A lot of big-name directors these days got their start in commercial work these days, and in between major films it isn’t at all uncommon to see major film makers keep their skills sharp by doing ads. Just a few weeks ago we reported on a car commercial directed by horror darling Sam Raimi, don’t …
The Life of Nicolas Winding Refn Directed by Me might have been a more appropriate title for Liv Corfixen’s first documentary, which provides a behind-the-scenes insight into the making of her husband’s latest film Only God Forgives. Following on from his remarkable critical and commercial success with Drive, Refn is under pressure to produce more of the same and in doing so satisfy both his financial backers and his artistic ambitions. It is also the first time that Corfixen and the couple’s two daughters have joined Refn for an extended shoot abroad, creating a completely new environment in which he must balance his personal and professional lives.
After a trip to Bangkok, it seems like writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn is returning to the electricity of Los Angeles and Drive for his next feature, The Neon Demon. Deadline reported the news on Monday and called the film a horror tale with a female-lead. The site added that Refn spoke on the reason he …
It is always a little special when a film that on the surface bears no signs of ulterior motive becomes the subject of mass deconstruction by a plethora of critics, casuals and the insane. Case in point would be Sound on Sight’s film of 2011, Drive.
Style oozes from every frame of Only God Forgives, tinged in red, like the blood that so frequently sprays across the screen and lands in artfully designed splatters. Writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling, reuniting after the cult success of 2011’s Drive, have collaborated on a truly baffling, bizarre, and gory crime drama that’s wall-to-wall striking, pretty images. Unlike Drive, however, Only God Forgives is hollow underneath all the model-like posturing and the flashes of excessive, gratuitous violence.
Only God Forgives, the next film from Drive director Nicolas Winding-Refn, has been near the top of most film nerds most-anticipated movie lists this year, if not sitting mightily atop all of them like a cinematic gargoyle. After storming on to the North American scene in 2011, all eyes have been on the weird little bugger, waiting to see what he’d do next.
Synopsis: Julian (Gosling) lives in exile in Bangkok where he runs a Thai boxing club as a front for the family’s drugs smuggling operation. When Julian’s brother Billy is killed their mother, Jenna (Kristen Scott Thomas), arrives in the city. She wants revenge and forces Julian to find the killer. Julian’s contacts in the criminal …
Pusher Directed by Luis Prieto Written by Matthew Read United Kingdom, 2012 The best action in film springs from desperation. Die Hard hits plenty of familiar beats in the action-movie genre, for example, but forces its lead into a corner at the outset, making it so he has to fight to get out and stay …
Pusher Written by Matthew Read Directed by Luis Prieto UK, 2012 1996’s Pusher launched the career of director Nicolas Winding Refn, and was followed by two sequels in the early 2000s. With some recurring characters but differing leads in each of the trilogy’s films, the first in the series concerned a man growing increasingly desperate, …
Pusher Written by Matthew Read Directed by Luis Prieto UK, 2012 1996’s Pusher launched the career of director Nicolas Winding Refn, and was followed by two sequels in the early 2000s. With some recurring characters but differing leads in each of the trilogy’s films, the first in the series concerned a man growing increasingly desperate, …
With the Academy Awards for the 2011 film year in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to take a look at one of the event’s most consistently fascinating categories: Best Supporting Actor. The most interesting story in the category this year isn’t who got nominated, it’s who didn’t. More specifically, Albert Brooks was completely robbed of …
Ever since I launched Sound On Sight back in 2008, I’ve seen an average of 150 new releases each year, and every year since, I’ve been able to easily draft up a list of my fifty favourite films. In fact, there were so many great movies released in 2011, I have a list of 75 …
Most moviegoers can agree on one thing: there were way too many movies this year. If you’re (un)fortunate enough to live in New York, you had the opportunity to see around 600 new features come and go; the rest of us didn’t get that many fewer. That means that anyone who’s been put in …
Most moviegoers can agree on one thing: there were way too many movies this year. If you’re (un)fortunate enough to live in New York, you had the opportunity to see around 600 new features come and go; the rest of us didn’t get that many fewer. That means that anyone who’s been put in a …
The question isn’t wether or not Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive will make Sound On Sight’s list of best films of 2011. Instead we should be asking if it will be at the number one spot, and I have a funny feeling that top spot will either go to Drive or Shame. Only time will tell. …
Drive Written by Hossein Amini, from a novel by James Sallis Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn USA, 2011 In one of Albert Brooks’s first scenes in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive as b-movie-producer-turned-mobster Bernie, Brooks dismisses his former occupation’s body of work. “One critic said they were ‘European.’ I thought they were shit.” Bernie likely wouldn’t …
The Hollywood Reporter has scoop that Ryan Gosling signed a deal last week to star in Warner Bros’ adaptation of Logan’s Run. Run is based on the 1967 sci-fi novel by William F. Nolan set in “a future society where people are executed upon reaching a certain age and those that seek to avoid their fate are deemed Runners” and …
Valhalla Rising Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn Nicolas Winding Refn, who made the underrated Bronson in England and the striking Pusher series in Denmark creates a brutal, yet thoughtful, re-envisioning of the Viking saga. This Malick/Jodorowsky hybrid is one of the best looking films in recent memory. It’s breathtaking digital photography across the bleak and …
BRONSON (cue “Digital Versicolor” by Glass Candy) While non-Americans win very few of the top acting awards at the Oscars, we see it happen from time to time (Daniel Day-Lewis, Roberto Benigni, etc). As a result, I’d love to see Tom Hardy, the English actor who brilliantly portrays Michael Gordon Pederson in Bronson, be considered …