Nicolas Winding Refn‘s The Neon Demon is a beautifully shot yet polarizing film. It’s either shallow, pretentious, sensationalistic and self-indulgent or a bold haunting hypnotic work of suspense. I’m still not sure if I liked it or not, but It has certainly remained with me since my viewing of the film over the weekend. My reaction is typical — the movie has gotten a very mixed reaction from critics and film geeks.
My viewing has prompted a deep dive into interviews and analysis of the film, and I thought I’d share some of the insights into The Neon Demon ending, the symbology and metaphors both obvious and more hidden. I’ll also attempt to answer some of your The Neon Demon questions.
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One of the big stories of this summer is what Hollywood is calling “the sequel slump.” The average sequel makes more than eight times the average original release, which explains why we have more of them than ever before. But the sequels of summer 2016 are failing to find audiences. Why aren’t movie theatergoers flocking to sequels as they have in the past? Let’s examine the possible reasons.
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Last week I watched Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition. I’m sure you’ve read about this — it’s Zack Snyder’s three-hour director’s cut of the film. The Ultimate Edition has had quite a few positive reviews as opposed to the half-hour shorter theatrical cut which was eviscerated by critics and moviegoers. The Ultimate Edition is a better film than the theatrical cut, I’m sure of that. So why did they release an inferior version of the movie in theaters? Why can’t the Zack Snyder release his director’s cuts theatrically?
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Game of Thrones season 6 concluded with a bang last week, killing off a significant portion of the cast and radically shifting the power structure of the entire show. With season seven set to begin filming soon and with George R.R. Martin’s sixth novel nowhere in sight, fans can only do one thing: wait. Oh, and talk. And speculate. And argue about fan theories. We’ve actually reached peak fan theory – my mother-in-law was grilling me about a few of the wackier ones this past week.
So let’s take a moment to look over the main fan theories currently buzzing around the internet following the conclusion of season 6. Some of these are plausible and others are infuriating, but we wouldn’t be Game of Thrones fans unless we were arguing about something.
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Steven Spielberg‘s The BFG hit theaters this weekend and landed with a “gigantic” thud. The $140 million Roald Dahl adaptation earned a measly $19.6 million in its opening weekend, which is a huge disappointment anyway you look at it. Is Spielberg, credited for creating the summer blockbuster with 1975’s Jaws, no longer the big box office draw that he once was?
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Posted on Monday, July 4th, 2016 by Angie Han
As we pass the halfway mark of 2016, we at /Film figured it’d be a good time to take a step back and assess the year we’ve had so far. By this point last year, consensus had formed around a few favorites: Mad Max: Fury Road was far and away our favorite of the year one year ago, and it maintained that position all the way through to December. But this year? The results look much more varied. Join us as we count down /Film’s top 10 films of 2016 so far.
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In the 1970’s, Mark Tarlov worked as a speechwriter for the Supreme Court and then as an attorney for the Justice Department. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Tarlov produced over a dozen films and, just before the millennium, directed his first (Simply Irresistible). Nowadays, as the co-founder of Maison L’Envoyé, he is best known as a wine-maker.
To the untrained eye, Mark Tarlov’s career might seem like a strange sequence of unconnected dots. But that’s not how he sees it. Not at all. Because there’s a thread that binds all of those seemingly disparate professions together: storytelling. And, above all else, Tarlov is a storyteller at heart. Which was both evident and enjoyable as we spent just over an hour chatting about all sorts of topics. From rescuing Willy Wonka and playing pick-up basketball with Peter Falk to the beauty and difficulty of telling personal stories in Hollywood.
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Chatting with /Film Managing Editor Angie Han, I recently came to the conclusion that she chooses the movies she wants to see based on a much different criteria than me. What follows is a chat transcript between us, exploring why we choose the movies we do. We would love to hear your thoughts and what goes into your movie decisions.
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Walt Disney Animation made a big announcement on Facebook Live this morning: Wreck-It Ralph 2 will be coming to theaters in 2018. Get the details after the jump.
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