My word, how misunderstood is this film! This was an experience..

I totally agree with you on mass opinion as my taste also seems to differ more and more from movies that have mass appeal or that a lot of my friends like (Avengers 2 especially was terrible in my opinion). 37 on Metacritic is absolutely sad. This film is a piece of art that was meditated on and thought about since its very inception. I thought it would be film critics, people whose very employment is watching films and analyzing them (a job almost every person in the world would want), who would have the time to actually appreciate film in an artistic form. Iron Man 3 and Jurassic world get around 60 on Metacritic, films made purely for money, greed, and with no artistic integrity or film making ingenuity/vision whatsoever. These are accepted and given a pass because they're not trying to be artsy or groundbreaking, they set out to do a task and accomplish if with factory-like efficiency (and that's fine by me, even if I don't enjoy them as much sometimes).

But when a film sets out to be a work of art that is more provocative than straight-forward, it gets destroyed by critics? Sure audiences will hate it, that's obvious and makes sense when all anyone is bombarded with are easily digestible films and escapist fantasies with happy endings. I just can't fathom a self respecting critic that gives a souless corporate film a better review than a provocative work of art by a director who is clearly a visionary (say what you will about the depth of Refn's scripts, but his style is incredible and unique).

I just hope people who write about film and its artistic merits will realize that, even if they don't like the film, it deserves speculation and props for being so unique, interesting, and ballsy in its director's vision and strange subject matter.