The Neon Demon: Or America's Next Top Model Acid Trip

There's a word I'm trying to think of to describe The Neon Demon, narcissist extraordinaire Nicolas Winding Refn's newest movie.  About two thirds through the movie, I reached the point where nothing really surprised me anymore and I found myself just saying "Sure, why not?" as the film continually tries to one up itself in weirdness and violence. At least until the credits came up and I found myself groaning and swearing aloud because of what I had just put myself through. Ah, I thought of the word to describe this pretentious ordeal, and to quote one of the film's characters, a fashion guru unimpressed with a model's artificial beauty, this movie is: "fine."

The movie is the story of Jesse (a miscast Elle Fanning) who moves to Los Angles to become a model where she quickly finds success because she has - as one character puts it, "that...thing." She soon brings out the ire and jealousy in models Sarah and Gigi and attracts the friendship of Ruby (a scene stealing Jena Malone) who is not what she seems. Jesse has a boyfriend of sorts, a photographer named Dean, who is the closest thing the film has to a character resembling an actual human being (or "real human being" for the Drive fans out there). Jesse also stays in a seedy motel run by Hank, a total creep who belongs in a Bret Easton Ellis novel, who, naturally is played by Keanu Reeves. The only other characters who are worth mentioning are a cheeky mustached fashion designer and a scene stealing Christina Hendricks, a casting director who is one of the first to tell Jesse she'll be a success; "They're all good, but you, you're going to be great."

"Congratulations, Elle Fanning, you're on your way to becoming America's Next Top Model."

And here's where some of the problems arise: Elle Fanning just isn't believable as a stunning beauty who literally everyone is in awe of, and is the object of everyone's jealousy. The clunky, oh-so-unsubtle dialogue ("You're like the sun in the winter," Beauty isn't everything, it's the only thing") sure doesn't help. While it sounds harsh to say "She isn't pretty enough for this," when it's the character trait for Jesse, a more believable (and pretty) actress was needed for this factor to not be distracting.

When Jesse becomes so narcissistic and full of herself due to the admiration she gets based off her looks, it's hard to root for her during her inevitable downfall. And when we get to that point, that's where shit gets crazy. Necrophilia, cannibalism, murder, Keanu Reeves, throwing up eyeballs, and I'm pretty sure some devil worship? Is some of this problematic? You bet! I wasn't bored though. It doesn't make a lot of sense and I found myself shaking my head in disbelief basically the whole last 25 minutes.

"Okay, Keanu, if you take the blue pill, you'll wake up and that'll be it. If you take the red pill, you'll wake up in a neon drenched nightmare world where you're a borderline serial killer motel owner and Elle Fanning is the most sought after human in the world."

What else can I say after probably devil worship? It wasn't badly paced, however Refn is clearly so in love with some of the shots in the movie that he drags out shots and sequences as long as he possibly can (However, it really does look great) The soundtrack is especially great, a synth techno score as eerie as it is groovy. And the movie closes with a Sia song written just for the movie and that's always a nice touch.

Overall, if this isn't your cup of tea, then that's very reasonable, but if it is your type of thing, be sure to check it out. On that note, this movie was dedicated to the director's wife, complete with a title and a Microsoft Word heart emoji before the titles start to roll, and I feel like that's an insult as painful as bloody retribution by a band of jealous models.

The Triple-Dog-Dare of Movie Viewings: A Serbian Film

The Triple-Dog-Dare of Movie Viewings:

A Serbian Film

Milos (Srđan Todorović) in one of the only appropriate pictures from the film to be found on Google images.

           

True story: once I finished watching A Serbian Film, I took a twenty minute shower.  I needed to feel clean. That’s the feeling you’ll get if you watch A Serbian Film, a film that has been banned in Spain, Norway, and Brazil among other countries. The film features rape, child molestation, murder, incest, and necrophilia, just to name a few perversions. Not surprisingly, this is why it has been so heavily banned and censored throughout the world. In 2010, in the United Kingdom, the BBFC cut four minutes and eleven seconds of content from the film, making it the most heavily cut film in sixteen years there. The BBFC also stated that it rarely makes cuts this drastic. Trying to ride the fine line between social commentary and exploitation film, A Serbian Film ends up just being gross and unpleasant.

