real quick: rewatching snowpiercer
Chris Evans is lookin' real manicured for a man who's been eating jellied roach in the caboose off a high-speed train for 17 years
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Snowpiercer (2013) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Written by Bong Joon-Ho and Kelly Masterson
Directed by Bong Joon-Ho
The first time I saw Snowpiercer, I was on a date with a man whose name I can’t remember (sorry, man) and I really didn’t know shit about Korean cinema or Bong Joon-Ho, but the dude I was hanging out with seemed deep in the way that men with man buns seemed deep to me in Brooklyn circa 2013, so I agreed to traverse all the way to the Lower East Side (ugh) to watch some film that I really had no context for. I remember at the time thinking something like, “I am out of my depth because I’m just trying to get some capital D, but I will probably rewatch this later in my life and I’ll be like Oooohh.”
Reader, this was my “Oooohh.”
I actually think Snowpiercer is a near-perfect movie. Its characters are well-wrought, it has deep stuff about classism, and Tilda Swinton is really, really funny in a movie that isn’t really, really funny. Song Kang-ho, it’s always a pleasure. The progression of the film? Very satisfying. The film sucks in the way that—spoiler?—practically everyone dies, but also I feel like the movie wouldn’t be good if everyone didn’t die. Tilda Swinton? GOT TO GO! Octavia Spencer? Strong black woman archetype, tapping OUT. Billy Elliott Jamie Bell? Sad, but you had to die so that Chris Evans’ dirt-streaked face could mold itself into the brow-furrowed shape of I SO SAD BUT I ALSO STRONG. Do I believe Chris Evans when he’s crying about killing Billy Elliot’s mom and trying to eat a baby Billy Elliott when there was no food in the caboose of the train? Not really! I kind of laughed! Because even if it wasn’t believable it was entertaining and I like Chris Evans and he gets a B+ for effort.
Now that being said: His shiny white teeth and perfectly trimmed beard and—perhaps most distractingly—Captain America physique was not giving I eat roach for breakfast, lunch, and dinner but it’s Hollywood, baby. One must go into these things with a je ne sais quoi, I pretend I do not see it mindset.
That’s what I did, and I had a GREAT time. Bye!