Her Private Hell (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2026)

[colinr0380]

I'm just excited to see this as Drive was one of the best films of the 2010s, with perfectly judged performances from everyone involved. Certainly one of the most important things that Ryan Gosling has been associated with, as suggested both by re-teaming for Only God Forgives, but also Gosling's own directorial debut (and only directed to date) film, Lost River, which shows a clear influence from Nicholas Winding Refn's stylised approach to narrative during that period (and which would be another pick for my best of the 2010s also).

And I still think that even beyond Melville, Hill and Mann, Drive works best seen as a tribute to Shane above everything else, especially in its finale.

[nicolas]

I’m also a big fan of Lost River and everything Refn directed in the 2010s, so here’s looking forward to your comments on Her Private Hell, Colin!

[colinr0380]

I'm still (perhaps vainly) waiting to see those Too Old To Die Young and Copenhagen Cowboy series as well if or when they ever make it to physical media. So I have a bit of catching up to do on Nicolas Winding Refn's work since The Neon Demon. Fingers crossed that with Her Private Hell having been a theatrical release, it may make it to disc at some point.

[mfunk9786]

I’ve started watching Too Old to Die Young in earnest (after bailing the first time around in 2019) and it’s really captivating. Bitrates even in the best case scenarios are rough, though

[therewillbeblus]

I hope you stick with it (and chime in with thoughts in its dedicated thread where we had a fun discussion)! If I remember correctly, by the end of the third ep I was hooked

[mfunk9786]

I hope you stick with it (and chime in with thoughts in its dedicated thread where we had a fun discussion)! If I remember correctly, by the end of the third ep I was hooked

Was a total 180 to watch it (of all places) on an iPad on a flight with noise cancelling headphones on. I was totally immersed in all of this stuff I'd found laborious before. Who knows, maybe I'll think the same about this movie (how's that for on topic?!) someday. Not in any rush to find out.

[Zot!]

I would say the long form is favorable to NWR. Sort of lets him stretch out, and I feel like his cinema is very tangential and playful, and the episodic content feels like a logical fit. I like maybe 20% of what he's done, but glad he's still plugging away, and prefer what he does to more recent provocateurs.

[The Curious Sofa]

I hope you stick with it (and chime in with thoughts in its dedicated thread where we had a fun discussion)! If I remember correctly, by the end of the third ep I was hooked

Was a total 180 to watch it (of all places) on an iPad on a flight with noise cancelling headphones on. I was totally immersed in all of this stuff I'd found laborious before. Who knows, maybe I'll think the same about this movie (how's that for on topic?!) someday. Not in any rush to find out.

I am far more likely to like a film or TV show on a plane, in fact my critical faculties go right out of the window. There was that time when I thought the Rob Schneider comedy The Hot Chick is the funniest movie ever made and on another flight, House of Sand and Fog made me weep buckets (I tried my best to hide it). I rewatched House of Sand and Fog later, back on solid ground and was thoroughly unmoved. Studies have shown that altitude and lower air pressure heightens emotions.

[Robin Davies]

I'm just excited to see this as Drive was one of the best films of the 2010s, with perfectly judged performances from everyone involved. Certainly one of the most important things that Ryan Gosling has been associated with, as suggested both by re-teaming for Only God Forgives, but also Gosling's own directorial debut (and only directed to date) film, Lost River, which shows a clear influence from Nicholas Winding Refn's stylised approach to narrative during that period (and which would be another pick for my best of the 2010s also).

And I still think that even beyond Melville, Hill and Mann, Drive works best seen as a tribute to Shane above everything else, especially in its finale.

I'm glad somebody else likes Lost River which I think is much better than the two Refn films I've seen. I liked Drive at first but cooled on it significantly on my second viewing. I thought Only God Forgives was dreadful!

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I would say the long form is favorable to NWR. Sort of lets him stretch out, and I feel like his cinema is very tangential and playful, and the episodic content feels like a logical fit.

Writing it with Ed Brubaker also helped. This series is still a big favorite of mine not least of which was also Darius Khondji shooting quite a bit of it.

[colinr0380]

I thought Only God Forgives was dreadful!

I loved Only God Forgives as well, though it plays on the Gosling character's 'inarticulate blankness' in an entirely different manner from Drive. In some ways it was an audacious move to follow up the anti-heroic (to the fault that it ends up critiquing overly mythologised notions of the same) star-cross'd lovers romance (even if just in the main character's head) of Drive with the out-and-out heel under the thumb of the domineering matriarch in Only God Forgives! Albeit even there he is a reluctant and nihilistic villain, in some ways using his passivity to neuter and bring everyone down around him, including the violent tendencies within himself. In that one Gosling is less a Shane-style character, and perhaps more like a Johnny Guitar-style one, passively standing on the sidelines of a violent conflict between figures who care about the goings on a lot more than he particularly does.

But I do wonder if people expecting a follow up to Drive with the same kind of lead character were rather thrown off by the darker tone of that one.