Movie Review: The Neon Demon

The Neon Demon

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn.

Written by: Nicolas Winding Refn and Mary Laws & Polly Stenham.

Starring: Elle Fanning (Jesse), Jena Malone (Ruby), Bella Heathcote (Gigi), Abbey Lee (Sarah), Karl Glusman (Dean), Desmond Harrington (Jack), Keanu Reeves (Hank), Alessandro Nivola (Fashion Designer), Christina Hendricks (Jan).

 

No one is going to accuse director Nicolas Winding Refn of anything approaching subtlety. He doesn’t do things half way – he makes lurid, sexual, violent films, that at their best, revel in style, and are elevated by great performances and set pieces to become genre masterworks (like 2011’s Drive – a fairy tale by way of Michael Mann), and at worse, become empty, morose, slogs that revel in misery (2013’s Only God Forgives). Thankfully his latest film, The Neon Demon, is more of the former than the later – a knowingly shallow film about shallowness, The Neon Demon is disturbing from the beginning, and gets downright shocking in its final act. Winding Refn isn’t exactly saying anything new here about the fashion industry and society’s fetishization of young women, but he’s doing it all with such flare and style – and gets such good performances from his actors, who somehow don’t get lost in all the excess in every frame, I didn’t much care. The Neon Demon is the type of film you walk out, not sure what to make of – and even now, days later, I’m still not sure. I think I loved it – but honestly, I’m not sure.

 

The film stars Elle Fanning as Jesse – a 16 year old girl, fresh to L.A., who openly says she has no talent at anything, but is pretty – and she can make money off of pretty. The film introduces us to her drenched in blood, splayed out on a couch – but that’s all just for a photoshoot by amateur Dean (Karl Glusman) – the first of many creepy men behind cameras who will fetishize Jesse, even if he turns out to the be the nicest of the bunch, he still doesn’t much care when he finds out she’s only 16. It’s at that photoshoot that Jesse meets Ruby (Jean Malone) – who is apparently the only makeup artist in L.A., because no matter what shoot or fashion show we see for the rest of the movie, Ruby is the one doing the makeup (she also does the makeup for corpses for their open casket funerals). Like Dean, and soon everyone else in the film, Ruby is immediately taken in by Jesse and her innocence. Ruby introduces Jesse to a couple of older models – Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee) – and they’re the only ones in the movie who don’t immediately fall for her. Everyone else – from creepy photography Jack (Desmond Harrington) to creepier fashion designer (Alessandro Nivola) to creepiest motel manager Hank (Keanu Reeves) will do just that. In this way, the film reminded me a little of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – in which every character in the film that Cruise meets on his journey into the night responds to him in an overtly sexual way. Jesse is lusted after by everyone in the film – to use the old cliché, all the women want to be here and all the men want to be with her (although some of the women want to be with her as well).

 

It is hard to make a deep film about shallowness, and I think Winding Refn probably has the right idea in that he doesn’t really even try to do that. Jesse is, in many ways, a blank slate. She doesn’t reveal anything about her past, or really how she got to L.A., or even what her desires are. Fanning is a terrific actress – and there is something perfect about her casting in this movie as a young girl completely judged on her looks, who is pushed and pulled in different directions by the adults, and goes along with it. She was a child actor, so in a sense, there is part of that here – where a child is expected to perform an adult role. But Fanning does something interesting with Jesse – and keeps her that blank from beginning to end – there is no internal struggle with her. She is the embodiment of the fashion industry ideal – a beautiful, young girl, and a blank slate. Jena Malone has better role, and is brilliant in it, as Ruby – who certainly is more conflicted. Malone uses her slighted askew smile to brilliant effect in the film – she seems so nice, but there’s something untrustworthy about her, and a hunger about her performance that becomes more pronounced as it moves along. It’s one of the best performances of the year so far. As the two, older (and I use that term only in relation to Jesse) – both Bella Heathcote and Abbey Lee, are also quite good – letting their perfect, ice queen facades, break a little bit at a time, until their actions in the last act make complete sense. The various men in the movie are all creeps – many of them, as mentioned before, behind cameras. Winding Refn knows he’s one of them, right?

