Is there not yet a thread for DRIVE, the forthcoming Ryan Gosling vehicle (geddit)?

I came close to tearing up once during JLG cancer movie.

I'd like to see it. Probably for the same reason I'd like to see Moneyball.

I'm starting to get legitimately angry with Bryce Dallas Howard's agent at this point.

I thought this film was remarkable.

Deeply stylized, 1980s now, so much style that the style became a substance.

Music that was cornily pastiche, and moving.

Immense use of silence, waiting, non-responses, non-communication, like a proper art film (which I don't generally like that much).

I have managed (maybe by avoiding reviews etc so far) not to see anyone yet compare it to GRAND THEFT AUTO so I will say it was the film of that.

The compelling things above were somewhat complicated by the ultraviolence, though, which was pretty shocking, disturbing and maybe oddly made the film seem more mainstream than it otherwise did?

i still really want to see this, but the violence is going to make it a hard sell to my gf (and to myself, for anything eye-related).

there are only a few violent moments and the violence is v momentary but quite shocking

It's almost all concentrated in the last half of the film as well.

so she can come in for the first half and meet her in the foyer after

Yeah, or she can take an extended powder-room break, or go play Dance Dance Revoolution in the lobby, or sneak into another movie, or...

:)

ialso some reviews seem to complain about gosling + mulligan being "unconvincing." what wold convince them? that they have INTERESTS IN COMMON? or A DEEP INTELLECTUAL CONNECTION? i mean, it's not that kind of movie. their characters are axioms. there's one brief but spellbinding sequence where gosling is about to leave her apartment and there are a few silent close-ups where they lock eyes and it's like THIS IS ON. that's all we need, really.

amateurist otm, here -- i feel like what was effective about gosling, especially, but mulligan too was, it was almost like refn was provocatively stripping down the leads to being as generic & typical as possible - so laconic or brooding gosling who protects & drives & is inscrutable, & potentially redemptive, offers-a-chance-at-a-new-life CM who occasionally infects RG with happiness, family etc. these are the products that we were probably going to get out of a more developed relationship between the two (i don't think a slightly more fleshed out script was going to take it in other directions aside from the driving), but what refn was doing was relying on our schema & expectation of that with the minimum expenditure of effort/additional story. the first few shots in which they met, smiled, were silent were v effective, i thought.

i think because i'd heard so before seeing this, i went in thinking that the film's ""sound design"" was meant to be some lauded & exemplary thing, in the way that its enjoyable soundtrack is; perhaps that isn't something the film's been credited with (it's only mentioned here once), but just wanted to rebut it. the song picks work well but the ''design'' is totally standard & maybe sorta uninventive considering the possibilities of music-in-cars (struggling to recall the specifics of radio on here but think it's better, even when non-diegetic.

i kinda liked this for its streamlined thing. i liked the lighting a lot, throughout, in a lot of different ways.

Salon dissects the "dreadful word of mouth"

dunno about this, saw it tonight (ie second week it's been open) and the theater was packed, like close to sold out

thought this was ok - wasn't expecting that level of violence/gore. thought it was interesting that they exaggerated the stereotypical heroic stoicness/silence/singlemindedness to the point where the main character seemed borderline retarded. like he exhibited literally no signs of intelligent thought/planning, his only asset is being able to drive. also it was a totally vapid, superficial movie, which isn't a criticism - at least the vapidity seemed like a conscious decision, unlike most movies.

feel like chris penn definitely would have been in this movie if he could, rip

A John Doe cameo would have been welcome.

i suppose it depends on who is doing the word of mouthing. i certainly encouraged people to go. maybe they opened it too wide?

i guess i don't have my finger on the pulse of america, since i thought this movie would be an audience-pleaser.

what if america was like dick cheney and had no pulse, i wonder.

i can't imagine this movie had a budget much over $30-40 mil, so i don't know why everybody was expecting blockbuster numbers to justify its existence.

i think maybe it was more like $15 million. and yeah--i think it'll do just fine.

I havent seen this yet (and now uncertain if i will because of the violence) but i wonder if critics don't misunderstand what audiences want. it's not so much tons of coolness and action, but gobs and gobs of obvious sentimental cliches. even in the "action" movies.

i was quite surprised they were able to open it as wide as they did. i dont really understand distribution, etc enough to know how it happened but id be interested to read something on it. late summer seems to be a really good time to put a movie like this out imo

The weekend estimates are out.

