DRIVE

***1/2 (out of ****)

 

There are rules for action movies. Keep the plot moving. If you have to have an information dump, make it quick and move on to your next gun shot. Have simple characters that have clear motives and goals. And don’t go for too long without an action setpiece. If things get too quiet for too long without an explosion, people start to get ancy.

There are rules for art house movies. Keep the pacing slow. Give your characters room to breathe. Don’t have more plot than you need. In fact, have a little less. Have some symbolism or subtext because that’s what you’ve heard good movies do. And act like you’ve seen a fucking movie or two. When you can, pay homage to your favorite films and directors. People flip over that shit.

 

Much has been made about the way Drive, on DVD and Blu Ray today, mixes genres. The two genres that everyone talks about are action movies and art house movies, but that’s only half-accurate, for a couple of reasons. One, art house isn’t a genre so much as a statement on the budget of the film, and the film’s intended audience, which is a small one. The other reason is that there are many more genres getting mixed and twisted here; pretty much all of them in fact. At least, enough of them that it moves way past the genre bending natures of From Dusk Till Dawn or even Shaun of the Dead. Those were movies that had a clear genre-bending agenda in mind. Drive is a little more complicated. Its only agenda is to not be confined by any one, two, or twelve genres, and this keeps it something that so few movies are these days, action, art house, or otherwise: surprising.

 

A simplistic way of looking at filmmaking is that it is a series of decisions. Most might be made by the director, but every skilled professional, from the writers to the actors to the producers to the lighting guys, are making decisions. Sometimes wrong decisions are made, just like in any other field. But it’s the number of decisions made, correct or otherwise, that can separate a movie like Drive from a movie like The Fast and the Furious. One could argue that only one important decision was made during the entire process of making The Fast and the Furious: we should make The Fast and the Furious. After that decision is made, everything else just kind of falls into place, as if there’s some sort of recipe to making big budget crap. Don’t go find the best writer for the job, but instead go find someone who will do the job quickly, cheaply, and make it like every other successful movie that has come out in the last five years. Try to make every other decision that comes up with that same mentality, and we’ll all be millionaires. I’d be surprised if many people involved with Drive are going to become millionaires strictly based on this movie’s success, but, if it happens, it won’t be the first time Drive surprised me.

 

 

People looking for an example of all of these decisions I’m talking about need look no further than the dreamiest example of all: Ryan Gosling. Gosling and I have had a tumultuous relationship, starting with Half Nelson and continuing with this year’s The Ides of March, released on video last week. At his best, he was always a guy who I thought lucked out with meaty parts and played them as well as he needed to. At his worst, which is where I usually found him, he was a guy who seemed like he just read Method Acting for Dummies, filling his performances with twitches and blinks and odd speech inflections that would make us think that, on the surface, he was a great actor, as long as we didn’t dig any deeper than that. His decisions for his Drive performance were a little bit different. On the surface, Ryan Gosling gives us almost nothing.

 

 

He barely has any dialogue, at least relative to his screen time. If you ask him a question that can be answered with a minimum of four words, he’ll give you three. He remains stoic and emotionless, with his reaction to stabbing a man in the chest the same as his reaction to winning a staring contest with a five year old. But Drive doesn’t remain exciting despite Gosling’s performance, but instead stays engaging because of it.

 

This performance is exactly what I mean by making decisions because it’s not the obvious choice. It’s not the first thing that would come to any actor’s mind when reading this script or starting rehearsals. It takes a lot of creativity, a little planning, and balls the size of hubcaps, not just from the actor but from the director as well, as there’s a 99 percent chance it could terribly wrong. And, I thought, in Ryan Gosling’s hands, that percentage would be 100. Instead, what we get is a level of intensity that couldn’t be matched by any sort of explosion or fighting robot. We get a performance that is impossible to look away from. We get a constant need to shake him (if we thought we wouldn’t get the shit kicked out of us) and demand to know what he’s thinking, or what he’s going through. Gosling never just delivers the line and then hands the scene back to his co-star. It’s not enough to get me to trust him  in the future, but it’s more than enough to keep me intrigued.

