Review #1,354: 'The Neon Demon' (2016)

The arrival of a new movie by Danish director and enfant terrible Nicolas Winding Refn is always a cause for excitement. Not because the filmmaker's name is any kind of guaranteed stamp of quality, but because of our natural curiosity to see just how far he is willing to push his audience. His 2011 smash and Hollywood breakthrough Drive was a surprise treat: a neon-lit journey into the underbelly of L.A. that featured a career-defining performance by Ryan Gosling. His follow-up Only God Forgives was a massive disappointment and received a near-universal panning, but there was enough style there to maintain the belief that Refn was still capable of delivering something special. Sadly his next film, The Neon Demon, is similarly hollow, kicking up such a stink at Cannes that it inspired mass booing, although just as many were cheering it.

Where the L.A. of Drive was dangerous and seductive, the City of Angels depicted in The Neon Demon is one cut straight from a glossy fashion magazine. Models are dolled up to look like corpses, staring dead-eyed into the lens as the shady photographer watches ominously. The city's latest arrival is porcelain-skinned beauty Jesse (Elle Fanning), who natural golden curls and cute nose draw jealousy from her cosmetically-enhanced rivals. She has just celebrated her 16th birthday, but a modelling agency talent spotter (played by Christina Hendricks) advises her to claim she's 19, should anybody ask. She soon catches the eye of some of the best photographers in the business, all of whom seems instantly enchanted by her looks and youth. As make-up artist Ruby (Jena Malone) puts it, Jesse just has that 'thing'. That thing is innocence, but such a quality cannot last in a cut-throat industry where models eat each other alive.

There's always been a grimy quality to Refn's movies, even in his most polished output. The Neon Demon is his closest brush with horror, and the director initially seems like the perfect fit for the genre. Yet this button-pushing slog will likely inspired yawns and frustration rather than gasps and shudders. It seems like Refn has a list of taboos he's eager to tick off his body of work, and The Neon Demon is happy to indulge in everything from necrophilia to cannibalism. It's a premise built on the flimsiest of metaphors, and the resulting message ultimately seems to be that some men are sleazy, women can be bitches, and the fashion world is vacuous and materialistic. Sub-plots are introduced, such as an incredibly dull love interest (Karl Glusman) and an unscrupulous motel owner (Keanu Reeves), but they lead nowhere and serve no real purpose to the story. It's provocative for the sake of being provocative, which wouldn't be a huge problem if the film wasn't so utterly ponderous. Like his fellow countryman Lars von Trier, Refn is eager to shock, but there can be little to no impact when there is a complete lack of substance.


Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Elle Fanning, Karl Glusman, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Keanu Reeves, Alessandro Nivola, Christina Hendricks
Country: Denmark/France/USA/UK

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #893: 'Inherent Vice' (2014)

Following in the footsteps of Raymond Chandler and the Coen brothers' Chandler homage The Big Lebowski (1998), Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel of the same name, Inherent Vice, has its permanently perplexed gumshoe trying to navigate his way through a labyrinthine plot that never really makes sense. Joaquin Phoenix's mutton-chopped 'Doc' Sportello is rarely too far away from his next joint in a hungover 1970's, where free love and hippydom is starting to fade and Richard Nixon reigns in the White House. The plot plays second fiddle to the hazy atmosphere and distinct sense of place, so if you find yourself constantly scratching your head as the story 'unfolds', it really doesn't matter.

If Paul Thomas Anderson's work is noticeably divided by 2007's masterpiece There Will Be Blood, when his work seemed to transform from absorbing, oddball ensembles (and even an Adam Sandler comedy) into sweeping, completely hypnotic works of art, Inherent Vice is a curious combination of the two era's. While never spilling over into full-blown comedy, the film makes frequent use of slapstick and moments of surreal absurdity, all delivered with perfect comic timing by its extremely talented cast. However, there's something else going on; a bigger picture that Anderson never really grasps (and doesn't really need to), and an eeriness that may or may not be fuelled by Doc's drug-induced paranoia and bewilderment.

