wall) to the often whimsical score to the utterly thrilling action setpieces, Slow West is one exquisitely crafted piece of art. Add in a truly smart script, full of great dialogue and surprising doses of humor (the scene where Jay and Silas come upon the skeletal body of a logger crushed beneath a tree, ax still in hand, is one of the single greatest sight gags ever) and one of the best casts in some time and I’ll be honest: I can’t really find much fault here. At all.

Fassbender and Smit-McPhee are absolutely perfect as the unlikely partners, each playing off the other in ways both expected and truly surprising. The aforementioned Eastwood reference is not stated lightly: as someone who worships at the altar of everything Eastwood (at least through the ’90s), I found plenty of nice parallels between Fassbender’s performance, here, and my squint-eyed childhood hero. His is a low-key performance, as much about what’s not said as what is. While I’m usually not the biggest fan of cinematic voice-overs, Silas’ narration throughout is an integral part of the perfection, leading us to one of the most perfect endings I’ve seen in some time.

For his part, Smit-McPhee finds the perfect balance between Jay’s inherent helplessness and the steely determination that allowed him to make this dangerous trek in the first place. At any point, the character of Jay could have slipped into either obnoxious comic relief (look at the silly Scottish wimp!) or complete irrelevancy (why focus on this yahoo when you’ve got badass Silas over there?). It’s to both Smit-McPhee and Maclean’s tremendous credits, however, that Jay is always sympathetic: we want him to succeed because he seems like a genuinely good, hopeful and positive person. This pie-in-the-sky optimism is absolutely critical to the film’s underlying themes and Slow West wouldn’t be nearly the overwhelming success it is without his able participation. My advice? Get Fassbender and Smit-McPhee into another film, stat!

Like the best films of Jim Jarmusch, however, the supporting cast gives as good as the leads do. Pistorius is perfect in a relatively small role, imbuing her character with such a co-mingled sense of joy and unbearable sorrow that she makes every second of her screen time count. Mendelsohn, who might be the very definition of an actor who really needs no introduction, absolutely shines as the gang leader, turning in one of the coolest, most fun and vile villains to hit the big-screen since the glory days of Peckinpah films. In fact, much of Slow West recalls Peckinpah’s work in style and theme, if not necessarily unmitigated bloodshed. With his odd fur coat, droll manner and reptilian coldness, Payne is an instantly iconic creation: my only complaint, here, is that we don’t get nearly enough of him.

Production-wise, Slow West is at the absolute top of its game, no two ways about it. What really tips the film into classic territory, however, is how smart and insightful it is. This isn’t the stereotypical Western, full of flinty men blowing other flinty men to Kingdom Come. In many ways, Slow West is about the disparity between intent and action, between wanting a better world and actually doing something about it. Time and time again, Silas points out the difference between his and Jay’s personal philosophies: Jay sees the Wild West as a place of endless promise, full of hard-working people doing their best to overcome the elements (and themselves), carving out their own spot in an unforgiving landscape, while Silas sees the frontier as a no-man’s-land full of outlaws, dust, murder and drudgery. To accept Jay’s worldview is to invite absolute destruction, as far as Silas is concerned: let your guard down just once and you’re wormfood. To accept Silas’s worldview, however, is equally destructive: if no one is good, if no one can change and if the capacity for peaceful coexistence is a myth, what, exactly, do we have to live for?

As smart as it is beautiful, Slow West is an absolute treasure, the kind of film that the Coens thought they were making with their True Grit (2010) remake, only to fall short of the mark. As apt to make you chuckle as stare in awe, Maclean has established himself as one of the most exciting new filmmakers operating right now: the fact that the writer-director is only on his first film (after a pair of shorts) is even more extraordinary. The fact that Maclean comes to us not through the film world but the music world is that much more astounding: erstwhile music fans might recognize him as one of the driving forces behind Scottish indie heroes The Beta Band.

To restate the very obvious: I absolutely loved Slow West. From the craft to the message to the absolute perfect synthesis of form and meaning, Maclean’s debut is nothing short of a revelation. At 84 minutes, there isn’t one wasted scene, shot or motion, no sense of pandering, hand-holding or dumbing-down. This is cinema at its very best, the kind of movie that makes you feel glad to be alive. As a lifelong movie fan, I look for films like this all the time but it’s like finding a needle in a field of haystacks. Good thing, then, that Maclean is all needles and no hay: when I’m looking for a quality film in the future, I have a pretty good idea where to look.  If you enjoy quality movies, too, I suggest you do the same thing.

