Drive

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn

Starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks, Oscar Isaac, and Albert Brooks

It’s difficult not to have massively built-up expectations of this film, which by virtue of its international acclaim and grand showing at Cannes this year had promised to either be a cinematic triumph or a massive letdown.

At the end of the movie I thought the former and Martyn the latter. I left the house thinking we’d simply get boozy, watch Ryan Gosling brutalise a few people and do some fancy driving, have a nightcap, and call it an evening. Instead I was treated to an hour-long drunken tirade about what bollocks the movie was and a midnight footnote resembling: “I hope you write a balanced review.”

Because I am a gracious person and a conscientious friend, I am going to write this chronicle in call-and-answer format. In plain writing will be my thoughts about the movie and what I appreciated in it and in bold what I imagine Martyn would have to say about this being the shittiest film we’ve seen yet and why everyone involved in the production must die.

Nameless young Driver (Ryan Gosling) is a wayfaring stranger and strict adherent to voluntary simplicity working as a mechanic, stuntman, and moonlighting as a getaway driver for whoever pays the piper and plays by his rules. His fatal flaw is a soft spot he develops for neighbour Liz (Carey Mulligan) and her son Benicio (Kaden Leos). They become his link to the world and a chance at redemption, even though he would never ask for it outright.  When Liz’s ne’er-done-good husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from jail, money-hungry thugs inevitably come calling and the Driver’s attachment to the family gets him in deeper than he expected.

The only thing deeper than expected in this movie was the stage of sleep I fell into.

In terms of genre, tone, and style, Drive had me from the word “go.” Director Nicolas Winding Refn stays true to his neo-noir influences, painting a bleak portrait of a shady and unforgiving Los Angeles. A cliché in itself, granted: gritty realism is the name of the game here, and Refn has it down pat. Film-noir has never been a world megalomaniac villains, superhuman ass-kickers, or black-and-white morality and loyalties. It is about a hapless player unable to insulate himself from disaster. It is about survival of the fittest in a world that punishes error swiftly and brutally. When your back is against the wall morality goes right out the window. This sense of helplessness is conveyed perfectly not only in the Driver’s quiet and violent determination but also in Albert Brooks’ against-type crime boss Bernie Rose, a villain who is fearsome and lethal by necessity, not by choice or out of sadism.

Oh please! Only an American could have made this movie. It tries so hard to be European – whatever the fuck that means anymore – but fails miserably. The most European thing about it was that there were pizzas in a scene or two. The sparse dialogue and dark shots of Los Angeles are meant to telegraph some sort of depth but frankly I’ve been in deeper swimming pools. Film-noir? More like film-shit.

As an avowed fan of the lone gunman mystique, Ryan Gosling roped me in as the stoic, mysterious, steely-eyed anti-hero, joining the ranks of Alain Delon’s Samourai, George Clooney’s American, and Forest Whitaker’s Ghost Dog in an immutable canon of strong, silent, deadly protagonists. He is a sly actor with a profound understanding of the genre and he walks the line between protector and destroyer in flawless, compelling form.

Gosling: Moody when he should have been nudie

Christ on a bike! That wasn’t acting. He smirks and grunts his way through this movie and he doesn’t even get his cock out! If this were actually a European movie, from France or Denmark or something, he would have gotten his cock out. I cannot believe I paid 12 quid to see Ryan Gosling wearing a fucking scorpion jacket for two hours.

Refn’s sparing, tactical use of action, sound, and violence is nothing short of masterful. For a crime thriller, the first hour of Drive is remarkably uneventful, although not without purpose. Ever so carefully, Refn builds and aura of menace an impending catastrophe, a powder keg of nefarious alliances and blood money threatening to explode at any minute. The tension in this movie is drawn out like a tightrope and Refn milks it by dropping long periods of ominous silence in the middle of Drive’s heist scenes, making palpable the trepidation of the characters involved.