 

The film is all style – lurid colors, a brilliant pulsating score by Cliff Martinez (quickly becoming one of my favorite movie composers for his work here, along with Drive and Spring Breakers – and various Soderberg films). There is nothing subtle about anything that Winding Refn does- and that is precisely what works about his films when they do work. The Neon Demon, after all, takes some horrific turns in its last act – turns that are designed to shock you, and they do. Yet they work in the context of the film because they are logical conclusion to what Winding Refn setup through the first two acts.

 

The Neon Demon is clearly not a film for everyone. It will be one that is too slow for some, or simply too much for others. Some will complain about the over-the-top style, or the sometimes too on-the-nose dialogue. They will argue the film is misogynistic (I don’t think it is, but I can see the case being made). I won’t argue too hard with anyone who hates The Neon Demon. But this is a film that knows exactly what it wants to be, and achieves what it sets out to do. It’s then just a question as to whether what it achieves it worth achieving at all. You decide.

Movie Review: Only God Forgives

Only God Forgives
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn.
Written by: Nicolas Winding Refn.
Starring: Ryan Gosling (Julian), Kristin Scott Thomas (Crystal), Vithaya Pansringarm (Chang), Gordon Brown (Gordon), Yayaying Rhatha Phongam (Mai), Tom Burke (Billy), Sahajak Boonthanakit (Kim), Pitchawat Petchayahon (Phaiban), Charlie Ruedpokanon (Daeng), Kovit Wattanakul (Choi Yan Lee), Wannisa Peungpa (Kanita), Narucha Chaimareung (Papa San).

Nothing would make me happier than being able to say that Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives was some sort of misunderstood masterpiece or at least a guilty pleasure. This is, after all, the Danish filmmaker’s follow-up to Drive – one of my absolute favorite films of 2011, and arguably the best crime drama of this young decade so far, and Only God Forgives ranked very high on my most anticipated films of the year list. But alas, I cannot say that, because Only God Forgives is a horrible movie – violent and pretentious in equal doses, with most of the characters seemingly on the verge of falling asleep during any of their line readings. Drive was a crime drama that was deeper than it initially appeared to be (and I stand by that, even if I seem to be in the minority in thinking so – even among the many people who loved Drive). Only God Forgives on the other hand is a movie that acts like it is about something deeper – but peel back the layers and there’s nothing there. And yet, you watch the movie and you can tell everyone involved in making it is extremely talented – they just laid an egg this time out. Really talented people can work far worse movies than non-talented people – and Only God Forgives is a perfect example of that.

The movie takes place in Bangkok. Julian (Ryan Gosling) and his brother Billy (Tom Burke) work there as drug dealers, and have a boxing club as a front. After a violent fight sequence kicks off the film, we follow Billy on his quest to, in his words, “Fuck a 14 year old”. It doesn’t take him long to find one – but he doesn’t merely fuck her, he rapes and murders her. The cops – led by Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm) are called – but Chang doesn’t arrest Billy. Instead, he calls the dead girl’s father, screams at him for allowing his daughter to become a prostitute, and then leaves him alone in the room with Billy. Needless to say, Billy doesn’t last long. Julian’s mother Crystal (Kristen Scott Thomas) arrives in Bangkok, and wants Julian to avenge his brother. When Julian finds out what Billy did, he kind of thinks his brother got what was coming to him – but his she-devil of the mother doesn’t care (“He must have had his reasons” she says) and wants the man who murdered her son – and Chang, the cop who allowed it to happen – and pretty much everyone else in Thailand to die to avenge her beloved son.

All of this probably sounds a lot better than the movie actually is. The basic plot outline could very easily be made into an extremely violent, entertaining crime thriller. Something like Drive, in fact. Winding Refn shouldn’t be expected to repeat himself – and while you can by the ever moving camera in Only God Forgives and the changing color palette that the same person is behind both films, the only way in which these films are really similar is that both are extremely violent and bloody. I don’t have a problem with blood and violence in a movie – as long as there seems to be a reason for it. In Only God Forgives, there doesn’t appear to be. There are no good guys in Only God Forgives, only degrees of awful really, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing if the characters we interesting – the problem being they’re not. Ryan Gosling, normally one of the best actors working together, appears almost comatose throughout the movie. His character in Drive didn’t say much – neither did his character in this year’s The Place Beyond the Pines – but in both of those movies, you could tell there was something going on inside of the characters – his performance in Drive in particular is masterfully subtle. But in Only God Forgives, he simply seems bored, lifeless and dull. I have heard some critics say that the sword wielding cop Chang, played by Vithaya Pansringarm, is the film’s hero, but really, he’s just as bad as everyone else – which again, I don’t object to, if he plays an interesting character. The problem is he doesn’t. The revelation about his home life may explain why he does what he does, but it doesn’t make him any more interesting. And why the hell the movie has him sing karaoke on a number of occasions?

