On Blu-ray/DVD: LET THE CORPSES TAN (2018), WHAT THEY HAD (2018), and GALVESTON (2018)

LET THE CORPSES TAN
(Belgium/France - 2017; US release 2018)

If Alejandro Jodorowsky followed up EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN with an Italian crime thriller in the mid-1970s, it would probably end up looking a lot like LET THE CORPSES TAN, the latest from the Belgium-based filmmaking duo of Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Much like their previous efforts, the giallo homages AMER and THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, LET THE CORPSES TAN is a fetishistic rollercoaster ride of Eurocult worship, incorporating elements of poliziotteschi, spaghetti westerns, the work of French crime novelist and screenwriter Sebastien Japrisot (RIDER ON THE RAIN), and liberally borrowing soundtrack cues from 1971's tawdry ROAD TO SALINA as well as composers like Ennio Morricone and Nico Fidenco. Based on a 1971 novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, LET THE CORPSES TAN is riddled with bizarre, impenetrable, and hypnotic imagery but at the same time, it's the most narrative-driven of Cattet and Forzani's films thus far. The fusion of the wildly surreal and the rigidity of story structure don't always mesh, especially since the story is pretty much a standard-issue cops-and-robbers standoff on a sparsely-populated Mediterranean island getaway. The action centers on an isolated resort of adobe-style ruins run by misanthropic artist Madame Luce (Elina Lowensohn, who a brief moment in the '90s indie spotlight with Hal Hartley's AMATEUR and FLIRT and the title role in Michael Almereyda's NADJA). Among the guests are Max Bernier (Marc Barbe), a washed-up  writer, and Luce's sleazy attorney and occasional lover Brisorguiel (Michelangelo Marchese). There's also three criminals--Rhino (Stephane Ferrara), Gros (Bernie Bonvoisin, lead singer of the French metal band Trust, whose "Prefabricated" was on soundtrack for 1981's HEAVY METAL), and Alex (Pierre Nisse)--who sport Frankenstein masks as they pull off a gold heist from an armored car but get stopped by a trio of hitchhikers during their escape. The hitchhikers include a woman (Dorylia Calmel), who's just stolen her son (Bamba Forzani Ndiaye) from her ex-husband and escaped with him and his nanny (Marine Sainsily). As it turns out, they're all headed to Madame Luce's, as the criminals plan to use it as a safe house and the woman is tracking down her estranged second husband Bernier.

Things more volatile by the minute, especially once two cops (Herve Sogne, Dominique Troyes) happen by with news of the gold heist and an abducted child on the radio, completely unaware that they're about to walk into both situations at once. From then, it's a mix of violent shootouts and trippy imagery, with frequent cutaways to a nude woman looming over a miniature recreation of Luce's resort, populated by ants in an apparent homage to the opening scene of THE WILD BUNCH. There's more, from urination to champagne lactation to an overt reference to a really nasty moment in Andrea Bianchi's CRY OF A PROSTITUTE, and a foolhardy attempt by Brisorguiel to steal the gold and drive a wedge between Gros and his cohorts, and from a plot standpoint, there's little here that's going to surprise anyone, even with supernatural allusions regarding Madame Luce. There's still that sense of surreal delirium that's become synonymous with Cattet and Forzani, and they also use some impressive, rapid-fire editing techniques in conjunction with an occasionally non-linear time element that keeps bouncing back to show events from different perspectives. But by embracing both their style and attempting to stick to the structure required by a story and to do right by the novel, they're sometimes working at cross purposes. Cattet and Forzani are admittedly an acquired taste, but if you liked AMER and THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, you'll generally like LET THE CORPSES TAN. The difference here is that you've got an abundance of plot and characters getting in the way of what this filmmaking team does best. (Unrated, 92 mins)




WHAT THEY HAD
(US/UK/Canada - 2018)

