The Neon Demon (Nicholas Refn)

Sad Professor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cipOTUO0CmU

Pretty awesome trailer. I'm getting Suspiria with a twist vibes.

Premiering at Cannes in a few weeks. Out here in July.

e_e

https://twitter.com/mattsinger/status/733371395472785409
https://twitter.com/robbiereviews/status/733372301228576769

Blimey.

mikhail

This is out this week. Anyone seen a preview? Any good reviews?

smash

mikhail wrote: »

This is out this week. Anyone seen a preview? Any good reviews?

If it's like Drive, then I couldn't be arsed. That try hard arty farty stuff just does my head in.

MilesMorales1

Looks pretty great to me, I've seen some amateur reviews that has me pretty hyped.

Fysh

smash wrote: »

If it's like Drive, then I couldn't be arsed. That try hard arty farty stuff just does my head in.

I haven't seen it yet but I'm hoping it's more like Black Swan, personally. Certainly that's the tone I got from the trailer.

smash

Fysh wrote: »

I haven't seen it yet but I'm hoping it's more like Black Swan, personally. Certainly that's the tone I got from the trailer.

I did enjoy Black Swan.

Sad Professor

Drive was pretty conventional by Refn's usual standards. And the marketing made it look even more conventional. I'm expecting this to be closer to Only God Forgives, which personally I loved but I know I'm in the minority.

I can't read that in anything but Collin's voice :pac:

pumpkin4life

Bronsen, The Pusher Trilogy and Drive are savage out, but Only God Forgives was a bit ****e. This has been getting a lot of mixed stuff online though?

LightsStillOn

Looks intriguing anyway, which is always good. Drive is one of my favourite films ever, absolutely love it! But on the other side of the coin Only God Forgives is one of the worst films I've ever seen, walked out in the cinema, and not been able to make it through the whole thing after multiple re-attempts.

I was really hyped for Only God Forgives after seeing the trailer, so as good as this one looks, I'll be keeping calm about it until I see it.

MilesMorales1

Well I liked it a whole lot, even thought it was pretty great. Although I can imagine other people really taking against it.

I'm sort of reserving final judgement till I watch it again, partly cos I was a couple of minutes late to my screening, and partly cos there was some at the back of the cinema who spent the whole thing loudly grunting and groaning and it was proper distracting.

conorhal

smash wrote: »

If it's like Drive, then I couldn't be arsed. That try hard arty farty stuff just does my head in.

Drive was like a remake of Bullitt with all the fun sucked out. I just find Refn's work as sterile as Kubrick's corpse directing a movie.

Chain Smoker

Sad Professor wrote: »

Drive was pretty conventional by Refn's usual standards. And the marketing made it look even more conventional. I'm expecting this to be closer to Only God Forgives, which personally I loved but I know I'm in the minority.

Was it? I'd say Drive was the bridge between his earlier stuff and the sterile nonsense he's put out since. I've only seen Bronson and the Pusher films, mind. Bronson has way more vibrancy to it than these ones.

Thought I commented in this thread already, but anyways, saw this a few weeks back and f*cking hated it. As much as I hated Only God Forgives, at least he was sticking somewhere within the realm of what he's good at, this thing is a shambles. He done a Q&A afterwards and I kind of got the impression he hadn't a notion what he was at either beyond "I want to do a film about a girl".
Pretty much the only good thing I can say about it is that it really isn't at all creepy or lecherous regarding its young protagonist (although at least if he was a giant pervert it might have gave the film some sense of purpose).


Because it was a special screening, there were tons of people asking questions like "Mr Refn, how did you make such a masterpiece like this?!" Really hope they were just brown nosing.

johnny_ultimate

A film explicitly about vapidness and surface beauty is perhaps the ideal ground for Nicolas Refn Winding, cinema's resident wannabe pornographer and purveyor of vapid surface beauty.

