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Chichevache posted:My girl watches it and I occasionally glance at it because Nina Dobrev is fine as hell. I've met her and she's super nice. fishtobaskets posted:I didn't like it at first either, but I kept thinking about it afterward and it's really stuck with me in a way that makes me excited to see it again, so I think that's probably a good sign? I think it's a movie where, in order to enjoy it, you have to just throw out all sense of realism & just accept it for the visually stunning, absurdly odd allegory it's trying to be. Similar to how you might approach Brazil or Clockwork Orange, except those films gave us early & obvious cues that they were not to be approached realistically. This is the only way to enjoy Snowpiercer, turn your critical brain off and enjoy each scene individually because it's beautiful. The story is Elysium on a train, with a great cast, and it's a solid movie despite itself. There's one really obviously bad monologue, but not even Laurence Olivier could pull off "I know what baby tastes like".
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Nov 3, 2014 03:33
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For what it is, Snowpeircer is ok I guess, but it was just too far fetched as a premise to be engaging. I could see it working as something like a failing colonization attempt that couldn't be resupplied or something, but everybody left on the planet on a train? The train just doesn't seem that plausible as a solution to the problem set forth and since it's not, it kind of removes you from whatever motivation the characters have.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:06
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MadMattH posted:For what it is, Snowpeircer is ok I guess, but it was just too far fetched as a premise to be engaging. I could see it working as something like a failing colonization attempt that couldn't be resupplied or something, but everybody left on the planet on a train? The train just doesn't seem that plausible as a solution to the problem set forth and since it's not, it kind of removes you from whatever motivation the characters have. It isn't supposed to be plausible. It is a giant metaphor.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:09
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Yeah but thinking about this guy thinking "they're still on the train?! This just isn't plausible!" 2 hours in is really funny.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:11
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Bumming Your Scene posted:The Burbs Hell yes!!
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Nov 3, 2014 04:14
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The_Rob posted:It isn't supposed to be plausible. It is a giant metaphor. I understand that, but it just pulls me out too far. I could even buy it if it was set in some underground bunker or something. Having the people be on a train just seems too forced and very unnatural. It just comes off as odd and even with the metaphor, the train thing is too forced.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:17
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I finished season 2 of American Horror Story last night. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I liked it, don't get me wrong. But if you asked me what it was about, I'm not sure what I would say. If you asked me about season 1, I would say it's about a family moving into a ghost house. But season 2, I would say it's about an insane asylum because what else could I say that isn't a spoiler? I'm not even sure it's about the asylum at all, more about the characters that happen to converge at a particular time in an asylum, but even saying which characters reveals their significance. It's a weird setup. Honestly I was finding it difficult to tell what was a main plot thread and what was a weird side thread that leads nowhere. A lot of random poo poo happens for no obvious reason. I thought most things in season 1 were explained at some point. SolidSnakesBandana fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 04:21
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MadMattH posted:I understand that, but it just pulls me out too far. I could even buy it if it was set in some underground bunker or something. Having the people be on a train just seems too forced and very unnatural. It just comes off as odd and even with the metaphor, the train thing is too forced. How would an underground bunker work better? The train works as a metaphor because there are multiple cars which will represent multiple levels of class and societal standing. What would a underground bunker represent?
