Meh I finally got to watch the neon demon but there aren't any threads about it anymore

meh I finally got to watch the neon demon but there aren't any threads about it anymore

>have threads open for new episode/movie I'm going to watch soon
>when I finish I check the threads out only to be disappointed less than halfway through because I cant' participate at the peak discussion

>For a movie about fashionable lesbian revenge, Nicholas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon sure is creepy. Its story of model industry intrigue, rivalry and lust turns women’s sexuality against them. But not only against female careerists; it freaks the attraction—and envy—that women might feel for each other and that drag queens goodnaturedly mock.

>Jena Malone’s Ruby is a gay Los Angeles makeup artist, working at the hottest photo shoots, who sneakily preys on Elle Fanning’s Jesse, a teenage newbie, fresh from out-of-town but with the youthful, unspoiled look craved by both fashionistas and plain-jane queers. Ruby marks the return of the predatory lesbian that used to be a common movie stereotype before gay liberation and before bodacious drag queens claimed the epithet “cunty” as a badge of pride.

I know that feel

sometimes I even start those threads thinking they wont get many posts like any of my other threads and then when I finish the movie the thread is over the limit or something

kek

>Winding Refn’s scream queen clichés resemble Jonathan Glazer’s creep fest Under The Skin which cast ScarJo as a murderous alien identified only as “The Female.” (Hetero film geeks couldn’t see past their boners to condemn Glazer’s sexism). From the first shot of Fanning posed as a corpse with a slit throat, The Neon Demon itself poses as a Kubrick-style cultural satire. It recalls Winding Refn’s ludicrous Drive, where Ryan Gosling beat a man to death while female strippers looked on like emotionless mannequins. Kubrick is a bad role model for Winding Refn because for all his “genius,” Kubrick never showed a sense of camp and that’s what this absurdist-existential film lacks.

>Reducing gay Ruby to a fiend and Jesse to an unlikable, if pretty, victim doesn’t mean The Neon Demon is homophobic; Refn is too savvy for that. (After all, he gave us Tom Hardy’s first big screen full monty in Bronson.) Yet The Neon Demon’s emphasis on girlish treachery and foolishness carries vestiges of gynophobia. “Nobody likes the way they look” a model says and dewy-eyed, soft-skinned, flaxen-haired Jesse rejects the notion. Her “perfection” (contrasted to modeling agent Christine Hendrick’s full-bodied womanliness) proves irresistible to Ruby who makes an obsessive, embarrassing pass.

I'm going to rape your mom and ravage her pussy so hard that a fucking hobo is going to start living inside that shithole.

>Plain-face Ruby (seen relaxing in a freshly dug grave) just seems plain pathetic. In Refn’s extreme version of throwing shade, the modeling business and its artificial presentation of femininity becomes the reverse of an infomercial. Ruby and her coven of older models exact a plan to destroy—and if necessary devour— Jesse. And when carnivorous models vomit-up eyeballs and viscera, the film is cunty without the fun.

>These ghoulish models graduated from the Mean Girls/Heathers all-white school. Even as a campy critique, The Neon Demon lacks insight into the racial-global-cultural competition that was detailed in Deborah Riley’s excellent fashion doc Versailles 73: American Runway Revolution. Riley memorialized American fashion pluralism against stodgy European tradition, capturing a moment in history that “changed the course of fashion history.”

>Fashion history is among many insights in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1955 masterpiece Le Amiche (The Girlfriends, above), newly restored in a polished Criterion Blu-Ray. In the suspense plot, Antonioni features glamourous actresses (Eleanora Rossi Drago, Yvonne Furneaux, Valentina Cortese, Madeleine Fischer, Anna Maria Pancani) as women unfulfilled by their bourgeois fashionista status. This glorious and devastating film is also a time capsule of mid-20 th century chic. The clothes look great and the dress-up always expresses personality—both social position and spiritual.

>Le Amiche goes deeper than Sex in the City. (For instance, Rossi Drago laments her ghetto background). Its profundity preserves the era of Schiaparelli, Dior, and Givenchy, never resorting to horror movie vulgarity. Antonioni knew what Hollywood’s butch-styled genius designer Edith Head knew when she remarked “Fashion is character.” But The Neon Demon cheapens fashion and femininity. Remember how Pauline Kael threw shade at Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge: “It’s like a neon sign spelling out the soullessness of neon.”

