Peel away the special effects and Michael Bay has the film-making capacity of a horny teenage boy. Imagine that
"The Town was ten times better!" your witness. thats one of them most ignorant conversations i've listened to. feels like those situations where you're on a bus and over hear a group of people talking utter shite and are powerless to their ever digging deepening ramblings
Let me restate what I meant. I actually enjoyed the "artsy/hipstery" touches. What I found lacking was the plot, the characters, the dialogue (stuff that I would consider the core of a movie). So essentially what I'm saying is that while the movie had an intriguing tone to it and was interestingly shot, it's wasn't that great as a whole. Hardly a controversial take on a film. Um... you're actually agreeing with my point then. Yes, Michael Bay's films are shit, and the special effects don't make them much better.
Problem is you're putting plot and character over visuals when we're talking about a visual medium. Anyhow, just saw this. Fucking great.
I see what you're saying, and agree with you that plot, dialogue and explicit character development are mostly not present - but what I'm saying is that this is a deliberate choice by Refn, not an indication of poor filmmaking. It's more of a mood piece than an action-driven thriller, so things like the slow-motion sequences and the "weird" music are integral to the final product, and are more important than the dialogue and plot. I'm not saying you're wrong for disliking the movie, but it seems to me like you're judging it as if it's a different kind of movie to what it actually is, you know?
Visual medium means that plot and character(ization) can be conveyed via the screen, which this movie does to great effect (well, characterization anyways). It's not a free pass to skip on their importance.
That was what I meant. I interpreted what he said to mean plot and character as conveyed by script/dialogue.
This just digs deeper into the debate of 'what makes a film'. and lemme tell ya, it aint' a pretty discussion. one should realistically throw away all preconceived notions of what makes a film while watching a new film(within reason) in order to allow the filmmaker reasonable space in which you can then interpret and digest properly the fact is, Refn could have just shown us Gosling driving around in his car at night for 2 hours straight - and it still would have been a film/movie. If anything its the 'cinema' that's subconsciously laying us with preconceived cinematic conventions of what one should expect while watching a 'movie'... but thats wrong
This gets better and better every time I watch it. Far and away my favorite film of the year. Of course, I've only seen three films that ever had a chance of being my favorite of the year, so maybe that isn't saying much. But Drive would be hard to top anyway. The use of music in the film is especially excellent.
Saw this for the first time today. A lot better than I was expecting to be honest. I really enjoyed it and it's one of the only 'recently' released movies that I've been impressed with.
I thought this film was incredibly Asian in its visuals, characters and themes. Also one of the best, if not the best film of 2011. I personally consider it to be Refn's best film, although it is the same homo-eroticism and violence-glorification seen in his earlier work.
Well...that was pretty fucking good. Reminds me a little of No Country for Old Men in that it's fairly minimal, often little dialogue, gloriously shot and TENSE AS FUCK.
Cause of the way the movie ended, though, I did joke to my girlfriend that they should have had superimposed text before the credits that said "The driver will return in Driver 2: New York City"
No sequel please. Drive needs to stay in its own little universe; an ephemeral bubble of excellence in a movie-making world gone tits up.
This was honestly my favourite film of 2011 - the soundtrack was amazing I don't know how anyone could dislike it and the way it enhances the feel of the film. Crazy.
Stunning film, will be seeing it a second time next week along with Melancholia. It'll have been said already ITT (most probably by Jono), but every shot is so perfectly composed. The elevator scene is breathtaking and the soundtrack is just too good.
Finally saw this. Did not see the trailer beforehand, went in blind. I'm not surprised that this film elicits polarized reactions from folks. I find myself on the "I loved it to death" side of the fence and am finding many of the negative nitpickings downright silly. I may sound just as much a tool as I see those people when I say, "I'm pretty sure I know how to enjoy life more than them because I can allow myself to get swept away and lost in fiction like this film," but I don't care. The only trouble I have with this picture is one I have with many of my favorites. It's difficult to recommend to someone because you can't tell them anything about it. All you can say is, "you've got to see it." An achievement.
To expand, now that I've had a night's sleep: Common complaints I've seen are over the "lack" of plot, story, character depth and such. As I said, silly. The plot is clear as day and the story is self-contained, as are the characters' personalities. I think what a lot of people are trying to say is they want heavier exposition, or "back story." Silly. The film operates fine without that. Pay attention to the picture you're watching and you'll know the characters as much as you need to. Their motivations become apparent. Events leading up to the start of the film are not important. This is a snapshot, a moment in these peoples' lives, in this city. It's an observation. It's perfectly fine if you don't care for it, but to say it's because it needs further exposition is ludicrous. The film contains everything it needs to operate fine. It's not even abstract. Very easy to understand. Expecting "back story"-type exposition in every picture is like expecting a ripping guitar solo every time you hear a metal song. Silly. Stop worrying so much about guidelines and standards. Don't have such specific expectations, unless you enjoy wallowing in disappointment.
While I agree with your thoughts, you have to understand what the marketing campaign was like. You were able to see a movie without trailers, etc. and just knew that it was talked about a lot. Conversely, a lot of us saw a trailer with fast cuts and intense driving sequences. It's one of the worst campaigns in recent memory as far as properly representing the movie (another being THE GREY). We expected a by-the-books action movie with maybe an extra dose of style. The results turned out way different (and way better) but you can't fault people for having certain expectations.
Very true. I can understand that. But trailers have been becoming more and more deceptive for a good while now. They are tailored like a greatest hits package to pull in as many consumers as possible, which makes sense. And I love great trailers. But I've learned to take them with more than a few grains of salt. Look at all the joke trailers we've seen on the Internet. Like footage from The Shining cut together to look like a family dramedy. When you have a couple hours of footage to pull from, you can design a 90 second trailer to look like any number of things.
Just saw this and I'm sooo glad I didn't watch the trailer beforehand. I think Refn must be trolling the moviegoers with his trailers. Like with his previous movie, Valhalla Rising, it was incredibly misleading. I'm amazed by this movie. It felt like they took a run-of-the-mill script for a racing movie in the vein of Fast & Furious, trimmed two epic driving scenes down from 20 to 3 minutes each and filled the rest of the plot and dialog (or lack thereof) with awkward silences and slow-motion walking. It's hilarious to think how it could have turned out if it had been directed by a normal Hollywood director. Not sure what to think about a possible sequel. I hope they can something special out of it. Maybe Refn will troll everyone again and turn it into a fast-paced action thriller.
I doubt he had much to do with the trailers. I am not educated on this at all but if I had to guess I'd assume the distributors get someone to edit together trailers.
Also, these were two of my favorite segments in film I've seen in a good while: the surveillance and the murder of Nino. Driver looking into the restaurant, those inside oblivious. And of course him standing up on the bluff, looking down on Nino, who shits his pants and scrambles toward the sea.
just saw it, thanks Andres, it was a great experience. and I think I prefer these sorts of tightly cut edits of driving/car chase scenes. When the adrenaliney shit/explosions/chasechasechase/fast omgwtfisgoingon gets too extended I lose my focus on the film but for this one I was able to follow everything. Nicely done.
Fuck trailers of any kind. I avoid them as much as possible (along with any other type of movie hype). I want to go into a film without foreknowledge and take in the experience without any preconceptions or expectations.
http://www.observer.com/2012/04/breaking-ryan-gosling-saves-british-woman-from-taxi-collision/ Real hero, real human being.
Aaaaaaaaand this is exactly the type of person this film was made for. Congratulations on being a living, breathing stereotype.
