The Neon Demon

Started by jenkins, April 14, 2016, 12:48:27 PM

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jenkins





Written and Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring Elle Fanning
Release Date - June 24, 2016

wilder


The Ultimate Badass

A seductive and intriguing trailer. But so too was the trailer to Only God Forgives. But then again, the man did make Drive. Yet, he comes across as the ultimate pretentious Euro-douche in every interview I've ever seen with him. Still, I'm cautiously optimistic about this one.


wilder

This was really good, for me his best movie since Fear X. Women viewing relationships as power, a movie about gaze, told with gaze. It has really beautiful rhythm, much more slow and deliberate than the trailer portrays, and it's a far cry from the vacuousness of OGF. The silences here are full of feeling and precise choices instead of being empty holes. Refn finally married his new style with the substance that he started out with (but make no mistake this movie GOES for style), and the dialogue is great. Even if you're not all about what it's about, the flow of the words themselves is impressive. Go see it in a theater. How this got booed at Cannes is beyond me.


wilder


The Ultimate Badass

This movie was bad. Like ridiculously bad.  It's hard to believe the guy who made Drive also made this. I really don't know where Wilder is coming from. This movie contained some the worst acting and dialogue I've seen in a movie in recent memory.

It had some visually nice moments, but there's no other redeeming value to this one.

wilder

Hmmm...if you didn't like the acting, that's fair, it's definitely stylized. What I saw is that every line and cut in this movie is a setup and payoff. It's unmercifully focused and economical, packed with new beats from beginning to end every time dialogue is delivered or the camera changes pov. And beyond that the cutting and framing is as slick as they come - liquid in the way it edits together. I'd need to watch it again to say more.

Alexandro

Yes, this was pretty fucking awesome. If we are going to divide movies by departments, I don't see how the acting here is in any way better or worst than in most movies. The eerie quality of the delivery by the players is obviously a stylistic choice, one that adds, just as the visuals and the fantastic sound design and music, to a sense of unease and impending doom that permeates the film from the beginning, and which works great as contrast to the constant beauty filling the screen.

Loved how the film has not one bad shot in it, and even shots that would be standard and forgettable here get the royal treatment. There is one cenital shot of a fucking empty sidewalk and even that is beautiful to look at. Also, the film manages to be economical in it's storytelling while taking license to convey the main character's development purely in symbolic or visual terms.

All in all, Wilder is right.

ElPandaRoyal

I've now seen 5 films by Refn, and I think Drive is good and truly cinematic, and then I find both Valhalla Rising and Only God Forgives kind of weak but with interesting things in it, and finally I'd put Neon Demon side by side with Bronson as, well... shit. Don't give a crap about any of what's on screen, as this seemed to me like it was written by an 18 year old person who wanted to expose the dark side of the fashion industry - just like Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars on the film industry. Every line of dialogue sounds like a cliché of a cliché. I hate to use this expression regarding movies, but "pretentious" is what quickly comes to mind. It ends as a horror movie without actually having the guts to be one for its entire duration, instead being such a pompous and shiny pile of nothing. I just don't think it earns anything it end up going for, and it all felt generally pretty gratuitous to me. He's clearly not my cup of tea.
Si

Garam

Nah, watch the Pushers. They're great. This was terrible. The nadir of a really dull and pointless stylistic detour Refn's been down for a decade. Don't know while he's still going down this road when he already nailed it with Fear X. Along with Gaspar Noe and Malick, Refn needs to throw out everything and start over with his next one cause it's really getting painful.

ElPandaRoyal

I've been wanting to give those a try for a while now, but after this they'll have to wait a bit.
Si

Alexandro

I'm sorry, but this has nothing to do with "exposing the dark side of the fashion industry". Are you kidding?
It's about the primordial longing for beauty, the spell beauty casts around it and how it becomes both a blessing and a curse. And how that reconfigures our perceptions, our sense of worth, power and control, ownership of the one desired. A lot is going on here. Cool if you were bored or whatever but it's completely much more layered than what you are saying here.

ElPandaRoyal

Wrong choice of words on my part, I meant like the attitude that it passes on the scenes that actually take place within the industry where, if you notice, every single character is just plain bad. But the way you put it is much better, for sure.

That said, it doesn't change what I felt about any of that, it never goes deep enough, instead ruminating on superficial thoughts about... well, superficiality. The scene at the bar after Jesse's debut, for instance, felt so terrible to me, from the dialogue about outer and inner beauty to the dismissal of the kid who likes her. See, I was not actually bored by it, I was more irritated by the attitude that thinks it's layered when it really isn't. It just talks about obvious shit in obvious ways. And then, after a certain point, it just felt shocking for shock's sake - that scene with Jenna Malone after having her sexual advances rejected, is both repugnant and way too on the nose.

I don't think I had any problems understanding what it was trying to say (but I'll accept any suggestion to the contrary, of course), I just didn't find any of it insightful at all.
Si

Alexandro

I guess we are just looking at it differently. "Superficiality" was never something I thought the film was meditating on. You are right that is not very "deep", but that doesn't mean is not layered, and it IS a horror film throughout, from the very beginning it feels like a nightmare.

There are a couple of scenes where they discuss the theme of beauty as this indefinible quality, beyond looks; and to me, that, and what this quality provokes in her as in everyone else, is what the film is actually dealing with. But hey, you hated the damn movie and we'll have to agree to disagree. :)