Movie List 2011: 43.) Contagion

Contagion
I had been wanting to see this one for a while.  Thought I had lost the chance, but a relatively slow release schedule to begin Oscar season has kept it in the theaters.  Glad I got the opportunity.  On the whole it's a gripping story of shit hitting fan.  It's also a none-too-subtle commentary on the status of humanity, and a pretty good one at that.

The premise is a familiar... and... I suppose unoriginal one.  There is a disaster, in this case a disease, and not only is the American Federal Government unprepared for it, the larger world and ALL the governments therein are similarly caught off guard.  This is a cautionary tale on what might happen.  And how worst-case scenarios will inevitably bring out the worst-versions of ourselves.

As a gripping government procedural movie, the film works.  I certainly was riveted watching it all play out.  How will they handle this?  How can they handle an epidemic on this scale?  How would I react if put in a similar situation (in terms of an ordinary member of society).  It is definitely a thought-provoking movie on that level.  As a message movie?  Ehhh... I'm not really sure what Steven Soderbergh's point was.  That the world is unprepared for a completely unknown/unknowable epidemic in the making?  That humanity will devolve into a frayed me-first "society" that would make the world of Lord of the Flies enviable?  That people will inevitably attempt to profit from this?  Well... yes.  All these are true.  People are inherently selfish.  The governments of the world aren't necessarily ready for a Spanish Flu type epidemic despite the cozy trappings of modern science.  If something on par with what happened in the movie happens in reality, in all likelihood things will get bad... and people will die.  And hysteria will ensue, governments will fumble about, and things in general will look apocalyptic.  My question back to Soderbergh: so what?  People have always been people. They will- in most cases- act with their own best interest in mind.  Just look at everyone who blows red lights.  It's a simple act, but a pretty darn selfish one too.  You'd rather risk- however small- causing a collision... or even just an inconvenience for others merely so you don't have to wait for the next green.  It happens with alarming frequency, and it is a very small sample of a very basic human selfishness.  Now, this doesn't mean that everyone in the world is a selfish troll.  Just that a lot of people are in basic ways.  It's natural.  It's a self preservation instinct.  So, again, Mr. Soderbergh, so what?  Government is unprepared.  Yep, and....?  In my view, governments would do their best to get to the bottom of things, get vaccines, and preserve as much humanity as possible.  We've been down this road before.  Yes, it can happen tomorrow, and it may be bad.

But... perhaps I'm taking this the wrong way.  Maybe Soderbergh isn't trying to make a point.  At least on a broad scale.  Maybe all he was trying to do was craft a government/societal procedural thriller.  And, as I said, to that end, the movie works.  But even there, I think Soderbergh didn't take it far enough.  Sure, people were selfish, people tried to profit, governments fumbled.  But in my mind, it was all rather tame.  I think Soderbergh missed an opportunity here to inject some really intriguing and original viewpoints here.  Cultural differences and religious viewpoints were largely ignored here.  Why not bring them out more?  It'd be an interesting angle, no?  I don't know.

I hate to say it, but as gripping as the story was, it seemed to be lacking... something.  (Very eloquent, K).  I guess what it was lacking was a bit of freshness.  Basically, it was a run-of-the-mill realistic disaster story.  Generic real world crisis happens.  Scores of humans die.  Governments hem and haw.  People grow restless.    The world starts to look pretty damn apocalyptic.  Then, depending on the mood/mindset of the individual crafting the story, things get better and lessons are learned... or humanity fails and ultimately dies... or will shortly after the end credits roll.  Contagion is very much of this mold.  Very much.  The fact that it is carried off by an exceptional cast (including Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hawkes, Marion Cotillard, Jennifer Ehle, Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, and especially scene-stealer Jude Law as a slithery blogger with a Messiah/money complex.) is, of course, much to the film's benefit.  But still, I wish there had been something more original to it.   Perhaps a different angle or as I suggested more intriguing questions.  As it stands, the movie was hardly bad.  It was quite good.  But I really feel as though Soderbergh- who is regarded as an interesting, if not auteur, filmmaker- swung and missed a bit with a great opportunity.

