2014: #15

It was the "year of compound word" in film titles. Including last night's The Overnighters, exactly half of the remaining movies on the countdown have compound words in their names.

I just blew your mind.

Next one up-

#15 Snowpiercer

Over the last decade or two, South Korea has truly carved out a niche for itself as an often dark, always-inventive producer of films that manage to stick with you. Movies like My Sassy Girl, A Tale of Two Sisters and Oldboy have all been attempted remakes, with some (A Tale of Two Sisters was remade as The Uninvited) more successful than others (Spike Lee's Oldboy reboot was apparently atrocious).

At the heart of the Korean new wave movement is director Bong Joon-ho, whose The Host, a 2006 sci-fi/horror mashup about a monster coming up from the Han river to wreak havoc on Seoul, is the highest-grossing Korean language film of all time. Snowpiercer is his first English-language film, and it's great. It's the year 2031, and thanks to a government overcorrection to try and block the advance of global warming, the whole planet is a ball of ice. The only survivors are circling the globe on the titular train, and it is set up in a fashion that reflects society: lower classes in the back of the train and the upper-crust up front. Chris Evans stars as Curtis Everett, an everyman who along with Edgar (Jamie Bell), Gilliam (John Hurt) and Tanya (Octavia Spencer), leads a revolt against the guards when they come to deliver protein blocks. From there, they free prisoner Namgoong (The Host star Song Kang-ho), the man who put together the security doors on Snowpiercer, and his daughter, offering them a stash of pure Kronole (futuristic cocaine) to unlock the doors as they move forward. Standing in their way are Mason (a grotesque-looking Tilda Swinton), the spokesperson and day-to-day operations manager for commander Wilfred, a terrifying armed schoolteacher (Alison Pill), Mason's top henchman Franco the Elder, and a seemingly endless supply of security personnel.

The film's tagline "Fight your way to the front" is exactly what they do, with Curtis refusing to stop until he gets an audience with Wilfred, regardless of body count (it's big, but who's counting?). It turns out the man behind the curtain has some information and horrifying secrets of his own about how his system has been built and how his engine runs. Korean filmmakers are known for blurring the line between genres, and somehow Snowpiercer manages to be a sci-fi thinker, an action-filled shoot 'em up, a social commentary and even in some instances, a horror (a fair amount of pretty gruesome axe/hatchet deaths and a couple of de-limbings). Its crazy resolution will play out in your head at least a few times once you've wrapped up. Bong Joon-ho is here to stay, folks.