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Nov 3, 2014 04:22
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red19fire posted:This is the only way to enjoy Snowpiercer, turn your critical brain off ... Nah, turn it back on, it's much more enjoyable that way. Watching it with your brain turned off is, as fishtobaskets discovered, a fast way to miss that it's very much like Brazil. For instance, the baby-eater monologue may be eccentric, but it's far from obvious in any sense, much less obviously bad. It's Juvenalian satire. The point is that the allegory is absolutely scathing in its depiction of 'the future,' and Joon-ho doesn't care if we find it ridiculous or not, because it's true. He wants nothing more than our spontaneous reaction to life being depicted in such a bereft, hopeless, and extreme way. This is exactly what Terry Gilliam does in Brazil: Juxtapose images of such shocking grotesque with black humor and epic fantasy. One needs to watch it more like a fairy tale, filtered through the strange subjective of a meek, little office boy who has bouts of Don Quixote syndrome. In Snowpiercer, it's the same poo poo, except the subjective of a guy who is both a hero and a cannibal. People should watch the movie with this in mind, that they're essentially seeing Curtis's culture shock at the progressing moral depravity of the world. There are gonna be parts that get full on ridiculous. And, for God's sake, there's already an underground version of Snowpiercer. It's called The Mole People, and it's equally absurd and awesome. EDIT: And, to a greater extent, The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:24
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The_Rob posted:How would an underground bunker work better? The train works as a metaphor because there are multiple cars which will represent multiple levels of class and societal standing. What would a underground bunker represent? In that it could actually work as a solution to the given problem and might be one that could actually be used without having to resort to "Hey look, this is really a train!" You could easily represent the exact same thing just having the bunker sealed off into different sections. Even having it set on a space ship would just make more sense than a train.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:36
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K. Waste posted:Nah, turn it back on, it's much more enjoyable that way. Watching it with your brain turned off is, as fishtobaskets discovered, a fast way to miss that it's very much like Brazil. Don't forget Logan's Run.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:37
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MadMattH posted:Don't forget Logan's Run. Also, Ben Ketai's Beneath from 2013.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:42
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:I finished season 2 of American Horror Story last night. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I liked it, don't get me wrong. But if you asked me what it was about, I'm not sure what I would say. If you asked me about season 1, I would say it's about a family moving into a ghost house. But season 2, I would say it's about an insane asylum because what else could I say that isn't a spoiler? I'm not even sure it's about the asylum at all, more about the characters that happen to converge at a particular time in an asylum, but even saying which characters reveals their significance. It's a weird setup. I've always felt that the subtitle Asylum was perfect for the second season, cause it is absolutely crazy. And the main plot was the journalist becoming trapped in the asylum, and mainly everyone and everything put on good guy fronts but were evil underneath, even going so far as to have the ultimate "Nice guy on the outside/monster on the inside" with rapey santa.
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Nov 3, 2014 04:44
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Snowpiercer is pretty great and anyone who is bothered by the implausibility is living an impoverished life because the part of their brain that suspends disbelief withered and died at some point while they choked on a piece of food or strangled themselves while jerking off or something. On the topic of Snowpiercer here's a short fun extremely spoiler filled video about one of the dozens of things that it does well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X05TDsoSg2Y But my favorites parts of the movie were how the tone zig zagged around from extremely bleak to weirdly funny while all along it adroitly rode the edge of absurdity. Really, all the implausible poo poo in that movie just helped pushed the absurdity. Is Brazil implausible? Yes, but who gives a poo poo? Ditto for Snowpiercer,
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Nov 3, 2014 05:14
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Snowpiercer is pretty great and anyone who is bothered by the implausibility is living an impoverished life because the part of their brain that suspends disbelief withered and died at some point while they choked on a piece of food or strangled themselves while jerking off or something. On the topic of Snowpiercer here's a short fun extremely spoiler filled video about one of the dozens of things that it does well: I agree completely, and I think netflix is the perfect place for it. I would predict it becoming a cultish sleeper hit, and it's great to have on in the background. K. Waste posted:Nah, turn it back on, it's much more enjoyable that way. Watching it with your brain turned off is, as fishtobaskets discovered, a fast way to miss that it's very much like Brazil. I think this is why it belongs on netflix, multiple viewings kind of clarify the film. Like the first time I saw it, I had the same gut reaction mentioned earlier, that it goes off the rails  like 3/4 in with a weird twist, and that overshadowed a lot of the film. Then, reading the Snowpiercer thread and critics' explanation, I really started to appreciate it. And the director standing up to Weinstein to keep his cut intact is cool as heck.