Whether it was a lack of confidence or cash flow, it's a shame that distributor Bleecker Street didn't treat WHAT THEY HAD a little better, stalling its release at just 53 screens for a gross of $260,000. Showcasing some of the best performances of 2018 that nobody saw, the film is a semi-autobiographical look at a family affected by Alzheimer's, written and directed by a debuting Elizabeth Chomko, a playwright and occasional actress who conceived the project as a tribute to her parents. Elderly Ruth (Blythe Danner) gets out of bed on Christmas Eve and wanders out into a Chicago snowstorm wearing only her robe and slippers. Her husband Burt (Robert Forster) wakes up to find her missing and the front door wide open. He places a frantic call to his son Nick (Michael Shannon), who lives nearby, and Nick calls his sister Bridget, or "Bitty" (Hilary Swank), who flies in from California with her teenage daughter Emma (Taissa Farmiga). By the time Bitty and Emma land, Ruth has been found, and it's just the latest incident in an ongoing and inevitable decline that's now a few years running and one that stubborn Burt refuses to see as a problem. Bullheaded and devoutly Catholic, he believes in taking care of his wife on his own ("In sickness and in health...that's the deal!") and has no patience for "teenage doctors" who don't know his wife as well as he does. Nick keeps unsuccessfully trying to convince Burt--who's 75, survived four heart attacks, and is clearly physically and emotionally exhausted from being a round-the-clock caregiver--that Ruth needs to be put in a nursing home, and he's hoping Bitty, who has power of attorney if their parents are incapacitated, will back him up.

As is the case in films like this, old wounds are reopened and the family gnaws on one another's nerves as only family can, but WHAT THEY HAD never panders and never goes the easy maudlin route. Having experienced Alzheimer's with her own mother, Chomko cuts through the bullshit and sugarcoats nothing, particularly in the script's many instances of dark humor, recognizing the ordeal as one of those situations where you frequently have to laugh to keep from crying. Danner plays Ruth with compassion and dignity, never overdoing it or going for cliched awards-bait moments, often speaking volumes just with a confused look on her face or a periodic flash of clarity (it's also heartbreaking to see Bitty's optimism when her mom sees her and excitedly says "Is that my baby?" only to soon realize Ruth says that to anyone younger than she is). Of course, those clear moments get increasingly rare as the story unfolds, and her family is forced to contend with embarrassing and uncomfortable incidents like Ruth in church flipping the bird to a fellow parishioner or drinking the Holy Water ("Well, at least she's hydrated," Nick deadpans), then hitting on Nick on the way home, completely unaware that he's her son. Bitty, presumably based on Chomko, has her own problems, namely an increasingly distant Emma and a stale marriage to Eddie (Josh Lucas), while abrasive Nick ("What are you, dead inside?" Emma asks, and he replies "Almost"), who resents his sister for living across the country and leaving him to deal with Burt and Ruth, has sunk his life savings into a bar and sleeps in its basement, seemingly never able to live up to his dad's standards (Shannon is terrific in a scene where he completely loses his composure and starts stammering when Burt keeps derisively calling him a "bartender"). But it's the great Forster who provides the rock-solid foundation of this ensemble with his best performance since JACKIE BROWN, making a complex character out of Burt that other films would just turn into a loud, Catholic blowhard. Even as he's laying down his "my way or the highway" stance on Ruth's care, Forster lets you see in his face that Burt is finding it increasingly difficult to keep believing his own excuses, but doing his best to ignore the fact that, despite his best intentions, he may be doing her more harm than good (also, nobody yells "What am I, some kinda horse's ass?!" quite like Robert Forster). He's a goddamn national treasure who, in a perfect world, would be a Best Supporting Actor Oscar front-runner right now, and it's unfortunate that this fine film completely fell through the cracks and was never given a chance by its distributor. (R, 101 mins)


GALVESTON
(US - 2018)

Nic Pizzolatto's debut novel Galveston earned some critical acclaim upon its release in 2010, but didn't attract much attention from the book-buying public until his later success as the creator of the HBO series TRUE DETECTIVE. It's likely the success of that show (at least its first season, probably not the much-maligned second) that led to Pizzolatto adapting Galveston into a screenplay, and while he gets a "Based on a novel by" credit, he ultimately had his name removed from the film--script credit now goes to his vaguely hard-boiled pseudonym "Jim Hammett"--when he felt that director Melanie Laurent's reworking and reshaping of his screenplay into her own work during production was so extensive that he didn't feel he should take sole credit per WGA rules, so he took none at all. Laurent, the French actress best known for her performance as the vengeance-seeking Shosanna in Quentin Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, has very quietly been establishing herself--at least among critics and festival programmers--as a versatile filmmaker, with works that include narrative features (BREATHE, DIVING), and a documentary about climate change (TOMORROW). GALVESTON is her US directing debut, and it's very much a slow-burning, often mumbly mood piece that isn't in any hurry to get to where it's going, but it sneaks up on you in an emotional and often devastating second half.

