Snowpiercer: Bong Joon-Ho's stunning climate-change action-thriller hits Amazon
Years before Bong Joon-Ho made his most widely-acclaimed masterpiece Parasite , he made his English-language debut with this dystopian action-thriller based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige . The 2013 film is an extraordinary work of climate-change fiction, with bold visuals, gripping action, shocking violence and a brutally clear allegory for the class system. It depicts a frozen world created after an attempt to slow global warming accidentally heralded a new ice age in which all of humanity has died out except for those who made it onto Snowpiercer, a train that continually circulates the globe. Chris Evans ( Captain America ) plays a lower-class passenger who leads an uprising against the elites who live at the front of the train: Octavia Spencer, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and Ed Helms also star. The film is also an interesting testament to a directors vision: Harvey Weinstein, whose company distributed the film, asked Joon-Ho to cut 20 minutes from the film and have less dialogue and more action. That version of the film went over terribly with test audiences, and Joon-Hos directors cut was eventually released after a campaign promoted by Swinton and Hurt. READ MORE: * Lockdown viewing: Twelve guilt-free TV shows to let your kids binge out on * Kevin Can F... Himself: Why after Schitt's Creek, Annie Murphy wanted a change * Nine Perfect Strangers: Amazon's starry cast can't recreate Little Lies' magic * Ten of Nicole Kidman's best performances (and where you can watch them) * Lockdown viewing: The greatest TV shows of all-time (& where you can watch them) Its great to see Amazon Prime Video playing host to more local content, like this documentary about how two Manukau Polytechnic students founded the Dawn Raid Entertainment empire. Directed by Oscar Kightley, Dawn Raid tells a vital story of Pacific artistry in Aotearoa, following Andy Murane and Tanielu Leaosavaii (aka Brotha D), as they went from running a bootleg t-shirt business and hip-hop night at an Otara bar to founding Dawn Raid Entertainment, the label that signed a number of influential hip-hop and R&B artists from Aotearoa, such as Savage, Adeaze, Aaradhna and the Deceptikonz, some of whom were propelled to international fame. The documentary takes a powerful and empathetic look at how this generation of musicians gave voice to a disenfranchised Pacific community still hurting from the cruel dawn raids. As our reviewer Graeme Tuckett put it , Dawn Raid is a concise, engrossing, enthralling and often extraordinarily funny trip through the broad strokes of the story. The music is terrific, the characters are genuine and unrepeatable and the story is unforgettable. After Titanic was released in 1997, and Kate Winslet essentially became, at least for a time, the most famous actress in the world, she turned down numerous big-budget offers she was getting (including Shakespeare in Love ) and instead starred in a number of back-to-back low-budget indie dramas, favouring interesting stories over fame and fortune. The first of these was Hideous Kinky , an adaptation of Esther Freuds semi-autobiographical novel about a woman who, unsatisfied with English life, moves to Morocco with her two daughters. (Freuds mother moved her to Morocco as a young girl; as an aside, shes Sigmund Freuds great-granddaughter). Winslet is unsurprisingly astounding in the role, which takes an interesting look at the often-privileged idealism of English people who sought enlightenment in so-called exotic places. Dominic West and Helena Bonham-Carter play the legendary actors and married couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in this 2013 film, made by BBC Four, that was released to critical acclaim. The movie is set in 1983, when Burton and Taylor, who at that point had been married and divorced twice, were in New York City to star in Noel Cowards play Private Lives . The film is a fascinating window into two very turbulent celebrities, and the performances are astounding: as NPR wrote , Bonham Carter has a firm hand on a fundamental conflict within Taylor, which is that she seems like such an impossibly elegant, self-possessed woman at some moments and like such an infuriating flake at others. I would like to first state that the typo is not mine: this film really is called The Pursuit of Happyness (some say this film actually sparked a more relaxed use of spelling that word with a y, so who knows anymore). This film was so popular in 2006 that most of us already know the story, but for those that dont, Will Smith stars as a father struggling to make ends meet, when he finds himself homeless. His real-life son Jaden also stars. The film almost sparked a sub-genre of Will Smith tearjerkers, albeit with diminishing returns: he re-teamed with his Happyness director, Gabriele Muccino, for 2008s Seven Pounds , which was poorly reviewed, and later starred in 2016s Collateral Beauty , one of those rare films thats so bad, its funny.