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Reviews
Greyhound (2020)
Exhilarating and brief
While Greyhound isn't exactly breaking any new ground (bars) it definitely does its subject matter more justice than one would expect considering its 90-minute runtime. The battle scenes are exciting enough to keep you consistently invested, with extra care given to the film's accuracy. Each action sequence is fast-paced but with so much happening at once that it feels like you're really there, being bombarded with this information from all angles (in the least overwhelming way possible.)
My issues with the film mostly lied with a lacking narrative and scarce character development. It seems as though the action was so prevalent that the story and individual characters often got left behind as a result, so that when things would happen to certain characters or we were reminded that their existence was purportedly essential to the plot, it was hard to really care since so much focus was given to the boats. Elisabeth Shue's character felt particularly inessential, which was perplexing considering she was one of the top-billed cast members. However, it's clear that the takeaway isn't meant to be about the story, so I'm willing to look past it.
My biggest issue had to be with Tom Hanks playing such a forgettable role. I won't deny that he does it effectively but it's just a shame how much his character seemed to fade into the scenery and hubbub.
So while this film probably won't go down in history as one of the more notable WWII films of the century, and I don't plan on rewatching it any time soon, I wouldn't knock it 'til you try it.
Rocketman (2019)
Hard to finish, easy to dismiss
Going into Rocketman, I expected a heartfelt, poignant, and ultimately uplifting portrait of the life of a gay icon whose musical prowess restructured pop music forever and gifted us with some of the most ubiquitous hits of the 20th century. Instead, I was presented with nearly two hours of Taron Egerton humming his way through the classics, trying desperately to evoke the whimsical stylings of Elton John but coming up short every single time.
"Rocketman" is poised to convince us that Elton John is more than just the man behind the eccentric costumes and otherworldly performances. Instead, Dexter Fletcher takes Elton's image and frames it to be palatable. He takes the bits and pieces of his life that would best fit into a typical biopic, crams them into two hours, and portrays his life in the most cliched, corny fashion possible.
The story is by-the-books: the child prodigy in an unloving home, the "partner-in-crime" character, the meteoric rise to stardom, the nervous first performance, the abusive partner, the spiral into madness and drugs, the rising from the ashes. You could have told me this was a parody of a biopic and I wouldn't have questioned you for a second. There is practically nothing to differentiate this film from the hundreds of biopics about assorted famous people to be made in the past half-century, which is even more unfortunate when you consider just how unique an individual Elton John is.
Speaking of which, Taron Egerton's characterization may be passionate, but it's also overacted to the point where I cringed whenever I saw him getting "emotional" again. I know Elton John was dramatic, but could we go five minutes without him yelling, crying, beaming, moping? Was there no room for nuance?
I would talk about the other characters in the film a bit more, but since the film doesn't care about them, the audience shouldn't either. Their only utility is to provide Elton further purpose in his life and career, and in the context of the movie, these people can be one of two things: helpers or hindrances. The most dynamic characters switch from one to the other, but it rarely goes much deeper than that. This becomes abundantly clear towards the movie's closing scene, when Elton sees the "spirits" of his loved ones and colleagues, as if they were demons and angels sent to him and him only, and confronts or thanks them one-by-one. They each say one or two lines that defines their entire role in the movie, and then Elton quickly shoots each of them down with a "Gotcha!" moment. Should we be concerned that these are real people with real stories and real personalities watered down to fit neatly into painfully archetypal roles within Elton's life? Is it odd that he has one final, supposedly cathartic moment where he strips their characters down to their barest elements and reveals just how simple their portrayals in the movie are? I thought it was, but maybe I shouldn't have. After all, this is ELTON'S movie, not Bernie's or anyone else's, so why should they be fleshed out? ...right?