3/19/15 (Part Two) Love, Pink Bees and Inverse Matter

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amnesia, Benoît Charest, Blu Mankuma, Brazil, cinema, class systems, dystopian future, evil corporations, film reviews, films, fish-out-of-water, foreign films, French-Canadian films, Gravity, haves vs have-nots, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Jim Sturgess, Juan Solanas, Kate Trotter, Kirsten Dunst, matter and inverse matter, Movies, Nicholas Rose, parallel worlds, Pierre Gill, romances, Romeo and Juliet, sci-fi, star-crossed lovers, stylish films, Terry Gilliam, Timothy Spall, upper vs lower class, Upside Down, voice-over narration, writer-director

Blame it on the Bard: ever since Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” first inflamed the sensibilities and emotions of its frilled sleeve and pantaloons-sporting audiences, it’s been pretty much the gold-standard of ill-fated pop culture romances. The tale of star-crossed lovers, doomed to be in thrall to each other, yet forbidden to be together thanks to a bitter cross-family feud, has formed the basis for an almost uncountable number of films, books, plays, TV shows, comic books, cartoons and stick-figure flip books. Every writer, filmmaker, content producer and artist brings their own spin to the story: the tale has transcended eras, notions of class, gender, race, sexuality, nationality and religious upbringing. Each and every generation finds something new with the story because, let’s face it: there have been star-crossed lovers since humanity emerged from the primordial ooze and there’ll be star-crossed lovers until our sun finally blinks out of existence.

Argentinian writer-director Juan Solanas’ Upside Down (2012), despite its fanciful sci-fi trappings, is yet another in a long line of films that look to Shakespeare’s iconic play for inspiration. In this case, the intent appears to be to dress up the age-old story of ill-fated lovers with the giddy fantasy elements of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and the grimy, dystopic worldview of Terry Gilliam. Rather than coming up with a fresh, new spin on the old chestnut, however, Solanas’ film ends up being trite, unapologetically dewy-eyed and overly sentimental: it’s basically a happy, multiplex take on Gilliam’s far superior Brazil (1985). As the old saying goes, if that’s what you’re looking for, look no further.

A star-struck, expository voice-over fills us in on the basics of the world from the jump. Essentially, Upside Down is focused on two planets, each with their own individual gravities, societies, social systems and matter (both “regular” and “inverse”). The planets are so close to each other that the metropolitan lights of the “top” world serve as the “stars” of the bottom world: a stark, industrial tower connects both worlds, allowing the privileged “top worlders” to co-exist (in a manner of speaking) with the lowly “bottom worlders.” That’s right, folks: the people in the gleaming, modern “top world” are the haves and the folks dwelling in the run-down, dystopic “bottom world” are the have-nots, condemned to suck up all the waste, pollution and detritus of their well-to-do “Northern” neighbors.

Our surrogate Romeo and Juliet, in this case, are Adam (Jim Sturgess) and Eden (Kirsten Dunst). She’s a privileged “up worlder,” he’s a lowly “down worlder” and they first meet as children, at a point where the two worlds almost touch. This begins a decades-long romance that is harshly curtailed when an “up world” hunting party takes a shot at Adam (“up worlders” and “down worlders” are forbidden to have social contact, you see) and ends up causing Eden to fall and lose her memory. He thinks she’s dead, she can’t remember anything before the accident and they each go about their separate lives.

An inventor, by trade, Adam comes up with a miraculous face-lifting cream that gains him access to the vaunted Trans World tower and the much-envied lives of the “up worlders.” While there, he makes a friend and ally in “up worlder” Bob (Timothy Spall), along with the more shocking discovery that Eden is still alive and well. Fighting against the restrictions and conventions of their individual societies, as well as their individual bodies (“up worlders” and “down worlders” are bound by the conventions of their respective gravities, even when “visiting” the opposing world…this, of course, makes the title a physical reality, while making personal interaction more than a little difficult), Adam struggles to make Eden remember the love they once shared, all while trying to carve out his own slice of the “up world” pie. As Trans World executives pursue the pair, however, they’ll come to realize that every great love involves sacrifice: sometimes, you have to lose everything you have in order to gain the things you really want.

