
I've been wanting to see this film for some time now after it drew comparisons to Mulholland Dr. which is far and away my favourite film of all-time. As I said when talking about Starry Eyes a few posts up, I love films that tackle an anti-Hollywood subtext. While The Neon Demon is visually stunning, I think the thematic aspects of the film that highlight Hollywood as destructive and dangerous are a little too obviously handled here, too apparent without any hint of subtlety; it's as though the director Nicolas Winding Refn doesn't have enough faith in his audience to acknowledge such themes with any imagination, ambiguity or interpretation on the audience's part. I haven't watched his other films, so I'm unfamiliar with his work on the whole. I'm glad I saw this, but for all its visual beauty I think it's a very flawed work.
Edit: I'm lying, I keep forgetting that Drive is his direction.

It's the only other of his films that I've seen, and I enjoyed that a lot more than this one, which was probably helped by the always watchable, always beautiful Ryan Gosling.
