Snowpiercer (8.5/10)

Trust the Koreans to come up with weird but good stuff like Oldboy and now Snowpiercer.

To be fair though, Snowpiercer was based on the French graphic novel, Le Transperceneige; but I have no idea how closely Bong Joon Ho and Kelly Masterson adapted it.

Bong, whose last movie of his that I saw was The Host, has improved since then (as far as I can remember) on how to structure a movie and select what scenes were necessary. Even when the pacing dipped while Bong was setting a mood with the "educational carriage", that was still an important part of the movie to change the way the audience has been viewing the movie thus far. However, I thought that scene went on for a little too long with a song.

But I really enjoyed how tidbits of information were slowly given to the audience and not all at once. I enjoyed figuring it out what's going on in the movie right from the start, where the whole world's population was living on a train because the outside world was no longer fit for life.

This was a good move for Chris Evans to do while in between being an Avenger. And he can carry a movie with no problems at all.

There's a great supporting cast as well. When John Hurt stood up, that was a wow moment for me. Whenever Tilda Swinton spoke, what a great character she created. That last shot of Octavia Spencer was a great piece of acting - not many can do a scene such as that with that much clarity and subtlety. Jamie Bell was also very serviceable. And whenever Ed Harris had something to say, you would listen to that man. And believed him. He almost changed my mind, too.

As for the two Korean actors, Song Kang Ho and Ko Ah Sung, there was a familiarity to them that I could not place until I checked their filmography and realised they have both collaborated with Bong before, in The Host. I liked Song's performance here but I wanted to fault Ko's; then I thought who am I to judge a kid who was brought up in a train and was also an addict.

But I really believe, at the end of the day, it was Bong's direction that brought out the acting to tell the story.

I really liked this movie, especially towards the end when I wasn't sure how it would end. It could have ended very differently and yet it would still have made sense.