From the get-go, Upside Down makes its intentions quite clear: this is a sappy, traditional, “boy meets/loses/gets back girl” story and any focus on other aspects of the narrative are, for lack of a better term, simply smoke and mirrors. Unlike Gilliam’s films, which take sharp, cynical jabs at the futility of modern life, or Jeunet’s films, which often point out the inherent absurdity of human interactions, Solanas’ Upside Down is really all about the trials and travails of this particular couple. Sure, there are pretensions to more, especially once we get to the giddy finale that seems to indicate that Adam and Eden’s love will, miraculously, transform their uncaring world(s) (as the ridiculously serious voice over tells us, “that’s a story for another time”…oy…).

As a traditional romance, Upside Down hits all of the required beats but never really catches fire: Sturgess and Dunst have decent enough chemistry, for the most part, but there’s never anything especially passionate about them. They seem like the kind of couple that have a good time in high school and then break up the summer before moving away to college: pretty far afield from lovers who would “die” without their partner. There are some clever attempts to make the notion of risking yourself for the one you love a more physical reality (Adam’s special rig, which is the only way he’s able to move around in “up world,” has a tendency to burst into flame when he overstays his welcome, meaning that he really is “burning” for Eden) but, for the most part, this is another example of “tell, don’t show.” The one good counter-example to this is also one of the film’s silliest scenes, as the two lovers hold each other and kiss as they gently spin in mid-air, caught between both of their opposing gravities. It’s the kind of silly, swooning moment that makes Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) seem like Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972).

Many of the film’s critical issues can actually be linked back to its frequently silly, nonsensical plot developments. The central idea concerning the opposing worlds is actually pretty great and would have made a really interesting, serious sci-fi film, ala Gattaca (1997), or even something inherently “artier” like von Trier’s Melancholia (2011). Here, though, the notion is squandered and given short shrift in favor of the much more mundane romantic angle: we’ve seen hundreds (thousands?) of takes on Romeo and Juliet over the years…how many films about parallel worlds with opposing gravities do you remember seeing? If you answered “more than one,” you’re doing a lot better than me, let me tell ya.

When the film actually takes the time to focus on world-building and puts the romance on the back-burner, there’s plenty of interesting, eye-catching stuff going on. Our first sight of the massive office room, with the upside-down matching floor right above, is pretty amazing and there’s a really cool sequence involving an extendable chair that managed to trigger my vertigo like gangbusters. A ballroom scene involving a mass of dancing couples, both upside-down and right-side-up, is instantly memorable, as is the Trans World tower, itself, that looks like it was pulled, wholesale, from one of King’s Dark Tower books. Visually, Upside Down has a lot to offer, even if the images are often murky and kind of ugly, alternately under-lit and over-blown.

At the end of the day, however, the film is really too obvious and ham-fisted to make much of an impact. There’s a strong central story, here, and plenty of good acting (Spall is typically excellent as Adam’s friendly “desk mate” and partner-in-crime) but it’s all in service of so much “more of the same” that the film ends up feeling rather generic, despite its wholly original central concept. I really wanted to be all-in here, but the film is just too dewy-eyed to ever take seriously. While I’ll admit that traditional romances aren’t necessarily my cup of tea, I’m more than willing to give a shout-out to any film that knocks it out of the park, regardless of style, content or genre: after all, films don’t get much better than True Romance (1993) and what’s that but a traditional “boy meets girl” story dragged through the gutter? Upside Down, unfortunately, never rises above the level of well-made, pedestrian entertainment: it’s a pleasant enough film, no doubt, but never more than that, despite how high it aims.

