What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Fourteen! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movies to stream, rent or buy from the comfort of home isolation. Today, a coming of age story, a comic playing against type and the secret history of disco. #Pariah #Drive #The SecretHistoryofDisco
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Give the gift of Ryan Gosling for Christmas! Or at least a replica of the cool scorpion jacket he wore in “Drive” from steadyclothing.com. Wear it and try to resist the urge to beat the hell out of people in restaurants!
For more info click HERE!
The key piece of dialogue in “Drive,” a new thriller starring Ryan Gostling, happens early on before any of the hard core action begins. Bernie Rose, a shady character played by Albert Brooks extends his hand to Gostling. The younger actor stares at the gesture of friendship for a moment before declining to shake. “My hands are a little dirty,” he says. “So are mine,” replies Rose.
That quick conversation tells us that nobody in this movie is above boards and they don’t care who knows it.
Gostling is a man with no name, simply known as Driver, a movie stunt driver/grease monkey by day and get-a-way wheelman by night. Befriending his neighbors Irene (Carey Mulligan) and young son Benicio (Kaden Leos, who dials the cute kid factor way up) he makes a deal to drive get-a-way for some criminals to square a debt Irene’s husband ran up and safeguard the mother and child. When the deal goes bad he unwittingly becomes involved in a treacherous situation involving Irene’s recently paroled husband, one million dollars in cash and some angry mobsters.
“Drive” is an art house thriller. It’s stylized, with lighting effects, lots of slow motion and interesting camera angles that create a sense of unease that permeates every scene. For every instance of brutal violence director Nicolas Winding Refn (“Valhalla Rising,” “Bronson”) also escalates the movie’s sense of heightened reality. Very long pauses punctuate most every exchange of dialogue and how is it that no one seems to notice that the Driver is drenched in blood as he walks through a tony Chinese restaurant? “Drive” exists in its own world, and it is a fascinating place.
Here Gostling isn’t the easy charmer of “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” he plays Driver like a coiled spring. There hasn’t been a leading man this close-mouthed since Rudolph Valentino was the king of the silent screen. He’s a man of very few words, but his silence hints at an active inner life and his actions certainly speak to having a past. It’s a brave and strange performance, either emotionally shut down, or simply cool-as-a-cucumber, take your pick.
As for his co-stars, Mulligan isn’t given much to do except use her subtly expressive face to make physical whatever is going on in her head, but Albert Brooks, cast against type as a mobster and Bryan Cranston as an unlucky garage owner are stellar. Refn clearly loves his actors, stroking them in long close-ups, allowing the camera to luxuriate on their faces. It’s the exact opposite of what we usually find in thrillers, but here it adds atmosphere and star power.
“Drive” is long-on silence and big on anti-heroes, and is one of the most intriguing movies of the year so far.
Albert Brooks has a new obsession. “I hate to say I put more thought into it than it deserves,” he says.
His new hobby? Twitter, that one-hundred-and-forty-character microblog has captivated the actor since the release of his last book, 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America, in April of this year.
“I started for real practical reasons,” he says. “Like trying to say, ‘Hey, I’ll be at a bookstore in Manhattan, come and say hello,’ and then I found it was an interesting way to see a headline and have a feeling about it and make a comment on the Republican debate. I used to call my friends and do these lines.”
He muses on his everyday life, with a comic twist. “Great time in Toronto,” he tweeted about his recent trip to the Toronto International Film Festival. “Great people. If you can make it here you can make it….well, in most parts of Canada.” Short and sardonic, the tweets are worth a read, but their short form goes against his usual style.
“As I said in one of my early tweets, ‘Twitter is turning us all into Bob Hope,” because my whole comedy career was as the anti-Hope. I liked to take seven minutes to tell you something and now I’m back to, ‘Liz looked out the door!’ “My shoes are wet!’ The real test of twitter will be to see if I can ever write in long form again. If it’s killed me, it’s been the devil.”
One thing he’ll certainly be tweeting about this weekend is Drive, the new film he co-stars in with Hollywood it-boy Ryan Gosling.