Set in 1988, the story focuses on Roy Cady (Ben Foster), a 40-year-old New Orleans hit man who's introduced storming out of a doctor's office when faced with what he knows is a terminal lung cancer diagnosis. After narrowly escaping a set-up orchestrated by his boss, dry-cleaning magnate and Big Easy crime kingpin Stan Pitko (Beau Bridges), Cady goes on the run with teenage prostitute Rocky (Elle Fanning), who was being held captive by the men hired to kill him. Cady was just doing the right thing by rescuing her, with the expectation of dropping her off somewhere on his way to die in his hometown of Galveston, but the two form a tentative bond that's strengthened when Rocky insists they make a stop and end up with her three-year-old sister Tiffany (twins Tinsley and Anniston Price) after Rocky shoots their abusive stepfather. Cady's got files of Pitko's invoices that leave a paper trail of his corrupt and shady business dealings, and tries to blackmail his boss for $75,000 in an attempt to do one good thing before he dies and provide some money to Rocky and Tiffany to start a new life, but seeing as this is a downbeat, back roads noir written by Nic Pizzolatto, it's certain the worst will happen. It's easy to see why some found GALVESTON inert and uninvolving. Laurent is more focused on mood than action, so much so that a late Cady rampage at Pitko's business, done in a long take reminiscent of similar sequence in the first season of TRUE DETECTIVE, initially seems jarring, but it's a natural response given a key event that led to it. For the most part, GALVESTON is more early Terrence Malick than TRUE DETECTIVE, with fine work by Foster and especially Fanning, who does a marvelous job with Rocky's motel room revelation (that you'll figure out long before Cady does), which is just about the point where you realize you're more engrossed in this than you thought. (Unrated, 93 mins)

In Theaters: THE BEGUILED (2017)

THE BEGUILED
(US - 2017)

Written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence, Angourie Rice, Addison Riecke, Emma Howard. (R, 93 mins)

Based on Thomas P. Cullinan's 1966 Civil War-set novel A Painted Devil, THE BEGUILED was previously made into a film in 1971 by director Don Siegel. A departure at the time for star Clint Eastwood, who would have DIRTY HARRY in theaters later that year, THE BEGUILED was a badly marketed box-office flop though its reputation has improved significantly over time. It's especially interesting in hindsight when viewing it as part of the entire Eastwood canon, as it's a fascinating look at a masculine, archetypal Eastwood character having the tables turned on him by a boarding school full of women he's manipulated and betrayed (though it also shares a common theme with the later and far more sordid and sleazy TIGHTROPE, where once again Eastwood is a character surrounded by women--in that case, prostitutes and other sex workers--throwing themselves at him and he's never once shown paying). Sofia Coppola's remake, also called THE BEGUILED, approaches the story more from the POV of the women, though it hasn't been without controversy: a slave character named Hallie (played by Mae Mercer in the 1971 film) has been dropped, her absence explained in an early bit of a dialogue where someone says "The slaves all left." In addition, the character of Edwina, played by Kirsten Dunst, was biracial in the novel, but it's never mentioned here, nor was "whitewashing" brought up in 1971 when Elizabeth Hartman played the same role, but perhaps critics and film enthusiasts had more pressing issues to bitch about in 1971. Neither the novel nor the 1971 film had any big salient points to make regarding race or slavery, because it's not what the story is about. Coppola explained her reasoning being that girls and young women tend to be drawn to her films (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, THE BLING RING), and she didn't want a black female to be portrayed in any negative way that distracted from the story.

The central premise remains the same: in 1864 Virginia, Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell), a Union deserter, is found injured in the woods surrounding a sparsely-attended girls school. Young Amy (Oona Laurence of SOUTHPAW) is out picking mushrooms and helps him back to the school grounds, where he's taken in and his leg wound tended to by headmistress Miss Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman). Agreeing to give him time to recover before turning him over to Confederate soldiers, Miss Martha keeps McBurney locked in the music room and informs the others--teacher Edwina (Dunst), rebellious teen Alicia (Elle Fanning), and younger girls Jane (Angourie Rice of THE NICE GUYS), Marie (Addison Riecke), and Marie (Emma Howard)--that McBurney's room is off limits. With his smoldering looks and his Irish brogue, the charming, Dublin-born McBurney slowly endears himself to the women and the girls, who begin showing off by dressing in their best clothes, breaking out the jewelry ("You haven't worn that pendant since the Christmas party!" two different people mention to Edwina), and constantly finding excuses to go into his room. McBurney revels in the attention and it isn't long before the choking atmosphere of repression simmers into overpowering sexual tension as McBurney declares his love for Edwina while seducing Alicia and very nearly getting the prim, proper Miss Martha into his bed. Hell hath no fury like several women scorned, and things go south very quickly for McBurney.

