Snowpiercer

Rated 4.0

In the not-too-distant future of Joon-ho Bong's meditative and thrilling Snowpiercer, a failed global-warming experiment has frozen the entire planet, rendering it uninhabitable. Eighteen years later, the remains of humanity live on a high-speed supertrain where a cruel class divide has developed, with the privileged class living up front, and the most destitute and exploitable people in the caboose. The setup may be high-concept times a thousand, but the obviousness of the symbolism (the train is the world, the passengers are humanity, and we're done here) is so inextricably interwoven with the forward momentum of the plot and so well complemented by Joon-ho's comic-book style and sick humor, you can't help but buy in. Joon-ho previously made The Host, a monster movie that both satisfied and sabotaged the expectations of the genre, and he does the same thing with futuristic sci-fi in Snowpiercer.