Drive - Review

After being told to check out Drive by a teacher at college, and being lent the DVD (which I will give back on Monday) I have finally got round to watching it, and here is my review, its only short but I’m having a busy weekend.

A Nicolas Winding Refn film based around the life of a Hollywood stunt driver by day, and criminal get away driver by night, Drive shows Ryan Gosling doing what his character does best “Drive”. Although his character is never actually given a name, other than being credited at “Driver” and not much is revealed about his ability behind the wheel of a car, all that is forgotten when watching this film due to the storyline being a much deeper one than I had first anticipated.

The Driver manages to get himself locked up in some serious mobster crime after trying to use his talent to help out the husband of his rather attractive neighbor (Carey Mulligan) after he becomes the target after being released from prison. Everything begins to go awry for the driver after this point and he is forced to turn to his obvious nature of violence to sort through it.

Due to the age rating of the film being an 18, towards the beginning of the film I had suspected scenes to get graphic when the plotline turned to crime, however, I was not actually expecting for Ryan Goslings character to be the one committing most of the violent acts. I think this is because, at the beginning of the film, although he is a crime get away driver, his character is portrayed as some one who takes a back seat on all this crime and who seems to be rather serene. How wrong I was in expecting this.  Which is in fact quite a good thing actually as the change in character half way through makes the film much more interesting; as well as showing just how a person can change when put in the right (well in this case, wrong) situation.

There was a large variety of slow motion scenes, which are rare in dramas such as this one, but I think that they worked very well and helped to highlight certain scenes as well as the gore that is shown in them. My personal favourite gory scene is when you get an up close and personal view to a bullet entering a persons head (I will say no more for those who wish to watch it.)

In a more general case, I thought that the film was directed brilliantly with some beautiful shots capturing the relationships between the characters. My only fault that I can think of with the film would be an element of corniness that is shown as Driver and pretty neighbor drive down the LA river culvert. Admittedly, it is just my own opinion, and general lack of interest in corny elements of films, but this reminded me immensely of the chase sequence in Grease and that is all I could see when watching this part of the film.

It is a definite must see to anyone who doesn't mind being made to feel uneasy by the amount of violence that you are shown. If you enjoy it, The Place Beyond The Pines, Ryan Goslings new release with Bradley Cooper looks set to be Drive on two wheels!

The film also raised the question In my mind- why doesn’t every criminal invest in a fake prosthetic face to wear rather than a ski mask?

Lore - Review

This review may not be of interest to many of you out there as I know that even a slight mention of foreign language film turns people off, but seeing as I made the trip out to Phoenix Arts Centre especially to watch it, I think my opinions might as well be shared.

Lore, a German foreign language film directed by Cate Shortland, focuses on a young girl Hannelore “Lore” for short and the journey she and her younger siblings take through Germany after the war has ended. Unlike many other war films Lore’s family are in fact fans of Hitler, who end up facing the trails of losing their parents along with the war. I found it an interesting story because I think it is one of the first films that I have seen focusing on Germans losing the war rather than the British winning ,and it was a part of history that had never really crossed my mind beforehand. Lore is forced with the task of moving her 4 younger siblings including a very young baby to the other side of Germany to live with their grandmother; along the way she is forced to put her trust into a jewish boy they meet, even though she is very reluctant to do so due to her low opinion of him installed by her parent’s Nazi views. The relationship formed by the two, is very intriguing and at times, heart-warming as although she does not want to trust him, in order to keep her family safe she has to and even begins to rely upon him as the film continues.

Musically I found this film beautiful, I don’t usually tend to notice the scores within a film however the beautifully written music conjoined with cinematic elegance created by Shortland made the score stand out. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that the film was entirely in German, whereas music is the same in every country so it was easily relatable to anyone, but any fan of film scores should defiantly listen to this one.

To those who get put off by foreign films or those reluctant to watch them, this is a good place to start. Although it contains many deep themes it is mostly revolved around cinematic techniques and music to tell the story rather than dialogue, even in the places that dialogue was used it was not difficult to keep up with. This enabled me to be taken in by the power of cinema and shown how language should not stop this art form.

However, it has to be said that this film is not the most exciting and in places did tend to drag but I am solely putting this down to the nature of the plotline and the time in which it was set. I wanted to completely fall in love with this film, I was drawn in to watch it from a review on Film 2013 early this year but for some reason did not come out of the arts centre in the astonished way that I had hoped for when entering. With time of reflection it is clear the elements of the film which were brilliantly compositioned; but not much light has been shed in my head onto the reason which I didn’t fall in love with it, because everything I have to say is mostly good. And so, I must conclude that it has something to do with the narrative being different to what I am used to watching.

Even with a language barrier (helped along by subtitles) I am still able to admit a good performance was given by 19 year old actress Saskia Rosendahl who played Lore, she portrayed the character in a believeale way: although with me having very little knowledge of the time frame it was set in or the German language I admit that my opinion on this could in fact be mistaken.