I also question what merits there are in raising societal anxiety for no apparent purpose.  As I mentioned before, for all the thought provocation going on, if you play forward the possible real-world analogies here, the end result you would come to... largely... is that yeah we ain't ready and it'd be hard to be.  And so we're fucked.  Yep.  So why even bring it up?...
... Because that's the realm in which the best horror/thriller flicks reside I suppose.  Hopeless reality.  Nothing scarier than that.  And... maybe that was the end Soderbergh was after all along.  And, it worked.  I've been suffering from persistent allergies for the last five years several days and I know I felt uncomfortable sniffling and coughing in the theater.  I didn't want my fellow moviegoers to fear me and the plague I held within myself. (did I feel germaphobic?  Absolutely not.  I even held my ticket stub in my mouth as I fished out my phone...during the end credits.  I guess movies just don't effect me that much on that level.  Tell you this though, I have NO interest in flying to Hong Kong anytime soon).  I could feel the people around me getting uncomfortable.  More so, than in any standard ghost/zombie horror movie I've been to.  So in that regard, well played Soderbergh, you crafted one hell of a horror movie... and... well, I guess there isn't really anything wrong with that.

Grade: A-

Movie List 2011: 42.) The Ides of March

The Ides of March

Man it feels good to have Fall Movie Season upon us.  I suppose you need the Spring/Summer Season to serve as a sort of palette cleanser... otherwise, you might be jaded by the superior quality of movies.  But- holy hell- were there some real awful movies this summer.  Honestly, though, with the run of movies I've had...excepting Abduction... it's hard to even remember the summer slop.  And Ides of March continues the upward trend... or... I guess... continues along the upward plateau (kind of hard to go up from the A+ of 50/50).

Cutting right to the chase, The Ides of March is a fantastic movie.  A political thriller/cautionary tale, it tells the riveting story of a young, hotshot campaign media manager (Ryan Gosling) who gets caught up in the less than glamorous world of a desperate presidential campaign (George Clooney plays Gov. Mike Morris, the hotshot ideologue who is either on the brink of losing the Ohio Democratic Primary or on the cusp of capturing the entire presidential election... because the Republicans haven't got a prayer)  where ideology, integrity, loyalty, and even human life are never as important as the campaign itself and should never get in the way of a chance at office.  Gosling's Stephen Meyers is a vet of political campaigns, but here he seems to have fallen for the whole Morris package (as schemed, honed, and presented by Morris' campaign manager, Paul Zara, as played by a suitably gruff Philip Seymour Hoffman).  Meyers completely buys in: Morris is a candidate of integrity, a candidate who can and will make sweeping changes, and someone who not only should be elected, but needs to be elected.  Of course, as the title alludes to, shit hits the fan, things aren't what they seem, and a series of cutthroat political games ensue:  the stakes?  Morris' chance at office and Meyers' chance at continuing his future as a campaign wunderkind.  What it all comes down to is a knock down drag out battle for survival... what- at least in the view of Clooney (the film's director)- is the essence of today's politics.

If even half the stuff that goes down in the movie is true, then not only has the American political system fallen into disrepair, one cam make an argument that American society has failed.  Clooney isn't- as far as I can tell- making accusations at any one particular candidate.  There are some ripped from the headlines scandals on display here, as well as some vague allusions to very real political candidates, but on the whole, Clooney is merely using these as plot devices.  I don't think Clooney is trying to bring anyone in specific down- so to speak- but rather to use the disrepair of the American political system as a backdrop to his engrossing (and believable) thriller.  And... the tactic works.  Or, at least in my view, it isn't as distracting as it could have been to try and figure out at whom Clooney is pointing.  Clooney is proving himself to be a master story-teller as both an actor and a director and, as such, he isn't in any need of such gimmickry to sell the story.  I was completely riveted to the screen watching to see- when the dust finally settled- who the winner was going to be... no, not of the Ohio Primary, but of the do-or-die battle of personalities waged from within the campaign as well as from the outside (including both Morris' Democratic foe Senator Pullman [Michael Mantell] and campaign team led by manager Tom Duffy [Paul Giamatti] and the press personified by the scoop-obsessed reporter, Ida Horowicz [Marisa Tomei]).  Every character has something to lose here, perhaps even more than they stand to gain should they come out on top.  To their credit, Clooney and company aren't very interested in turning this into a twisting/turning whodunit story.  No one's hand is kept entirely secret.  The treat is watching it all unfold.  And a hell of a treat it is.