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Nov 3, 2014 05:48
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TychoCelchuuu posted:Snowpiercer is pretty great and anyone who is bothered by the implausibility is living an impoverished life because the part of their brain that suspends disbelief withered and died at some point while they choked on a piece of food or strangled themselves while jerking off or something. On the topic of Snowpiercer here's a short fun extremely spoiler filled video about one of the dozens of things that it does well: OTOH, people who consider Snowpiercer to be any sort of good science fiction are the same people who think Sharknado was a thing that could actually happen. Anyone who thought that getting on a loving train was going to save them because the entire planet was frozen deserved whatever the people who convinced them to get on in the first place did to them because they were too stupid to actually continue their existence. They might as well have said, "We are saving you with MAGIC!" Suspension of disbelief doesn't mean turning your brain entirely off. The train was just a heavy handed plot device that didn't really do anything. Saying that the train is metaphor does nothing to change that the train is a poo poo metaphor. Snowpiercer didn't even do the action adroitly, it certainly wasn't special in that regard. When the acting wasn't flat it was scene chewing. The sets were ugly. It probably smelled weird too. I happen to think Brazil is fine and is more acceptable as a future reality than Snowpiercer. Snowpiercer is around the level of Zardoz in both commentary and working as a movie reality and shouldn't be classed with something like Brazil.
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Nov 3, 2014 06:04
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I thought the main problem with Snowpiercer is that it just didn't have a very good script. I don't care about the premise being goofy as poo poo, I love Sunshine and Dark City and The Fountain and all that. I just thought it was very solidly mediocre from a script-and-acting point of view. It was about on the level of that movie where Malcolm McDowell plays a guy who escapes a worldwide plague by living in a castle. It did have neat visuals though.
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Nov 3, 2014 06:40
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:I finished season 2 of American Horror Story last night. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I liked it, don't get me wrong. But if you asked me what it was about, I'm not sure what I would say. If you asked me about season 1, I would say it's about a family moving into a ghost house. But season 2, I would say it's about an insane asylum because what else could I say that isn't a spoiler? I'm not even sure it's about the asylum at all, more about the characters that happen to converge at a particular time in an asylum, but even saying which characters reveals their significance. It's a weird setup. I agree with all of this and thought season one was a little better overall, and thematically tighter. I also didn't really care that much about the Nazi doctor or the nun and they dominate most of the season, and the alien plot, while potentially interesting, is scarce and intermittent and it seems like they didn't really know what to do with it. There's also a bit when they finally introduce Dylan McDermott and he immediately identifies himself as the serial killer's son and then you know that must mean the public knows who the killer was in the future, so all the scenes of the killer following that are devoid of dramatic tension because you know he's not going to get away with it. I will say the one scene that's stuck with me after watching it like a week ago is 'The Name Game' because Jessica Lange loving nails it. Wolfsheim fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 07:25
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TychoCelchuuu posted:
That's pretty much a trademark style of the director.
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Nov 3, 2014 08:22
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Yeah, Snowpiercer just isn't firing on all cylinders. It's got an off-the-wall premise, but instead of embracing that, it still spins its wheels with lots of exposition. It's an action movie, but the action is choppy and not clear. It has a cool idea of progression as they advance through the train, but you don't really get a great feel for the train as a place. It's ok, but I wish it was better.
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Nov 3, 2014 08:34
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wafflesnsegways posted:Yeah, Snowpiercer just isn't firing on all cylinders.  
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Nov 3, 2014 08:41
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I'm only up to Mac and Charlie die pt 2 in Always Sunny but it's the only show that consistently cracks me up. The fact there are still at least five more seasons is excellent.
fliptophead fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 11:16
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It is King of The Hill consistent too
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Nov 3, 2014 11:19
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fliptophead posted:I'm only up to Mac and Charlie die pt 2 in Always Sunny but it's the only show that consistently cracks me up. The fact there are still at least five more seasons is excellent. Good news, it stays funny against all odds. I just binged through season 9 last night. I wasn't expecting to watch the whole season in one sitting but it was just so loving good that I couldn't help myself. MadMattH posted:OTOH, people who consider Snowpiercer to be any sort of good science fiction are the same people who think Sharknado was a thing that could actually happen. I'm glad you started off your post with this sentence, because it informed me that the entire rest of your post was stupid as poo poo, so I didn't bother to read it.
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Nov 3, 2014 15:07
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Leper Residue posted:I've always felt that the subtitle Asylum was perfect for the second season, cause it is absolutely crazy. And the main plot was the journalist becoming trapped in the asylum, and mainly everyone and everything put on good guy fronts but were evil underneath, even going so far as to have the ultimate "Nice guy on the outside/monster on the inside" with rapey santa. At first I thought it was about Lana being in the asylum, but so many characters get so much screen time that I had a hard time saying that it was about her. But considering the way the show begins and the way it ends, I guess its accurate. I also really really wanted to see a resolution on the possession story, because that was by far the most interesting part of the season for me. But it just ends so abruptly. I must have missed something there. I find it hard to believe that killing the host would even have an effect. I also don't understand why they brought Alma back, because she didn't actually do anything except what happened with Grace which made no loving sense whatsoever. Probably the thing I hated most about the season.