 

11/30/14: The Last Train Out of Town

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12 Monkeys, action films, Alison Pill, auteur theory, betrayal, Blade Runner, Bong Joon-Ho, Chris Evans, cinema, class systems, class warfare, climate change, dystopian future, Ed Harris, end of the world, English-language debut, Ewen Bremner, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Hunger Games, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Ko Ah-sung, Luke Pasqualino, Movies, near future, Octavia Spencer, rich vs poor, sci-fi, Snowpiercer, Song Kang-ho, Steve Park, The Host, Tilda Swinton, trains

Nowadays, with the space between the haves and have-nots not so much a gap as a massive, bottomless chasm filled with baying hellhounds, the notion of class warfare has never been more prescient. Increasingly, it seems that the world can be neatly divided into two groups: those who can afford the basic necessities of life (food, clean water, housing, security, justice) and those who must struggle to divide up whatever dregs remain. We can argue notions of economics, supply-and-demand, consumerism, et al until the cows come home but it does nothing to change the basic facts: as it stands, our modern world is but several very slippery steps away from the feudal system that proved so “effective” during the Middle Ages. While issues of race, gender, religion and nationality will always plague humanity, anyone who doesn’t see the underlying class issues behind them is either willfully ignorant…or a part of the problem.

For his English-language debut, Snowpiercer (2014) Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho takes a good, long look at this underlying class warfare, wrapping it tight within the guise of an environmental message film before bundling everything up within a stream-lined sci-fi/action outer-shell: if you will, Joon-ho’s film is the turducken of big-budget multiplex fare, a multi-layered feast that reveals new flavors and wrinkles with each turn of the script. If the ultimate result ends up feeling somehow less revelatory than expected, it does nothing to detract from the overall quality of the film: anyone worried that making the transition to English-language films would blunt Joon-ho’s edge should check their fears at the door, since Snowpiercer is nothing if not a highly accomplished spectacle, relentlessly paced and endlessly thrilling.

From the outset, we learn that efforts to reverse global warming, involving a material known as “CW-7” have proven a little too successful: the Earth has now frozen and the vast majority of life has been wiped out. The only survivors now live on a massive “super-train” that zooms in a perpetual, never-ending loop around the frozen desolation, unable to ever step foot outside lest they instantly freeze. Aboard the train, similar to the breakdown on the Titanic, the survivors have been separated into two groups: the wealthy, powerful members of society get the front of the train and all of the perks (real food, drink, tanning beds, raves, shopping, sushi), while the poor, downtrodden masses get the tail section and live in complete squalor, subsisting on some sort of strange, black “food” substance and whatever scraps the upper berths don’t want. To make matters worse, the poor are constantly beaten and abused by the thuggish security detail and have their children constantly taken from them, spirited away to the front of the train, never to be seen again. The system is stretched to breaking and something must change…and change, it does.

Revolution enters the picture in the form of Curtis (Chris Evans), the charismatic “folk leader” of the lower classes who, along with their de facto leader, Gilliam (John Hurt), has devised a plan to wrest control of the train from the haves and return it to the have-nots. Quite simply, “whoever controls the engine, controls the world,” and Curtis knows that their only hope for change is to fight their way all the way to the front of the train. At first, the task seems all but impossible: the security detail is huge, well-armed and cold-blooded; the ruling regime, represented by the bizarrely presentational Mason (Tilda Swinton), don’t see the lower classes as anything other than fodder and free labor, so have absolutely no problem with dispatching as many of them as necessary to make their point. During the moment of truth, however, as Curtis’ rebels square off against the security team, something miraculous happens: the guards are revealed to be out of ammo, after all. Fortune, it appears, has just smiled on the brave.

Seizing the moment, Curtis and his fighters gain the upper-hand and begin their perilous trek to the front of the train, working their way towards a climatic meeting with Wilford (Ed Harris), the mysterious industrialist and engineer who not only foresaw the current environmental crisis but created the Ark as humanity’s last recourse. Along the way, the group picks up Nam (Song Kang-ho) and his daughter, Yona (Ko Ah-sung), a pair of drug addicts who may just know how to get Curtis into the engine room. As the group will find out, however, nothing on the train is quite as it seems and Curtis will soon be neck-deep in betrayal, shocking revelations and life-changing decisions. At stake? Nothing less than the fate of all humanity.

For the most part, Snowpiercer works spectacularly well on several different levels. For one thing, the film is a superb action film, showcasing several impressive set-pieces (the tunnel massacre is pretty unforgettable) and throttling forward at a breakneck pace. We’re jumped into the action from the get-go and the film never really lets up: in some ways, it almost feels as if we’re dumped into Snowpiercer in media res, although the film is streamlined enough that abject flailing about is fairly minimal. Everything is filmed in a highly stylized, kinetic fashion that will be immediately familiar to fans of Joon-ho’s back catalog (especially his iconic monster flick, The Host (2006) and the various fight scenes, full of highly evocative slo-mo and balletic movements, are consistently impressive.

