New on Blu: THE SHALLOWS, WARCRAFT, THE NEON DEMON,
This week on home entertainment there are two young ladies battling sharks, both of a different breed. Duncan Jones (MOON) very passionate WARCRAFT has also released, and here are some thoughts.
I didn't think visionary Nicolas Winding Refn could make a worse movie until I saw THE NEON DEMON. This is a film I can't go back and give it another try to see if my feelings change. I do this with ONLY GOD FORGIVES once a year and the results are the same: I hate you. I know Refn was under a lot of pressure after the massive success of DRIVE, and he didn't want people to think he was making DRIVE 2, but casting Gosling as the silent anti-hero again kind of chopped and screwed everything. ONLY GOD FORGIVES has one of the best titles in cinema, and a few cool scenes (The quick "Wanna fight?" moment is amazing), the movie forgot to have a plot and is just scenes cut together.
In NEON DEMON, Jesse (Elle Fanning), young and naive, runs away to LA to become a model. She's got natural beauty and seems to be on the right track. Then she starts to hang with a group of vicious models Ruby (Jena Malone), Gigi (Bella Heathcote), and Sarah (Abbey Lee), who understand how cutthroat the modeling business is.
Keanu Reeves makes an appearance as a pedophile apartment complex owner and his role is criminally underused. I want to see more of this vile Reeves, but we get just a glimpse.
The PR company in control of handling NEON DEMON sent press eyeballs, and you will learn why at some point in the movie. Great marketing.
NEON DEMON was co-written by two women, so I'm curious if the modeling world is really this ugly. (I sure hope not.)
If you are a Refn fan and/or model, I would say give this a rent.
In THE SHALLOWS, Blake Lively is battling a shark and it ain't gorgeous, conniving models like the ones Dakota fanning has to face in NEON DEMON.. It's one, smart, big hungry shark. This is a film that took me by surprise. In an industry that have sharks in tornadoes and doing other stupid shit, THE SHALLOWS is a true horrifying observation at the possibility of death at sea. it's scary, and tension runs high once the action gets going.
BUY.
I didn't see this the way all movies are supposed to be seen -- in a theater -- but I still had a blast watching it. Some of it I couldn't follow because I didn't play the game, but I did enjoy the action and incredible Oscar-worthy CGI. This is one of many Blockbusters that got crushed by critics, and I'm not sure why. The real voices of film criticism have passed on, and I'm curious how they'd feel about this movie. Is it worth smashing because the story is a bit hard to follow, or deserves praise because of the non-stop entertainment?
BUY.