The music also bears mentioning, of course, since it IS a musical. I kept hoping that this would be the film's saving grace, but I was sorely mistaken. Most jukebox musicals, especially ones that span an artist's whole career, have some self-awareness and recognize that it's impossible to string together an entire discography of loosely-related singles and expect a fully realized portrait of an artist's life to come together in the process. (Clearly, Dexter Fletcher didn't get the memo.) These types of musicals instead allow for the story to progress for some amount of time before hitting us with another musical number, and build the story around the songs rather than with them. By not inundating the audience with performances, they allow for everyone to get a feel for the narrative outside of the songs and to take a breath in between. "Rocketman" seems intent on suffocating moviegoers.
This math is probably flawed (as most math is) but the film's soundtrack album is about 1 hour and 13 minutes long. Compare that number to the runtime of the movie (2 hours and 1 minute) and it means that more than 60% of the movie is just music. On top of that, Taron Egerton is certainly no Pavarotti, let alone Elton John. While he's shown himself to be a competent vocalist in the past, and he has a similar timbre to his voice as Elton, it's evident that vocally, there's no real comparison. The passion, the soulfulness, it's all stripped away to be more to the film's liking. Worse yet is the processing on the vocals, which borders on T-Pain levels, and renders the music absolutely lifeless.
Regardless of who's singing, though, the bottom line is that it doesn't feel like I'm actually watching an accurate approximation of someone's life story when their story feels secondary to the music, especially when plot points show up and disappear simply for the sake of being able to include a certain song. The "Tiny Dancer" scene, where Elton seems jaded after seeing Bernie getting with a woman, makes barely any sense before it happens and just as much sense afterwards. A few scenes before (or after, not really sure) Elton makes a move on Bernie, and Bernie rejects his advances. Elton doesn't seem too distraught over it, and this is the only other time this idea of any unrequited love between the two of them comes up in the entire movie, so why include that as a part of the story in the first place? And if that's not what we're meant to glean from this scene, then why use a song like "Tiny Dancer"?
All in all, please don't make me watch this movie again, Dad.
Black Mirror: Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too (2019)
Hannah Montana: The Documentary
When I first saw the trailer for this episode, the first thing I thought of was Hannah Montana. Color me underwhelmed when I watched the episode only to find out that my initial expectations were essentially correct.
The parallels to Hannah Montana are all there, whether you like it or not. Both are Disney-adjacent girl power stories about a girl struggling to keep up her double life. One side of her is a wig-donning mega-popstar whose close relative also acts as her manager and confidante; the other is a regular girl with everyday trials and tribulations just like everyone else. (Hannah Montana and this episode are so connected, in fact, that I'm pretty sure Ashley's wig is just a recycled version of the one Miley's best friend, Lilly, used to become her alter ego Lola.)
However, there are some key differences between Miley Stewart and Miss O, mainly being that Ashley is miserable and Miley is not. Miley Stewart, despite still having her star status imposed on her by a fame-hungry father, still gets to spend time outside of the limelight as her side gig, while Ashley, a tad bit more realistically, spends her "days off" forced into seclusion, having her every decision determined or altered by her fame-hungry aunt, who feeds her pills to make her subservient. This speaks a little bit better to the realities of child stardom but remains disappointingly wholesome and downtrodden by the dead-horse damsel-in-distress narrative employed by Charlie Brooker here: "dead parents, evil female relative, trapped in a castle". It is easily the closest Black Mirror has ever come to being a Disney Channel Original Movie and hopefully the closest it ever will.
All of this would be fine if this were an actual Disney product, a follow-up to Hannah Montana: The Movie wherein Miley and Ashley's worlds collide, but that doesn't happen and this isn't that. This is a Black Mirror episode, specifically a season finale, and by those merits, it fails. Badly.
There is an endless supply of untapped potential waiting to rise to the surface within this episode. The success of modern pop music rides so heavily on the technology used to produce it that it's shocking Charlie Brooker didn't choose to write an episode about it prior to this. The main issue here is that none of the topics covered in the episode are particularly new, and those that are get little to no attention. The eerie aspects of Ashley O's glossy, coquettish persona that are touched on here and there, such as her ability to be overtly sexual and still appeal to an audience of pre-teens, or the fact that her signature song is a mutilation of a Nine Inch Nails song about rejecting society's conformity made into one about completely relinquishing self-control to others, could be taken to more intriguing extremes, but these ideas are forgotten as quickly as they're brought up.