In the end, with a gripping, intense story, punctuated by a stable of reliably excellent actors and actresses there really isn't much to dislike about the movie.  The winking look behind the shimmering idealistic curtain of the American political process revealing the gritty, grimy "glory" of  what "actually" can happen as acandidate desperately pursues this country's top office is the cherry on top of the fantastic movie sundae.  The only problem the movie had (other than the fleeting sense that maybe it was a bit much for one campaign to experience all that shit hitting the fan) was that it had to end... and that there really isn't any guarantee that there will be others of similar quality to follow in its wake... one can only hope...

Grade: A+

Movie List 2011: 41.) 50/50

50/50

I'm assuming everyone out there knows the premise of this one:  the comedy about cancer.  Well, that's the thumb-nail sketch version anyway.  It's true, it is a comedy about cancer.  But to leave it at that would diminish the total package that this film actually is.  What it is, is a fantastic movie- perhaps even the best I've ever seen- about what you do when everything falls to shit.  Realistically, what happens now?  The answer?  You deal.  This is a movie about how one guy (the never-better Joseph Gordon-Levitt) dealt with the shitty turn his life took.  Of course, he's helped (or hindered) along in this dealing process by the world's worst girlfriend, the world's worst best friend, the world's worst doctor, and the world's worst counselor.

Yes, these characters are- on paper- caricatures but they work well within the framework of the movie.  You know why?  Because while it would be odd for Adam (Gordon-Levitt) to have to experience all these people at the same time, they are all real people.  His girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a bit batshit crazy and can't handle his sickness so she cheats on him, his best friend (Seth Rogen) refuses to let Adam play the pity party routine... unless it's to help the two of them score a quick and easy lay, his mother (Anjelica Huston) is a first-class, self-absorbed smotherer, and his illness counselor (Anna Kendrick) is completely unprepared to make that dive from the theory world to the real world as she slowly realizes that in the latter, the case studies talk back.  In each case, these are really believable characters.  The fact that they don't slip into out-sized caricatures is due to the remarkable effort of each member of the cast and the writer (Will Reiser, fictionalizing his real-life battle with cancer) and director (Jonathan Levine).  Each of these folks show remarkable constraint and the actors a fine eye for nuance.  They don't force the absurdities here (though some of the more crass humor doesn't always flow the best), they all manage to sit back and let the story happen.  By the end, all of the characters revolving around Adam seem normal.  And that's the key.

Almost everything flows so naturally that it doesn't always feel like a comedy.  It never feels like they're setting up punchlines.  Maybe that's because- at its heart- this isn't actually a comedy.  It's more of a dramedy.  Or just an excellent movie.  I think categorizing it is almost a mistake.  If you go in expecting a typical Seth Rogen comedy, you'll get bits of it, but may be caught off guard (though hopefully not put off) by the level of sincerity and emotional complexity here.  If you go in expecting Hallmark channel sugar and inspirational and explicit messages about beating the odds, you will undoubtedly be put off by the more base aspects of the humor.  Adam isn't some pedestal-decoration hero.  He's just a guy doing what he can, feeling what he feels as he deals with a particularly scary moment of his life.  You will be touched, you will be moved, and if you're like me, you'll laugh.  And that amounts to an all-in-all great movie.