One of the admittedly good things about the film is its interesting premise. Milos (Srđan Todorović) is a down on his luck porn star that has retired from the business. He has a wife (Jelena Gavrilović) and a young son (Luka Mijatović). Milos also has a brother (Slobodan Beštić) that is attracted to his Milos’ wife and jealous of his sexual vigor. Milos is approached by an independent filmmaker Vukmir (Sergej Trifunović) who asks him to star in his latest film. Wanting financial security for his family, Milos agrees, despite not knowing what will be asked of him. Vukmir’s movie, however, is the most sexually violent and perverted snuff film ever conceived.

Much like how Vukmir’s film challenges Milos and his sensibilities, so does A Serbian Film with audiences. Aside from an interesting premise and high stylization, this film has nothing to offer the general masses aside from misery and pretend political messages, but I’ll get to that. First, the strengths: you cannot say that the film “where the former porn star gets tricked into making a hyper violent snuff film” is not an interesting premise. The premise is expanded upon, but if you’re looking for some real thought provoking substance, you are out of luck. If you’re looking for some real gritty nastiness that makes you feel dirty, then look no further!  The stylization of the sequences is very noteworthy. The film is shot in such a visually stylized way that some images are extremely hard to get forget. The movie’s cinematagrophy is first rate. Unfortunately, you might really want to forget everything you’ve seen once you’ve watched A Serbian Film. 

The director has stated that the whole film is a social commentary meant to represent the mistreatment of Serbian people by the government. That’s a bit of a stretch, but if sexually-violent metaphors about the cruelty of the Serbian Government are your cup of tea, then maybe this film is for you! Ultimately, this is a film that fans of disturbing and controversial movies will enjoy, if that’s the right word for it. I didn’t particularly “enjoy” this film. In fact, I was constantly wondering why I was watching it. It’s gross and disturbing for the sake of being gross and disturbing. The film is also incredibly misogynistic. Terrible things happen to women throughout this film. It really stuck out to me just how much the director seemed to hate women. They cannot get a break in this movie. This is not to say that terrible things don’t happen to men in the film either. The director has horrific things happen to men and women and children. No one is spared in this disgusting, violent “social commentary.” 

A Serbian Film was Srdjan Spasojevic’s debut feature. He has only made a short film in the horror anthology The ABCs of Death since. To be perfectly frank, I would be perfectly happy never seeing another one of his films again. I have a feeling that he won’t be able to top the sheer repulsiveness and misogyny of A Serbian Film, but I could be proven wrong. Ultimately, these disturbing, gross-out films are made so people can dare each other to go see them; reminiscent of a schoolyard dare to eat a worm or some kind of insect. A Serbian Film is the kind of film you would triple-dog-dare someone to see. However, just because someone dares you to do it, that doesn’t mean you should eat the worm.

Most Overrated Movies: Or Unpopular Opinions but I Hope that We Can Still be Friends

In this blog, I'll be taking on some of the movies that, despite mainstream popularity or critical praise, I'll tell you just aren't that good. When coming up with some of the movies to discuss, I realized there are countless Academy Award winners that I can tear apart (Will save for a later post), but I decided to stick mainly to ones here that are more mainstream popular. I write this at the risk of angering more people, but someone has to say these things. I hope we can still be friends, but then again, if you're the kind of person that thinks Argo is a better movie than Django Unchained or Zero Dark Thirty, I quite frankly don't want to be your friend.

