|
www.kevacho.com
©2002-2024
Kevin Michael Vance
Writer - Portland, Oregon
|
|
|
Go Back To Reviews
Title: THE NEON DEMON
Director: Nocolas Winding Refn
Year: 2016
Reviewed: January 22, 2017
| Rating: |
|
 | |
| |
 | |
| |
Birthday Cake-Second Highest Rating |
[Rating Definitions]
|
|
|
Oh... N.W.R. What a bright, bloody mess you are. And what a pretentious film maker. Not since Lars Von Trier, or Gus Van Sant (huh... they all do the three name title, just like me! Maybe I'm a pretentious piece of shit, too?) has there been a more pompous, masturbatory, self-involved "auteur". "The Neon Demon" is a beauteous, colorful pile of garbage. Its' stink hangs in the room after its viewing like bad perfume. It is the two worst qualities of any film: it is both boring and pretentious. Refn holds onto scenes with a vainglorious sense of his own longing and importance, laboriously wringing each scene as you and I might attempt to wring water from a bath towel, nullifying any attempt at story and character development with the hands of an obsessed psychotic on ritalin. This movie is ponderous, a slow crawl that does not edge towards a thunderous conclusion, but is rather akin to a man dying of thirst reaching out towards a glistening mirage, only to realize he's been tricked by his eyes and his lack of sanity. You and I are that thirsty man. And Nicolas is most definitely the mirage. This movie is as deep as a dixie cup, and yet professes to house the depths of profundity of the ocean itself. A bunch of things happen: a cougar is found in Jesse's room, Keanu Reeves plays a bitter sociopath, we are bombarded with the imagery of a Sierpinski Triangle, there's a contrite romance; and you none of that matters, because none of it is given any weight by the story or the characters. This is schlock film making that thinks it's oscar worthy. This is Gus Van Sant 101.
"The Neon Demon" is terrible. Colorful and some times beautifully shot (albeit you could argue its shot value is not just derivative of Stanley Kubrick, but direct copies), the movie gets a BIRTHDAY CAKE review.
|
|
