10 Movies That Tried Way Too Hard To Be Cool
9. Only God Forgives
Nicolas Winding Refn is one of the most stylish and singular filmmakers working today, and also one of the most divisive.
Though Refn's Drive, by far his most successful film, was far more popular with critics than audiences, his follow-up Only God Forgives was polarising across the board, with no consensus on whether the Thailand-set crime thriller was a genuinely tantalising mood piece or a pile of pretentious tosh.
A molasses-slow movie in which Ryan Gosling speaks little and spends long passages staring off into the middle-distance, Only God Forgives is also awash in sledgehammer-subtle Freudian imagery, casual misogyny, and a whole host of brutal-yet-forgettable violence.
Does the film have any soul or feeling? Not really, and while the neon-soaked cinematography is undeniably gorgeous, this felt like Refn flipping the middle finger to anyone - basically everyone - who was just expecting him to make Drive 2: Thailand Edition.
It has its defenders, of course, though for many, it's a film so self-consciously hateful of its audience as to be incredibly obnoxious.