There are two good things about Only God Forgives. One of them is the performance by Yayaying Rhatha Phongam as Mai, a prostitute frequented by Julian, who he stupidly brings along as his date to meet his mother. This is a small role – and she doesn’t really have much to do – but she does it remarkably well, making Mai into the only sympathetic character in the moving – the only person the audience can possibly care about. The other is the performance by Kristen Scott Thomas. Unlike everyone else in the movie, there is passion in her performance. Yes, she is in many ways a one note villain – whose every line is dripping with hatred, racism, cruelty, and creepiness in the way she talks about her sons and their penises (I’m pretty sure she has slept with both in them in the past). Everyone else in the movie is subdued almost to the point of lulling the audience to sleep – but you sit up and take notice when she’s onscreen.

Only God Forgives is a pretentious mess of a film. If Winding Refn had just given in to his base instincts (he has said repeatedly he makes “pornography” when talking about Only God Forgives) he may not have made a film as good as Drive, but he could have made Only God Forgives into a violent guilty pleasure. But by taking the film so deadly seriously, by draining it of any pleasure whatsoever, and seemingly instructing the entire cast except for Scott Thomas to play their roles like zombies, he has made a film that is both sickeningly violent and deadly dull. And that makes Only God Forgives one of the year’s worst films.

Movie Review: Drive

Drive ****

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn.

Written by: Hossein Amini based on the book by James Sallis.

Starring: Ryan Gosling (Driver), Carey Mulligan (Irene), Bryan Cranston (Shannon), Albert Brooks (Bernie Rose), Oscar Isaac (Standard), Christina Hendricks (Blanche), Ron Perlman (Nino), Kaden Leos (Benicio).

There is a scene near the end of Drive which is, quite simply put, the best scene I’ve seen in any movie this year. Ryan Gosling’s near silent driver gets onto an elevator with Irene (Cary Mulligan), because he knows the other man in there is going to try and kill them both. In a wordless, effortlessly fluid scene, Gosling moves Mulligan behind him, and as an ‘80s pop song plays, turns around and gives one of the most memorable kisses in recent memory. He then beats the other man in the elevator to a pulp – leaving him a dead, bloody, mess on the floor, and as the elevator door closes – with Irene now on the outside, the two share a wounded, sad look of disappointment, longing and regret. Without a single line of dialogue, this is a scene that will haunt me for years.

But it is just one of many great scenes in Drive, the new films by Nicolas Winding Refn, which very justly won him the Best Director prize at this years Cannes Film Festival. I wasn’t a fan of Winding Refn’s last film, Valhalla Rising, which was also bloody, but ponderous, slow and confusing, even as it was visually astonishing. Here, working with a screenplay by Hossein Amini, and a great cast, he has created one of the best crime movies in recent years.

Ryan Gosling is superb as The Driver – a man of few words, and seemingly few emotions. Many critics have drawn comparisons to his character here with actors like Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen – and the comparison is apt. Gosling’s Driver is an existensial hero, a man whose meaning is based solely on his actions, because he never gives you a hint as to what he is really thinking or feeling. Far from being a boring or flawed performance, it is actually rather thrilling to see Gosling, who can be so good with dialogue, sit back and let everyone around him talk and talk and talk. The Driver doesn’t talk much. He drives – whether it’s on the racetrack, doing stunts for the movies, or being a getaway driver for criminals, he is the best there is. He lives a solitary life, basically just interacting with his boss Shannon (Bryan Cranston), who unlike Driver, cannot shut up. But then he meets his new neightbor – Irene, and her young son Benicio. Her husband is in jail, and he takes a shine to this small family, so beaten down by the husband’s absence. When he does get out of jail, he owes money to some bad people – who tell him that he can pay it off by robbing a pawn shop. But he needs a driver, so guess who volunteers?