The inspirations for Ashley O's story are also excellent starting points -- the immortality of holographic, international pop stars like Tupac and Hatsune Miku; celebrities as products first, humans second; the relationship between media and young, impressionable consumers; the sedation of female celebrities in order to keep their image clean and their behavior docile, a la #FreeBritney -- but Charlie Brooker can't seem to stick the landing with any of these, probably because the entire episode tries to tackle all of them and more at once to the point of becoming terribly overstuffed. Not only that, but almost all of these are thrown out the window by the second half of the episode in a rare decision by Brooker, in which he opts to sugarcoat the harsher truths of the narrative in place of an innocent, practically family-friendly romp about staying true to who you are. Barf.
Moreover, the harmful effects Ashley's persona has on fans such as Rachel, who lack older female figures or even friends, are ignored as well. Following the death of her mother and the reclusion of her older sister, she turns to Ashley Too, a completely synthesized companion, to find what she's been missing in her dead mother and apathetic sister. The problem here is that Ashley Too, as "creepy" as the episode might want us to believe she is, never actually proves herself as a bad replacement for Rachel's friends or family, which is one of the most damning points of the episode as a whole. Its inability to find, let alone show us, any problem with Ashley Too, or any of the technology used throughout the episode for that matter, is what makes it so hard to believe this is even an episode of Black Mirror to begin with. Nearly every Black Mirror episode presents a future wherein technology has either been taken to dangerous and immutable extremes reflective of human selfishness, or has grown beyond anyone's ability to stop it from harming the humans that were responsible for its inception. According to this episode, however, the only problem with Ashley Too's initial design is that she's not actually a carbon copy of Ashley herself...even though technically she is, she's just been "limited". (Speaking of which, why would anyone program a robot to be able to replicate the entire behavior of another human being if the robot was only intended to spit out cliched, automated responses? And how were the programmers of this high-tech doll so incompetent that they allowed for their apparently carefully manufactured program to be corrupted by two teenage girls with no knowledge of programming or how the doll even works in the first place? This episode raises a lot more questions than it does answers.)
But otherwise, Ashley Too presents no immediate threat: she's upbeat, amiable, and offers uplifting (albeit mostly meaningless) words of encouragement to young girls like Rachel who are in desperate need of them, and all while causing virtually no harm to the real Ashley. The worst that could even be said about the doll based solely on the episode is that she's the primary cause of Rachel's embarrassment at the talent show, but even then, it wasn't really her fault that Rachel made a mistake. Even after her "limiter" is wiped, she feels no shame or despair knowing that she is a replication of another person's entire conscience. In fact, she bonds quite well with the real Ashley, so much so that she even attends her rock concert with an anarchy sticker on.
What would happen if, instead, Rachel's self-image became entirely complementary to Ashley Too's ideas of her, and Ashley Too's restrictive programming caused her to judge Rachel's ability to make her own decisions? What if Rachel became completely dependent on Ashley Too, and began shutting out her family to satisfy the doll? These possibilities make the episode's second half all the more frustrating, as it basically takes a complete 180 and glosses over anything that happened in the first half.
Ashley Eternal is also presented as being "evil", but we never really get to understand why. We can assume that if she were to continue existing after the real Ashley died, this could cause any number of problems for anyone involved, but just like with Ashley Too, the season finale is too afraid to touch on what might have been.
The episode does have its high points, though: Miley Cyrus shines both in her acting and singing, showing an immense amount of versatility that may not be as necessary for Black Mirror's story as it is for Miley but is nonetheless entertaining to watch. Angourie Rice pulls off the overly-obsessive fangirl quite well, in a performance that adds a much-needed dose of nuance to an otherwise showing-not-telling episode, and I'm excited to see what she has to offer as this could be a potential star turn for her. The episode is pretty heartwarming overall, but that fact alone means it lacks much of the punch expected from an episode of Black Mirror.
"Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too" succeeds at what it sets out to do, which is present a commentary on society while still being as heartwarming and d'aww-ful as a Disney Channel movie. Unfortunately, the beats it hits are all too textbook for any of the supposed commentary to feel insightful or new, and I ended up thinking that maybe "Ashley Too" might have been better off as one less addition to the Black Mirror canon.
Kike Like Me (2007)
Schlock, with a few redeeming qualities
A little background for those reading this: I did not watch this film voluntarily. I just think that might be pertinent information for those wondering why I (or anyone, for that matter) would go into watching something this inherently, obviously stupid and dated of my own volition. I was made to watch this very, very unpleasant film for school, and the fact that anyone would consider something this banal sound for educational use is mind-boggling to me, because this movie is straight garbage.
As I've made somewhat evident, I did not come into this film with very high expectations. Why my teacher would show us a mostly forgotten (and offensive) documentary by a self-involved, pompous filmmaker for a class about religious oppression is beyond me, but I certainly preferred watching this with others over having to watch it by myself, since at least I ended the film with the peace of mind that I wasn't alone in thinking that this movie was dumb as bricks.
In short, Jamie Kastner (or, as it seems he would prefer to be called throughout the course of this film, Jewmie Jewstner) decides that since everyone always thinks he's Jewish because of his curly hair and how much of a nebbish he is, he's going to travel around the world and publicly call himself Jewish with no evidence or insight into why this makes a difference whatsoever. He believes that in doing this, he'll be able to expose the antisemitic behaviors of those around him and in turn, give viewers a glimpse into the life of a true Jew. This idea, which Kastner seems eager to have the film revolve around, caves in on itself pretty quickly, as it relies heavily on the public's anticipated shock and dismay at his status as a proud Jewish man. But when he actually DOES "reveal" his status as Jewish, few people so much as bat an eye. In fact, most responses are less based in fear or anger and more in bewilderment. Most people are just as perplexed as the audience as to why Kastner feels the constant urge to flaunt his faux-Judaism everywhere he goes, and since the premise of the film is essentially, "All my friends tell me that I look Jewish, so I'm going to pretend to be a Jew and see how that goes," there's not much to go off of if no one reacts to it. But it's not like he can pretend to be surprised by any of this: he even admits within the first few minutes of the film that nearly everyone he meets already assumes he's Jewish without even asking him, so what reason would they have to be any more disgusted or alarmed when he says it out loud? As the film goes on, his premise crumbles beneath his feet and eventually just sort of devolves into "Antisemitism is bad".
He also seems to believe that people are too stupid to know when they're being played for a reaction, which becomes clear when he talks to Pat Buchanan and is subsequently forced to leave after picking a fight with him in his own home (which somehow manages to leave Kastner stumped, even more evidence of how clueless he is of his own attitude) and that they will do exactly as he wants if he pushes the right buttons. Sure, it works sometimes, but not because he treats people politely and receives antisemitic sentiment anyway, but because he is usually a persistent, stubborn asshole and gets treated with the same amount of respect as he shows others. It serves less as evidence of others' mistreatment of his not-actually-Jewish heritage and more as oversight on Kastner's part, something which is not too hard to spot throughout the movie.
His ability to crack unfunny jokes at a Holocaust memorial coupled with his readiness to defend "his people" who are not really his people make for a rather confusing dynamic, and makes it hard to tell what tone Kastner is trying to set throughout the film. At some points, you're convinced he's an uninformed asshole who wants to make a serious documentary about the hardships of Jewish life while never actually documenting them, and at others, you're convinced he's a sarcastic asshole who wants to make a lighthearted romp about how silly and funny it is that Jews are still not accepted in modern society. As if either of those things are better than one another.
