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Even some brightness issues with the projection at my local multiplex (so over that) couldn't dull the cool neon snowstorm of Atomic Blonde - what an eye fuck, in the best sense of the phrase "eye fuck," this movie is! That is to say that Atomic Blonde was a passionate and attentive lover, to my eyeballs - it hit the spot and then flipped me over and found some spots I didn't even know I had.
Probably my favorite thing about the movie is what a high-end art-house pop contraption it is - it's clear that director David Leitch is a fan of some good shit, you guys. There are explicit shout-outs - the fight scene in the movie theater takes place during a screening of Tarkovsky's film Stalker, for one, and the coroner being played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder regular Barbara Sukowa is another.
But visually it's this smash-up of Argento and Refn with the long-take swagger of Cuaron and the bottomless sleaze of Verhoeven ladled liberally over top. As to the latter the shout-out to Basic Instinct would've only be more explicit if Charlize had uncrossed her legs mid regaling the room of breath-held fellas with her sapphic soliloquies, but Leitch knew well enough he didn't need to actually go there (even if he got us and them ecstatically going there in our heads).