A Southern Gothic that was as close as Eastwood ever came to starring in a horror movie, the 1971 BEGUILED took its time to let things boil over and when they did, it got seriously dark and unsettling. Coppola doesn't replicate that feeling here because her version seems to rush through the story (the closing credits roll before the 90-minute mark). Farrell's McBurney tells Edwina he loves her much too quickly, and whether Coppola's breezing past the details or it's intentional to show how lonely and desperate Edwina is for an escape from her dreary existence, it doesn't work. This new interpretation shows more gore in the surgical scenes and blood splattered all over Miss Martha's white dress as she emphatically orders someone to "Go to the smokehouse, bring me the saw!" before performing an impromptu offscreen leg amputation--a horrifying moment in the original film--but it's tame in other respects. Gone is the subplot about Miss Martha's past incestuous relationship with her brother (which led to one of Eastwood's best lines in the 1971 version) as well as any sense of tension and suspense at all. The shocking scenes where Eastwood's McBurney kills Amy's beloved turtle, and when he wakes up to find one of his legs missing are both ineffectively handled here to the point of being bungled. The subsequent psychotic rampage by Farrell's McBurney threatens to turn Coppola's BEGUILED into a Civil War-set "Houseguest from Hell" thriller, while the climactic dinner sequence loses all of its momentum thanks to Coppola's bizarre decision to have Edwina decline a helping of mushrooms. Farrell, Kidman, and the supporting cast are fine, but Kidman isn't given nearly as meaty and complex a Miss Martha as Geraldine Page got to play in 1971, and the only real improvement Coppola makes is with her Kubrick-like use of natural lighting throughout. Shot by cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd (THE GRANDMASTER) in a 1.66 aspect ratio--unusual for today's movies--THE BEGUILED '17 looks great. There's a dreamlike haze to the proceedings--not surprising to anyone who's seen THE VIRGIN SUICIDES--and you can feel the sweltering humidity, and with the BARRY LYNDON-like natural lighting, whether it's sunlight during the day or candles providing scant illumination at night, accompanied by the constant background noise of war and cannon fire and the sight of smoke from battle that's too close to the school for comfort, you really do feel transported back to 1864. But elsewhere, this BEGUILED doesn't seem to show much purpose since Coppola seems to have gone out of her way to render it as dramatically inert as possible. It looks stunning, but what exactly was the point of remaking this?

In Theaters: LIVE BY NIGHT (2016)

LIVE BY NIGHT
(US - 2016)

Written and directed by Ben Affleck. Cast: Ben Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Brendan Gleeson, Elle Fanning, Remo Girone, Robert Glenister, Miguel J. Pimentel, Matthew Maher, Anthony Michael Hall, Clark Gregg, Max Casella, J.D. Evermore, Christian Clemenson, Benjamin Ciaramello, Derek Mears. (R, 130 mins)

Ben Affleck made his directing debut with 2007's excellent Dennis Lehane adaptation GONE BABY GONE, and after establishing himself as a solid filmmaker with 2010's THE TOWN and 2012's Best Picture Oscar-winner ARGO, he returns with LIVE BY NIGHT, based on another Lehane novel. Where GONE BABY GONE and THE TOWN (based on a Chuck Hogan novel) were set in contemporary Boston, LIVE BY NIGHT looks at the city in a Prohibition-era setting. While Affleck the director captures the look of late 1920s Boston, his script is all over the place and he's completely miscast in the lead role. Affleck isn't an actor who thrives in period pieces and the film would've been better served had he stayed behind the camera as he did with GONE BABY GONE and cast someone else (co-producer Leonardo DiCaprio, perhaps?). With his Panama hat and oversized suit, he never looks comfortable in the role of Joe Coughlin, a WWI vet and Boston stick-up man-turned-Tampa rum runner. There's simply too much story for a feature film, and here is yet another example of an overstuffed film that would've been better served as a cable miniseries where characters could be fleshed out and events wouldn't be so glossed over. The pacing is choppy and there's reams of sleepy,, mumbly Affleck narration to cover exposition and whole sections of plot that are missing, not to mention Scott Eastwood and Titus Welliver having their entire roles cut out (Welliver is still in the credits, but if he's there, I didn't see him). Robert Richardson's cinematography and Jess Gonchor's production design are top-notch and every now and again, there's a striking image (like a car engulfed in flames sticking out of a shallow lake) or a memorable line of dialogue (the "So what am I talkin' to you for?" bit is great), but the cluttered and muddled LIVE BY NIGHT is otherwise is just too familiar to make its own mark in the gangster genre, borrowing too many ideas from too many movies that came before it to tell a story we've seen countless times before.

