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Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic here with a Slate's spoiler special podcast on Snowpiercer, the new adventure story from the Korean director Bong Joon Ho. Adventure stories, is that safe to say? Sci-fi thriller, something like that. Well, we'll talk about all the genres that this is and isn't as we go along. The voice you hear is Forrest Wittman, a writer for Slate. Hello, Forrest. Hey, Dana. So one reason I wanted to have you in on this one is that you are a big Bong Joon Ho fan and a completist.

You've seen all five of his features.

I've seen all of his features.

He's done a lot of shorts, including some lengthier shorts and parts and serials and stuff, which I'm excited to check out.

But, yeah, all of them. Yeah, I think I do too, although I would say probably that this is my least favorite of his movies I've seen so far.

There's one other that I haven't seen, unlike you.

But that's a high bar to set in the case of this particular director because he's so interesting and varied and so all over the place.

So let's really briefly set up the history of his career before we get into Snowpiercer. Yeah, his first movie was Barking Dogs Never Bite, which came out in the early 2000s, I think, which is more of a comedy.

I think his movies have become sort of very generally speaking, less comedic as they've gone along, or at least, snowpiercer is probably his least funny movie, though it has moments of humor, which is a sort of smaller budget movie.

And then he did Memories of Murder, which is kind of the Zodiac of South Korea that came out before Zodiac.

It's similarly based on a true story and the mystery is unsolved at the end.

And it's about kind of two detectives who become very obsessive about it and sort of lose their lives to the story.

So it's very similar and really great.

And much more comic, we should say, than Zodiac also.

I mean, that's the strange thing that he's somehow able to do is fold this sometimes very broad physical comedy into these genre detective stories or whatever genre he's working in.

Yeah.

I mean, it seems very bold to inject so much humor into a movie about like a true life murder.

But he pulls it off.

Even in this movie, there's this great moment where there's like a horribly brutal fight scene.

And right in the middle of it, Chris Evans.

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