I would be remiss, however, if I didn't single out Gordon-Levitt.  All of the cast is tremendous.  As I mentioned earlier, in lesser and less nuanced hands, this could easily have devolved into a study of absurdity- "with folks like this in his life, is cancer really his biggest worry?".  The cast simply wouldn't let it.  And leading the charge in this determined effort was Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  It must have been- by turns- the easiest and most difficult part he's had to play.  Easy because the film requires him to be nothing other than a normal every guy.  Difficult because he must- in a believable manner- take the audience on a roller coaster ride of emotion. Because, in most instances, that's what would happen if any number of people were in Adam's shoes.  It didn't take long before I was completely drawn in to Gordon-Levitt's mesmerizing performance.  His take on Adam encourages empathy from the audience.  He's out there showing you exactly how Adam feels and what he's going through and the performance feels uncannily real.  I'm not sure there are many others in Hollywood today who could have gone from the highs of...well... getting high on medicinal marijuana while watching PBS to the lows of a nervous breakdown on the night before his do-or-die surgery with the nonchalant ease of Gordon-Levitt.  His finest, most heart-breaking scene is when he's visiting his parents while getting prepped for his surgery.  Just as the attendants are about to wheel him into the operating room, Adam seems to experience his moment of crushing realization.  This is, for anyone who's had to deal with a traumatic situation, a common and heart-rending occurrence.  While I have not had cancer- or any serious disease- I have lost a parent.  And, I can tell you there is hardly a more horrible, desperate feeling than when you experience that moment of crushing realization.  I watched it happen in most of my siblings during the wake/funeral process.  I experienced the feeling myself... the feeling that- fuck, this shit is real...now what?.  Gordon-Levitt displays on screen what I felt and saw.  That feeling of being absolutely overwhelmed by the moment... it is a superb scene carried out by an incredible actor giving a subtly amazing performance.  And it is every bit, in a nutshell, what this movie is all about.

Grade: A+

Movie List 2011: 40.) Abduction

Abduction


After seeing Abduction, I can only really think of three possibilities to explain what happened: 1.) John Singleton has completely lost it.  2.) John Singleton is a comic genius.  3.) John Singleton outsourced the directing of this movie to an 8th grader.  Actually, the scenario I choose to believe is going to greatly effect the final grade here.  If this really was a sincere effort on John Singleton's part, then the film is horrible.  If it really was meant to be a comedic spoof then it was passable... though I'd have to rewatch it in that frame of mind to be certain (not something I'd look forward to).  If he outsourced the direction of the movie to an 8th grader... well, then... not bad!

The real problem here is that the movie sucks.  Terribly.  The acting?  Shit.  The story?  Same old yawn-inducing, vaguely bad-smelling, but mostly inconvenient shit.  The tone or feel of the movie?  Amateurish shit.  The plot involves some kind of half-baked CIA/spy vs. spy story.  Terms like rogue asset, Level 4 (or some bs) clearance, and things of the like are bandied about.  A bad dude with a vaguely eastern European accent comes to America to hunt down the good (but maybe bad?... eh, who cares) dude for some spy-ish reason.  Taylor Lautner plays the kid stuck in the middle, trained by his CIA agent parents for the (in terms of the film, but never in real life or any close approximation therein) inevitable day when he'd have to stand on his own.  Ass-kickery- which was about the only thing the film had going for it... that is, if you're in to that sort of thing- ensues.  The end.  I'm sure there are probably more details that went into the plot, but I just don't remember what they were or why I should care.

Actually, for the better part of the movie, I was struggling to figure out if John Singleton was serious here.  The movie was so awful and so amateurish.  And Singleton?  Wasn't he the edgy bad boy sort of director who helmed such badass flicks as Boyz N the Hood, Higher Learning, and... umm.. Shaft?  According to imdb.com, this is indeed the same Singleton.  Hmmm.  Ok, so I've never seen those movies...maybe they suck too and this guy is just floating by on his undeserved reputation.  Or... maybe... imdb is wrong and this is a different Singleton.  Or maybe he just took a shit on cellophane and sold it to the studio.  Whatever.  It's unimportant.  The movie sucked in any event.  But, seriously, I kept wondering if this was just some kind of spoof.  It really kind of resembled one of those comically epic (well... that's their intention) cellphone commercials full of melodramatic overacting, overly dramatized shots, and complete with a ridiculously dramatic score.  Even those tend to fall flat- successful spoofing does require some degree of wit, you can't just blow all the cliches up to an enormous size in hopes that the sheer spectacle will win some laughs.  Here, everything is so ridiculously melodramatic, the acting so bad  (how bad was it?  It sounded like Sigourney Weaver was reading a cue card... for the first time when they shot her scenes.  Lautner just squints a lot and sounds like an over eager high school actor... and things actually go down from there.  Everyone was pretty well emotionless... except, I suppose Maria Bello... she was the only one who was dedicated/naive enough to bring her B game), the shots so forced it just felt like at the end they were going to peddle the latest HTC smartphone.  (Come to think of it, a cellphone is a major player in the movie... hmmm).  By the end of the film I had to start laughing just to keep from getting my eyes stuck at the back of my head (from all the eye rolling I was doing... no, it isn't witty if you have to explain it... maybe Singleton will let me direct his next movie... bam.)

