The Neon Demon of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's groundbreaking surrealist short "Un Chien Andalou" – that all you can do is howl or cheer." Tirdad Derakhshani, writing for "The Philadelphia Inquirer", called Refn a "bold visionary artist... able to revel in the culture of instant gratification while also subjecting it to critique", giving the film three and a half out of four stars and calling it a "brutal masterpiece". Rene Rodriguez of "The Miami Herald" wrote positively of the film's visuals and experimental filmmaking, writing, "To complain that "The Neon Demon" lacks substance or that it doesn't have anything to say about
Luis Buñuel in 1979, he was awarded the Honorable Prize for his contribution to cinema. Luis Buñuel Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in Spain, Mexico and France. When Luis Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in "The New York Times" called him "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later". His first picture, "Un Chien Andalou"—made in the silent era—was called "the most famous short film ever made" by critic Roger Ebert,