 

My point in all of this is that Drive remains one of those movies, art house or mainstream, that is impossible to spoil. There is so much great stuff going on here, so many decisions being made, and being made well, that I could tell you everything that happens in the third act, and you would still be an asshole for not seeing it. I just don’t want anyone to be worried because this movie is going to be work, as opposed to 2 Fast 2 Transformer, which you can just sit back, let your eyes glaze over, and go along for the ride. Drive is the best kind of movie, the best kind of art, really, that will let the consumer get out of it exactly what they put in. If you want to throw it on and fast forward to the “good” parts, it’s there for you, but if you’re looking for a little more, it’s there too. It’s a movie not recommended for all ages, but instead, recommended for intelligence levels. And, aside from most Pixar films, that is a rare thing.

 

-Ryan Haley

 

50/50

*** (out of ****)

Everyone knows the story of 50/50. Movie-darling Joseph-Gordon Levitt gets diagnosed with cancer. He slowly loses his shit. He deals with the help of his oafy but lovable pal Seth Rogen who cracks wise about the situation. The trailer showed the major beats; so watching the story unfold wasn’t the draw of the film- though it hit those beats fantastically. The awkwardness, charm and despair that were captured in the performances by the entire cast are what drove this movie to 3 stars for me. The debate about whether it’s a comedy about a tragic event, or a dram with comedic parts is tired and unnecessary. It’s a story that, like life, teeters back and forth between the two and does it well. Rogen is pointed out as a weak point of the film, accused of doing the same character per usual. I’m not going to argue that he’s not doing what he does best, but as the movie goes along he shows why he’s more than just the funny-looking guy with the dumb laugh. If you want to hear me gush bore about JGL’s performance check out the Pop Filter podcast of top 10 performances of the year:

https://popfilter.co/2012/01/popfilter-ep-25-best-of-all-performances-2011/

ALSO RELEASED:

THE BIG YEAR

DREAM HOUSE

REAL STEEL

NEW TO BLU-RAY

NOTORIOUS (****), REBECCA (****),

SPELLBOUND (***1/2)

Blu Ray is awesome because these three movies have never been released, yet 50 First Dates has been out for years. These are three of Alfred Hitchcock’s best, but have never found the notoriety that movies like Psycho, North by Northwest, or Rear Window. Notorious stars Hitch staples Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman star as two people trying to bring down a group of Nazis in hiding. Throughout the movie they fall in love, which may sound obvious, but keep in mind who is directing the movie. Hitchcock rarely focused on romance, even as a plot device, but here it both serves the plot, making it insanely complicawesome, but also feels completely natural. Spellbound is lesser Hitchcock, but is famous for a pretty bananas dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali. And then there’s Rebecca, Hitchcock’s first American film, and one of his few book adaptations. This film, about an odd marriage that just gets odder, doesn’t show off a lot of what will be become Hitchcock’s trademark thriller aspects, but is still super fucked up. If those plot synopses aren’t enough for you, all three discs are loaded with special features, including commentaries from film professors, which are great because then they will tell you what you think of the movie in case you can’t figure it out. – RH

ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN (both ****)

If we’re getting three of Hitchcock’s lesser known favorites, we’re getting Woody Allen’s two masterpieces. Every couple of years or so, we’ll get a Woody Allen movie that really connects with America, like this year’s Midnight in Paris, or Match Point from 2005. Film dorks love this time, not just because it proves that Allen has still got it, and it’s worth sitting through all of the Curse of the Jade Scorpions and Scoops, but also because it gives them a chance to get old Allen movies in their hands and let them know that he’s worth watching. Woody Allen only makes Woody Allen films, and sometimes their dialogue delivery and sense of humor can take a little bit of getting used to. Annie Hall and Manhattan remain his two most accessible films, not because they’re light on the Allenisms, but because they’re so fucking good you will have no choice but to accept all of the ways Allen movies are different than Katherine Heigl films. If you are that film nerd, and you get these Blu Rays into the hands of people who liked Midnight in Paris, your goal is to get those people to never watch a Katherine Heigl movie again. Good luck. – RH