Vox Lux (2018)

[zomgmouse]

New film about the rise of a fictional pop star, starring Natalie Portman and Jude Law (and narrated by Willem Dafoe). Really impressed me! It's original and bold and a bit loopy but it absolutely goes for it.

[buzby]

I want to go and see this - I saw the trailer last year and it looked like a modern version of Breaking Glass with a bit of Madonna and Lady Gaga mixed in. Having Scott Walker and Sia writing the soundtrack and songs also got me interested.

[rasta-spouse]

I really enjoyed the first hour of this, it seemed to be going somewhere great. Then when Portman shows up it kind of dipped for me...her character (and the switch) kind of put me off. Also, no real ending but a lot of pop dancing - was something meant to happen that was cut?

Still, interesting subject matter filmed in a cool way. The Arianna Grande Latte thing hanging in the background (not literally).

[zomgmouse]

Also, no real ending but a lot of pop dancing - was something meant to happen that was cut?

I read it as this sort of unstoppable rise, which made things a whole lot more chilling.

[worldsgreatestsinner]

The problem with that end performance is it all looked so shit. If an actual pop singer turned in something that half-arsed they'd be mocked all over Twitter within seconds of the concert ending.

[rasta-spouse]

I read it as this sort of unstoppable rise, which made things a whole lot more chilling.

Dafoe's final voiceover regarding The Pact was quite alarming. I guess seeing nothing supernatural in the whole film makes it even more interesting.

I liked Corbet in Simon Killer, is his film The Childhood of a Leader worth a watch?

The problem with that end performance is it all looked so shit.

Yeah, the music was much better in the first half (I especially liked that short clip of the music video with Cassidy on the motorbike, it had a really cool fresh vibe). I was wondering if the music at the end was made to be deliberately mediocre, to resemble an artist in decline. Although is she in decline? Or is it that Portman didn't pick up the torch from Cassidy quite right.

[DukeDeMondo]

I liked Corbet in Simon Killer, is his film The Childhood of a Leader worth a watch?

Childhood Of A Leader is absolutely mesmerising and terrifying and I would say it is absolutely worth a watch. Saying that, I have friends who didn't get on with it at all - a lot of folks on here didn't get on with it very well either, if memory serves - but I thought it was stunning. Certain shots in that thing scared me in ways that very few things have ever scared me.

[Schnapple]

I thought this had one of the best opening hours of a film I've ever seen, bolstered of course by the traumatic sequence that kicks off the narrative. Unfortunately, I thought it lost a lot of steam, and ended up a bit of a clunker without much of note to say. Of course, it's actually nice to see a film this bracingly cynical in the current landscape, but something about this didn't land. Agreed that the songs were toilet, and I felt the final act felt clunky and awkward in a way that wasn't intended. It's an interesting, coincidental companion piece to 'A Star is Born', but for all it's gloop, I actually think that's a much better and hard-hitting film.

I know the director has worked with Von Trier in the past, which I think shows up a little in the rhythm and staging of this. The cast were great, and I loved Jude Law's crumpled, beige outfit in the latter half.

[Bence Fekete]

Some good moments, but as suggested some terrible bits as well. 

The 'switch' gimmick was so jarring.  All of a sudden you're empathising with one character and then you have to do all the heavy lifting and transpose those feelings onto another, supposedly completely different character, all while suspending disbelief that the new daughter is a different character in her own right (she wasn't).

Also, it was stylised as a portrait (i.e. hands-off, no holds barred) and then became utterly reliant on Defoe's garbled voice-over to fill in the gaps.  Add in some crow-barred tragedy stuff, which was terribly forced and random for me (if not well staged), it felt like 3 good movies spliced into 1 irritating movie.

[buzby]

Some good moments, but as suggested some terrible bits as well. 

Watched it last night, and agree with this. Portman's bits were largely the problem - some of it felt like it was improvised or under-rehearsed (apparently she only worked on the shoot for 10 days). The worst bit was the concert footage - it sounded like they were trying to portray the ambient sound she was hearing on the stage, but it was far too quiet and there was no sound of her voice singing (which may have been the point - that she was miming). The choreography was too simplistic and hackneyed too (it was choreographed by Portman's husband, apparently). I felt sorry for Sia too, as no amount of autotune could make Portman's voice sound good on her songs.

I noticed that Sia was also an executive producer too, and wondered if she had any input to the script details, as the adult Celeste's lifestyle definitely shared some similarities with Sia's before her 2010 retirement. I was also half-expecting the choreographer that the teenage Celese was sent to work with would be Denna Thomsen, a friend and collaborator of Sia's, but it turned out not to be.