So yeah, it sucked.  Well unless it was a spoof.  Then it was ok.  I kind of wonder why Singleton didn't at least try to peddle that off as an explanation.  Well, maybe he didn't want to embarrass his 8th grader buddy. Because... Singleton couldn't really put together something this bad...could he?  Hmmm... I suppose he just did (until he tells us otherwise)...

Grade: D-

Movie List 2011: 39.) Moneyball

Moneyball


I've always maintained that people shouldn't get their history from movies.  You want to know about the American Revolution?  Don't rely on The Patriot.  And so on... So I have to be really careful to divorce the fictionalized (or "based on a true story") story of Billy Beane presented in the movie Moneyball with the real-life account of Billy Beane, the actual General Manager of the Oakland Athletics... especially because I'm not a huge fan of Billy Beane... the real life version.  I've always kind have found him to be a bit too (damn) egotistical for my take- as though he thought that he single-handedly changed the face of baseball.  (As though he really would have if he hadn't been forced by Oakland's economic circumstances... and never mind the contributions of folks like Bill James... and never mind the fact that the whole Moneyball approach has really only worked to a point and that a hybrid of approach of traditional values blended  with the newer statistics-driven evaluation techniques is probably- in my mind anyway- a far better way to build a ball club).  But I digress.  So the issue here was for me to keep an open mind while watching the movie without getting hung up on the potential hero worship and insignificant factual mistakes/misrepresentations.

How'd I do?  Well, I liked the movie- which is a start (but also not so surprising considering I like the film's co-writer Aaron Sorkin, star Brad Pitt, and most of all baseball).  I wouldn't say it's a perfect movie by any stretch, but it was quite good.  For the most part, I think Director Bennett Miller and company do a pretty good job of avoiding too much hero worship.  It's there, but they also seem pretty unflinching when it comes to documenting Beane's all-too-evident over-inflated ego.  I can't say that I'm thrilled with the movie's premise that Beane was inspired to change the talent evaluation game within the game of baseball because a bunch of traditional scouts were wrong about him (touted as a can't-miss prospect, Beane's big league career just never took off).  I'm not 100% sold on this idea.  And I don't think the movie sold it particularly well either.  It seems to me that there would be a myriad of other reasons that the Billy Beane of the movie would want to change the system.  His own experience and the complications that arose due to the scouts getting it wrong with him would seem to be a minor factor.  The ability to change the game, financial pressure, reading the about the work of Bill James, these- to me- would serve as more plausible explanations.  In truth, it probably was a mixture of all of these factors that help drive Beane (though I still believe the fact that Oakland just didn't have the money to play by the traditional rules was the primary motivating factor) to "create" the Moneyball system.  I guess in terms of the film- which addresses Beane's history with broken evaluation structure through intermittent flashbacks- the problem with this approach is that it becomes a bit distracting to what makes the film fun to watch; that it pulls back the curtain on the behind-the-scenes world of baseball.