He treats everyone he meets, regardless of whether or not they support his argument, with such blatant condescension that it's difficult to like or empathize with him, which in turn makes it difficult to see where he's coming from. This treatment extends to the audience as well, since I suppose if he doesn't make a snide comment every two seconds he'll self-destruct, so he decides to fill the movie with sound bites of him being even more unlikable by saying really spiteful, facetious things behind the backs of whoever he's talking to.
The reason I gave this movie three stars as opposed to just one is, in spite of Kastner's snobby attitude, haplessly poor filmmaking skills, and lack of self-awareness, he manages to get on tape some pretty intriguing moments which actually do help to illuminate his argument, with no help from him or his film crew. The most entertaining segment in the film is when Kastner finds himself in the middle of an almost-too-perfectly-timed war of words between some locals in Paris regarding Jews' work ethic, which unfolds beautifully as more and more strangers throw in their two cents and eventually the whole neighborhood is having a go at it. It's quickly glossed over though, I guess because Kastner felt it didn't give him enough reason to voice over a bad joke, and in its place is a rather obnoxious conversation he has with a group of Muslim boys. The boys say some ignorant things about Jewish people but Kastner continuously tries to make it about himself and how they have the audacity to say something like what they're saying in front of a real, live Jew. Whatever point he was attempting to make by asking the boys loaded questions is nullified through his self-involvement, but the authentic moments where Kastner's unpleasantness isn't on full display and we are allowed to see interactions between other people about their feelings on Judaism and Jewish identity are the real gems of the film.
Potentially the worst part of the film is Kastner's insistence on keeping it a secret as to whether or not he's really Jewish, as if it's not made obvious by his own tourist-y behavior when he walks into a synagogue. This is made even more frustrating by the fact that he never actually provides an answer to the question, even though it's probably the only thing anyone even cares to know by the end of the movie.
He finishes by asking those watching why it even matters whether or not he's Jewish, I guess thinking that this is supposed to make us feel really introspective and ask ourselves why we care so much, except he also fails to have any sort of mea culpa and never once considers that maybe we're not the ones who need to be analyzing our own behaviors.
Black Mirror: Nosedive (2016)
Beautifully biting social satire
If they were to replace every single health class video about the dangers of social media and its effects on our self-perceptions with this episode, I can almost guarantee that the number of hours teenagers spent on social media would go down exponentially.
Nosedive is one of those TV episodes which you expect to have a harrowing, disappointing ending (and one which kind of does, depending on your slant) but surprises you by leaving you with a warm feeling of gratification for the characters and an even deeper feeling of anguish for society. It's a wince-until-you-laugh joyride from start to finish, and every single detail is perfectly polished throughout. With a few key performances from lead actresses Bryce Dallas Howard and Alice Eve, Nosedive presents a keen analysis of social media facades and proposes that maybe the worst people are the ones we convince ourselves are the best.
Black Mirror: The Waldo Moment (2013)
An asinine waste of an episode
Why create an episode this dull for a show full of so many thought-provoking truths? Why must everything in this episode be spoon-fed to me to the point where I feel dumber just for having observed it?
The Waldo Moment is not the worst piece of television ever created. In fact, it's quite far from that. It has its moments (pun completely intended) and makes a compelling point by the end of it, making the viewer question society's general expectations for leadership and let out a resounding sigh because we all let Donald Trump become President. However, regardless of its lack of direct connection to the other episodes, this is still an episode of Black Mirror and in my opinion must be held to the standard that the rest have created. And when viewed through that lens, this episode falls utterly flat in nearly every aspect.
The story feels dull despite the amount of bloggers and writers ready to inform you at the drop of a hat that Black Mirror somehow singlehandedly predicted Trump's success and eventual presidency as if Waldo doesn't end up losing anyway. The idea that an irreverent, vulgar gag candidate with a hatred for centralized government could run for public office and garner a bunch of votes and support is nothing new; in fact, it's happened in real life. Oft-forgotten French comedian Coluche (who was essentially Waldo except funnier, not as creepy, and a real person) did this same exact thing in 1980. He was one of the first comedians to regularly be vulgar in his routines and publicly denounced the French government, but ran as President of France nonetheless. THIS exact thing has happened before and isn't actually that profound based solely on the merit of its concept. Any episode of television shouldn't be buoyed by the shock value of its plot alone, let alone an episode of Black Mirror, but here that seems to be all we can get.