Not a single good car chase in the whole bloody movie! They should have called it Parked. I have never before in my life fallen asleep in a movie and I nodded off completely in the first 10 minutes of this one, during that whole opening “car chase” scene.

You were drunk.

I wasn’t! I wasn’t even tired. As an action movie this blows more pole than Liam Fox in a room full of Scottish underclassmen. You’re a cowbag.

Stop. Hammertime.

While the movie is shockingly brutal, it is so in short jabs, just enough to allow the audience to understand the lengths to which the Driver and his nemeses are willing to go, and a disturbing reminder of the darkness that lies in all of them. As with all great storytelling, the threat of violence proves infinitely more effective and nerve-wracking than its overuse.

The violence didn’t work at all. What, I’m supposed to be impressed because Ryan stomps on a few people and gets his face covered in blood? Limp-wristed at best. It was as satisfying as watching a Hasidic porno.

To be fair, the music in this film was fucking awful.

So. Fucking. Awwwful.

Damage: 3/10 (Pre-movie: 1 pint Guinness, 1 measure Bowmore 15yo; During: 4 x 250 ml Grolsch)

Boozy Rating: 6/10 (A fantastic movie but there’s really no added value in seeing it drunk)

The Three Musketeers

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Starring Logan Lerman, Matthew MacFadyen, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Mads Mikkelsen, Christoph Waltz, Milla Jovovich, Juno Temple, Freedie Fox, and Orlando Bloom.

After last week’s dose of seriousness, it was time to get back on the debauchery track with guest movieboozer Becky.

Those of you who know me also know that I have a staunch “no chicks” policy when it comes to boozy Wednesday. This goes back to late last year when my hoss James and I decided to bring our respective dates to boozy Tuesday (as it was known at the time) and it was like they needed to have the rules explained to them. The two were essentially competing to have the highest profile with their outdoor-voice jibber-jabber. In all my years of movie drinking I have never once been thrown out of a theatre and bringing broads on a boozy Tuesday excursion nearly brought the streak to a bitter end. Everyone loves a drunk, but no one loves a loud, obnoxious one.

Wednesdays: 1; Broads: 0

It was meant to be a sober night, but The Three Musketeers was the only film playing at an appropriate hour and there was no way I was sitting through that piece of shit cold sober. The decision turned out to be a good one, with that movie now joining my ever-expanding “Things one mustn’t do sober” list along with swimming, trans-Atlantic flights, and donating blood (it doubles the drunk instantly and it’s FREE!!).

A reboot of Alexandre Dumas’ swashbuckling classic, The Three Musketeers revolves around a 17^th century trio of King Louis’ guard who refuse to throw down arms after their regiment is disbanded. They choose instead to become outlaws and antagonise the power-hungry Caridnal Richilieu as he tries to expand his influence and seize France’s reins.

1993: Fencing

2011: Winning

Several adaptations of the film have been made and this one had me wishing for the good old days when Kiefer and Charlie Sheen ruined people’s shit. Let me repeat that: this made me wish I were at a Disney movie with Charlie Sheen in it. To his credit, the guy has fucking Tiger Blood ™ and porked Denise Richards for a good coupla years but a heroic French swordsman he is not. You know your day is done when Ashton Kutcher is filling your shoes (and getting stronger ratings). The good news is he’s probably so coked out of his mind he thinks he’s being Punk’d and he’ll return to set soon enough.

Come hither, Fräulein

All digressions aside, however, this is probably the silliest, most absurd movies ever made in terms of historical shenanigans, ham-fisted dialogue, tedious rivalries, and its multiple distortions of the laws of physics. For serious, if Albert Einstein had been sitting in the back row at this movie I would have gone over to give him a huge hug and tried to feed him consolation beer, both because The Three Musketeers single-handedly undoes the progress humankind has made in the last century and the prospect of seeing Einstein ripped, heckling North London girls and asking if they’d like to take a ride on his lip-ferret is probably the funniest thing I would ever see. I swear, I would die happy.



