Bong Joon Ho has a new movie out – that is always an event to look forward to. His previous “Mother” was outstanding, and “The Host” was a very very strange variation on the “monster comes down to haunt a city” topic – strange in a very relaxed way, as if the extra-ordinariness of the event is a mere side note.
And this is what links The Host to “Snowpiercer”. We have an extraordinary situation, outlandish in its eccentricity: the world has frozen over in a freak accident after some well-intended weather manipulation. Now what’s left of civilisation is huddled up in a high-speed train that circles the planet. Nobility and working class, spa cars and slavery work included. There is not too much discussion about the practicality of the arrangements, but the tone is rather one of “let’s assume this could be plausible”. Of course there is dissatisfaction and rebellion in the train’s rear end, of course there is a military-like suppression of all such rebellion with whatever violent means is necessary. It is not really clear what the elite class gains from their survival and segregation of the poor class, but maybe that lack of clarity is always present in segregated societies.
But then they rise, the army of the misfits… under the intellectual leadership of John Hurt, no less, who is one of those actors I am always very very happy about seeing, and who I am always very very confused about seeing, because I keep thinking he died decades ago. Widely exaggerated, he’s still around and saves half of the film through his presence. Of the other half, a third is saved on the other end of the train by Tilda Swinton, who must have had the time of her life playing the … liaison officer between the train’s front and rear end. This is over the top in all possible manners, think Willy Wonka high in speed, and on a high-speed train, as it is. Lovely teeth, too. Song Kang-ho gives the cool and wicked Korean nerd criminal, Ed Harris the evil leader coat, but when it comes to fighting the just fight, it is Chris Evans who has to do the heavy lifting. Maybe not the best choice amidst all this acting nobility, he comes across as a bit of a generic action hero figure.
As a romping and stomping action drama, with a bunch of outlaws fighting their way through a very long train, this actually works most of the time. The narrow confines of the train structure allow for a lot of vertical kinetic energy, with very little place to hide (unless you find some fat people in sauna cubicles). The choice of occasionally cutting to an outside perspective on the train is not the best one, as the whole winter landscape and cgi snow effect department was not quite up to the task. It actually conjured some fond memories of much better and dramatic train sequences, such as in particular in the more recent “Transsiberian” and the more mature but insurmountable “Runaway Train” (ohhhh… have to watch that one again, and soon!)
What happens on the train stays on the train, as they say, and what is on the train makes for some very solid and dense atmospheric action cinema!
66% of top critics at Rottentomatoes think “Zoolander” is good rather than bad… 66%… my only assumption can be that the world is coming to an end very soon. Only very rarely did 80 minutes feel so long. … I am having a quick but comprehensive run-through on my life now, and after complete assessment I have to say I cannot think of any 80 minutes that felt longer.
A very uplifting little French take on the power of motherly affection, on the heart-warming effects of maternal dedication, and the feeling of vulnerability pregnancy leaves many women with. “Charming” would be the word, if not for the fact that one such mother is on a massacre spree, and her key target is a mother to be (to be tomorrow, as in “this is the night before she is supposed to go to hospital to deliver”). The latter really does not know what she did to deserve this level of attention, nor do all the other people who get in the way of “The Woman’s” (
Steve Coogan and Judy Dench – what can go wrong, really? Not much, and Stephen Frears manages a beautiful thing: he forces Coogan into a serious, somehow sad role of former journalistic and political hotshot, now demoted to serve as hired hand of human interest story-telling. But he does not allow Coogan to lose his sense of humour, his “The Trip”- or “Alan Partridge”-sharpened weapon of mocking himself and the rest of the world with a flick of the tongue. And at the same time, Dench is not just cast as the melancholic mother searching for a son long lost, as an old-fashioned Damsel not really keeping up with the pace of modern times. Occasionally she shoots arrows of humour, filth or honesty at her surroundings that make the whole scenery stand still, mouth gaping open, aghast … WTF?
Blood will flow… heads will roll… hardly ever have those standard issue gang war sentences been taken so literally by a film maker… Wikipedia cites the Norwegian film classification board as calling the film to depict “high impact violence and cruelty” and keeping it out of the theatres for that reason. A very accurate and sober description, I have to say.
Everybody loves “Blue Ruin” – it is one of the critics’ and festivals’ favourites of the last year, and it becomes immediately apparent why this is so. Revenge films, skilfully derived plots to make the murderers of a poor child’s family suffer decades later, we have seen all that, and plenty.
thomas4cinema 