The robbery, of course, is not what it seems. People end up dead, and instead of the $40,000 they expected, it turns out that they have $1 million. This isn’t good. Shannon makes inquires as to who the money belongs to – and it’s Nino (Ron Perelman), a violent gangster, who is partners with Bernie (Albert Brooks). They need the money back – and soon – or they’ll wind up dead.

The plot is pretty standard for a crime film. And yet the handling of the plot is anything but standard. The film is highly stylized from its opening sequence – a thrilling “car chase” sequence that really isn’t a car chase at all, but an expertly choreographed dance sequence using Gosling and his car as the dancer. The movie is stylized, but this isn’t an example of style trumping substance, but rather and example of style matching substance. The movie is flashy and violent from beginning to end, but also rather thrillingly romantic and grandiose. I loved every second of it.

The cast is perfect as well. Gosling is the still center of the movie, who lets the crazies around him go wild. Bryan Cranston is excellent as his sleazy buddy and Ron Perelman good as the heavy. Carey Mulligan exudes wounded beauty with the best of them as the girl he loves. And the casting of Albert Brooks was nothing short of genius. I’ve always thought of Brooks as an actor like Woody Allen – only capable of playing the same role in every film. But here, although some of his speeches are as hilarious as something he has written himself, he is also downright scary. His intensity builds as the movie goes along – at first being little more than the Albert Brooks we know and love, and then turning into some sort of monster. It is a brilliant performance – one that should land Brooks an Oscar nomination.

Drive is without question one of the best movies of the year. Expertly written and acted, and amazingly well directed by a filmmaking who I thought had the talent to pull something like this off for a few years now. A truly great film.

Movie Review: Valhalla Rising

Valhalla Rising **
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn.
Written By: Roy Jacobsen & Nicolas Winding Refn.
Starring: Mads Mikkelsen (One Eye), Maarten Stevenson (Are), Gordon Brown (Hagen), Andrew Flanagan (Gudmond), Gary Lewis (Kare), Gary McCormack (Hauk), Alexander Morton (Barde), Jamie Sives (Gorm).

In the opening scenes of Valhalla Rising, I really thought that director Nicolas Winding Refn was going to make a great movie. The opening act is violent and brutal as we see the mute; appropriately named One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) chained to a pole, and forced to fight one person after another by his cruel overlords. These scenes are bloody as hell – and what’s more unlike most violence in the movies, it really seems to hurt. The blood, mud, gore and bone cracking hit hard, and you think you may be watching a new classic of the genre – in this case some sort of Medieval, Viking action film. Unfortunately, the film really does go downhill from there. The violence of the opening scenes will come back – again and again – throughout the movie but it gradually becomes clear that Refn doesn’t really have anything to say about any of what he is showing us. There are hints at buried themes about religious intolerance, but Refn seems more interesting in his visual tricks than anything else. I think he even does Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) one better, as it seems like the entire third act is shot in super slow motion. What starts out fascinating and thrilling, quickly becomes rather dull, repetitive and boring.

While the silent hero recalls Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name in the Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns (and Mikkelsen certainly tries to be Eastwood, but no one is Eastwood other than Eastwood), and there are times when the sweeping landscape vistas call to mind Terence Malick, Refn’s biggest influence here is certainly Werner Herzog – that mad German visionary who films border on insanity at times. This is particularly true after the pagan One Eye falls in with a band of Christian Vikings on their way to the Holy Land, who (in the films most prolonged and boring sequence) get lost and end up in the New World. Here, the armor clad warriors head out in the wilderness of North America, and get slaughtered. Yes, it seems that Refn wanted to remake Aguirre, the Wrath of God in North America.

But after a while, Valhalla Rising turns into a game of “spot the influences” more than a film unto itself. One Eye is an uninteresting character, not because he doesn’t speak (although that doesn’t help), but because he remains a complete blank – we never even figure out why he gets those blood red premonitions of the future – they’re just there.