As garish and manufactured as it is, there's certainly some pleasure to be found in the neon fever dream visuals of this film. Refn is less a great filmmaker than a pretty good cover shoot photographer and perfume ad director. And The Neon Demon is at its best when it embraces its inner music video, abandoning any pretenses of being about anything interesting and just indulging in a series of vibrant but hollow imagery. Hence the sequence when a fashion show turns into some sort of triangle-heavy lightshow hits the spot not for the character turning point it allegedly represents, but more as lurid spectacle. There are other times when Cliff Martinez's score pulsates convincingly alongside the dayglo visual palette to temporarily captivating effect. Ditto the final credit sequence, which is like the director seemingly surrendering to the fact he will never be allowed make a James Bond opening sequence so **** it may as well throw one in here instead.

More so than Only God Forgives, there's enjoyment to be gained from the formally hollow but aestethically visceral presentation here. Sadly, though, The Neon Demon doubles down on many of its predecessors bad habits. Once again, any semblance to humanity is purely coincidental - but not in the artful way of Roy Andersson's pale spectres or Wes Anderson's hyper-reality. Any exchanges between characters here are utterly unconvincing and mechanical - partially for thematic reasons, sure, but the feeble, drawn-out and often nonsensical conversations (a ridiculous episode in a restaurant is a particular doozy) are a chore to endure. As a satire of the fashion industry and the destructive obsession with beauty, there's little Zoolander didn't cover. Refn continues to rely on bloody (literally) nonsense to guide his films towards the end, and his lust to shock has never been more tiring than it is here. Mostly there's just a persuasive hostility and mean-spiritedness that runs through his work that I find very difficult to connect with - in this world, pretty much everybody is either a horrible misogynist, arrogant supermodel or crazed lesbian, and they probably have cannibalistic tendencies too. Not every film has to be occupied by likable characters or anything, but here it all feeds into a general bitterness (and indeed overall abundance of clichés, despite its general avoidance of explicit horror tropes) that wears thin long before the faux Bond credits roll.

I did find myself overall more tuned in than I did with the utterly appalling Only God Forgives, so I'll be kind and remove the 'utterly' when describing this one :P But seriously, for all those occasionally beguiling music video sequences, they're easily overwritten by long stretches of total tedium. Like its characters, The Neon Demon is an exercise in vapid beauty - effective in promo-sized bites, but frustrating as a feature film.

pumpkin4life

Poor movie. Winding's great skill is making straight up gangster/b movie violence with stunning visuals (Pusher Trilogy and Drive) and stunning John Carpenter electronica music. Always felt Bronson was an anomaly; made up for the fact that Tom Hardy being Tom ****ing Hardy delivers a astonishing performance in it. Also has Super Hans in it for lads who are fans of Peep Show.

Thing is, he's gone into this Kubrick/David Lynch mind**** territory, but he's not good at it. At all. The movie is incredibly shallow. Even the way it is shot; funny how the main character wears white for most of the movie and the fashion lads wear black, etc. If you want a women at their throats, competing over looks thing, then there's Muholland Drive. Jesus feck, even Zoolander is a stupid as feck movie (but great mind you), but that's a far better commentary on the superficiality of the fashion industry.

The violence in the second half was boring too. For a movie that did that right this year, see Green Room.

I went blindly enough into this, but next time Refn releases a movie, I'm going to hold back on it. **** it, dull as dishwater movie.

pumpkin4life

But that soundtrack. Jesus, been blaring that all morning lads, classy bastard stuff.

Mister Vain

I'm not a fan of Refn's films but the soundtracks and visuals are always class.

e_e

Wow was I let down by this. Vapid, inert, dull and surprisingly stale. Only God Forgives is a far far superior film.

Chain Smoker

Also, I really don't think Martinez deserves that much praise either considering Refn deliberately cuts each shot far later than normal to give Martinez more freedom with the audio. That's a privilege very few composers get and doubtlessly contributes to some of the huge amounts of **** all that there have been in these last two (it's effectively waiving quite a lot of the editing rights away to someone else).

