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I'm surprised that there isn't a thread yet for this film but anyways... Ryan Gosling was interviewed recently by dark horzions and spoke a little bit about Only God Forgives. Apparently it will be coming out this summer and will bear similarities to Refn's previous film Drive

Gosling says: "It's very extreme. It's part of the same dream as ‘Drive,’ but it's more of a nightmare than a dream but it's more extreme. We shot it in Thailand and no one was watching, so that's what happens when you let Nicolas loose in Thailand. There's no one around to put the reins on and he's completely unleashed."

http://www.darkhorizons.com/news/26629/ ... ick-s-next" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Movie aside (and boy, it looks good), that is a wonderfully cut trailer. The music is captivating.

If Drive was indebted to Thief, this looks indebted to Black Rain.

mfunk9786 wrote:Movie aside (and boy, it looks good), but that is a wonderfully cut trailer. The music is captivating.

The music at the end reminded of the 8-bit music from 80s platformers, made me think of some type of boss battle when I heard Gosling say "wanna fight?" As someone whose enjoyment of Drive has steadily increased with each successive viewing, I'm looking forward to this.

Zot! wrote:If Drive was indebted to Thief, this looks indebted to Black Rain.

The Ridley Scott one?

mfunk9786 wrote:Movie aside (and boy, it looks good), that is a wonderfully cut trailer. The music is captivating.

That is probably the best trailer I've seen in a long time, put together really well. I wonder if Refn himself cut the trailer with Mat Newman or if it was people hired by the producers; either way it was fantastic.

The music was incredible in it too, the part of the trailer when Gosling was dragging the guy and the music kicked gave me goosebumps.

And my god does it ever look good, it has that same gorgeous aesthetic Refn used on Drive; however it does feel somewhat different than Drive, it doesn't just feel like Drive 2. It also feels like even more of an homage to 80s action than Drive if that's even possible.

I know its way too soon and I've only seen a minute and a half of footage but I'm incredibly pumped to see this film

flyonthewall2983 wrote:

Zot! wrote:If Drive was indebted to Thief, this looks indebted to Black Rain.

The Ridley Scott one?

Ah, you're totally right, I had incorrectly rememebered Michael Mann had made that too. Certainly not the Imamura. I wonder how it will compare with the Johnnie To, Kitano Yakuza movies. That Tran Anh Hung attempt at the genre, "I come with the Rain" was a bit of a mess. I think I'm most looking forward to Kristen Scott Thomas.

I actually asked because there was another movie named Black Rain, that oddly also came out in 1989.

I'll give you a clue flyonthewall: it's the one that has scenes filmed in Japan

So, a semi-remake of Kickboxer? It looks to be about as culturally engaged, going by those trailers. Fun though!

Some of the Cannes reviews are out, and so far they are not good. Most critics thus far have panned the film, condemning it as style over substance, overly violent and misogynistic.

Personally I don't care about the reviews, as what I've heard thus far, even what the reviewers intended to be negative, still sounds like something I'd like (except for the misogyny). But either way it doesn't sound like this film is going to be as appreciated or well received as Drive was.

Seems more mixed to me. And I wouldn't be too concerned about what the Jeffrey Wells' of the world have to say. Him calling something misogynist is like Walter Hudson calling someone fat.

Wasn't Drive's Cannes reviews pretty mixed as well?

Bradshaw's rave has me intrigued and... hell, who am I kidding? There is absolutely no way I'm not going to see this!

Andrew O'Hehir offers another defense. The money quotes for me:

In this case, we have a director who has deliberately chosen to move away from the fusion of American genre movie and European artistry embodied in “Drive.” Even though it displays a man sliced open to the ribcage and features two scenes of Muay Thai martial arts – in one of them, Gosling’s character receives a vicious ass-kicking from a middle-aged Thai man – “Only God Forgives” is an abstract, dreamlike, heavily symbolic film with little concern for pacing and almost no dialogue. Shot largely at night in death-dream-sex colors (black, deep blue, blood red, magenta) by cinematographer Larry Smith, this movie is more akin to Refn’s experimental Viking-era freakout “Valhalla Rising” than to “Drive.” It’s the martial-arts movie that might result from a drunken collaboration between David Lynch, Luis Buñuel and Michael Haneke.

“Only God Forgives” is about Scott Thomas’ demonic, scene-eating performance paired with Gosling’s impassive silence; Smith’s meticulous, almost Ozu-like camerawork paired with the supersaturated night-world colors of Bangkok; and the pulsing, haunting, many-layered electronic score by one-time Red Hot Chili Pepper Cliff Martinez.

Nothing about this doesn't sound amazing to me.

I'm glad to see some people are backing the film. It seems like once all the negative press started coming out, everyone just decided to jump on the flick. Honestly, people need to wait and make up their own minds (I'm referring to people commenting on the trailers on youtube and twitter saying how much it's "supposed" to suck.)

ya I know it really bothers me too when people, specifically many of friends are saying things like "hah, looks like only god forgives sucks; they booed it at Cannes" and have now basically already decided they aren't going to like it because early buzz is that the film isn't very good. Why not wait until you see it yourself to decide if you don't like it.

On a side bar though, the things I have heard, both positives and intended negatives, sound intriguing to me. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing this film. The guardian's review in particular had me very excited for what I can expect to see. I'm still waiting to see this to make up my mind on it, but my expectations are pretty high right now

Well there's at least some logic to that. It got a pretty poor to average reception from critcs and audiences and people are lowering their expectations accordingly. Better than the people who are insisting it will be great despite evidence it probably won't be.

MongooseCmr wrote:Well there's at least some logic to that. It got a pretty poor to average reception from critcs and audiences and people are lowering their expectations accordingly. Better than the people who are insisting it will be great despite evidence it probably won't be.

Yeah, I hear ya. I suppose my comment was aimed more at people dismissing any film in general or like you said saying something would be amazing regardless. I think Rotten Tomatoes/The Flixster app have kinda messed up the way people view movies. I don't know about you guys but I have a quite a few friends(some are film buffs others just casual movie fans) and they swear by the tomato meter regardless of whether or not they've watched a movie. I ran into one of my friends a while back and he had just watched Colin Trevorrow's Saftey Not Guaranteed; I hadn't caught it yet so I was curious to hear his thoughts. I asked him how was it and he replied: Good but I don't think it 88% good. It just stunned me that he would say something like that. It just seems like nowadays people are swayed way too much by an early review or checking out RT on there iPhone before making their own mind up about a film.

MongooseCmr wrote:Well there's at least some logic to that. It got a pretty poor to average reception from critcs and audiences and people are lowering their expectations accordingly. Better than the people who are insisting it will be great despite evidence it probably won't be.

Criticism isn't some monolithic consensus, and even complaints about the movie have made it sound rather fascinating and up my alley as opposed to dampening my enthusiasm. To say nothing of praise from critics and viewers whose tastes I trust. Who knows, maybe it will suck. But it sounds quite what I expected it to be so far.

Never seen so much hand-wringing over something none of us have seen yet

See also Watchmen and Dark Knight. At least we're still on one page here.

Didn't the Brokeback Mountain thread get to page 15 or something before it got released too?