Quote Quoting Irish (view post)
Honestly for the first hour and a half I kept shaking my head in admiration and disbelief and going, "Sheeeeeeeesh, dude, goddamn" because every shot was so beautiful. I felt like I could have pulled any frame down from the screen, hung it on the wall, and had a piece of wonder in my living room.

So I enjoyed it on that level -- as if it were a museum piece.
That's partly why I think the movie works so well on the whole, though. Because considering the subject matter, the fact that so much of this movie is style over substance actually really compliments the film in a way that doesn't always work out in other such "style over substance" sorta films. I don't disagree with you when you say that there's no point looking for too much deeper meaning in this film, as upon reflection, it really is pretty surface level stuff. (I know I expressed confusion earlier in the thread, like I was digging for something deeper there, but a couple revisits and some mulling over really showed me that, no, it's all pretty much right there staring you in the face, lol.) But this is precisely the sorta trashy movie that filmed in a more traditional manner (or really, any other way at all) would easily go discarded and forgotten, but Refn's execution of style and precision that goes hand in hand with the topic matter of the film itself elevates it to a level that other similar trashy films can't even fathom of attaining. This movie is respectable trash, and hearing the director talk about it only makes me appreciate it and what he was trying to achieve with this movie all the more, and I fucking loved every second of it. XD