The story kicks off when Doc is visited by old flame Shasta Hepworth (Katherine Waterston), who informs Doc of her affair with real estate developer Mickey Z. Wolfmann (Eric Roberts) and a possible plot to kidnap and commit him to a mental asylum. Doc's investigations force him into constant conflict with former colleague Lt. Detective 'Bigfoot' Bjornsen (Josh Brolin), a buzzcut-donning hippy-hater, who assists Doc with the news that Wolfmann has disappeared without a trace. Doc is also tasked with locating two others - a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who owes money to Black Guerilla Family member Tariq (Michael Kenneth Williams), and missing husband Coy (Owen Wilson), whose wife Hope (Jena Malone) has been informed of his death. The cases all may be linked by a mysterious boat known as the Golden Fang.

The head-scratching antics and doped-up conversations can cause extreme brain fatigue at times, so this is far from Anderson's best work. But Inherent Vice is still distinctly the work of Anderson, who wraps the film in an unpredictable and unsettling atmosphere at times, with the favouring of close-up's, a technique adopted in The Master (2012), heightening the deliriousness of the experience. The real find here is undoubtedly Waterston, whose twist on the femme fatale is played with a free-spirited seductiveness that would drive most men crazy. Phoenix is predictably convincing as the permanently red-eyed and well-meaning private dick, and Brolin overshadows anyone in the same room as him with his intense and idiosyncratic stiff, demanding waffles in bawled Spanish and deep-throating a popsicle much to Doc's disgust. Anyone expecting to be satisfied come the climax may be disappointed, and, like The Master, it can be difficult to love at times, but Inherent Vice is a one-of-a-kind experience; constantly baffling, funny, frustrating and beautiful.


Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Katherine Waterston, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, Reese Witherspoon, Jena Malone, Joanna Newsom, Martin Short
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #142: 'Sucker Punch' (2011)

Zack Snyder has directed a couple of quite good films (Dawn of the Dead (2004), and Watchmen (2008)), but this debut as the story/screenplay co-writer, shows that he is more of a visual stylist than one for narrative complexity. Snyder's formative years in television commercials has shown through his film career; fast editing; the oh-so-tired and cliched use of speed and slow motion in action sequences. In Sucker Punch however, the narrative/visual structure works on this with self-contained sequences, amounting to a series of commercials. The "adverts" (or even music videos) are fantasies of Baby Doll (Emily Browning). What these dreams are structurally also, are levels in a video game. To get to the next level, she must complete the task.

Baby Doll is being incarcerated into Lennox home for the mentally ill by her "evil" step-father. A lobotomy is ordered. This is where she delves into her imagination, constructing a world where she is imprisoned in a bordello and controlled by men who make them perform for them. Escape is on her mind. When Baby Doll is forced to "dance" for the audience, she goes even further into a dual fantasy where she is given orders by "Games Master", The Wise Man (Scott Glenn). These game-level "bosses" are visual cliches in themselves. Baby Doll and her appointed gang consisting of Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jenna Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung), must battle giant monster-samurai on level one; German zombies in CGI WWI on level two; lord of the rings-like orcs and dragons on level 3......and so on. These fantasies of Baby Doll's are constructed as a device (in the bordello she is simply dancing), which make a simple task such as stealing a lighter off a dumb cook, is turned into a fight for survival from monsters!

This is absurdly expensive, derivative nonsense. It's an awful brickolage of visuals that have been on our screens for the last decade. The game-like structure is utterly ridiculous (yes, this type of structure was used to good effect in 2009's Scott Pilgrim vs The World, but that film played as pastiche), and Sucker just uses this device as a means to project dazzling computer effects. They make no narrative sense. Is her dance visually like the fighting in her fantasies? Even if you did want to hide from the reality itself, why would you construct over-elaborate fighting levels just to get a map? These questions are irrelevant, the main concept behind this movie is the perverse collection of fantasy dolls that make up the gang; all short skirts, underwear and stockings. It's a teenage boys wet dream, the product of a juvenile mind. As a teenager in an adults body, I have to say it was nice. However, the film did not have any excitement to it. The characters were bland facsimiles of genre regulars. The action was so similar to so many of these type today, it was hard to care about it, and became tedious very quickly.

Directed by: Zack Snyder
Starring: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino, Jon Hamm, Scott Glenn
Country: USA/Canada

Rating: **

Marc Ivamy