THE NEON DEMON: Skin Deep

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Writers: Nicolas Winding Refn, Mary Laws, Polly Stenham
Cast: Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Keanu Reeves, Karl Glusman, Desmond Harrington, Christina Hendricks
Runtime: 118 mins.
2016

Nicolas Winding Refn broke into mainstream consciousness with 2011's Drive, the Ryan Gosling action vehicle. If you've never seen Drive, the phrase "Ryan Gosling action vehicle" probably conjures all sorts of expectations, few of which would sync up with the experience of watching Drive. Audiences were so distraught, in fact, that one Michigan woman brought a class action lawsuit against the film's distributor for releasing a deliberately misleading trailer, as the end product bore little resemblance to something in the vein of The Fast and the Furious. The critics, meanwhile, by and large heralded Drive as a brooding thriller, and a fascinating deconstruction of the masculine hero figure.

Two years later, Refn released Only God Forgives, and this time neither audiences nor critics were on board. Sitting at a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, some excoriated the film for being laborious and impenetrable, while some lambasted it for being too on the nose. For my part, Only God Forgives was one of my favorite movies of 2013. It went even deeper down the rabbit hole of deconstructing Ryan Gosling's persona as part of its critique of the violence and perversion inherent in toxic masculinity. The central visual motif of the film is that of the hand: unclenched in supplication, clenched in violence. This commentary develops in glacier-slow sequences underpinned by Cliff Martinez's infectious score.

So it is to my absolute pleasure, and the distress of many others, that The Neon Demon is the perfect counterpart film to Only God Forgives. Whereas the latter follows violent gangs and the sex trade in Thailand to immerse us in toxic masculine culture, the former thrusts us into the Los Angeles modeling scene in order to put a lens on toxic femininity. The Neon Demon is Only God Forgives refracted through the prism of gender.

BRAVE: A Monument to Compromise

Twenty years ago Pixar Animation Studios revolutionized cinema with the first full length completely computer-generated film. Two decades later and Pixar is still one of the most consistently groundbreaking studios in the business. Leading up to the release of their new film The Good Dinosaur, I will be going through Pixar's entire filmography at the rate of two movies a week. This time around we dig into the tragedy behind Pixar's attempt at diversity, Brave.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Mark Andrews or Brenda Chapman, Steve Purcell (co-director)
Writers: Brenda Chapman, Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Irene Mecchi
Cast: Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, John Ratzenberger
Runtime: 93 mins
2012

In every fiber of its being, Brave is a wholly and unflinchingly average movie. The character design is slightly amusing. The world is lush but unoriginal. The slapstick is inoffensive and unengaging. The voice acting is cartoonishly Scottish. The dialogue gets the job done. The action is functional. The plot is familiar. The story is a far more typical version of what Disney tried and succeeded in accomplishing a year later with Frozen.

When you add all that up, you can't help but be disappointed to find that Brave is no more nor less than the sum of its parts: a cookie cutter movie about fate and self-determination. I'd be hardpressed to name one truly interesting or groundbreaking choice in the whole movie. During my viewing I was so unimpressed with the paint-by-numbers proceedings that, without even realizing it, I got up and went to do something in another room while the climax was ramping up. I never abandon movies like that.

The Cool Girl: Women in Film 2014

I want you to watch something for me.

You've seen some of these movies before. You're all familiar with this plot beat. The woman, almost always a love interest, has been captured by the villain, and the hero has to brawl or bargain to save her. There's nothing inherently sexist about the situation, just as the use of such a plot device doesn't automatically make a movie sexist. But that's beside the point. This supercut puts a lot of unpleasant Hollywood trends in stark relief.

For starters, notice how in most of these clips the woman doesn't even speak. She's a prop. The only important dynamic in the scene is that between the (generally) male hero and the (generally) male villain. Their relationship is the important one, the real one, the dramatically resonant one. The men have all the dialogue, all the power, all the agency, all the charisma, all the audience's rooting interests--everything. Meanwhile, the women just have weakness and manufactured tears. They are little more than poker chips in these scenes, an observation driven home when the heroes start offering money to trade for her: "I'll give up the gold," "I gave you the money," "I'll open the safe." Then, as if it wasn't apparent enough, we have the litany of scenes that make the utter unimportance of the woman explicit: "This is between you and me," "She's not important," "She doesn't belong here."

