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
Rain (1929 film) they sought expression through a film's rhythm and movement—the characteristics which, according to these artists, made film a unique medium. They believed a film could create its own world, whether through thought–provoking Absurdism in a piece like Buñuel and Dali's "Un Chien Andalou" or purely through form, as in Dziga Vertov's "Man with a Movie Camera". "Rain" closely adheres to this prioritization of a film's formalistic qualities. The short film focuses primarily on composition and rhythm, visually following the patterns of raindrops and people as they try to negotiate with each other in their movements through the city. Ivens's efforts