Unlike his best known roles—like Aaron Altman in Broadcast News or Marlin the clownfish in Finding Nemo—he’s not playing it for laughs this time. In this stylish crime drama he is a shady character named Bernie Rose. In an early scene Gosling declines a handshake from Rose. The younger actor stares at the gesture of friendship for a moment before declining to shake. “My hands are a little dirty,” he says. “So are mine,” replies Rose.
It’s a great scene which tells us that nobody in this movie is above boards and it’s something different for the actor.
“The same twelve people play all the roles,” he says. “Even though you may like an actor, there’s no surprise anymore. When Edward G. Robinson came on-screen you knew what he was going to do. So the fact that [director] Nicolas [Winding Refn] thought this was a good idea worked for everybody. I wanted to try something different. It doesn’t let the audience know one hundred percent just because they see me. As a matter of fact, they might even think something different. It’s always a good thing in movies if you can do that and pull it off.”
His performance is getting great buzz—he even manages to upstage Gosling—and says it is a movie that sticks with you. After seeing it for the first time he couldn’t get it out of his head.
“Both my wife and I, like four days later, said, ‘Are you still thinking about this?’ I don’t know why. I’ve been trying to figure it out. I said to Nicolas, ‘I felt like I’ve had a dream. The movie started and ended and where did I go?’ Nicolas consciously talks about movies like that. He says dreams are 94 minutes in length, and has all sorts of theories, but whatever it is, it sticks there.”
Want to know more about the movie? Check out his twitter feed at @AlbertBrooks.
Richard: 4 ½ STARS
Ned: 5 STARS
SYNOPSIS: Ryan Gostling is Driver, a movie stunt driver/grease monkey by day and get-a-way wheelman by night. Befriending his neighbors Irene (Carey Mulligan) and young son Benicio (Kaden Leos) he makes a deal to drive get-a-way for some criminals to square a debt Irene’s husband ran up and safeguard the mother and child. When the deal goes bad he unwittingly becomes involved in a treacherous situation involving Irene’s recently paroled husband, one million dollars in cash and some angry mobsters.
Metro World News Hollywood Correspondent Ned Ehrbar sits in for Mark Breslin this week.
Richard: Ned, Gostling isn’t the easy charmer of Crazy, Stupid, Love, he plays Driver like a coiled spring. There hasn’t been a leading man this close-mouthed since Rudolph Valentino was the king of the silent screen. He’s a man of very few words, but his silence hints at an active inner life and his actions certainly speak to having a past. It’s a brave and strange performance, either emotionally shut down, or simply cool-as-a-cucumber, take your pick.
Ned: Definitely the strong silent type. But I guess if your best friend is a scheming, motor-mouthed deadbeat like Shannon (Bryan Cranston), you learn to keep your mouth shut. The expression Gosling has on his face most of the time seems just as likely to turn in to a smirk or have him burst into tears, making him fascinatingly impossible to read. But he certainly knows when to put his foot down. So to speak. As electrifying has Gosling’s toothpick-chewing Driver is, the performance that impressed me the most was Albert Brooks as former movie producer and current mob boss Bernie Rose. I never thought I’d the sight of the star of “Lost in America” would fill me with dread, but there you go.
RC: Albert Brooks walks away with the movie in his blood stained hands. Gosling, Mulligan and Bryan Cranston are all great, but the character you remember is the ex-movie producer-turned-gangster Rose. He delivers what may be the best bad guy line of the year. When Gosling’s character refuses to shake his hand because his hands are dirty from working Rose says, “So are mine.” Great stuff.
NE: The only real criticism I’d make of Brooks is his performance makes Ron Perlman’s character, Rose’s less well-spoken partner Nino, stand out for being so conventional. But that’s really about the only complaint I can put against the film. Every shot is artfully composed, and the tension-filled sequences of Gosling waiting for his getaway driving gigs to begin will make you reconsider how long you can hold your breath. And the music — I’ve been listening to the soundtrack every day since it was released last week.
RC: It’s funny that a movie that values silence so much—there are l-o-n-g pauses in the dialogue—has such a great soundtrack, but there you go, just another surprising thing about an unconventional but intriguing movie.
