Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Matt Singer ★★★½ 1

  Basically a DVD extra for ONLY GOD FORGIVES, but a pretty worthwhile one. I can't recall the last time I saw a director this honest about his insecurities (he worries his movie isn’t very good, and complains that he’s wasted years of his life on it) or his cynical calculations about audience tastes (“They want more of the same,” he moans when talking about the pressure to follow DRIVE with something equally commercial). Refn doesn’t come off that well -- he’s moody and self-obsessed and indecisive -- which is kind of interesting given the fact that his wife is the director. If my wife made a documentary that was this revealing and unflattering, I’d be furious. But I guess he got the last laugh; he dedicated THE NEON DEMON to her.

• 

  Review by SilentDawn ★★★½ 3

  While only slightly above the quality of an average behind-the-scenes documentary, My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn has quite a few moments of brutal honesty and painful revelations. Set during the filming of Refn's Only God Forgives, Liv Corfixen captures her husband as he slowly moves through the process of tackling such an ambitious project. If you're a huge fan of Refn's vibrant creation (like I am), then consider this documentary essential. Some of the footage is as in-depth and honest as anything that you'll see in a film-making documentary, with emotional breakdowns and failed shoots of filming sometimes veering towards a personal level that I don't care to see. Seeing such familial struggles breaks my heart.

  All in all, It's fascinating, and it proves that Nicolas Winding Refn, no matter how weird he might be, is an exceptional talent.

• 

  Review by Shane McAvoy 4

  I was trying to watch Directed by John Ford on YouTube, but it was some TCM documentary from 2006 mislabeled as the Peter Bogdanovich film, so I decided to move on down to a film about cinema’s second greatest director Nicolas Winding Refn.

  Dedicating The Neon Demon to your wife is so cool.

• 

  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★ 4

  The crushing weight of self doubt in a director who wants to make something artistically challenging but can't escape the shadow of his own commercial success.

• 

  Review by Larry ★★★

  I liked Only God Forgives.

  That's probably the best way I could start off this review. I could also mention how I don't watch films for the stories or characters but I feel like I've worn myself out debating that.

  Instead I'll simply state that for me films are a kind of audiovisual stimulus. I like to look at the whole picture like a piece of poetry or a painting. It has something to tell me or its trying to make me feel a certain way by use of style and visuals. A story can be nothing more than a concept or a setup that ties images and expressions together.

  Now on to Refn's film.

  Ask someone what they thought…

• 

  Review by Graham Williamson ★★★ 2

  Things I was particularly amused by in Liv Corfixen's documentary about her husband making Only God Forgives:

  1) Ryan Gosling asking one of Refn and Corfixen's adorable children whether they thought the movie their dad had planned out on his wall was going to be good. "I dunno" is the reply.

  2) Kristin Scott Thomas saying "So, you'll kill and disembowel me tomorrow?"

  3) Ryan Gosling listening to Refn explain how violence has an innate sexual tension while looking at Corfixen with an expression on his face that unmistakably says "So you married this guy, eh?"

  4) Ryan Gosling sitting back and chilling under a tree with his face covered in gruesome make-up.

  5) Basically just anything with Ryan Gosling…

• 

  Review by Connor Carey ★★½ 2

  Spends more time focusing on Winding Refn's uninteresting personal life instead of the making of "Only God Forgives". I found myself pretty interested and entertained when it did show him making that film and all the troubles he went through while doing so but I was pretty bored for a good amount of its short runtime.

• 

  Review by Nicolò Grasso ★★★★½

  Original Title: My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
  Year of Release: 2014
  Genres: Documentary
  Director: Liv Corfixen
  Writer: Liv Corfixen
  Main Cast: Nicolas Winding Refn, Liv Corfixen, Ryan Gosling, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kristin Scott Thomas

  I've spent three years on this movie, and I don't really know what it's about.

  I have a troubled relationship with Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives, a film I have seen many times and famously called "my most hated film". A pretentious, overly-stylish slog, gratuitously violent, confounding in the worst way possible. That is how I have felt since first watching it in cinemas May 2013. Finally watching the behind-the-scenes documentary of Refn (and having kickstarted a filmmaking career for myself too), I feel…

• 

  Review by Roberta ★★★½ 1

  that moment in which refn thinks that only god forgives (2013) is better than drive (2011) must have been really hard for him

• 

  Review by Andrew | A.J.

  It would be boring if everyone made safe films. 
  
  
  That's how you know you've made great cinema: some love it, some hate it. 

  
  Quite possibly my new favorite thing ever. To see a filmmaker's mindset in such various stages was such an intimate and enlightening thing.

• 

  Review by adelinetaylorh ★★★½ 2

  Trying to be nothing more than a documentation of a husband's struggle with art, My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn is interesting, concise, and appeals to the side of me that loves the behind-the-scenes of film production. Some could see Liv Corfixen's approach to filming Nicolas as just biased and unoriginal, but I saw it as passionate and endearing.

  Also, Ryan Gosling playing with children is the most adorable thing I've seen in my life.

• 

  Review by matt lynch ★★★

  Nice bonus feature.