Snowpiercer also succeeds as a dystopic future flick, albeit one that doesn’t add much to the lexicon: even the revelation of the icky looking protein bars (Spoiler: it’s not people) feels like part of a fairly well-established formula. That being said, the film’s look and world-building is fully immersive: this is recognizably our world but it’s tweaked enough to give a proper sense of disorientation. It reminded me of Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys (1995), although Joon-ho’s particular vision isn’t quite as singular or unique. There are moments when the film approaches the iconic city scenes of Blade Runner (1982), especially during our introduction to the tail section of the train and the moment where our heroes first pass into the posh upper class section.

The third area where Snowpiercer excels is as a message film: while the script can, occasionally, be a little too on the nose, there are plenty of layers here and some truly interesting discussions of responsibility, personal sacrifice and the value of the individual against the many. Wilford may be the film’s de facto villain (although Swinton’s ludicrously over-the-top Mason fits that bill in a more classic manner) but his climatic meeting with Curtis raises more questions than it answers: a latter-half revelation puts his actions into a new light, making easy condemnations just a little bit harder. Wilford may be a real son of a bitch but he’s anything but arbitrary: the fact that he, technically, has a point doesn’t absolve him or his peers of responsibility for their terrible actions but it should definitely lead to some interesting post-film conversations/arguments. In many ways, Wilford represents the unwavering, coldly clinical eye of government: decisions and actions that seem unconscionable on the ground sometimes take on a different meaning from the war room.

Despite all of the pluses, however, I must freely admit that I didn’t find Snowpiercer to be the complete revelation that others have: if anything, the film is an exceptionally well-made, tightly plotted action with lots of themes and meaning but, ultimately, not much different from similarly intelligent multiplex fare. Often, I was reminded of the Hunger Games series: while Snowpiercer is a much more mature, artistic film, craft-wise, it’s really not that far removed, thematically. Unlike the uncomfortable class discussions of something like Society (1989), nothing in Snowpiercer really feels “game-changing,” as it were: we’ve seen this particular conflict many, many times over the years and, while it may be timely, it’s certainly not shocking. This is not to knock the film’s themes in any way, however: I would rather see an overly familiar discussion of class and environmentalism on the big screen than no discussion at all, thank you very much. That being said, I frequently found myself wishing that the film took a few more risks: even the double-crosses felt a bit familiar and the ending, while beautifully executed, didn’t seem to pack the punch that it could have.

Ultimately, however, my quibbles about Snowpiercer feel fairly petty: above and beyond all else, this is the kind of intelligent popcorn film that we definitely need more of in this era of the “turn your brain off and react” action film. The acting is excellent, with Captain America’s (2011) Chris Evans almost unrecognizable as the grizzled hero and Song Kang-ho serving as a more than suitable foil. If Hurt and Swinton end up turning in yet more variations on their past work (“gruff mentor” and “quirky oddball” could very well be chiseled on their gravestones, at some point in the far future), it doesn’t take away from the basic pleasure of watching either one work. Ditto for Ed Harris who’s managed to avoid disappointing me for at least a couple decades now: a film could do a lot worse than have him play a megalomanical leader with a God-complex and distinct ideas on the social contract.

Is Snowpiercer one of the best films of the year, however? To be honest, it’s kind of a difficult question to answer. The film is certainly one of the best action films of the last several years, hands down, but I just can’t help shake the feeling that it’s still slightly less than what it could have been. Despite it’s epic scope and feel, Snowpiercer, somehow, feels like a slightly lesser film than The Host. Chalk this up to to the transition from more personalized family struggles in one to more “universal” issues in the other and we begin to see where the issue may lie. While watching Snowpiercer, I kept waiting to feel the intense connection to the characters that I did with the family in The Host but it really only happened with Nam and his daughter: whenever the two of them share the screen, Snowpiercer is able to transcend its sci-fi/action trappings and become something simultaneously more intimate and more far-reaching. In a film that purports to be about the very essence of humanity, it’s only when we spend time with this disenfranchised father and daughter, so wrecked by life yet still so inherently hopeful, that the film truly seems to come alive. I’d like to say it’s enough to melt the most frozen heart but that would be kind of precious, wouldn’t it?