That well-scripted glimpse into the day-to-day life of baseball management is really the film's bread and butter.  The dialog (as typical of Sorkin) snaps, the pace is spot on, and baseball as many fantasy baseball-playing buffs would like to know it is put on full display in an incredibly enjoyable way.  My absolute favorite scene in the movie is the one where Beane is attempting to work out some trades at the trade deadline.  Most any baseball fan would LOVE to be a fly on the wall in such a situation and here Miller and crew put you in that scenario... though I doubt it's really that much fun in reality.

I guess when it comes down to it, the movie works because there are a number of scenes just like the trade-deadline scene.  The behind the scenes stuff... it just feels right.  The whole movie actually feels right.  I know that's a pretty ridiculous way to assess the movie, but I don't know how else to say it.  The movie has an outstanding feel to it.  I suppose that's created by a well-written script, excellent performances, incredible pacing, and the like.  Miller, Sorkin, and company also refrain from delving into the more sugary sweet cliches that accompany most sports movies.  The whole underdog overcoming insurmountable odds.  It's true this is an underdog story on a couple of levels, but that's not the story's one trick pony.

All that said, there were some glaring problems with the movie.  For one, the whole story might have been too recent for the film's good.  No, not because there hasn't been time to acquire the necessary space and prospective with which to properly evaluate the whole Moneyball ideology, it's actually simpler than that.   There is abundant images, video, and photos of what all these folks looked and sounded like, and aside from the fact that the look of the baseball action presented here is pretty solid, physically, not many of the people here look (or sound) a damn thing like the folks they are portraying.  This might be a petty criticism... after all, how often do any actors really resemble the actual people they are portraying?  Not all that often, I suppose, but being as aware (as a HUGE baseball fan) of what these people looked like, it was pretty distracting wondering who they could have gotten that would have looked the part better.  (the biggest culprits?  Stephen Bishop playing David Justice and Royce Clayton playing Miguel Tejada... .... ok, so I don't remember actually seeing Royce Clayton in the movie, but he was listed in the cast credits... and it is that Royce Clayton- the one that played a decade of major league ball... and I can tell you, they don't look a thing like each other.  So they used one of Tejada's peers...one that doesn't look especially like him.... to play Tejada... why not just get Tejada?  Couldn't have been any worse playing a younger version of himself on screen than he was this past year playing the current version of himself on the field).   Among the other minor flubs were the fact that the film seems to suggest that Beane's young daughter Casey wrote and recorded the song "The Show" (actually written/recorded by Aussie folkster Lenka... and released something like 5 years after the movie takes place).  And the fact that they claimed that rookie 1B Carlos Pena was having a monster/incredible year when he was traded away to force manager Art Howe to buy into the Moneyball method.  While Pena was a promising young talent, he was NOT having an all-star start to the year.  Hitting .218 with something like 7 home runs and 18 RBI at the time he was dealt?  Wasn't going to be elected to any all star team with those numbers.

You know what?  These are all pretty well petty criticisms.  Splitting hairs really.  The fact is that the film isn't perfect.  But, you know, it was damn good.  And that's plenty enough for me.

Grade: A-

Movie List 2011: 38.) Drive

Drive

I have got to start writing these things in a more timely manner.  Gets kind of hard to write reviews after a couple of weeks... a couple subsequent movie viewings stacked on top... and a ten day vacation.  Oh well, nothing I can do now but give this my best effort going forward...

So yeah, Drive.  In a word, awesome.  A great movie.  Loved the hell out of it...as much as anyone can love the hell out of a super intense, ultra violent crime caper flick.  But then, when you have a movie this well made, I suppose the subject matter isn't as much of a concern as the artistry on screen.  In any event, Drive is definitely the best movie I had seen in months... not that that's saying much.  But there you have it.

Put another way, Drive is every bit the movie that the 2010 George Clooney flop The American could and possibly should have been.  The two are rather similar movies: both feature an undercurrent that focuses on the somewhat desolate isolation of the main characters, both are shot in an artistic way, and so on and so forth.  Where Drive manages to come out ahead is in its story-telling.  Nicolas Winding Refn manages to build an incredible slow burning intensity into Drive whereas Anton Corbijn allows for an overwhelming and yawn-inducing mopiness to smother his film.  Where Drive's Ryan Gosling is absolutely mesmerizing, riveting viewers to the screen with his every move, George Clooney aimlessly floated through his story, as though he was waiting for the end credits to catch up to his state of mind.  Clooney's Jack/Edward character could definitely have used a sip of whatever it was that Gosling's Driver character was drinking to cast aside that perpetual sulk.