As a director, Refn shows a definite talent – that I cannot deny. There are images in this movie as haunting as anything I have seen this year. And yet, I do think he really needs to learn that sometimes less is more – if you play an entire movie like this ramped up to 11, it becomes tedious, not daring. His last film, Bronson, suffered in similar ways – but because it’s main character was so damn interesting, and played brilliantly by Tom Hardy in the role that probably got him noticed by Christopher Nolan, I forgave that film its shortcoming. Here however, I cannot. Valhalla Rising has some interesting things going on in it, and Refn is definitely a talented director to keep your eye on – but the film adds up to absolutely nothing.

Movie Review: Bronson

Bronson *** ½
Directed By: Nicolas Winding Refn.
Written By: Nicolas Winding Refn & Brock Norman Brock.
Starring: Tom Hardy (Charles Bronson), Matt King (Paul), Kelly Adams (Irene), Katy Barker (Julie), Edward Bennett-Coles (Brian), Amanda Burton (Mum), William Darke (Charles Bronson - Age 13), Andrew Forbes (Joe Peterson), James Lance (Phil), Juliet Oldfield (Alison), Hugh Ross (Uncle Jack), Joe Tucker (John White).

I fear that we have become a society of petulant children. You know the kids that act out because they crave attention, and do not care if it’s good attention or bad attention? That’s what we have become. We are surrounded by “celebrities” you I have no idea why they are celebrities. Paris Hilton? Nicole Ritchie? The Kardashians? Jon and Kate? The Octo Mom? Who the hell are these people and why they hell I am supposed to care about them? Do they have talent? Or are they just more willing than the next person to degrade themselves for a little bit of fame?

I know that it is odd to begin a review about the “most violent inmate in Britain” talking about vacuous celebrities, but it was the thought that stuck with me as I was watching Bronson. Born Michael Peterson, the main character in Bronson thinks he is destined for great things, and longs to make a name for himself. As a child, he got into fights, dropped out of school early, got married and had a kid, but never grew up. He gets arrested for a silly armed robbery, and turns his six year sentence into a pretty much a life sentence by his refusal to do anything but beat people up. True, he never did kill anyone, but when you’re constantly fighting in jail, does it really matter? During his brief (62 days) of freedom following years in jail, he changes his name to Charles Bronson. Why? If you cannot be famous being yourself, maybe adopting the fame of someone else will work.

Bronson, the movie, is pretty much a one man show for actor Tom Hardy, who rips into his role with a ferocity and fearlessness that you rarely see in the movies. He is in pretty much every scene in the film, and he commands your attention no matter what he is doing. Often, he imagines himself on a stage, delivering a monologue about his life, dressed up in full face paint to an adoring crowd that isn’t actually there. He’s not delusional, as he knows it is a fantasy, but in his own mind he is much more famous than he is in reality. In prison, he is a legend, everywhere else he is failure. This is why he continually sabotages himself when he gets an opportunity to be released. He doesn’t want out of jail.

The film was co-written and director by Nicolas Winding Refn, and while the film’s visual and aural look and feel definitely owe a debt to Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, the film is masterfully directed in its own right. Refn borrows Kubrick’s tactic of marrying the violence with classical music, and does so more effectively than anyone since Kubrick did. But the musical cue that sticks with me the most happens during Bronson’s stay at a mental hospital, during a dance where they play The Pet Shop Boys “It’s a Sin”. It’s here where the movie takes on a life of its own, and marries its realism and surrealism together to great effective. It is a haunting scene. Refn’s visual style seems to want to isolate Bronson throughout the movie. Even when not in jail, he is shot either behind bars, or with the darkness on the edge of the screen closing in on him. On stage, he is the pretty much the only thing lit up. These scenes ratchet up the surrealism of the movie, and recall the sad scenes in Scorsese’s brilliant The King of Comedy, where Pupkin practices his standup to an adoring audience of no one.

But the star of the show is Hardy. There are other characters in the movie, but I find it hard to come up with anything to say about them, because Hardy completely dominates every scene, as he is supposed to. Without an actor of his physicality and presence, his alternating charm, humor and scariness, the whole movie would have devolved into an exercise in style and little else. But he makes Bronson into a real person. A sad, pathetic person, true, but a person nonetheless. All he wants to do is cling to the little bit of “fame” that he has. If he wasn’t a psychopath, it would almost be sad.