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Nov 3, 2014 15:11
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precision posted:I thought the main problem with Snowpiercer is that it just didn't have a very good script. I don't care about the premise being goofy as poo poo, I love Sunshine and Dark City and The Fountain and all that. I just thought it was very solidly mediocre from a script-and-acting point of view. It was about on the level of that movie where Malcolm McDowell plays a guy who escapes a worldwide plague by living in a castle. Best line in that terrible script, "BUT HOW CAN I LEAD IF I HAVE TWO ARMS?" Yes the train is a metaphor, but that metaphor is as ham-fisted and juvenile as some 9th grader's poetry notebook.
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Nov 3, 2014 15:14
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MadMattH posted:OTOH, people who consider Snowpiercer to be any sort of good science fiction are the same people who think Sharknado was a thing that could actually happen. Anyone who thought that getting on a loving train was going to save them because the entire planet was frozen deserved whatever the people who convinced them to get on in the first place did to them because they were too stupid to actually continue their existence. They might as well have said, "We are saving you with MAGIC!" Suspension of disbelief doesn't mean turning your brain entirely off. Who the Hell thinks Sharknado could actually happen? And what does this have to do with the enjoyment of a fantasy film? The people who get on the apocalypse train aren't stupid. For all intents and purposes, the God engine works. It's that the price of it working is that some people are farmed as disposable sacrifices. It's really not as farfetched as people are getting hung up on. It's certainly not comparable to a shark tornado, which - though I haven't seen the film - I'm assuming is a case where the fantasy conceit exists solely to look ridiculous and not actually comment upon anything other than its own ridiculousness. Snowpiercer takes absurdity and does a really good job of using it for reasons other than self-indulgence. quote:The train was just a heavy handed plot device that didn't really do anything. Saying that the train is metaphor does nothing to change that the train is a poo poo metaphor. What makes it a poo poo metaphor? The lack of plausibility? quote:Snowpiercer didn't even do the action adroitly, it certainly wasn't special in that regard. When the acting wasn't flat it was scene chewing. The sets were ugly. It probably smelled weird too. wafflesnsegways posted:Yeah, Snowpiercer just isn't firing on all cylinders. It's got an off-the-wall premise, but instead of embracing that, it still spins its wheels with lots of exposition. It's an action movie, but the action is choppy and not clear. It has a cool idea of progression as they advance through the train, but you don't really get a great feel for the train as a place. Now we're getting into a weird place where Snowpiercer is apparently too absurd to be taken seriously, but also not absurd enough to be appreciated on its own terms. All of the exposition in Snowpiercer serves a purpose of contextualizing the characters and giving the spectator a feel of the train as a place. Furthermore, this exposition routinely pays off at some later point in the story. I'm thinking particularly of stuff like when Gilliam attempts to get Curtis to stop the campaign forward and instead hold the water-supply of the train hostage. This isn't the movie spinning its wheels, it's exposition for when it's revealed that Gilliam is being coerced by the Conductor, that the boiler room was where the revolution was supposed to end, and that Curtis was then going to be escorted to the front of the train and seduced by its pleasures. Ironically, the reason this doesn't happen is because Curtis is written in such a way that he's eager to defy the plausibility of this strategy in favor of pushing forward. The train itself as a feat of production design is amazing. The sheer contrast between the privileged areas and the prisons and slums is accentuated by our consciousness that they're literally only a few feet away from one another. And Joon-ho films these narrow corridors very well, giving us a proper sense that the further forward these characters go in the train, the more and more it feels like a stable and total world and not just a train with some nice cars and some bad cars.
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Nov 3, 2014 15:25
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Hat Thoughts posted:It is King of The Hill consistent too I wish King of the Hill was still on Netflix... 
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Nov 3, 2014 15:47
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inSTAALed posted:I wish King of the Hill was still on Netflix... Same, it was always great for that "I've got ~20 minutes to kill" niche.