If she's really so unimportant to the central conflict, why is she even in the movie? The answer is even sorrier than the question: She exists in these films as nothing more than a pawn, a plot device, and an eventual reward for the man to take home and mount on his mantle. Figuratively speaking.

WE ARE THE BEST!: It's the Best

In which three young girls kick ass and take names--ideologically.

Director: Lukas Moodysson
Writer: Lukas Moodysson
Cast: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne
Runtime: 102 mins.
2014

Normally going into these things I have a structure outlined in my head, and I work through the review beat by beat. I don't have that for We Are the Best! I think, in the spirit of punk, I'll bang this one out as I go along.

We Are the Best! follows two thirteen year old girls in 1980's Sweden as they sort of fumble around from day to day, hating what they hate and loving what they love, until they happen into this idea that they should really just start their own punk band--despite having no previous musical experience. Once they recruit an unlikely third member--a young Christian girl who has years of experience on the guitar--the band starts becoming something and taking on a central importance in their lives. Meanwhile they deal with drama and trauma surrounding school, parents, and especially love interests.

More than all that, this movie is about the spirit of PUNK. And the spirit of GIRLS. And the spirit of GIRLS doing PUNK.

But more than THAT this movie is about those girls--as people.

I'm going to reiterate because that is the most important thing I can say about this movie, as it is 2014 and this sort of thing is still a revolutionary concept in cinema:

We Are the Best! treats children as though they are people. We Are the Best! treats girls as though they are people. These are two of the most egregiously uncommon achievements of contemporary film, and two reasons why We Are the Best! has to be considered one of the most incredible things to be released in 2014.

EDGE OF TOMORROW: Fresh Repetition

Director: Doug Liman
Writers: Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth
Cast: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt
Runtime: 113 mins.
2014

What if a big budget summer blockbuster could be more than ingratiating?

What if that blockbuster didn't focus on visual effects at the expense of all else?  What if it treated every aspect of the film with respect and attention?  What if it tended to script, performance, pace, and tone in equal parts?

What if that script had a more pristine structure than some Oscar contenders?

What if this film came from a director whose filmography has been radically hit or miss?  What if it came from a team of writers who have arguably one excellent film between them--a film that came out in 1995?

What if the star was a former Grade-A man's man of a movie star, who has recently been perceived as "going off the deep end" and "box office poison"?

What if, despite the presence of said man's man movie star, the real badass of the film was the female protagonist?  What if the male protagonist was cowardly and hopelessly out of his league, and he had to learn the ropes from her?  What if the film didn't relegate her to the position of trophy girlfriend?  What if the movie didn't focus on their romance and instead allowed them to be real characters with a real, mature, and evolving relationship?

What if, in addition to all of this, the movie delivered on everything that is expected of a blockbuster action flick?  What if that delivery was a heavy dose of sci-fi and some of the haul-assed best mech action and convincing special effects this side of Avatar?

Actually I liked these effects better than Avatar's.

This is Edge of Tomorrow.

FROZEN: Ice Queens Aren't So Frigid

In ice, no one can hear you scream.

Directors: Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck
Writer: Jennifer Lee
Cast: Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad
Runtime: 102 mins.
2013

Disney's Frozen has a lot going for it.  The visuals are stunning.  The soundtrack has its moments.  The characters are strong and well-written.  The humor hits the mark with pleasing consistency.  The pace is usually brisk.  The cast is spot on.  It's also just damned fun to watch.

The movie has another thing going for it though.  It strives to be a contemporary feminist version of the well-established Disney Princess paradigm.  In one sense, this branding of Frozen as a feminist film leads to a lot of bickering that distracts from the movie itself (some examples in a minute).  In another sense, the movie begs to be viewed and reviewed as a subversive step forward for women's issues in Hollywood--it's written into the film's DNA.  So that's how I'm going to review it.