• American Hustle (And basically every David O. Russell movie, but especially American Hustle). Okay, I like Jennifer Lawrence just as much as the next guy. She's a decent enough actress, she's pretty, and she seems likable enough in interviews. But she's not Meryl Streep, okay? When I first saw American Hustle, after appearing on screen for no more than 20 seconds, I could hear the people sitting behind me in the theater say, "Ugh, she is just such a good actress." Let's just calm down here a little. And although J Law is surely one of the more enjoyable parts of American Hustle, did anyone really like this movie that much? It had a great cast also featuring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, and Jeremy Renner, an interesting enough real live event for the basis of the script, but I can't say I really enjoyed much of any of this. Every character is either annoying or a fairly despicable person, specifically Christian Bale, and I personally wasn't rooting for him, but in the end, everything works out for everyone except Bradley Cooper's FBI Agent, who gets majorly screwed over despite him being the only character in the movie I liked. For a movie nominated for Academy Awards in several big categories, does anyone remember this movie or look back on it that fondly? That's sort of the case with all of David O. Russell's movies, except arguably Silver Linings Playbook, which holds up but is still a bit overrated. The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and especially the unpleasant, melo-dramatic white people problems saga that was Joy; David O. Russell keeps using great actors in movies that fall flat but people seem to love (Usually because they're starring Jennifer Lawrence or Bradley Cooper). And while we're on the subject of Joy, let me just say that Joy, which follows the inventor of the Miracle Mop, was such a catastrophe that a Miracle Mop was definitely needed to clean up the overrated shit show that Jennifer Lawrence chose to star in. 
• Avatar. Yes it looked cool. Yes it became the all time biggest grossing film of all time because everyone just had to see it in 3D. But let's be real, it was just an expensive production of Fern Gully... or Dances with Wolves... or Pocahontas. Honestly, the list of films goes on and on. But we didn't pay money for the story of Avatar, we came to see blue aliens fight an army with robot battle suits. Fair enough, but even still, did this movie really warrant all the sequels that James Cameron has in production for it? It's been roughly seven years since Avatar, and you don't hear anyone saying "Oh man, you know what I can't wait for? The sequel to Avatar!" 
• Fight Club. This is the title that's probably going to anger the bourgeoisie twenty something white men of the internet with their "Feel the Bern" bumper stickers and Anonymous Masks who nihilistically quote this movie and cackle in contempt at those who naively think this movie is just about fighting. I get it, okay? I get what this movie is about, I just think it's insanely overrated, not nearly as clever as it thinks, and quite frankly, the movie is just all around unpleasant. Sorry, not sorry.
• Natural Born Killers. Much like Fight Club, just very unpleasant, not nearly as clever as it thinks, and self indulgent to the point that whatever Oliver Stone was trying to satirize becomes hopelessly lost in this ugly, overly violent, bad looking, inconsistent, (And for all these reasons, heavily debated) hot mess. 
• Slumdog Millionaire. No matter how "uplifting" and deceivingly "feel good" this movie makes itself out to be, it's just all around overrated. Star crossed lovers? A Bollywood dance number? Heavy handed themes of fate that are meant to otherwise cover up lazy writing? The last part is the most unforgivable. When "fate" is interwoven with the story to account for all the laughably implausible occurrences in the plot, the movie becomes so hammy, it should be served with a side of pineapple. And for the winner of Best Picture at the 2008 Academy Awards, it just isn't that memorable.
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you claimed to have loved The Force Awakens and were completely satisfied by Spielberg-Wanna-Be J.J. Abrams's attempt to reboot the saga, then we both know you're lying to yourself. Look, I get that J.J. had basically the whole world to please, but it really irked me when everyone seemed to fall head over heels for this installment for the sole reason that it wasn't bad per se. Were audiences so desperate to like this movie that they were willing to overlook the bad acting, bad special effects, wasted potential, and the recycled plot of the original film? Judging by the acclaim and love for this film, I'd say audiences evidently were. I get that after the prequels, people were disappointed, but is that really any excuse to blatantly rip off A New Hope? Come on JJ, I know that actually probably is the best you got, but with unlimited resources and the original screenwriter to Empire Strikes Back, you definitely could've done better with all that help. But instead, we have wasted characters (one of the best actors on the planet, Max Von Sydow? Hell, let's kill him after two minutes of screen time. Captain Phasma, a badass chrome woman stormtrooper played by Brienne of Tarth herself, Gwendoline Christie? Let's turn her into a joke and never use her to do anything cool), bad special effects (Snoke, anyone?) and bad acting (the original trilogy actors are all slumming it, and most of the new players were all merely adequate, save Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, while Oscar Isaac just didn't have enough to do). And let me just sum up this film's plot compared to that of A New Hope: "It's not a Death Star, it's bigger! Starkiller Base doesn't blow up one planet, it blows up five! See??? Different!" 

