Drive: Grade A

A
Drive (2011)

Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Oscar Isaac; Director Nicolas Winding Refn.

Gosling is a young, impoverished, ex-con Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver for burglaries. He befriends a single mom neighbor (Mulligan) and maybe there is a romantic interest there too, but her husband comes home from prison and it is tense. Nevertheless, when the husband gets caught in an extortion deal, the driver agrees to drive for him on one last heist, which, predictably, goes wrong. But Gosling ends up with the money so now the mob is after him and Mulligan too. He fights to freedom in several gruesomely bloody scenes, but realizes he is “no good” for the girl and drives away into the sunset (severely wounded).

What makes the movie good is Gosling’s very quiet performance, which I attribute to excellent directing as much as excellent acting. The book is extremely terse, with not a single spare word, and that economy is transferred to the screen in spare dialog, a perfect artistic choice. Gosling has hardly any dialog, expressing his moods and thoughts through subtle facial gestures and big dramatic actions, like decapitating a guy by repeatedly stomping on his neck. Usually, it is only mature actors who have the skill and the courage to act quietly though. It is a pleasure to watch Gosling perform. Albert Brooks, who usually grates my nerves, does a completely believable job. Mulligan has a terrible, passive role, so she doesn’t have much to do but look beautiful, which she does well.

The photography is outstanding, including the difficult inside-the-car shots, and the music is tense but not too intrusive. The director keeps the action tension very high. The car chases are not too clichéd, but at times hard to follow, like how, exactly Driver got undetected to the freeway underpass to hide from the helicopter. The cars look and sound good, too, Bullet-esque for the Mustang. The main problem is the driver’s character, which unaccountably drifts from earnest, sensitive mechanic and friend, to cold-blooded psychopathic killer. In the end, he apparently realizes his own psychopathy and that’s why he leaves town, but that doesn’t explain who he was when we met him. It’s a violent, bloody movie, not for everyone, but a thoroughly entertaining action film.

Please Give: Grade B

B

Please Give (2010)

Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Rebecca Hall, Oliver Platt, Sarah Steele, Ann Morgan Guilbert; Writer-Director Nicole Holofcener.

This film is almost a remake of Holofcener’s “Friends With Money,” another talky-comedy, which was set in LA. This one takes place in Manhattan and has a Woody-Allen feel. Two families are neighbors in a condo. The Keener-Platt couple (and their daughter Steele) have bought the neighboring apartment but allow the old lady living there (Guilbert) to remain as a tenant until she dies. She is tended to by her daughters Hall and Peet.

So what happens? Nothing. In the end, the old lady dies and the Keener-Platts take possession of her apartment as expected. There is no dramatic story line running through this film. Instead, it is about the characters, but they do not develop much over the course of the film. So what that leaves you is a set of little portraits or vignettes. But these characters are ordinary, white, affluent, moderately educated, generally uninteresting people. So this seems like a setup for an extremely boring movie, except that the acting is stellar and the script is moderately witty.

All these actors are so strong that you don’t really care that there is basically no story, no dramatic tension. Little quotidian things do happen, such as the two sisters, Hall and Peet bickering, Platt cheating on Keener, the daughter Steele wanting expensive jeans her mother won’t buy, the anxiety of how much money one should give street people. None of it builds story or character, and none of it contributes to a contemporary theme you could name. But again, the writing is sharp and the acting mesmerizing, and that’s enough to carry the picture.

The Boss of it All: Grade A

A
The Boss of it All (2006)
Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler. Writer-Director: Lars von Trier. Danish, subtitled.

The owner (Gantzler) of a small, featureless IT company in Denmark is about to sell to an Icelandic buyer. The owner has always represented himself merely as the local manager, with the real boss being an American who never visits Denmark. That way he could avoid responsibility for implementing difficult decisions on his staff. He has over the years manufactured memos from the big boss. But the new buyer insists on signing with the big boss, so the owner hires an out of work actor (Albinus) to play the part, issuing him temporary power of attorney. The actor walks in totally unprepared but survives bizarre conversations in which he has no idea what is going on, by seeming skillfully terse. “Have you seen the numbers?” “Of course I’ve seen the numbers.” “Well, are they good?” “The numbers are shit.” “But your memo said they were good.” “Not good enough.” This is a funny premise and leads to many humorous and sophisticated scenes.

The main theme focuses on the employees’ helpless trust in the boss. There is an ethical subtheme about the owner’s duplicity. There is a satisfying denoument. The sets and colors are cold, like the work environment itself. It is snowing outside, the trees are bare, the walls are blue and the furniture is that God-awful teak and “7-chair” motif. Although that may be normal furniture in Denmark, it looked uncomfortable, cold and harsh. There was some interesting political hostility between the Icelandic buyer and the Danish owner, but not all of it was translated. I would have liked more focus on those tensions, but this is supposed to be a comedy. There was some deliciously ironic commentary on what constitutes good acting, which may have been the main point of the film, but the topic was not highlighted enough to make it shine. According to an interview in The Guardian, von Trier used an “Automavision” camera, in which a computer introduces arbitrary cuts and tilts into each scene, so the overall effect is jumpy, as if a really bad editor had been at work. Maybe it was a vaguely humorous allusion to von Trier's Dogma days. It was interesting, but I didn’t see how it contributed to this light, not-too-funny, but richly engaging comedy.

The Lives of Others: Grade A

A
The Lives of Others (2006)

Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Muhe. Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. German, Subtitled.

Five years before the fall of the Wall, the GDR Stasi spies on its citizens. A prominent playwright (Koch) and his star actress (Gedeck) are targeted by the police for surveillance. The apartment is bugged and the captain in charge of listening (Muhe) waits for incriminating talk. There is none. But he learns that the reason for the surveillance on the playwright is that a fatcat higher-up government minister lusts for the actress, not because of any threat to state security. The movie describes the character transformation of the captain as he slowly comes to sympathize with his prey. It is a tremendous story once you accept that he is capable of that radical change so quickly. It’s not psychologically believable, but every great story hinges on a lie, and that is a relatively small one. Excellent directing, costumes and sets. A DVD extra explains why night scenes are shot through a yellow, instead of a traditional blue filter (it looks a lot better, too). The music is wonderful, the acting thoroughly compelling and the historical theme relevant to modern Germany, and by analogy, modern America.

The Dead Girl: Grade A

A

The Dead Girl

Toni Collette, Piper Laurie, Giovanni Ribisi, Rose Byrn, Mary Steenburgen, Marcia Gay Harden, Mary Beth Hurt, Kerry Washington. Writer-Director: Karen Moncrieff

A dead girl is found in a pasture. Five scenarios ensue showing the ripple effects into other people’s lives. All feature some kind of sub-psychotic mental disorder: clinical depression, substance abuse, psychopathy, and various severe personality disorders. It is interesting that on the DVD extras, the interviewed actors “explain” their characters as being tested by hard life and tough breaks but nobody, including the director, mentions mental abnormality. It’s hard to believe that is such a blind spot. Without that theme, there would be no movie because healthy people do not act like this. But as a writer/director’s gimmick, it justifies surreal acting. Kerry Washington as a hooker is astonishing. Newcomer Rose Byrne is completely absorbing. Toni Collette is so good she gives you the creeps. Marcia Gay is wonderful. Photography and directing are outstanding, especially a favorite fixed camera shot into one room from another room. I don’t know how the depth of field is controlled on those. Moncrieff has done mostly TV shows and that probably accounts for the episodic nature of the story, but the overall theme does unfold in an organic way. Only the mistaken identity of the girl in the morgue rings a false note. If you love good acting, this is the one.