OP here, what have I done wtf is this

A review of the movie Neon Demon by Armond White

>he didn't see it in theaters
top pleb

dude I don't even remember the last time I went to the movies

try not being a fucking poor loser

...

Think the movie is too much like Only God Forgives in a lot of ways, and as Refn movies are pure aesthetic it kinda makes it a little worse I guess.

...

You didn't miss much. Shitty threads for a shitty movie.

It was actually much better at the cinema box and I'm not even memeing like most people do for other flicks. Watching it at home I had to stop myself from browsing multiple times

>Even as a campy critique, The Neon Demon lacks insight into the racial-global-cultural competition that was detailed in

This right here is the reason I hate this nigger's "reviews". Everything has to be about politics.

Even though it's clear Refn has ZERO interest in pushing political "insights" with his films, this fucking guy has to approach it from that angle because it's the only one he knows.

How is it shitty?

yeah how dare a man do art for the art

back to capeshit threads boy

Pretty much the dictionary definition of all style and no substance.

I knew you would say that fucking retarded line that doesn't mean anything in particular. This way you don't actually have to make any arguments. Thanks for being a predictable cunt.

>Remember how Pauline Kael threw shade at Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge: “It’s like a neon sign spelling out the soullessness of neon.”
Based
Refntino getting blown out once again

and?

the movie is pure aesthetics and im ok with that, not that it matters but it is also deliberately pure aesthetics

He doesn't produce a single argument in the whole review.

>the movie is pure aesthetics and im ok with that

I would be too, but it's not pure aesthetics. They were clearly trying to have it be much more than that, but they failed. The ending makes it obvious they were doing for something deep and symbolic plot-wise, but they failed miserably. It detracts from the rest of the film.

What are you talking about? Any symbolism present is completely overt, and intentionally blasted in the viewer's face. It's the opposite of what you're saying.

ill watch it again tomorrow with more attention, really didnt have this feeling watching the first time

Did you not read my second sentence? Yes, the symbolism and aesthetics are overt, but they also tried to tell a compelling story, interwoven with the symbolism. But the plot was immensely shallow. Had they simply had the other models kill the MC and end it shortly after with them continuing to model, I would agree with the film was "pure aesthetic".

The satanic ritual and the cannibalism demonstrates the plot for the whole film was meant to be much more then a vehicle to make a film on aesthetics alone. And they failed miserably.

You are literally just imagining things. The ritual and the cannibalism are the best examples of pure aesthetics in the film. They have a basic symbolical purpose but ultimately they are there in the first place for aesthetics.

How the fuck can you say the film is trying to be "deep" when the symbolism is so obvious? It's not trying to be deep, it's just playing with ideas that manifest in the form of the characters. And that's what makes it so great. Almost any film that tries to be "deep" is bound to be a juvenile effort.

It has way more substance than Only God Forgives or Valhalla Rising or half the shit winding-refn movies.

i have class with a girl who looks exactly like elle fanning

Yeah, I agree. It's trying to make a statement about something and it fails to do so.

I mean, compare it to the other winding-refn movies where there's barely a plot and the characters don't matter. Here, stuff actually happens, the main character has relationships, and most importantly, the main character actually undergoes a change. There's a lot of style but it's obvious that he was trying to make something that wouldn't just be viewed as pretentious like a lot of his other movies.

After reading pretty much every interview and listening to the commentary track of the film I still have no reason to believe Refn is interested in making "statements". What he does is simply play with ideas, like the idea of glorifying narcissism, or beauty being the most important thing. He's not trying to teach anyone anything, he's just transforming ideas from the abstract and how he feels about them to the audiovisual realm.

25/100

The Film Stage Giovanni Marchini Camia
The director has set out to make the most repellently misogynistic film imaginable, yet he's disguised it as a postmodern feminist satire. By shattering every possible taboo, the film is supposed to be an attack against the very thing it represents. Really, though, any semblance of commentary is simply a posture for Winding Refn to cover his ass.

What a moron.

Maybe he should set his preconceived notions aside and watch the movie.
It's his fault he didn't like his own interpretation of a movie.