        Sorry, not sorry.

Mother's Day Review

There are films that, although cliched and only mildly funny, have enough charm to them to be fairly enjoyable. There are also movies that are so bad, they end up being an enjoyable, guilty pleasure experience for the audience. Mothers Day is neither of those. It is a film that may have tried to be both,  but is so misguided, so without merit, so utterly painful and cringe worthy to watch in its depictions of motherhood, that any mothers whose children take them to see this movie would be forgiven in thinking that this is payback for being late to picking up the kids from soccer practice 10 years ago. Director Gary Marshall continues the pattern of ruining holidays with ensemble romantic comedies (Valentine's Day, New Year's Eve) that are about as romantic as the Anakin Skywalker-Padme love story in the Star Wars prequels, and about as funny as Saving Private Ryan.

To make my point about just how terrible Mother's Day really is, let me list some examples from film and TV that celebrate motherhood exponentially better than Mother's Day:

• Dirk Diggler's alcoholic, verbally abusive mother in Boogie Nights.
• Norman Bates's dead mother in Psycho (Yes, even the remake).
• Carrie's psychotic, fanatic mother from Carrie (1976).
• Stiffler's Mom from American Pie.
• Serial killer Mrs. Vorhees from Friday the 13th.
• Macaulay Culkin's forgetful, and criminally neglectful mom from Home Alone.
• Livia Soprano from The Sopranos, after she conspires to have a hit placed on her son.
• Hilary Swank's white trash, tax evading mother from Million Dollar Baby. (Played by Margo Martindale, who appears in this film as well.)

Where to even start with this film? I suppose with its train wreck of a plot. There's Sandy, played by Jennifer Anistion, a struggling mom raising two boys, whose dirtbag ex-husband (Timothy Olyphant) marries a girl half his age. Sandy complains about the obnoxiously millennial new step-mom not wearing enough clothing (Despite the fact that the movie has Jennifer Anistion walk around in a towel for 10 minutes for seemingly no reason). Then there's Jesse (Kate Hudson) and Gabi (Sarah Chalke), two sisters who are estranged from their wacky racist parents. Gabi is in a lesbian relationship and Jesse is married to an Indian doctor and has a son with him. When the parents stop by for a surprise visit, wacky and inconceivably racist hijinks ensue! Almost every word out of the red neck parents' mouths are cringe worthy and racist (Upon seeing Jesse's husband they ask who that "towelhead" is). The movie also seems hopefully confused over the differences between Indian and Arab as the inconsistent stereotypes are spouted out throughout the film, which unfortunately, garnered genuine laughs from the audience I was in. There's a subplot about a painfully unfunny comedian  named Max helping to raise his infant daughter with his would-be fiance, and in one of the film's most bizarre WTF bits, when they finally marry at the film's end, there are gangly, white pre-teens that were seemingly pulled off the street to do cart wheels at their wedding; "It's just how I always pictured it," Max says with tears rolling down his face. Jason Sudekis also has the misfortune to be in this Titanic sized mess of a movie as a widower raising two teenage girls (He has to buy tampons for his teenage daughter. Hardy har har). He plans on treating Mother's Day like a normal day since his marine wife (Jennifer Garner) died. He obsessively watches tapes of his wife, while his daughters criticize him and tell him to get over it. Despite that, they yell at Papa Sudekis that they have to honor her, and end up running off to the cemetery to visit her grave. Then Jason Sudekis has a karaoke related accident. Still with me? Didn't think so. Julia Roberts also stars as founding Three Stooges member, Moe Howard, or at least that's what her haircut would suggest.
Mother's Day is the cinematic equivalent to having wisdom teeth removed, something I just recently had done. Unfortunately, I was put to sleep and given pain killers for the surgery, something I desperately craved while watching Mother's Day. But honestly, when a movie starts with a song that goes "You might have a mom, she might be the bomb," what else could you possibly expect?