4) Snowpiercer
Those who were lucky enough to catch Snowpiercer during its miniscule cinematic run (Harvey Weinstein sure knows how to hold a grudge) were treated to one hell of a spectacle. An A-list cast, a steam punk pirate John Hurt and a bonkers sci-fi concept brought to you by the Korean auteur behind The Host? Count me in.
There was a great deal wrong with the film – its script often clunked, its internal logic was all over the place and the sound mixing made some key dialogue rather difficult to catch. But forget all that, Snowpiercer is gloriously and all encompassingly batshit insane, to the point where I could forgive it for just about anything. There’s just so much weird stuff going on beneath the hood.
Is there any other film of this caliber and pedigree that would – during a particularly brutal and gorgeously shot fight sequence – have its main character collapse to the floor, not felled by another combatant, but by a poorly placed dead fish? It seems unlikely.
There’s a scene around halfway through Snowpiercer‘s messy, joyous and uncut (SUCK IT Harvey) runtime where everything comes together. It’s a sequence – one involving a wheelbarrow full of eggs and a wonderfully OTT cameo from Alison Pill – that elevates Snowpiercer from pitch black zaniness to flat out insanity, one that had me clutching my head in my hands trying to contain my paroxysms of bewildered joy. Before then it was a blast, from there on in it was an increasingly mad descent into hyper-stylized madness the likes of which I’ve rarely seen.
It’s not for everyone, with the film receiving a pretty nasty backlash after an initial round of near unanimous praise, but for the kind of people who like their high-concept sci-fi big and messy and irrevocably insane, Snowpiercer is a slice of deliciously imperfect perfection.