The "super threatening" technology in this episode is practically a joke, and no, not a practical joke, although I wish it had been. Watch even two seconds of this hideous, spastic monstrosity named Waldo and you'll wonder why anyone would ever even momentarily think "This stilted, poorly animated cartoon bear with bug eyes and a fake penis seems like it would be a great choice for President, and I completely understand why people in this universe voted for him." Come on now. I know that most great television requires you to suspend disbelief for at least a moment, but this episode came out in 2013, when things like Frozen and the new Lara Croft game were coming out. Are you seriously telling me that a nationally syndicated news satire program couldn't afford better technology than the Xbox Kinect?
As for the characters...I mean, my god. THIS is what I meant when I said that this episode was spoonfeeding its material to the viewers. The personality and motives for each character is laid out so plainly in front of you that it's surprising the writers didn't just hand out free scripts of the episode instead of airing it.
Jamie, our main character, is very depressed. This fact is supposed to be significant for one reason or another but I only remember it because it seems to be his only defining trait other than not liking the government and voicing a cartoon bear. His depression means that everything he does is pointless to him, and more specifically, he finds voicing Waldo pointless as well. The only time throughout the episode's hour-long runtime where Jamie is shown to be not depressed (and if he hadn't just straight up said it I genuinely don't think I would have known based on the fact that he sounds just as depressed anyway) is right after bonking his campaign rival, Gwendolyn.
Gwendolyn is an ambitious politician who takes herself very seriously. Although apparently she doesn't actually take herself very seriously at all because she ends up sleeping with one of her rivals and exposing herself to him as a career politician, and then somehow ends up shocked when, after ghosting this man who said that the only time he wasn't depressed was when he was with her, he exposes her on live TV. This blatant lack of understanding of how politics (and basic human interactions) work from a supposedly experienced politician makes an already hard to fathom episode even harder to fathom.
We soon find out that Waldo is barely Jamie's operation at all, and in fact, is not even owned by Jamie. The Waldo trademark is owned by a guy named Napier, who is quite clearly a megalomaniac. He is concerned with very little other than making sure that Waldo's name is plastered nearly everywhere and he gets as much money from it as possible. Napier tries to get Jamie to turn Waldo into an actual politician so that he can earn even more cash, despite the fact that the phrase Jamie probably uses the most throughout the whole episode is "I'm not a real politician," so obviously this doesn't work.
One scene in particular stood out to me as the biggest affront to the audience's intellect. In this scene, during the last day of making the rounds, Jamie realizes he's had enough and starts yelling for Waldo's supporters not to vote for him. He runs out of the van on which Waldo is being broadcasted and reveals himself to be tuh 1 trew Wahl Doe. Then Napier takes over as Waldo and tells everyone that Jamie is a fraud so they attack him.
What?!
I know that the characters in this episode are supposed to be kind of naive, I get that. They don't like how politics are so they find a non-politician to support instead, not understanding that that will only make things worse. But are you kidding me? This episode pretends that people will be a-okay with finding out that they were being duped by someone they supported as long as they continue to say what sounds right, seeming to forget entirely that people as a whole don't like being lied to and that they now know they've been supporting a liar this whole time. It's been shown that when a politician does something untrustworthy, their supporters tend to stop supporting them (Watergate, anybody?) So either these people are fine with being lied to or they're too stupid to understand that they were being lied to the whole time. This was the crux of my opinion on this episode, the Moment when I realized that Waldo Moment actually had nothing to say about what could have been a very interesting analysis and had to resort to making everyone bumbling idiots for any of the plot to make sense, and the worst part of all of this is how the show itself seems to also treat us like those idiots, too stupid to be capable of understanding these characters without having the material forced in our faces.
