Review of The Bling Ring (2013) by Kevin P — 21 Nov 2017

The Bling Ring is directed and written by Sofia Coppola, and it stars Katie Chang, Israel Broussard, and Emma Watson in a crime film about a group of high school students that realizes that they can easily break into celebrities' houses when they're off doing other things, and they've been doing it for a long time.

When I first saw this movie, I thought it was fine, but was kind of bored of the film, didn't remember anything about the characters, and Power by Kanye West was in this. So of course I revisited this film to see if it improved when I got older, or if it got worse, I can say that it definitely was better than what I remember.

The acting is solid from a bunch of unknown kid actors that did very well of acting like actual teenagers, especially Emma Watson who is really funny as she acts like a bit of a valley girl, and it doesn't sound annoying and too obvious as you wouldn't really know about whether she's telling the truth or not, although some moments can be obvious as you already know about their actions.

I do like how subtle it is with social media that's not a main focus, and it's surprisingly done well which is a rarity in films lately. The way it's filmed is fantastic as it's the first to be filmed in digital from Sofia Coppola, and it takes some advantages of it as it has scenes that were from the computer based on the qualities of it, it has a long shot of the outside of a house where you see people robbing the place, it has some slow motions that were paced very well, and it actually has videos from actual interviews or news where it talks about the actual event that happened.

The score is probably the best part of the film for me as it has a bunch of songs that are very classy, it fits with the tone, and it gets me excited that makes my head bop back and forward, which reminded me of Project X because of it's classy soundtrack, even though that's a terrible film and this isn't.

The issues that I remembered from my first viewing are in this also. Even though I remember more about the characters in my second viewing, it's only mostly in exposition, which is a different method from what Sofia Coppola typically does from her other films, which I don't necessarily like, but there were some character moments that are more or less the director's style.

I also remembered that a lot of the film was the kids robbing places, and not much else that's not that, and my memory serves right on that as it did felt repetitive throughout the film. So while The Bling Ring is just as good as Sofia Coppola's other films from source material but not as special as the non-source material films, I'll rewatch this any day over Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides to an extent only for the soundtrack.