Drive falls to #7, with $5,771,000, which is also about a million or so more than it did between the weekends. The current gross estimate thus far is $21,425,000, and the budget has been released at the tune of 15 million.

Things to Chew On:

• Last week's #2 & #3 (Contagion & Drive) got pushed to #6 & #7 with 4 new openings separating them from reigning champ Lion King 3D.

• Of these 4 new films, two of them (Abduction & Killer Elite) can easily be considered more straight-forward action flicks than Drive. However, according to these estimates, neither has grossed as much as Drive did opening weekend. (Although Abduction is pretty close.)

Drive really hasn't done bad at all. Compared to this week's Killer Elite or Straw Dogs and I Don't Know How She Does It, it's done very, very well.

Yeah, it's actually turned a profit. I just noticed that Contagion still has a week or so before you can say the same.

minus 49% at the box office this weekend. I guess mh's word of mouth sample is slightly off.

EG's condescension comes on a far more unpredictable timetable. Wd call you and him a draw on precision, tho.

That is absolutely deliciously phrased nondiplomacy!

I'm just one guy, and I told just one guy after one young lady told me.

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls66bzpbWR1qegdapo1_500.gif

I just saw this last night.

The first ten minutes were great. I was so stoked for the film during the initial getaway car chase/manuevering/parking at the Basketball game/credits with synth pop/Miami Vice-esque font.

The montage of kid and mom and driver kinda made me start to get sad. And then it was just not very good from then on out. I wanted more car chases, actually. I don't find Gosling hot, either, if you can believe it!

Interesting use of hardly any guns, though. Also really gross.

i can believe it!!

yeah, he really does not seem h2 material

That mask was so silly. I still have no idea why he wears it.

Because it's CREEPY!

I thought the movie had great style and mood, though. The story just kinda didn't go the way I'd have liked it to--I guess I like your typical Hollywood crap when it comes to car movies.

no, i hear you. my ideal movie would've been a lot more like that (killer) opening sequence, though i still liked it for what it was. and you're otm about that kid/mom montage being exactly where it started to lose me

I think it was supposed to be neato that they went to some little woodsy oasis by the LA river, but it was pretty cheesy and kinda even borderline embarassing

I thought they avoided embarrassment through ritualized undercharacterization and a lack of pursuing anything really novel. Chilling at a park? Most generic human experience.

i'm with homo on this one, i kinda cringed at that part

I really liked this.

I think the mom/kid stuff served the exact purpose it was supposed to: give a searching and aimless person something to find a purpose in. I agree with whoever said it was like a comic book hero origin story.

it was very similar to Valhalla Rising i thought, just more successful, or at least the religious overtones seemed a little more moving this time.

the mask was really interesting! also tons of visual stuff going on with light/shadow--kind of in the Western mode of the hero exiling himself from the Eden he helps create.

did he really wear the mask just because it was creepy

its p creppy

I don't really need any more justification than that, tbh. its a fascinating image! I loved the slo-mo shot of Perlman grinding on some random blonde.

each to their own

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/108867adc4/drive-to-shitty-music-trailer

Watching this movie made me want to rewatch The Driver, which uh I did at work today because the entire movie is on YouTube.

^^I rescreened it on dvd the other day. Forgot how much Adjani's part consisted of looking alternately cool & scared in the cab of pickup.

i love that the descrip on the youtube vid is "the full movie of the driver enjoy"

the font was fucking awesome

^^I rescreened it on dvd the other day. Forgot how much Adjani's part consisted of looking alternately cool & scared in the cab of pickup.

― The Man With The Flavored Toothpick (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, September 28, 2011 7:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yeah adjani is just there to look pretty, but then again so is ryan o'neal (who has always struck me as a ridiculous actor). the romantic stuff in the film is completely superfluous.

i like the driver but i feel like it doesn't go all the way in the minimalist direction that is it's raison d'etre, and if it doesn't go all the way it's sort of a problem since going all the way is the point.

it's = its

I cannot comprehend ron perlman really

I've only seen o'neal in Barry Lyndon, so i probably have a very distorted view of his effectiveness.

one other thing i liked about this movie was how it was very self-referentially about Refn himself "going hollywood."