Fashion Forward

Films: The Neon Demon
Format: DVD from Ella Johnson Memorial Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen

I’ve had The Neon Demon checked out from the library before but I’ve never gotten around to it until now. I’ve heard a good deal about it, though, and I’ve liked at least some of Nicolas Winding Refn’s films in the past. That said, I’m not sure I was prepared for where this goes. What starts as a sort of Day-Glo fashion-based Suspiria ends up touching on some very upsetting topics. It seems cliché to call this film transgressive, and yet that is absolutely the best word for it.

While visually this does have a lot in common with the original Suspiria (and should come with an epilepsy warning), in terms of story, it reminded me a lot more of the underrated and underseen Starry Eyes. That’s not just based on the overall story, but on the way the story works. Both films dip into disturbing ideas through the running time, but take a very hard left into upsetting territory in the third act. And for as disturbing as the conclusion of Starry Eyes turned out to be, The Neon Demon goes further, darker, and harder. Aside from that, the biggest difference is that Starry Eyes is about an upcoming actress while The Neon Demon is about someone who wants to be a model.

And You May Find Yourself Behind the Wheel of a Large Automobile

Film: Senna; Drive
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t pay attention to sports at all. But it wasn’t always this way; I used to be as into sports as the typical guy. I was a big football fan and would watch even a bad football game (American football for those of you outside of the U.S.) over just about anything else. I gave up on sports a few years ago and have never looked back. I’m fine not caring about them. Even when I was a sports fan, though, I never cared at all about any sort of auto racing. NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula One…it was all the same to me and I didn’t care about any of it. That makes a film like Senna an especially hard sell for me.

The film is a collection of archival footage of the life of Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna with voiceovers from people who knew him and members of his family. While there is some discussion of Senna’s early life, the film really concentrates almost entirely on his Formula One career, and even here touching only briefly on his first few years on the circuit. A good deal of the story focuses on his rival with some time teammate Alain Prost, on Senna’s three world championship titles, and, ultimately on the crash that took his life and its aftermath.