All in all, the episode tries to present a commentary on power structures in a faceless society, where politicians have millions of men behind-the-scenes doing what is supposed to be their job and are able to coerce people into believing in them, and it could have, were it not for the fact that it just ends up making a mockery of its own concept by having the story be told with an ugly bear and having everyone in the story be completely braindead.
The Neon Demon (2016)
Wow, just...wow
Let me say right off the bat that I did enjoy this movie. A lot. Although it was undeniably pretentious and camp, the visuals were incredible and some of the best I've seen in a while (even if they did look like they were ripped straight from every perfume commercial ever), Cliff Martinez's composition is impeccable and works incredibly well with the theme of the movie, the color scheme definitely worked to portray themes of jealousy, anger, innocence, etc., the characters, despite what many critics might say, were intriguing, and Refn's vision seems to have been fully realized through this film. Elle Fanning's airy, monotonous voice as Jesse made her all the more creepy and compelling, in my opinion. Abbey Lee absolutely SLAYED as the creepily cannibalistic and dethroned supermodel, and although Jena Malone's performance was sometimes lacking, she was almost always convincing, whether she was the innocent makeup artist who showed undying support for Jesse or as the crazed necrophiliac which she eventually reveals herself to be.
It did an excellent job portraying Hollywood for what it can often be: a factory which takes in innocent, naive girls and turns them into vapid, catty monsters who will do anything to stay on top. Although some might argue that the movie is lacking in subtlety in this regard, making it less enjoyable to watch, I think that the over-the-top nature that the movie often has while tackling certain serious subjects is very fitting and does the subjects more justice than if it had taken the nuanced route. The symbolism in this film is everything. The core message that this film is trying to send to its viewers can be debated, but overall it seems to be saying that you are what you eat. (just kidding) The bottom line seems to be that Hollywood and the modeling industry will chew you up and spit you out (literally) if you're not cautious or you're overly optimistic. Elle feels like a very lonely, inexperienced girl, and watching her transform into the uncaring person who she eventually becomes is all the more sad because of the fact that she is so ignorant to the evils around her prior, only to become these at the end.
Now let's go into what I did NOT enjoy about this film.
For starters, no offense, but Elle Fanning is not a particularly visually striking girl, especially when placed next to Abbey f***ing Lee, who is not only a former Victoria's Secret model, but also generally breathtaking. As the movie progresses, you are forced to see her enough that you start to realize that she does have a very interesting doe-eyed look to her, but the idea that she is in any way capable of dethroning either of the women who she does is difficult to imagine. At first glance, she is plain, and although an undeniably pretty girl, she does not have the model-like appearance that the evil stepsisters of the film do. I'm sure that this casting choice was made intentionally, as she is very youthful looking (since, well, she's pretty damn youthful) and has a much more innocent air about her than any of the other characters in the film, which is a very common theme that cause but it doesn't excuse the fact that her features aren't sharp enough to convince the viewer that she would be able to take someone like Abbey Lee out of power in the modeling industry. This problem really only bothered me because it caused the movie to feel a lot less real to me (even though mountain lions breaking into a motel room in LA isn't exactly "real" either, but whatever.)
Secondly, the pacing of the film is so incredibly slow, making finishing some of the scenes feel mundane and chore-like. Of course, a good half of the scenes require you to watch them in their entirety to truly enjoy and absorb them, but the other half seem to be that slow solely to follow a pattern. Although admirable, this pattern gets VERY tiring at a certain point, which becomes especially apparent when the writers decide that they get tired of it too and suddenly make Ruby a necrophiliac rapist and Gigi and Sarah psycho cannibals.
Lastly, this movie included a myriad of scenes which, even if they did have any true meaning, were clearly done in large part for the added shock value. These scenes are most likely what caused those at Cannes to boo this film. Watching Gigi and Sarah have sexy shower time with Jesse's blood followed by watching blood pour out of Jena Malone's hoohah are too gross/confusing for the general public to actually pay attention to whatever importance these images could have and probably held in the context of the film, and doesn't serve to actually progress the film further.
7.5/10