Instead of exclusively rocking the Hatorade™ on this movie and acting all clever in my derision of it (as critics do), I’m going to praise its drunken value. Milla Jovovich made enough appearances to keep DrunkBen happy, Orlando Bloom is fun to throw popcorn at, you can guffaw at ANY MOMENT during this movie (believe me you’ll want to) and it won’t be objectionable, and the actors who play King Louis and d’Artagnan in this movie are such a laughable little bitches that you’ll feel warm and secure in your manhood by the end credits. For serious, King Louis’ most pressing concern throughout the entire film is what colour to wear.

Any gayer and he'd be a picnic basket

I must again caution you against seeing this movie sober; the results could be catastrophic. During one of the action set-pieces (none of which are eventful, somehow) I heard some hella loud gunfire behind me and thought “Nice! The fucking surround sound is kicking in! This movie is awesome!” But as it turns out some poor bastard four rows behind me had nothing to drink and decided to eat a bullet, exit stage left Hemingway-style. Mad props to him for holding out as long as he did. Thrust into the same position I would have bought 37 boxes of Junior Mints and committed Type II Diabetes suicide or asked an overweight person in the cinema to sit on my chest until I died of positional asphyxiation.

The movie is long so bring lots of beer with you and maybe a catheter. Becky and I had great laughs during the first few acts until she passed out cold in her seat around the 74^th minute, awoke on the 92^nd and spent the rest of the flick in the ladies’ room. So the “no chicks” rule is back on, sisters. Maybe I’ll consider some applications next year.

Damage: 4/10 (Pre-movie: 3 measures Glenkinchie 12yo; During: 2 x 500 ml Heineken)

Boozy rating: 8/10 (Don't get me wrong, it's a shit film but an absolute boozy guilty pleasure)

Next week: Drive 

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
Starring Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei, Analeigh Tipton, John Carroll Lynch, Josh Groban, and Kevin Bacon

Change of pace this week: it’s going to be a serious review.

To be frank, I was expecting a regular old boozy Wednesday dotted with episodes of Martyn collapsing drunk over rows of unsuspecting moviegoers and me forgetting where I lived and asking the guy at the Kebab shop if he could provide directions to “please which way is me home? I… home? Ben?”

Instead we ended up remaining relatively sober and seeing a terrific movie. Never too late to teach an old dog new tricks, I guess.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a simple tale, some may call it worn, but rendered in a way that is sweet, contemporary, unpretentious, and heart-warming. A brilliant opening scene shows us Cal (Steve Carell) and Emily (Julianne Moore) at the tail end of a 25-year marriage, surrounded by youthful romance and bankrupt of their own. Within a two minutes of the WB Production logo leaving the screen, Emily is confessing her extra-marital dalliances and asking for a divorce. Cold as ice, right? I had just cracked open my first Peroni. This woman, clearly, was not a time-waster.

Carell: learning the tricks of the trade

The rest of the movie evolves out of Cal’s ensuing tailspin, which lands him devastated in a nouveau-riche California lounge bar observing modern-day Don Juan Jacob (Ryan Gosling) working his magic on any woman around and getting pick of the litter night after night. Jacob, as it turns out, has also noted Cal’s sad-sack antics and, for nebulous reasons of his own, offers to take the new bachelor under his wing.

Married in his late teens, Cal has never had to think twice about dating and sex appeal. Now thrust back onto the market by the slickest womanizer this side of the Sierra Madre, Cal proves to be quick study and more of a catch than he thought possible. 

Unfairly pigeonholed as a supporting or TV actor, Carell here reminds us just how lovely he is as a leading man, and how strong yet subtle a performance he can give in the hands of the right screenplay and director. He never goes over the top with his comedy or his portrayal of a man in total emotional disarray. An early scene where he drives young babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton) home having just split from his wife is spectacular in terms of how much weight Carell can deliver when only saying a few words (and being filmed over-the-shoulder, no less).