Outlaw Pete

Easily one of my favourite films of his.

Liked Pusher, Bleeder and Bronson but didn't like Valhalla Rising, Drive nor Only God Forgives and so had felt I would hate this given that I was of the belief that he had disappeared up his own posterior since Rising.

Simply put though, I was just thoroughly entertained by it from start to finish. Was excellent in that sense and that for me is more than enough. Won't pretend to have got everything he was saying, or attempting to say, but sure that's not really important once a film is enjoyable to my mind. Would rather that than to be aware of all a director is saying but yet have to endure two hours plus of tedium (The Tree of Life, cough).

Seen this in a packed cinema and don't think I seen one walk out. The screening I was at of Only God Forgives must have had two to three dozen people walk by an hour in. It's just far more engaging. Even the wtf moments are entertaining, whereas in OGF they were irritating. For anyone that hasn't seen it, I would suggest going to a busy screening as it's one of those films where the atmosphere it creates adds something to the overall enjoyment of it. Much the The Lobster. You can always see it at a sparsely attended screening at a later point.

A mad film for sure, but only in the best sense of the word.

Chain Smoker

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

Won't pretend to have got everything he was saying

No need to over read into it, fairly sure he wasn't even trying to say whole lot. He's not a very deep director in general (not that there's anything wrong with that in itself).

LuckyLloyd

Law of diminishing returns beginning to apply as far as I'm concerned. I wasn't a huge fan of Drive though I could see its appeal. But the downward trajectory in terms of form and meaning hits rock bottom here. I kinda feel he should just release a series of vignettes and be done with it.

charlie_says

Looked and sounded pretty damn luscious but just a bit empty overall.

Had potential to be a really solid psychological horror with the trippy dream sequences and some pretty arresting scenes, but the story never really latched on to either the main protagonist or the group of industry 'friends' in any meaningful way.

Shame, I had high hopes for this. It's not terrible just not brilliant.

Dyr

From what I've heard of the plot it's basically sounds just like Starry Eyes.

Decuc500

Overall I was left a bit frustrated after watching this. It had some standout sequences and looked and sounded great but I expected it to pick up pace in the second half.

I had read a few reviews that mentioned comparisons to Dario Argento films but I didn’t see this at all. Way too cold and clinical to compare to Argento. I definitely got a David Lynch vibe off it though.

One of Winding Refn’s lesser films maybe, but still worth watching.

Banjaxed82

For a film so lacking in cohesion and devoid of any real story, it was surprisingly watchable. Nice to look at. Nice to listen to, but painfully hollow and probably not something I'll ever watch again.

Sweeties for the eyes and ears and that's about it.

Fysh

I finally caught this a couple of days ago. I'm still in two minds about it.

Narratively, it's a wasteland. Little to no characterisation or siginificant story, with several points where nothing happens and the camera lingers on something banal while the (very good) score thrums away, and no real depth to any of it.

But when it's not hanging around spinning its wheels....it looks and sounds amazing. There are some great sequences in this, and oddly enough if the film were more obtuse (e.g. less dialogue) I think those sequences might have been more potent.

I came out of the cinema feeling frustrated because the slow, annoying parts had soured me on the good parts. I've had the good parts stuck in my head since then, though, so while it's clearly a flawed film it's not one I can dismiss.

I've not seen much else by Refn - I saw Drive and thought it was an OK film helped by a very good soundtrack & score (but it would've been better if it was the film the opening five minutes suggested), and I gave up on Only God Forgives after fifteen minutes of tedium. The only other thing of his on my radar is Bronson, and that's because I have enjoyed most things Tom Hardy has been in.

Slydice

I've seen Valhalla Rising and Only God Forgives. If I'd known it was by the same guy, I mighta expected how this film was gonna go. The shock at what went down in the final 25% of that film:eek:

I'd say going into the film knowing very little about it as I did delivers the shock value. Being any way prepared.. probably not so much.

Anyone whose read this thread to this post already knows the general plot and shock ending though.