From The Rageaholic/Razörfist’s YouTube description: The further adventures of Robotits the Thunderfeminist and… some English dude.
Tag Archives: Abbey Lee
Film Review: The Dark Tower (2017)
Release Date: July 31st, 2017 (Museum of Modern Art premiere)
Directed by: Nikolaj Arcel
Written by: Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, Nikolaj Arcel
Based on: The Dark Tower by Stephen King
Music by: Tom Holkenborg
Cast: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Claudia Kim, Fran Kranz, Abbey Lee, Jackie Earle Haley
MRC, Imagine Entertainment, Weed Road, Columbia Pictures, 95 Minutes
Review:
“You can’t stop what’s coming. Death always wins.” – Man In Black
Idris Elba is a bad ass. Matthew McConaughey is a bad ass. Both men are also super smooth, great actors and the apple of many people’s eye. Then you have Abbey Lee, a woman I just can’t help but be mesmerized by, even if she is just emotionless window dressing in a scene. Throw in the always perfectly sinister Jackie Earle Haley and you’ve got my attention.
Unfortunately, only one word can really describe this film and that is “mundane”.
The Dark Tower was a gigantic missed opportunity. Here, you have a massive and lush universe created by Stephen King over the course of nine books. While I am not a big fan of King, I’ve heard for years that these books are some of his best work and they have become the stories that seem to be the most beloved. From what I understand, this movie was not based specifically on any one of the books but was instead a sort of sequel to them.
The film initially started out with promise but as the picture rolled on, it got worse and worse. In fact, there were some absolutely horrible creative decisions made on several levels of this film, especially if it was going the PG-13 route in an effort to capture the widest audience possible.
I don’t really know anything about the director but the execution was terrible. The acting was mostly good but suffered from the direction and often times, McConaughey’s lines came out pretty wooden. At this point, in his storied career, McConaughey is never really an issue in a movie. I have to put the blame on the director, who apparently wanted McConaughey’s Man In Black to be so cold that he was absolutely emotionless in his line delivery.
The movie introduced a lot of ideas and concepts to filmgoing audiences that might not be familiar with the books but it barely scratches the surface with any of it. There is all this cool shit happening but you never really understand or grasp any of it. The mythos needed to be better established and explained.
The whole film is setup in order to lead to the big final confrontation between the Gunslinger and the Man In Black, something I am assuming literary fans have been waiting for. What we get in the big finale is friggin’ dog shit. Just imagine a wizard versus a gun happy cowboy. The cowboy goes ape shit, blasting off dozens upon dozens of rounds and trick shots until the wizard finally gets duped and shot through the heart. Up until that point, the wizard is using rubble and glass to block shots and even catching bullets in the chaos. It just comes off as hokey and stupid and McConaughey looked baffled by the whole thing as he was doing it. Although, Idris Elba looked like a mastodon of a man as he blasted off hundreds of shots while looking stoic and cool.
I think, based off of the ending, that the film anticipates sequels. I’ll be shocked if that happens because this was a silly and disappointing train wreck.
Rating: 4.5/10
Film Review: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Release Date: May 7th, 2015 (TCL Chinese Theatre premiere)
Directed by: George Miller
Written by: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nico Lathouris
Music by: Junkie XL
Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Zoe Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton, Nathan Jones
Village Roadshow Pictures, Kennedy Miller Mitchell, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Warner Bros. Pictures, 120 Minutes
Review:
*originally written in 2015.
This film is difficult to review.
I mean, being a lifelong avid film buff, I can only compare the task of reviewing this film to some crazed Evangelical Christian having to write a review of the Bible. Can a film be perfect? It is very fucking rare. Was this perfect? It is as close as anything I have seen in a very long time. This could honestly be the best film of this decade. It is certainly the best summer blockbuster film of this decade.
You see, the original Mad Max trilogy is an amazing thing. Those films are all great in their own way. Mel Gibson was prefect. But this film is something else entirely.
This is an homage to the original three films, a sort of reboot/sequel but ultimately, its own thing and a perfect amalgamation of all the things that made each of the original movies great on their own. It also offers up its own powerful ideas and vision and takes things further than any of the previous films could go, whether due to budget or because this film took George Miller decades to make. Having had three great films in this series, as templates and as trial and error efforts, this film took Miller’s life’s work and his direction and showed us what is possible if an artist is able to truly make the masterpiece they have intended all along. Balls to the wall, all out, motherfucking mayhem.
If this hasn’t set the bar higher in Hollywood, well.. fuck Hollywood.
Mad Max: Fury Road has proven that you can have an R-rated blockbuster and not have to cater to seemingly mindless PG-13 audiences. Also, the theater wasn’t full of a bunch of yapping kids muffled by Iron Man masks.
This is the big film that men have wanted since film became a neutered art form. This reminds me of all the things that made the original Robocop and the R-rated Schwarzenegger and Stallone films of the 80s so great. It had more testosterone than the last twenty minutes of Death Wish 3 after it pounded a few bottles of low-t medication and jacked off with a porterhouse in hand. This is a manly man’s film, through and through. It is high art in cinematic form for every man’s inner Neanderthal. It is like a Chuck Norris fist to the balls where the fist’s fingers are made up of little Bruce Lees. It made me sprout hair in places I didn’t know it could grow.