Carell and Moore: effortless chemistry

Although Cal becomes an able lady-killer in his own right, the movie is, at its core, about the pursuit of romantic love and turns people take on the road to it. It's about him finding his way back home.

Crazy, Stupid, Love takes viewers completely by surprise and separates itself from other like-genre movies in a number of ways. For starters: it is a film without villains. None of these people have set out to harm others; even Kevin Bacon’s homewrecking accountant David Lindhogen is somewhat pitiable in his cuckolding of Cal. Even though the movie is unabashed in its love-conquers-all paradigm, it acknowledges the complications of relationships in a modern world, even when none of the parties involved are malicious in the slightest.

The film is also a rare character-driven rom-com, as opposed to plot existing merely as a vehicle for coupling some eight-figure salary movie stars and dropping lame humour like breadcrumbs along the way. Even Jacob – whose appearances are brief and could have been mishandled by a lesser actor – is three-dimensional and sufficiently tragic in his opulence and solitary malaise that the audience invests in his character too.

Gosling and his winning smile

2011 is Ryan Gosling’s year and he is, yet again, a triumph in this film. A testament to his versatility and onscreen charisma, he is as effective, credible, and human as a trust-fund lounge lizard in light romantic-comedy as he is in heavier fare like Drive or Half Nelson. Even more commendable is his enduring sex-symbol status, since he’s one of the few celebrities who have properly earned it. Unlike Brad Pitt or Hugh Jackman (who, let’s face it, were just born pretty and aged gracefully), Gosling has a young puppydog face (a bit lopsided, even), is not formidably tall or broad, and doesn’t possess strong distinguishing features. What he does have is attitude. He has singular control over his image, his physical presence on camera, and can exude sex appeal on command. As Lars (of Lars and the Real Girl), he is utterly convincing as a completely repressed and introverted small-towner, whereas this latest incarnation of a 21^st century lothario looks sexy eating a slice of takeout pizza. He is seriously one of the great actors of his generation.

While not groundbreaking, Crazy, Stupid, Love is funny and brilliantly acted and fearlessly optimistic. You can’t help but love it.

Next week: The Three Musketeers

Friends With Benefits

Directed by Will Gluck

Starring Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis, Patricia Clarkson, Woody Harrelson, Jenna Elfman, and Richard Jenkins

I feel like this is the second time this flick has been made in the last 12 months. There was that No Strings Attached silliness earlier this year, wherein a small, clever, feisty brunette (Natalie Portman) and a tall, dark, handsome, driven professional (Ashton Kutcher) start bumping their junk together under the guise of platonic fluid exchanges devoid of the entanglements and emotional investment that relationships entail. The punchline: they get entangled. What a curveball. Watching these people write movie scripts is like watching George W. Bush play Simon™ on medium difficulty; it’s strong and unsettling evidence that we’re really not so far removed from monkeys and apes and stuff.

Friends With Benefits (down to its title) is a lather, rinse, repeat affair starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake as the titular junk-bumping friends, and while I’ll readily acknowledge a posteriori that the movie itself is limp-wristed, my intentions in seeing it were absolutely, 100% legit. Because I keeps it real like that.

"I just need better pattern recognification!"

Before I get into the bulk of the review, here’s the scoop for all you haters: Justin Timberlake is basically one of the hardest, iciest motherfuckers alive (perhaps second only to Vin Diesel, who admits to playing Dungeons & Dragons and is still somehow hard as fuck). Here’s what I’m talking about. Do you remember when Britney Spears was young? And I’m not talking about the In the Zone, 55-hour marriage young Britney; I’m talking about Fresh Outta High School, Barely Legal Britney. Like back when she wasn’t old enough to sign any legal documents by herself and her parents tossed a coin to see if they were going to throw her into a porno or a music video. Yeah, that young Britney.

