Netflix streaming tip: OKJA is yet another amazing blockbuster from Bong Joon-ho

Is there anyone else in the movie world making such intelligent, suprising and entertaining blockbusters as that South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho? I don't think so. He is indeed the new Spielberg but also something quite "more." After his Snowpiercer (from 2014), he has now gifted us with OKJA, the new sci-fi/fantasy/(sort-of)monster movie that features as its leading character a stalwart adolescent girl up against a corporate world that controls us all these days. Really: I can't think of another moviemaker (Mr. Bong is shown below) who could begin a film as though it were a child-and-her-adorable-giant-animal movie and then, by its end, give us one of the most memorable, moving, surprising and disturbing scenes to ever grace the screen (and I mean any kind of screen, not simply the "theatrical" variety).

That scene, by the way, may make the movie a more difficult experience for kids -- even though they'll love and appreciate most of the film.

And yet, because Bong is such a smart and gifted filmmaker (Mother, Memories of Murder, The Host), he is able to simultaneously give us the "happy ending" that those kids (and, come on, us adults, too) so want, while forcing his audience to view the larger picture -- in a manner so stunning and wrenching that it will seem like nothing you've encountered previously.

For thie alone, Okja deserves, and will undoubtedly receive, its placement on many of the year's "best" lists. (In fact, Variety has already picked it as one of the top movies of the year at our current halfway point.)

The film's story -- no spoilers here -- is all about a girl and her pet pig. That the pig is one of many genetically modified porkers and has grown to "monster" size has been no problem, since the girl, her grandfather and their pig live way the hell out in the countryside where they see (and are seen by) nobody else.

In the supporting cast are the likes of Paul Dano (above) and Jake Gyllenhaal (below), but the movie belongs to the Korean actress Ahn Seo-hyun, as the girl, Mija, and to the special effects department that created Okja and her giant breed. She and they are wonders indeed.

The drama arrives when the corporate entity (personified by the gifted and funny Tilda Swinton) that owns the pig takes it away from the girl to become the mascot for a new line of "pork products." Will our heroine allow this to happen? Not on your strip of breakfast bacon. So our filmmaker orchestrates everything from top-notch chase scenes to a pig-in-the-china-shop spree in a Seoul mall, from a marketing parade in Manhattan to a scary scene in one of those experimental laboratories.

But Bong is simply smarter than almost all the other would-be-blockbuster moviemakers. He always sees both sides of the situation, and so continuallly surprises and unsettles us. He understands that the power of money and greed can work both ways, that corporations can make themselves rich while feeding the planet, and that animal activists who want to harm neither animals nor humans will occasionally do both. He also understands the impulse not to kill other life forms we come to care for, and this, finally, is what sets up the film's biggest conflict.

So, sure, children will find more on their plate than movies like this usually provide. But give them the chance to view and handle it, and I suspect they'll remember this film for a long, long time. Stick with it, and you will, too. Opening a only a few theaters (in New York City at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica Film Center), the film will find its biggest international audience via Netflix streaming, where it is now playing.

With SNOWPIERCER, Bong Joon-ho teaches Hollywood how to make a smart blockbuster

There are probably half a dozen ways to approach SNOWPIERCER, the first English-language feature from noted South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, shown below. You could certainly call it an action movie, which it is. The action is terrific and practically non-stop, save for one surprising expository speech from star Chris Evans (on poster, above, and two photos down) that is so out of nowhere and rather charming and tender that it stops the movie in its tracks for a couple of sweet minutes.

Or simply call the film a blockbuster, since it offers two full hours (plus credits) of enjoyment, a starry cast, explosions, near-non-stop thrills, and lots of gun play and violence -- all wrapped within an intelligent plot that gives us a hell of a lot more than mere special effects. Attention, Hollywood: This is how your blockbusters ought to be delivered -- with the usual hotshot trimmings surrounding some genuine content for a change.