Actually, what also separates the two films is the supporting cast.  Here, again, Corbijn and company do the film no favors.  Where Clooney's Jack/Edward is left to hopelessly interact with the likes of a platitude-spouting clergyman, Gosling's Driver gets to spar with Albert Brooks' and Ron Perlman's gangster's and Bryan Cranston's excellent take on Driver's mentor/agent/manager whose only luck seems to be bad...or worse.  All the actors here work together to further the film's slow burning intensity without ever bringing a hammy-ness to the screen that would have killed such momentum.  It's a great recipe for a great film.  I imagine it would have been easy to sprinkle the movie with chronic over-actors hell-bent on smacking the audience over the head with the idea that there is some intense shit going down here.  (Even though I love him, insert Jeremy Piven for Albert Brooks and you'd essentially achieve the end I'm describing here... and ruin the movie at the same time).  Instead, Refn hands the screen over to actors content to issue performances of a rather cool restraint- much to the film's benefit.  Subtlety would seem to be the key here.

I'm probably doing Drive a major disservice my comparing it to a far inferior movie in The American.  I guess the question I should be asking is whether Drive holds up in its own right.  Yes, it does.  Absolutely.  The story is riveting, the performances are easily top-notch (including the heretofore unmentioned Carey Mulligan who seems utterly incapable of coming off as anything other than charming, fresh, and- of course- cute... in fact almost too cute here), and the tone is right.  I guess it says something that you can pretty much figure out generally where the movie has to inevitably head and yet you find yourself completely riveted to the screen.  It occurs to me that I've done a shitty job of explaining the plot- what the story actually is- even though I keep insisting that it is pretty fantastic. I can try to give it a go here.  Drive follows the story of a young man (Ryan Gosling) scraping by in the double life of a Hollywood stunt driver and automobile mechanic (by day) and criminal getaway driver (by occasional night).  The kid- known only as "the driver" or "kid" in the movie- seems resigned to this hardscrabble life of relative isolation surrounded by two-bit gangsters (including his unlucky mentor/agent/manager Shannon- played in an incredible performance by Bryan Cranston.  By the end you can just smell the desperation brought on by a lifetime of missteps... and an utter refusal to learn from the past).  In fact, for the most part during the onset of the movie, you never can quite get at what makes the driver tick- other than the thrill of the chase.  He's a blank slate wandering through his days and nights unless he's behind the wheel of a car particularly when he's outwitting hopeless police pursuers.  All this seems to change when he meets and starts falling for his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son (Kaden Leos).  All at once a new side of the kid emerges, one that burns for something other than the thrill of the chase, one that sees a need to perhaps leave the life of scraping by behind, one that sees a need to take care of the young woman and her son.  It is this desire to take care of and provide for Irene that leads to driver getting mixed up in a crime caper that puts him in over his head (Driver is typically the one in control- which is just the way he needs things) leading to a violent, high stakes game of cat and mouse with some petty gangsters (Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman).  As you can probably guess, bad things end up happening here. For a bundle of different people too.  As I've said, as you watch the movie, you generally can get a sense of exactly where the movie needs to end up, but even such as that is, you can't force yourself to look away... even if you wanted to.  And that is the mark of expert acting and storytelling.

Much has been made of how shockingly- if casually- violent the movie is.  And it is that.  But I didn't find it so over the top as to be distracting.  Maybe that's just because I was completely drawn in by Gosling's (in particular, but also the rest of the cast) completely engrossing performance.  Or maybe I'm just completely desensitized to violence of such a scale (and am a doomed, lost soul).  What ever the case may be,  I'd hope that folks could manage to quit focusing on trivial matters like the level of violence featured here and tune in to a much more important concern such as exactly how incredible the movie is on the whole.

Grade: A+