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Nov 3, 2014 15:48
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I watched Snowpiercer again last night and could not stop laughing at the joyful weirdness that Tilda Swinton and Ewen Bremner bring to their characters. Swinton in particular is such a delight. Has she ever played a role where she didn't commit 1000% to the character?
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Nov 3, 2014 17:26
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I was going to post her as Janine in Hot Fuzz, until I double checked on IMDB and realised that was Cate Blanchett not Tilda Swinton. However, this did lead me to the great discovery that Michael the shelf stacker is played by Rory McCann, AKA The Hound from Game of Thrones  
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Nov 3, 2014 17:34
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inSTAALed posted:I wish King of the Hill was still on Netflix... My girlfriend and I got sick of waiting for it to pop back up so we ended up buying the whole run on amazon and stream it through prime. Yes, it's much much more expensive in the long run than Netflix but I get to watch as much KotH as I want now with no fear of it mysteriously disappearing for over a year with no explanation or promise that it will come back. Which makes no sense considering every other Fox cartoon (except The Simpsons) are always up on Netflix but not KotH.
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Nov 3, 2014 17:37
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Snowpiercer isn't a meaningful depiction of class struggle because its underclass by and large doesn't labor, HTH. (e: cleared up phrasing) The Time Dissolver fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Nov 3, 2014 |
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Nov 3, 2014 18:14
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:I'm glad you started off your post with this sentence, because it informed me that the entire rest of your post was stupid as poo poo, so I didn't bother to read it. That's OK since it was just a tiny jab at the other guy anyway. K. Waste posted:Who the Hell thinks Sharknado could actually happen? And what does this have to do with the enjoyment of a fantasy film? I made it pretty clear it was stupid people, to clarify, specifically the ones who think Snowpiercer is good science fiction. K. Waste posted:
They would have to be stupid to think that there would be any way for it to work without magic. It's not just the whole God engine Macguffin, the whole idea is an unworkable mess. It is comparable in the exact same way as a shark tornado, it only exists as a conceit of the film it exists in and wouldn't even be considered as something that could happen in a real world. quote:What makes it a poo poo metaphor? The lack of plausibility? An actual good metaphor, wouldn't have to refer back to itself for 2 hours. quote:Now we're getting into a weird place where Snowpiercer is apparently too absurd to be taken seriously, but also not absurd enough to be appreciated on its own terms. If the train can be replaced by any vehicle other than a train, then it's just a dumb plot device. Even the never stopping train thing has been done before, although not in a post-apocalypse world.
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Nov 3, 2014 18:58
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I'm sorry to break this to you, but movies aren't real.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:15
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SolidSnakesBandana posted:I also don't understand why they brought Alma back, because she didn't actually do anything except what happened with Grace which made no loving sense whatsoever. Probably the thing I hated most about the season. The aliens part of the story is still the one element never quite sat well with me, maybe in part because given how relatively popular things like UFOs, crop circles, cattle mutilation, abductions, etc. was in the 70s-90s I think there might be enough material there on its own season for something revolving around that. The only difficult thing would be to find a way to make erotic sexual situations involving grays or reptilians watchable, though.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:16
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Tune in next week where we learn that Star Wars is a terrible movie because the Death Star is implausibly large for what it needs to do, Indiana Jones is awful because the sun would never hit that angle in the desert, let alone get focused through the staff, Blade Runner sucks because robots don't and can't work like that, Aladdin is implausible because magic carpets can't support that much weight, and Schindler's List is the worst movie ever made because in real life neither Schindler nor anyone else was speaking in English.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:16
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Bagpuss_UK posted:I was going to post her as Janine in Hot Fuzz, until I double checked on IMDB and realised that was Cate Blanchett not Tilda Swinton. Yarp  I love Hot Fuzz. I was going to start raving about Dalton in it but everyone is awesome. So rewatchable.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:18
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Your impeccable logic has convinced me that I wasn't a little bit bored by Snowpiercer after all.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:19
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wafflesnsegways posted:Your impeccable logic has convinced me that I wasn't a little bit bored by Snowpiercer after all. Nah, you're cool, that's not what the present argument is about.
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Nov 3, 2014 19:21
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