Only God Forgives (2013) Nicolas Winding Refn, Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas

http://www.moviegoods.com/Assets/product_images/1010/46229.1010.A.jpg

oh right

This wasn't very good but was pretty at times

like Ryan Gosling himself

found this pretty disappointing. just alternates between sadistic violence and Gosling walking silently through unpopulated primary colored rooms + throw in the occasional faux David Lynch surreal shot for variety. all style & little substance.

Kristin Scott Thomas is practically the only character who speaks & is thus the most interesting.

the violence in this felt so much cheaper than in Drive ... there was so little human interaction in between that it was hard to care. bunch of blank-faced ciphers stabbing and slicing each other emotionlessly.

word that kept coming to mind while I was watching this was "lurid."

It'll be on John Waters' year-end top 10 for sure.

Drive at least had Albert Brooks's fairly original gangster performance. And some cool driving sequences, although not enough of them -- I'm with the fast-and-furious lawsuit lady on that.

Refn was looking for a Rocket From the Tombs album, but he has skipped over to Lou Reed. He rifles through the CDs, then pulls out Transformer, the one with "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Satellite of Love" and all those classic pop songs. Then he yanks out Metal Machine Music, Reed's infamous atonal guitar freakout. He points: "First this, then this. There is a great satisfaction from going from Transformer to Metal Machine."

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9490223/the-career-nicolas-winding-refn-director-drive-only-god-forgives

I realized the other day I lump Valhalla Rising in with Refn's English language films, which is kind of funny.

btw Bronson is probably still his best of those

I hate myself for it but my inner contrarian made me get really interested in this movie only once all the bad reviews came out.

Ditto, pretty much.

Every backlash has its own backlash these days, though.

I know I hate getting caught up in that nonsense...but still I'll be damned if I'm gonna listen to David Edelstein or whoever tell me what's good or not!

same ryan. plus i mean, if jeff wells and rex reed hate it...

What do we feel about the singing scenes?

I would say that minute-for-minute, you get twice as much thai karaoke as you do violence

I feel like he's very beholden to John Woo somehow, like he's trying to do that same low-efx, visual-poetry-of-violence kind of thing. But not as well of course.

karaoke numbers reminded me of dancing maniac in beau travail. less amazing though. did provide some nice textural variety.

thai karaoke also makes me think of the end of Uncle Boonmee

the singing scenes were part of what I was referring to as knock-off Lynch ... and shots like the random muscle guys flexing. the singing bits made for an ok change of pace I guess, not sure I got anything out of it as far as learning something about the police captain (Chang?). He likes to sing I guess.

also Tropical Malady. I liked the silent karaoke scene, that was funny.

silent karaoke had some clear relation to surrounding film, so it made a bit more literal sense. maybe the other karaokes were only only there to set up context for the silent bit.

speaking of this, was that mai at the back left table in the final karaoke scene?

the karaoke was great! It's even better if you remove the visual - close or avert your eyes. Those are some cool tunes

Gaspar Noe is one of the people the movie is dedicated to, though NWR gives the first pre-credits dedication to Alejandro Jodorowsky, if memory serves.

your memory does serve. the only explicit connection to Jodorowsky that I could come up with was all the dismembering in Santa Sangre.

"Only God Forgives this level of tedium"

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jul/29/patterson-only-god-forgives

The result is akin to Gaspar Noé's simultaneously brilliant and moronic Enter The Void or Harmony Korine's candy-coloured Spring Breakers

Spring Breakers was way the hell better than this

watched both with a friend in the same day (OGF and Spring Breakers) and I think that was our conclusion

The movie is very much in the spirit of Jodorowsky's comic book work, super rapey, extreme brutality, psychosexual mythopoetics, etc

liked this more than Drive

this was really dumb. cool soundtrack though

so Albert Brooks' fork will be played by chopsticks in this one.
― Pope Rusty I (Dr Morbius), Monday, April 15, 2013 5:40 PM

lol

A total piece of shit, this thing, although I laughed every time Scott Thomas, in the voice of Unicron, "I’ll take care of the yellow n---- that killed my son. Now get up and kiss your mother."

I'm the world's least likely NWR stan (hated the early films, skipped everything until Drive and fell asleep twenty minutes into that) but I absolutely loved this.

this guy was the best thing in it

http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb56/ahdvd/MMS-Only-God-Forgives-Vithaya-Pansringarm_zpsbbb78ced.jpg

I'm the world's least likely NWR stan (hated the early films, skipped everything until Drive and fell asleep twenty minutes into that) but I absolutely loved this.

― Ramnaresh Samhain (ShariVari), Tuesday, November 26, 2013 2:05 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

haha yeah im not a big fan of his non-pusher work. maybe this is the refn film for people who dont much like refn

Loved the villain, the minimalist storytelling, and the goddamn wallpaper.

i did not watch this in ideal circumstances, but i found myself a little (too) bored watching it. kubrickian deliberateness and bressonian blank-faced acting are a deadly mix, i think.

i didnt really understand why this was rejected so violently, its the autistic hyperviolent dayglo nightmare hes been building towards for a while now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQq4QoQFWBw

^can't wait to see this guy's Only God Forgives fan film

I loved Drive. This was worthless.

did the people who hated this hate valhalla rising? i dont think they're worlds apart

Valhalla Rising didn't embarrass its lead actress with dialogue so horrendous that I actually felt sorry for her. Of course, I don't even remember it having any women in it.

valhalla rising was awesome, this was kind of a diff thing

So this movie must've broke Kristin Scott Thomas; quitting films.

"She is tired, too, of being cast in films that need her more than she needs them. 'I'm often asked to do something because I'm going to be a sort of weight to their otherwise flimsy production. They need me for production purposes, basically. So they give me a little role in something where they know I'm going to be able to turn up, know what to do, cry in the right place. I shouldn't bite the hand that feeds, but I keep doing these things for other people, and last year I just decided life's too short. I don't want to do it any more.'"

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/31/kristin-scott-thomas-interview

I would have quit before having the recite dialogue comparing the size of my sons' cocks.

I didn't realize the actress was Kristin Scott Thomas until I clicked on this thread. I sort of enjoyed this movie, it wasn't as good as drive, but I loved the cop and Kristin Scott Thomas. It seemed like she really stepped out of her usual skin for this role.

I mean, what other 2013 film even came close in terms of wallpaper?

This movie is amazing and you are all crazy

It's also so much better than drive that I can't even figure out where to start the comparison