Hard Candy (2006)
Directed by David Slade
Hayley’s a smart, charming teenage girl. Jeff’s a handsome, smooth fashion photographer. An Internet chat, a coffee shop meet-up, an impromptu fashion shoot back at Jeff’s place. Jeff thinks it’s his lucky night. He’s in for a surprise.
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What critics compared Hard Candy to
There was a similar dynamic in the form of David Slade’s “Hard Candy” (2005), featuring a so-young Elliot Page, in which sins are practiced upon the sinner with cold rebuke, but Fennell’s less interested in the protracted application of the laser than in keen appreciation of the delicate art of the bazooka.
It's not a particularly novel idea (beyond switching the gender of the vigilante, although that has been done before -- notably 2005's "Hard Candy") and it makes one wonder why she never went after the guilty before now rather than racking up an impressive list of strangers' names that she keeps in her "I humiliated" notebook compilation.
A movie thriller for the #MeToo movement writ large, “Promising Young Woman” is like a bit of stale “Hard Candy,” the 2005 film also premised around vengeance against a sexual predator that features a standout leading performance.
With The Crush (1993), Election (1999), and all the Poison Ivy sequels and knockoffs like Hard Candy (2005) and Pretty Persuasion (2005), media transformed abuse victims into cunning perpetrators of violence in their own right.
As dark revenge fantasies go, this is no “Hard Candy” or “Thoroughbreds.”
The screenplay, a sharp, unadorned affair penned by Brian Nelson (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night), is predicated on a Twilight Zone-ish premise: Five apparent strangers--a young mechanic (Logan Marshall-Green), an older woman (Jenny O’Hara), a sharply dressed younger woman (Bojana Novakovic), a temp security guard (Bokeem Woodbine), and a sleazy businessman (Geoffrey Arend)--get on an express elevator one morning in a Philadelphia high-rise and find themselves trapped when the elevator inexplicably stops somewhere halfway up the building.
And it was written by Brian Nelson, who was the screenwriter for "30 Days Of Night" and "Hard Candy," who seems like a natural fit for this sort of story.
The actual director, John Erick Dowdle, previously made Quarantine , and the screenwriter, Brian Nelson, penned Hard Candy .
The first in a trio of "Night Chronicles," Devil was conceived by Shyamalan, who farmed out the project to a terrific team, including screenwriter Brian Nelson, who penned Ellen Page's breakout film Hard Candy and the vampire classic 30 Days of Night; and director John Erick Dowdle, who infuses Devil with the same sickening sense of claustrophobic dread that permeates his 2008 fight pic, Quarantine.
Based on an original concept from Shyamalan?s sketchbook, Devil?s surprisingly clever script was written by Brian Nelson, who hit pay dirt with his Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night , both excellent pieces of work.
Screenwriter Brian Nelson (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy) is the one who filled in the details of M. Night’s story, and he wisely keeps the dialogue between the passengers inside the box snap-crackling, while keeping us engaged with movement and physical action carried out by the players on the outside.
American remakes are in the works, and it's hard to imagine who could replace her: Ellen Page was gripping as a slightly similar character in "Hard Candy," and she may be a closer physical match to the prose Salander, but Rapace will be a tough act to compete with.
Fans of Hard Candy (2005) may guess what I’m alluding to…
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Posteriormente, comienza un juego macabro que no es ajeno al exploitation propio del género en los 70, sin embargo a la hora de actualizarlo, Eli Roth, Nicolas López y Guillermo Amoedo fallan en adaptar la atmósfera de la original, perdiéndose por momentos en ejecuciones más cercanas al thriller del tipo Funny Games de Michael Hanneke o Hard Candy con una joven Ellen Page cazando al depredador.
And when it comes to female vengeance films, “Kill Bill,” “Hard Candy,” “Extremities” and — one of my all-time favorites — “Serial Mom” and their so-called heroines Uma Thurman, Ellen Page, Farrah Fawcett and Kathleen Turner did it much better with more believability.
Its closest relation may be Hard Candy -- another twisted take on girl power through castration -- and while it lacks that film's searing intensity, its playful jabs are no less memorable.
At times it's as traumatic a watch for male viewers as 2005's Hard Candy, yet sets itself apart from David Slade's film by being less direct, that little bit more playful.
At one point, Keanu Reeve’s manager calls her “ Hard Candy ” and her 13-year old neighbor “some Lolita shit,” which made me hopeful, but alas.
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Put together with a series of long takes (cinematography by Sean Bobbitt, "Hunger") accompanied by a funereal score by Harry Escott ("Hard Candy," "The Arbor"), "Shame" will frustrate those who like their narrative spelled out but reward those who can stick with an ambiguous, artsy character study.
The almost impossibly sweet and funny comedy "Juno" is a star-making turn for Ellen Page ("Hard Candy") in the title role, who makes the 16-year-old Juno the sort of quick-witted, ironic teenage heroine many aspired to be in high school, without ever letting us forget there's a vulnerable, confused kid behind the pop culture references and blogspeak.
As embodied by Ellen Page with the same unflappable hipness that she flashed in Hard Candy , the talkative, iconoclastic Juno – who becomes pregnant after sleeping with her geeky best friend (Michael Cera), and then decides to give the baby up for adoption to a rich couple (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) – is a fountain of references from before her day, such that when her water breaks, she instinctively screams to her dad “Thundercats are Goooooooo!”
Page, the Canadian actress who put the perfect combination of chilly rage and innocence into the pedophile-targeting avenger in "Hard Candy," makes this and other lines serenely amusing thanks to her soft cadence and baby-faced gaze.
After cutting her teeth with a juicy breakthrough role in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival entry “Hard Candy,” Ellen Page knocks it out of the park as Juno MacGuff, a free-spirited high school tomboy who’d rather be listening to Iggy and the Stooges than Hannah Montana.
There’s Ellen Page , who after two very different breakout performances in this film and 2005’s Hard Candy has officially proclaimed her status as one of the finest young actresses of the new generation.
In spite of such shortcomings, Ellen Page is nevertheless as revelation in the lead role, proving that her performance in Hard Candy was no mere fluke and truly announcing herself as a star on the world stage.