Affleck's Coughlin is a small-time Boston hood who happens to be the son of a high-ranking police superintendent (Brendan Gleeson). He's also in love with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), the moll of powerful Irish mob kingpin Albert White (Robert Glenister). Their plan to run away together is thwarted when she's intimidated into ratting him out to White, who beats him senseless and leaves him in a coma. After he wakes and serves a stint in prison, he's paroled only to find his father has died and Emma was killed by White. Hell-bent on revenge, Coughlin forms an unholy alliance with Italian crime boss Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone) to take over the booze operation in the Tampa enclave of Ybor City and cut White out of the picture. Heading to Tampa with his buddy Dion Bartolo (Chris Messina), Coughlin teams with Cuban gangster Esteban Suarez (singer Miguel, under his full name Miguel J. Pimentel) and falls for his sister and partner Graciella (Zoe Saldana). Coughlin has to deal with all sorts of pressure, from stern police chief Figgis (Chris Cooper) cordially warning him to stay in his territory and they won't have any trouble, to the local chapter of the KKK, led by Figgis' idiot brother-in-law R.D. Pruitt (Matthew Maher), who wants a 60% cut of the business since Joe's club caters to Cubans and blacks and because he's hooked up with Graciella. LIVE BY NIGHT also finds time for a subplot about Figgis' wholesome daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning) heading off to Hollywood to be a movie star but instead falling into drugs and prostitution. She then returns to Ybor City to become a fire-and-brimstone preacher warning the townsfolk about the dangers of gambling and "the demon rum," which stonewalls Pescatore's plans for Coughlin to build a casino.

There's also double-crosses against Coughlin by the increasingly greedy Pescatore, who wants his moron son Digger (Max Casella) to take over the Ybor City operation, a sudden reappearance by a character presumed dead for no discernible reason, and about four endings before the credits finally roll. People are introduced and things happen so quickly and at times randomly that it's sometimes difficult to process who's who and how they figure into the story. LIVE BY NIGHT is always nice to look at and Affleck has an undeniable flair with set pieces (including an intense early card game stick-up that he does in a single take), but it's lacking everywhere else. He tries to cover it up with all the narration, but the seams don't take long to show. Affleck's performance is curiously bland throughout, never seeming like a 1920s gangster but always like a modern actor playing gangster dress-up (and for a smart guy, Coughlin is pretty brazenly stupid about being seen in public with Emma). Graciella's character arc makes no sense, bemoaning her husband's (yeah, she and Coughlin get married offscreen and then it's casually mentioned several scenes later) dangerous career, seemingly forgetting that they met because she's a partner in a major Cuban crime organization. Gleeson and Miller have nothing to do, and Cooper's character never makes consistent sense from scene to scene. Veteran Italian character actor Girone (in his first American film in a career going back to 1974) and an outstanding Fanning fare best, even if her Loretta ends up being another underdeveloped plot tangent that briefly turns the film into an Eli Sunday sermon from THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Affleck tries to go for a MILLER'S CROSSING feel, but ends up with a rushed, lesser BOARDWALK EMPIRE, and his own lackluster performance never inspires you to care much about Coughlin. By the  third or fourth ending, the relaxed pace starts to lend a second-tier Clint Eastwood feeling to the proceedings, further demonstrating the uneven tone of the entire project. LIVE BY NIGHT might've had potential, and perhaps a longer director's cut would help, but in the end, it's a formulaic, cliche-laden misfire from Affleck.