But wait: Snowpiercer is also a sci-fi movie, taking off from the point at which our world has finally come to terms with global warming by shooting into the atmosphere some new derivative that overdoes things hugely, turning the world to ice. All surviving citizens have been herded aboard an enormously long train that has been designed to keep the inside temperature within a livable range.

Ah, yes, but this movie is also a nifty political parable about class in our society. The train, you see, is a microcosm of the world in which we already live. How this "new" world is organized turns out to be one of the delightful treats that Mr. Bong, as director and co-writer, has up his sleeve -- a sleeve, by the way, that is continually surprising and politically astute. This filmmaker has already gifted us with three very different, though equally successful, films: the police procedural, Memories of Murder; an unusual monster movie, The Host; and the character-study-cum-criminal-justice tale, Mother.

Snowpiercer is like nothing else Bong has done, and I think it's his best film yet, certainly his most accessible to western audiences. Oh, yes: And did I mention that this is also one of those newly popular contained-space thrillers, in which everything we see and experience, save a couple of minutes, takes place inside this speeding train. Bong has found a way to keep things moving so fast and so intensely that the pace never lags. One surprise after another awaits us as our set of beleaguered heroes -- think of them as the 99 per cent -- makes its way from train car to train car in its quest to reach, and wrest power from, the one per cent.

These train cars and what they hold are too much fun to spoil with any give-aways here (my personal favorite is the schoolroom, with a well-used Allison Pill, above, as the teacher). Instead let's talk about the crack international cast that Mr. Bong has assembled and that brings his movie to amazing life. Mr. Evans, always good, is light years away from his Captain America image (think of this performance as a cross between his super-hero work and his role in The Iceman).

Evans is well abetted by a fine and action-prone Jamie Bell, above, as his second-in-command. His "mentor" is played by the wonderful John Hurt (below, left with Luke Pasqualino), who brings his usual charm and precision to the proceedings, as well as a little more melancholy and hesitation that we're used to from this excellent actor.

A word must be said for Ed Harris, who does his typically commanding job, as well as for Octavia Spencer (below) who brings her enormous humanity and luminosity to the film, as a fighting mother.

The scene-stealer of them all, however, is Miss Tilda Swinton (below, center), who walks away with the acting/performing/knocking-your-socks-off award. She is unlike anything we've so far seen in her evidently vast repertoire, and she staggers us, while entertaining us royally, as always.

Mr. Bong is from South Korean, so it only seems fair that he include a couple of good Asian actors into his mix. He does, and Song Kang-ho (below, of Secret Sunshine and Thirst) comes through with flying colors. He is -- as character, actor, and action hero -- every bit the equal of Mr. Evans.

As the young woman who accompanies him, Ko Ah-sung proves delightful and daring in her own way. Ms Ko, below, right, gets a particularly suuculent moment in the film, as she and another species eye each other interestedly, warily.

Another of my critical compatriots noted, after the press screening, that he was concerned that director Bong might have made too many concessions to Hollywood's need for feel-good. But no: both of us agreed that the filmmaker has given us his usual dark vision, in which some of the very characters we care for most do not make it to the film's finale.

That finale is something, all right: different from anything else we've seen in this movie, both hopeful and frightening. Snowpiercer is one hell of a ride. Anyone interested in learning what a smart blockbuster looks, sounds and feels like should not miss it.

The movie, from Radius-TWC, opens this Friday, June 27, here in New York at the film centers Angelika and Elinor Bunin Munroe, as well as making its NYC debut as part of BAMcinemaFest 2014 the The BAM Cinemateque in Brooklyn tomorrow, Wednesday, June 25. (This BAM screening will feature a Q&A with director Bong Joon Ho and actor John Hurt, moderated by Scott Foundas, chief film critic for Variety.) Where is the film playing elsewhere across the country? Well, try clicking here, and then entering your info under TICKETS AND SHOWTIMES and see what happens....