Everyone should see Snowpiercer in the theaters without watches or cell phones, without bathroom breaks or trips to the concession stands. The premise sounds vaguely ridiculous, but it is not another forgettable dystopian catastrophe movie. Snowpiercer is a beautiful, action-flled and rigorously thoughtful masterpiece that almost slipped under my radar. It got my attention when I found out that Joon-ho Bong or Bong Joon-ho (depending on who is reporting) directed Snowpiercer. If you are not familiar with South Korean movies, you are missing out on some of the best cutting-edge, genuine boundary pushing, visionary films available. If you are familiar with this director, you may know his prior work: The Host, Memories of Murder and Mother. Snowpiercer, his first English speaking film, may be his best and most optimistic movie yet. I watch too many movies so I successfully guessed many plot points in the movie, but I would not say that Snowpiercer is predictable. Instead I would say that Snowpiercer effectively uses certain narrative markers to challenge its audience similarly to the characters. We bring certain preconceptions to how things should unfold instead of asking if we’re just following a well-worn track that inevitably becomes ineffective and actually contributes to the very thing that we don’t want. Snowpiercer is revolutionary in its iconic Christian imagery (arks, communion, baptism, anti-Gods as opposed to anti-Christ, fish), its questioning of socio-economic and political classes, exploitation versus self-sacrifice, rejecting false choice dichotomies or what gives life and what gives death. The casting director brilliantly casts Captain America as Curtis, the main protagonist in Snowpiercer, which is revolutionary considering Curtis’ history, and the antagonist, which I will not reveal since the casting is brilliant considering his past anti-God roles. I have gained so much respect for Chris Evans to be able to hold his own around such acting greats as Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Octavia Spencer and the iconic Song Kang-ho or Kang-ho Song depending on who is reporting his name. He is not only the star of many of Bong Joon-ho’s aforementioned films, but the star of films by another great South Korean director, Chan-wook Park: Thirst and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Even though Curtis is clearly the main character, Snowpiercer cleverly manages to shift focus on even unnamed characters to display their unique talents-fighting, art, wisdom, moral-grounding. Snowpiercer is a movie that creates a believable world complete with rituals and three-dimensional characters. It feels solid in a way that most movies do not-similar enough to our world to make us squirm in our seats and recognize ourselves not as the hero, but the faceless, enforcers. I am angry that more people do not know about Snowpiercer. There was a disagreement between the distributor, who wanted to cut twenty minutes of the film, and the director, who refused, so Snowpiercer didn’t get the press it deserved. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. I don’t understand how you can have a good movie that can make you a ton of money and should, but because someone correctly refused to do something that you asked, you decide to shoot yourself in the foot instead of implicitly admitting that you’re wrong. They were clearly not watching the same movie that I did–or they were and took the wrong lesson from the movie. Please prove the studios wrong and see Snowpiercer in theaters, but if you can’t, try to replicate the theater experience by giving it your full attention when you do. I may see Snowpiercer again in the theaters. The only right choice is to NOT do the wrong thing for the right reasons regardless of the consequences.