In Theaters: THE NEON DEMON (2016)

THE NEON DEMON
(France/US/Denmark - 2016)

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. Written by Nicolas Winding Refn, Mary Laws and Polly Stenham. Cast: Elle Fanning, Karl Glusman, Jena Malone, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Desmond Harrington, Alessandro Nivola, Charles Baker, Jamie Clayton, Stacey Danger. (R, 118 mins)

With his latest film THE NEON DEMON, DRIVE director and cult filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is aspiring to be the same kind of poking-with-a-stick provocateur as his fellow Danish countryman Lars von Trier. Refn's last film, 2013's hypnotic and hyper-stylized masterpiece ONLY GOD FORGIVES (infamously booed at Cannes, which is essentially a badge of honor, if not the entire endgame to guys like Refn and von Trier) is a key influence here, at least in terms of the throbbing synth score by Cliff Martinez, the obsessive perfectionism of the Kubrickian shot composition, and the red and blue Dario Argento colorgasms. But THE NEON DEMON is Refn's worst film, a huge disappointment that looks like the equivalent of an ONLY GOD FORGIVES B-side, with the visual and aural elements crammed into a puerile, simplistic, and embarrassingly heavy-handed metaphorical allegory that's part supernatural spin on BLACK SWAN and part good vs. evil lecture on whatever it takes to get ahead in the Los Angeles modeling world. One senses around 3/4 of the way through that it's all a goof to amuse Refn, no doubt chuckling to himself thinking about how cineastes will sift through every last bit of faux symbolism and gawk in astonishment at some of the shocking imagery on display. Sure, THE NEON DEMON is the most transgressive summer release to hit mainstream multiplex chains in years, but it feels like lukewarm leftovers otherwise: Refn seems like he's just copying himself, and even the score sounds familiar and uninspired. The busy Martinez--a former drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers back in the Freaky Styley days-- has composed some of the most memorable film music of the last several years, but even he appears to be on autopilot here, with only the sights and sounds of an early club scene hitting the exhilarating, intoxicating heights of DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES.

A proverbial wide-eyed innocent just off the bus and on her own on the mean streets of L.A., Jesse (Elle Fanning) is a 16-year-old orphan posing as 19--"18 is too on-the-nose," she's told by her agent (Christina Hendricks)--and trying to make it in modeling. She befriends nice-guy photographer Dean (Karl Glusman of Gaspar Noe's LOVE), who takes some shots for her portfolio, and at a test shoot, she meets makeup artist Ruby (Jena Malone, in the film's best performance). Ruby senses Jesse is something special, and more or less takes her under her wing, advising her how to navigate the pit of vipers that is the world of fashion modeling. A natural beauty of virginal purity who catches the eye of every photographer and designer she meets, Jesse quickly earns the jealous derision of Ruby's friends Gigi (Bella Heathcote) and Sarah (Abbey Lee), models in their very early 20s who have undergone extensive cosmetic surgery and are quickly aging their way out of the business. It doesn't take long before Jesse is well on her way to becoming the next big thing after a photo shoot with starmaker Jack (Desmond Harrington) and closing the latest show by L.A.'s hottest fashion designer (Alessandro Nivola). It's the designer who drives home the notion that "Beauty isn't everything...it's the only thing," passive-aggressively chastising Gigi and her cosmetic artifice. As Jesse is indoctrinated--in an almost ritualistic, sacrificial way--into this new world, she rejects the sincere affections of both Dean and Ruby, starts lording her gift of beauty over others, and the seething Gigi and Sarah decide they've had enough of the ingenue usurping the attention and adoration for which they've had themselves almost completely surgically reconstructed but have yet to reap the benefits.

I suppose it's some kind of auto-critique that a film calling out the shallowness of surface beauty is all shallow surface itself. THE NEON DEMON is an exercise in tedium for its first 90 minutes, riddled with cliches and going nowhere slowly, and by the time the really sick and twisted shit starts in the last half hour, it doesn't come off as shocking, but rather, juvenile and attention-seeking. Refn has nothing new to say here about L.A., fashion, or fame--he's just trying to outrage people and get a reaction. All the foreshadowing about "fresh meat" and the like should give you an idea of where at least some things are going, and it ultimately plays like an unfilmable short story from the halcyon days of splatterpunk, a lot of stuff that reads better on the page than it can possibly play out on the screen. Refn manages to create a few striking images here and there, mostly in the early going (the aforementioned club scene is a highlight), and Hendricks has a memorably acidic line about small-town girls pursuing modeling because "some guy named Chad in the food court told them they were beautiful enough to be a model." But there's an awful lot of very little otherwise, from extraneous supporting characters who serve little or no purpose (Glusman's Dean is absent for long stretches, then just vanishes altogether, and Keanu Reeves seems to have put in a day's work tops, as the repugnant manager of the fleabag motel where Jesse lives) to its painfully obvious metaphor for the way "the scene" chews up the naive innocents and spits them out. There's absolutely no doubt that a cult will form around this and I'm not ruling out another look at it down the line, but this seems like it's all smoke and mirrors, with Refn making a lot of noise but having very little to say.