BURN
Reunion Newsletter [7.18.26]
I love Nicolas Winding Refn and have considered him one of the greatest living filmmakers since Pusher. He’s as personally responsible for the way the world looks as any human being. His style is both peerless and constantly mimicked. He influences far beyond just film, but he’s a director built for cinephiles.
I watched Her Private Hell this week and NWR spoke after. I brought a friend who was a Refn novice, had seen a few, but not really aware of his significance. They hated it. I’m very challenged by how to feel about it. I very much did not enjoy. But at the same time I respect him doing it. He earned the right to do a movie like this if he felt like it, which he clearly did. It’s like Knife + Heart, not even pretending to care about a story—which isn’t fatal—but more importantly recycling stylistic flairs already achieved without CGI in his other works. And also achieved by Bertrand Mandico many times over all in-camera, for little money. If he were doing visually interesting things, just that alone would’ve made this worth watching. But there’s nothing in there I could pick out that we haven’t seen before, pretty much all already in his work.
He sounded a lot like Coppola. He wanted to have fun. He filmed chronologically so he could invent what the shoot would be each day. It was playtime for him. The whole process he seems to have gone through resembles Megalopolis, except he’s much younger so it’s weird he’s this advanced in his disinterest in appealing to an audience. Megalopolis, I would argue was not disinterested in audience, and not unambitious. I think Coppola went all-in on a vision he desperately wanted to share with audiences. It was just taken as super wacky and the press hurt. I loved it though. At the same time, he wanted to have fun working with actors, like we see in Megadoc. But it seems like Refn just wanted to get out there and play around with actors, but he didn’t have any ambition for what the movie had to be. There was some thematic connection with fatherhood. His soundbite for the press tour he keeps repeating is this story about how he almost died, but I don’t get how it connects with the movie. Seems like it’s the Neon marketing people telling him to repeat it, which did work and was the thing my friend cared about for some reason.
So Refn’s disillusionment…what’s up with that? Since Neon Demon, he launched byNWR.com, a magazine and streaming service restoring old obscure movies he digs. Super cool thing that didn’t seem to get picked up much. Too Old to Die Young was incredible, but nobody watched it because of its glacial pacing mismatched to its Amazon Prime streaming distribution platform. Copenhagen Cowboy saw Netflix take its turn footing the bill, and came across to me as a retreat. It keeps the obscure difficult to penetrate narrative and characters, keeps the glacially paced long take straight pan scenes, but ditches the rest of the style, and characters became for the first time in his catalog cookie cutter. Most recently his Kojima installation art collab felt like nothing to me. Just a hang.
A few minutes in, my friend laughed at the bad out of touch dad dialogue in Her Private Hell. I had the thought it was a Gucci movie, not even a Saint Laurent movie. Saint Laurent movies are cool. Gucci movies are genre cliches with famous actors in Gucci clothes. It’s weird because he invented how to film Ryan Gosling, before The Gray Man and The Fall Guy recycled him. And then he filmed Charles Melton in the same way as if it were novel. It’s cool for Charles Melton (an anecdote shared by Refn as if novel), but I don’t know why Refn wants to do that with his time. He’s the guy who invented it. He invented the bisexual lighting. Why is he doing it for these people? Like at least sell yourself if you’re gonna do the cliches you created. Don’t spend your own money (which I understand he did) for the privilege of recycling yourself.
It all reminds me of M. Night Shyamalan talking to Norm McDonald on the Netflix show. Go 10 mins into the episode, he talks about it. He says he was really into thrillers, then he had kids, then he wanted to make softer stories for them. Audiences rejected this version of him. Then they grew up, and he went back to the dark stuff and audiences came back. Maybe that’s what Refn is doing. Maybe this is his meditative family time. He got the keys to the kingdom with Neon Demon. He didn’t like how it went. He retreated. He did more fashion stuff for money, he indulged in the creative friendships that felt rewarding for him. His daughters are near grown up now. Maybe next few years, he’ll get back to it and reclaim what he’s earned. He’s still at any given moment the greatest living working filmmaker, but it hasn’t felt like he’s wanted to live that way for a while.
Strongly recommend trying to get The Odyssey Lincoln Square 70mm IMAX. Watch it proper. Either wait til next week or two, or go to theater and refresh over and over again right before the movie starts and get a cancelation.
Noir City at Paris has been awesome. Opening night was one of those things we don’t get anymore. A double feature with long rich intros from Eddie Muller and a 4 song live music set in between movies. This is one of those times we must appreciate both Netflix and the team run by John Vanco who do these things. They must lose so much money on it. There was so much staff and build out for the night. It was awesome. Regular ticket price. Beautiful thing they do. Many more movies to see still.
— Sean Glass @sdotglass
EVENTS
July 15-August 1: Glowing with Beth B in person [Roxy]
July 21: Outwaters with director Robbie Banfitch in person [IFC]
July 31: A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching [Rooftop Films]
August 11: Session 9 with Director Brad Anderson and co-writer/lead actor Stephen Gevedon [Roxy]
August 12: Reunion Live at Salmagundi—link coming soon!
