This month's installment of Nothing to Watch on Netflix is the Korean-made Snowpiercer.
I can say with complete sincerity that I have never seen anything quite like Snowpiercer. It's a surreal pastiche of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi coupled with straight action with a healthy dose of class warfare added for shits and giggles.
I'm gonna level with you. When I first sat down to watch this movie, I didn't enjoy it. I thought the premise was stupid. I thought it was too campy and tropey. All of the rich people live a life of opulence at the front of the car while poor people starve at the back of the car.
Then I realized about halfway through the movie that this was part of the movie's appeal. And just when I thought I had things figured out, the plot takes a series of left turns (which is kind of weird because it takes place on a train) that leave me wondering just what the hell I had sat down to watch.
Basically, humanity has screwed the pooch and Earth is a frozen wasteland after a botched attempt to combat global warming. Everyone piles onto a train called Snowpiercer that makes a year-long circuit around the world. People who had tickets get to ride first class and live the good life while the freeloaders live in the back of the train in squalor. Our hero, Curtis Everett (played by Chris Evans AKA Captain America AKA Jake from Not Another Teen Movie), is a young upstart living in the back of the train who starts a revolution that causes him to fight his way to the engine room of the train.
This isn't a movie that's gonna make you curl up in a ball and contemplate all of your poor life choices. This also isn't some mindless explosion porn. It's somewhere in between in its absurdity. Give this one a shot if you're not looking for something completely serious.