Sunday, September 21, 2014

Dark Drive Justified

So I re-watched Dark Knight Rises, and boy, it doesn't really hold up much, does it? Catwoman is pretty boring. She's feisty in a politically correct way. And her arc is she doesn't care about anybody, oh, no, wait, she does care. The only fun scenes are the ones involving Bane, and that's mostly because of his voice. If Nolan had told Hardy, no, don't do that silly voice, the whole film would have been worthless.

Drive is my first Nicolas Winding Refn film and my first Ryan Gosling film, and now I want to see all their films. Refn is like a young Ridley Scott, and Gosling has almost a Steve McQueenish vibe. The film is very stylish, but there's also a slight... emptiness? It's all pretty much surface. But that's okay now and then. Ordered Valhalla Rising.
 
Season 4 of Justified was pretty good, after the disappointing third season, but maybe not quite up to the second one. If I have a problem with the show it's that it moves so quickly. A lot of story is jammed into the 38 - 40 minutes of each episode. Slow it down, guys! Creating tension takes time.

10 comments:

  1. That Batman movie seems so unnecessary. By Ride you mean Drive, right? It's Refns most mainstream movie. The emptiness and sense of surface is some kind of trademark, I think. His newest one Only God Forgives is extremely nasty, great but somehow hard to recommend. I hope you enjoy Valhalla Rising, I think it's his greatest. More of that wonderful emptiness.

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  2. There is something about LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (2007). You should watch it.

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  3. Drive and Pusher are, in my opinion, Refn's best films by far. I find Valhalla Rising and Only God Forgives to be too pretentious for their own good, and suspect that you will too. Still, there is something fascinating about all of Refn's films, and I keep going back to them without quite knowing why.

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  4. My dvd player just decided to crash, but I got my Valhalla copy waiting. OK, will check out Pusher. I'm also curious about Bronson.

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  5. Bronson is by far my favorite of Refn's work, was incredible and Valhalla rising also good although it was a much slower ride. beautifully shot.

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  6. Will check out Bronson. Drive looked amazing. I should have seen it in a cinema, I guess. Something might be lost in watching his films on a tv screen.

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  7. Drive works well with headphones so the score pulses through your skull. And i looked at the emptiness through the lens of it being a sci-fi film and he was and android/alien.

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    1. Haven't tried headphones. Might give me a new experience of the film.

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