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Watched Only God Forgives this weekend, the newest effort from the re-teaming of the director of Drive and Ryan Gosling.
What a beautiful, violent and non-sensical movie. Much like what I said on Facebook, it's so gorgeous that you could stop the film at almost any point and you'd have a beautiful image to stare at for hours - Nicolas Winding Refn frames every shot stunningly, uses an incredible palette of colors and tries to invoke a lot of Stanley Kubrick like slow zooms. The score by Clint Martinez is hypnotic and definitely worth a listen.
But the film is an endless parade of excessive violence; each scene trying to top the previous bloodbath. All this is pretty much and hour of a half of retribution back and forth between Gosling's gang and the police, and not much else. Kirsten Scott Thomas manages to top her worst performance to date (which was Prince's Under The Cherry Moon - not a small feat when you manage to do worse than a movie with Prince in it) and Gosling says about 20 lines throughout the film and shows about as much emotion as Steven Segal after a stroke.
It's so opaque, it's impossible to figure out what the fuck Winding Refn is trying to do here - is the cop with the sword supposed to be God? Or is there some kind of Eastern Philosophy thing that I'm missing out on?
I really wanted to like it - Winding Refn manages to stage some incredibly stunning images, but wastes it with a threadbare plot (if there is any, I'm not really figure one out other than family member rapes and kills prostitute, retribution back and forth for the remaining 80 minutes), characters that are thinly sketched and unlikable (if you can call them actual "characters") and an ending that doesn't really make a lick of sense.
Verdict - Avoid, unless you're a budding cinematographer and you're looking for some inspiration.
What a beautiful, violent and non-sensical movie. Much like what I said on Facebook, it's so gorgeous that you could stop the film at almost any point and you'd have a beautiful image to stare at for hours - Nicolas Winding Refn frames every shot stunningly, uses an incredible palette of colors and tries to invoke a lot of Stanley Kubrick like slow zooms. The score by Clint Martinez is hypnotic and definitely worth a listen.
But the film is an endless parade of excessive violence; each scene trying to top the previous bloodbath. All this is pretty much and hour of a half of retribution back and forth between Gosling's gang and the police, and not much else. Kirsten Scott Thomas manages to top her worst performance to date (which was Prince's Under The Cherry Moon - not a small feat when you manage to do worse than a movie with Prince in it) and Gosling says about 20 lines throughout the film and shows about as much emotion as Steven Segal after a stroke.
It's so opaque, it's impossible to figure out what the fuck Winding Refn is trying to do here - is the cop with the sword supposed to be God? Or is there some kind of Eastern Philosophy thing that I'm missing out on?
I really wanted to like it - Winding Refn manages to stage some incredibly stunning images, but wastes it with a threadbare plot (if there is any, I'm not really figure one out other than family member rapes and kills prostitute, retribution back and forth for the remaining 80 minutes), characters that are thinly sketched and unlikable (if you can call them actual "characters") and an ending that doesn't really make a lick of sense.
Verdict - Avoid, unless you're a budding cinematographer and you're looking for some inspiration.
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