Let me tell you: no one who was in high school when her career exploded will ever forget. I was, like, 15 and this girl came out of nowhere and ousted Madonna from my spank bank. All the world’s cameras were suddenly pointed at her as she put on the sexy-but-principled schoolgirl act and claimed she was saving herself for marriage. Naturally, all the other 15-year-old guys at my high school, flush with Maxim subscriptions, steeped in teenage machismo, walking around with their collars popped would say: “Marriage, eh? We’ll see about that.”

And then, before any of us had graduated (or even finished the 10^th grade), Justin Timberlake came along like: “No. Seriously guys. We’ll fucking see about that.”

Better still, once he was done deflowering her, he waited roughly five minutes before calling his publicist and saying: “I want you to get all the liberal Jewish media on the phone and tell them that I did the following things to Britney: T-square, the piledriver, the shocker, the Danza slap, Cincinnati bowtie, Angry Dragon. And then I made her lie in the wet spot.” Since then Britney made Crossroads and married K-Fed and Oscar-nominated directors line up to work with JT. Game, set, match.

If that evidence wasn’t compelling enough: remember when he was dating Jessica Biel? It was when he was touring futuresex/lovesounds and she was all up in his Kool-Aid like: “Hey Justin! Why don’t I come along on tour with you and do the girlfriend thing?! It’ll be great! We’ll have sooooo much fun together! LOL!”

Just imagine being JT and your daily routine being:

1)      Wake up 4 p.m.

2)      Pizza

3)      Play 11,000-person stadium

4)      Have Jess lick the sweat off my body until I am dry

5)      Jack Daniels single barrel

6)      Amphetamines

7)      Mario Kart

8)      Pizza

9)      Sleep

Just look! You could lie down and take a nap on those!

This is Jessica Biel we’re talking about. She has lips like my sofa. And instead of going for it JT told her: “Thanks but I gotta do my own thing right now. And by do my own thing I mean collect venereal diseases.”

 

ICIEST COLDEST MOTHERFUCKER ALIVE

The problem with Friends With Benefits is the same problem that most romantic comedies have: it lacks depth and imagination. It’s a movie that throws no curveballs (I was being sarcastic earlier). Frankly, it’s getting insulting that Hollywood producers feel they can bank repeatedly on solid chemistry and winsome good looks the two leads and people will take the film seriously enough to give it three stars. As soon as the rom-coms of the nineties became tiresome and listless we started seeing more R-rated permutations in cinemas, some of which (like The 40-Year-Old Virgin) were even sublime pictures. Now, six years later, screenwriters and directors have even become complacent in their irreverence, assuming that sexual boldness and a few filthy one-liners are suitable replacement for plot or dialogue or a decent finale.

It’s a particular shame in this case, since this movie has a lot going for it. Woody Harrelson has cemented himself as one of the most likeable onscreen presences and he makes the most of a small role here as JT’s older, wiser gay sidekick. A few other screen veterans make strong appearances, with Patricia Clarkson earning big laughs as Mila Kunis’ wayward, alcoholic mother and Richard Jenkins (surely one of the most underappreciated actors in Hollywood) as JT’s disabled father. Although contrived, there is a charming, touching father/son moment near the end of the movie that makes you wish everyone on board had tried just a little bit harder with Friends With Benefits.

But they didn’t so the movie goes nowhere. Just like my evening went nowhere. I had one lousy beer during this movie and I spilled maybe a quarter of it on the guy next to me. Sorry if I ruined your jeans or your date dude. If it means anything you took it like a champ.

Damage: 2/10 (A couple beers at home pre-movie, 1 x 750 Stella Artois during)

Boozy rating: 2/10 (Martyn kept glaring at me during the flick and will never let me off the hook. From now on, every time I select a good movie he’ll hang this over my head. “Well Mr. L, seems you’ve redeemed yourself a little from last time, n’est-ce pas?” Fucker.)

Next week: Crazy stupid love