Today Sploid put up a link to Nicolas Winding Refn’s excellent movie Drive. If you have not seen it yet… you really have to give it the time. It’s a master work. Sploid was just embedding this video so that is all you need assuming you have already watched the film.
Drive (2011) – The Quadrant System from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.
After some back and forth with Max Power via email I decided to do a quick lunch time take on Drive for DSB.
Quick aside: It really is sad that Refn’s follow up was such crap. I don’t know how the same guy that made Drive could also make Only God Forgives.
Did he drink too much of his own Kool Aid? What the hell happened in those two years? I knew the movie was getting poor reviews; which is being kind. I wanted to see it anyway and frankly it was absolutely unwatchable. I could not finish it. I gave up. I could not summon the power to give a fuck about that movie, it characters, or the story even if my life depended on it.
Back to discussing Drive… Looking at the field from the 2012 Oscars you really get a sense three years later of where these movies fell with just a little history.
The Artist won best picture, so that tells us a lot about the state of the Academy that year. Sure, it was an interesting picture… 80 years ago.
Other nominees in 2012:
The Tree of Life — Dinosaurs, really? “Because why the fuck not, that’s why!” — Terrance Mann. Literally no one understood this movie and if they claim to they are lying and want you to think they are smart and like important things.
The Descendants — George Clooney think piece! (GAGGING)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: I did not see this but pulling 9/11 heart strings should have been played out by this time. Right?
The Help – Turd Pie
Hugo – Martin Scorsese made this? Really, Scorsese? The one we all love? Are we sure?
Midnight in Paris – A Woody Allen flick that was nearly as enjoyable as Vicky Christina Barcelona. It should have been nominated simply because it was a Woody Allen flick that was tolerable. That’s an achievement at this point.
Moneyball – PSH’s limited performance was better than the whole rest of the flick. I feel like that might be the defining statement of his career. He was better the whole rest of the movie around him… I am sad… moving on.
War Horse – Speaking of sad… The Academy nominated this movie on everyone that saw it saying “I had a sad.”
You know what the Academy saw fit to be nominated in Drive: Best Achievement in Sound Editing. That’s it.
Looking at the cast… Albert Brooks not getting nominated for Best Supporting is still awful and nearly as F’ed up as The Lego Movie getting shut out this year. He was excellent playing against type. No extra credit for that?
I like movies. I am not a critic. I am barely willing to call myself a buff. But Drive was an EXCELLENT movie. It was a beautifully tragic tale that made you afraid to get too close to anything because you could never trust it to have the happy ending. I liked that. It was an achievement in story telling in taking what was painful, dark, and violent and make it feel light and airy.
So many of the scenes trap you. You feel confined with the characters in the nuance of their pain, their longing, their fear, their bad past, or simply trapped in a car that is moving so fast and violently that it will surely kill you.
Does anyone look at the list above and think Drive did not deserve to be in the conversation if not win for director or best film?
Will the Oscars ever stop disappointing me? Probably not.
Thanks for coming by and suckling on Daddy’s Sugar Ball…
Bearcat
Daddy's Sugar Ball 