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THE NEWS
The important stuff on the important stuff. TL;DR + links if you want more.
| INDUSTRY |
Sam Neill, Actor in Jurassic Park and The Piano, Dies at 78 [THR]
Backrooms Producer Chris Ferguson Signs First Look Deal With Warner Bros. [THR]
|ANNOUNCEMENTS|
Film at Lincoln Center Announces Lineup for “Scary Movies XIV,” August 12-20 [FLC]
Rose Byrne and Jenna Ortega Starring in Mary Bronstein’s Nasty for Warner Bros. Clockwork [Variety]
Obsession Director Curry Barker’s Dad Jeff Barker to Write, Direct Horror Short Starring Dane Cook [THR] The headline of the year.
Danny McBride to Direct G.I. Joe Movie for Paramount [THR]
MoMI x Mubi: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma Exhibition
| FESTIVALS |
James Gray’s Paper Tiger Will Open This Year’s New York Film Festival [IndieWire] Uh oh.
Danny Boyle’s Ink, Starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy, to Open Venice Film Festival [Variety] I hope these openers don't mean anything for the quality of the rest of the fests. Openers are usually hit or miss. Hopefully. Because these suck.
Toronto: Cate Blanchett, Margaret Qualley, Naomi Watts Films to Get World Premieres [TIFF]
| MISC. |
Julianne zine signed by Julianne Nicholson and photographer Kevin Hatt + signing [Preoder]
Kong x Godzilla Ride Set to Open at Korea’s Lotte World This Month: It’s ‘Extremely Immersive’ [Variety]
Help support New Plaza Cinema [Donate]
NY Film & TV Comeback
Double dose of The Terminator.
SUBSTACK RECOMMENDATIONS
WHAT TO WATCH
New York Asian Film Festival 2026 [FLC] 🍿
Noir City: New York [Paris] 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
Laurel & Hardy [Film Forum]
Japan Cuts 2026 [Japan Society] 🍿🍿🍿
It Came From the Archive! Opens July 31 [Paris]
| NEW RELEASES |
The Odyssey [wide] + 35mm [Quad + Angelika] + 70mm [Angelika]
Tom Cruise Praises Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’: “I Can’t Wait to See It Again” [THR]
American Pachuco: The Legend of Luiz Valdez [Film Forum]
The Kidnapping of Arabella with special guests [IFC]
Summer Tour [IFC]
Rhythm is a Dancer [Roxy]
| ON FILM |
The Window in 35mm [Paris]
Sorry, Wrong Number in 35mm [Paris]
Zoot Suit in 35mm [Film Forum]
Stranger in Paradise in 35mm [MoMA]
The Lusty Men in 35mm [Roxy]
On Dangerous Ground in 35mm [Roxy]
Gone with the Pope in 35mm [Roxy]
Johnny Guitar in 35mm [Roxy]
Jacob’s Ladder in 35mm [Metrograph]
Belle de Jour in 35mm [Metrograph]
The Kid in 35mm [Metrograph]
Dirty Ho in 35mm [Metrograph]
Basic Instinct in 35mm [Metrograph]
One Hundred and One Dalmatians in 35mm [Metrograph]
The Seventh Bullet in 35mm [Metrograph]
Dodsworth in 35mm [MoMI]
Jason and the Argonauts in 35mm [MoMI]
Clash of the Titans in 35mm [MoMI]
| REP CINEMA |
Infinite Football [FLC] Free Summer Series
She’s the Man [FLC] Free Summer Series
Sweet Smell of Success [Paris]
Hangover Square [Paris]
Gilda [Paris]
Out of the Past [Paris]
Blast of Silence [Paris]
In a Lonely Place [Paris]
Stranger on the Third Floor [Paris]
Double Indemnity [Paris]
Touch of Evil [Paris]
The Short Films of David Lynch [Angelika]
Hunt for the Wilderpeople [Angelika]
The Neon Demon [Angelika]
Only God Forgives [Angelika]
Tally Brown, New York, new 4K restoration [IFC]
Hester Street [MoMA]
Love in the Afternoon [Metrograph]
3 Women [Metrograph]
The Great Silence [Metrograph]
Phantom of the Paradise [MoMI]
| STREAMING |
Backrooms [VOD]
The Currents [VOD]
Exit 8 [Shudder]
Jinsei [VOD]
Marc by Sofia [HBO Max]
Mile End Kicks [Netflix]
Miroirs No. 3 [MUBI]
Obsession [Peacock]
| COMING SOON |
| BONUS FEATURES |
World Cup x Obsession
Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange) & Thomas Bangalter (Daft Punk) | The A24 Podcast
500 Criterion Booklets Online [Download]
The beauty of movies and community.