Tom Hardy was pretty damned good as the new Max Rockatansky. I will always feel that it is Mel Gibson’s role but the legacy is in perfectly capable hands going forward. Charlize Theron may have been her greatest in this film. She also had more lines and was more central to the plot than Max was. It is almost as if this was her movie and Max was along for the ride. But isn’t that Max’s modus operandi? He wanders around, stumbles upon some shit, rides the lightning and then wanders off again.
The use of colors and design in this film were amazing. The costumes were top notch, the set design was marvelous and this post-apocalyptic world that I got to traverse through with our heroes, was colorful and refreshingly vivid for being in the middle of such a desolate and bleak environment.
I actually don’t want to delve into too many details with this review because I think everyone should go see this movie. If, for some bizarre ass reason, you don’t find this film to be a tour de force of blazing machine gun testicles, something is seriously wrong with you. This film features enough bad ass action and intensity to satisfy any man and enough tough as nails female characters to inspire any woman.
Looking at what else is supposed to come out this summer, the rest of this blockbuster season is going to suck. Nothing will top this. In fact, Mad Max: Fury Road just magnifies all the things wrong with Avengers: Age of Ultron and every other big budget film I’ve seen in recent memory.
I may just go see this film again and again, every weekend it is still in theaters.
Rating: 9.5/10
Film Review: The Neon Demon (2016)
Release Date: May 20th, 2016 (Cannes)
Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn
Written by: Nicolas Winding Refn, Mary Laws, Polly Stenham
Music by: Cliff Martinez
Cast: Elle Fanning, Karl Glusman, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Christina Hendricks, Keanu Reeves, Desmond Harrington, Alessandro Nivola, Charles Baker
Gaumont Film Company, Wild Bunch, Space Rocket Nation, Vendian Entertainment, Bold Films, Amazon Studios, Broad Green Pictures, Scanbox Entertainment, The Jokers, 117 Minutes
Review:
The Neon Demon is one of those films where I didn’t know what to think when I got to the end of it. I had to sit back and really process a lot of it.
Initially, I was impressed by it from a visual and technical standpoint but from the narrative side of things, it was hard to emotionally connect with anything in the picture.
I love watching Nicolas Winding Refn’s work because at its very least a Refn film will be a visual masterpiece. He has an eye for creating stunning visuals that stimulate an emotional drive that connects his surreal works with his characters and the audience. But while his surreal visuals get more impressive from film to film, his stories are also becoming surreal to the point that they feel like a dream sequence, as opposed to an actual cohesive story.
The Neon Demon doesn’t go as far off of the rails as his previous movie Only God Forgives. However, I do like the previous film better, overall. Maybe because Only God Forgives was a testosterone festival where The Neon Demon is the flip side of that, a film full of catty women obsessed with physical beauty to the point of committing atrocities.
The subject matter isn’t something that I care that much about. We’ve also seen variations of this story since the beginning of time. Refn still does enough to make this tale original and it crosses over certain lines that I haven’t seen yet but the impact of the actual horror was minimal, as not a single character in this film, except for Karl Glusman’s Dean, is even remotely likable. Then again, he’s an adult trying to hook up with a sixteen year-old.
Elle Fanning’s Jesse is a natural beauty and is initially innocent. However, she quickly becomes a monster, just like the other girls in the film. I can’t feel bad when she faces the wrath of the other women.
Everyone in this picture, except for one person, is so superficial and plastic that it’s like watching a violent and colorful play of animatronic Barbie dolls pretending to be psychotic vampires. And while Jesse is all-natural and the film puts a heavy emphasis on other girls filling themselves with plastic and having surgeries just to compete with her natural beauty, Jesse is probably the most plastic underneath her skin, after her transformation.
Also, I can’t take Elle Fanning seriously as a girl who is supposed to be so beautiful that she is just steamrolling over other top supermodels. Sure, she’s cute and I would say she’s a bridge between the girl next door and a model. I certainly wouldn’t put her anywhere near Abbey Lee or Bella Heathcote’s level of beauty. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
The acting is pretty solid and despite not buying into the Jesse character, Elle Fanning still did a great job in this picture. Everyone else put in a good performance but Jena Malone, Karl Glusman and Keanu Reeves really shine.
The film’s score by Cliff Martinez is fantastic but he has never disappointed. Having worked with Refn on several films now, his musical style is able to perfectly meld with Refn’s colorful visual surrealism. For those who may only know of Refn’s Drive, you should be well aware of how greatly the music drove the film alongside the cinematography.
The Neon Demon provides some of the most magnificent eye candy to be filmed since the last Refn picture. And while the film is certainly a memorable experience, it just doesn’t resonate like Refn’s Drive, Bronson or Pusher. The story is more fluid and less confusing than Only God Forgives but at least that film had characters one could relate to on some level.
I do like The Neon Demon but I don’t know if I would have the urge to see it again, other than to bask in its remarkable cinematography.
Rating: 6/10
Talking Pulp 
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