Project Ludovico
- Thread starter Athene
- Start date
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- Tags
- athenemas film media movie review
teslashark
One of the brother site’s janitors
- Location
- Somewhere
Do what you like.
Funny reviews... Aren't. For example: @De3ta 's thing against bad fanfic or Coiler's epic on SB.
I don't know why you keep apologizing like this, my favorite review so far was the John Carpenter retrospective.
De3ta
Mae
- Location
- The hellish pit known as New Jersey
Yay, I've been mentioned
Now if anyone needs me, I have a thread to read.
- Location
- Luton Airport
People come for good reviews, not for you to force a particular tone.
Jace911
Spider-Dork
- Location
- The Gold-Bricking State
Personally when I write something "funny" it tends to be much better received if I'm fueling it with actual outrage/bewilderment and resorting to humor as an outlet for that, rather than setting out to make something funny.
I mean fuck, my half-assed review of Madoka is still turning out a decent yield of likes every now and then.
I mean fuck, my half-assed review of Madoka is still turning out a decent yield of likes every now and then.
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
- Location
- Dream of The 90s
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So for the first time in who knows how many months we were able to go out to the second run theater:
I'd already seen it of course but this allowed me to eyefuck the screen all movie in glorious film.
[NIGHTCALL INTENSIFIES]
I'd already seen it of course but this allowed me to eyefuck the screen all movie in glorious film.
[NIGHTCALL INTENSIFIES]
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
- Location
- Dream of The 90s
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm gonna tell you something you don't want to hear
I'm gonna show you where it's dark, but have no fear
There's something inside you
It's hard to explain
They're talking about you boy
But you're still the same
-Nightcall
Drive is a movie that is not going to sit here and hold your damn hand and spoon feed you what is going on. It fully expects you to pay attention every single moment of the film, take it all in and figure out what's going on yourself. It will never explain to you what is going on, what people are feeling, or what the meaning of any of it is. We've been discussing and debating parts of it since we saw it, because there is a lot to talk about in a movie where there is so little talking.
What is Drive about? Here is the setup, in brief: Ryan Gosling plays The Driver, a mechanic and Hollywood stuntman that moonlights as the best wheelman you will ever be able to hire. You give him a time, place and destination and you have him for a 5 minute window. Anything that happens a minute before or after is your problem, but within that five minutes you are his. After that, he will easily lose anyone that may pursue you thanks to not only to his driving ability but his steely eyed intelligence.
He has a boss named Shannon that gets him his legal and otherwise jobs, who wants them to setup a stock car that he borrows money from his old friend Bernie, a Jewish gangster who works with a violent gangster named Nino. Shannon charged a bit too much one time and Nino crushed his pelvis, forcing him to wear a brace the rest of his life. Nino is not a man you want to cross, simply because there is no guarantee he will be reasonable.
At the same time in the heart of the movie, the Driver is pining for his neighbor Irene, a not so single mother with a husband on the inside for an unknown crime. The Driver is at his most human when he's around her because of his obvious attraction for her and care for her son. He manages to integrate himself platonically (yet with obvious sexual tension) into their lives as a surrogate husband and father, until Irene's husband Standard is released early from prison, effectively ending the relationship.
However Standard has gotten himself into trouble by owing protection money from his prison time to an Albanian gangster named Cook, who is demanding that he pay the money back by robbing a pawn shop. Standard doesn't want to do it but Cook has already had him savagely beaten and his family's next. The Driver volunteers to help as a wheelman to keep Irene and her son safe. Things go wrong, awfully wrong because this wasn't a simple job, this wasn't a simple pawnshop, nothing is simple anymore and nothing will be the same.
Back against the wall of ours
With the strength of a will and a cause
The suits some called outstanding
Though, emotionally complex
Against the grain of dystopic claims
Of stop thoughts your actions entertain
And, you have proved to be
A real human being
And, a real hero
-A Real Hero
Drive is a film that doesn't tell you shit and that's best exemplified by The Driver. We never find out his name, we never find out where he comes from, he doesn't ever talk about himself except to reluctantly say what he does for a living. Shannon says he came out of nowhere 5 years ago with perfect skills and that's all he can actually say about him despite being his arguably best friend. He never says what he feels, never exposits, he only talks the minimum it takes to get through life. The movie doesn't tell us anything about him.
But it shows us everything we need to know. We see his actions, we see his reactions , we get a sense of the pattern of his life and personality. We're invited to sit there and watch him because his face and body language will tell us what is going on with him as he interacts with other people and the world around him. His sleep schedule is minimal or non existent. He might be slightly autistic. He might have an unsavory and violent past that forced him to move. Ryan Gosling does more with a pair of gloves than a lot of actors do with their whole bodies.
This is of course made possible by the fact that the movie is intelligently and frankly perfectly shot by the somewhat uneven Nicholas Winding Refn. We see what we need to see, he uses every square inch of the screen to tell a complex visual story. How does Irene feel about her husband being home? Watch her look sad and depressed at his coming home party and faking happiness when he pays attention to her. A closing elevator door between two characters is a gut punch of a period on the relationship between two characters. The opening, and brilliant, car chase feels more like a submarine movie than a chase scene as without saying anything, we understand that avoiding detection is what's important in escaping from the police, not pure speed and driving. The searchlight of a helicopter is akin to depth charges and the adjustment of the radio gives clues to how close safety is. Dialogue would be unnecessary.
The movie looks haunting. A blowhard coming out of the movie trying to impress his date said "Wasn't I right about it being dreamlike?" but I would describe it as the opposite. Drive is a movie that feels like you've been awake too long, the feeling of those who get off work when the rest of the world is just waking for theirs. Combined with probably one of the most perfect scores and soundtracks, and you have a movie with a solid, visceral feel even in the moments where there is nothing happening. When things do happen, its short, intense, violent, and focused. There are no real action scenes here, its all about the tension before the violence, much like how Sergio Leone was bored by violence but fascinated by the preparation for it. The creak of the gloves gripped around a hammer, the pushing a person gently behind you, the opening of a car door, the wearing of a stunt double mask as you stalk your prey, the eating of a meal. When a man has his vein fatally opened by a person telling him to relax, that's all the pain there will be and you know that they were really friends before things went wrong.
Drive is a movie where nobody says anything and I could talk for days about every single glorious second of it.
I'm gonna show you where it's dark, but have no fear
There's something inside you
It's hard to explain
They're talking about you boy
But you're still the same
-Nightcall
Drive is a movie that is not going to sit here and hold your damn hand and spoon feed you what is going on. It fully expects you to pay attention every single moment of the film, take it all in and figure out what's going on yourself. It will never explain to you what is going on, what people are feeling, or what the meaning of any of it is. We've been discussing and debating parts of it since we saw it, because there is a lot to talk about in a movie where there is so little talking.
What is Drive about? Here is the setup, in brief: Ryan Gosling plays The Driver, a mechanic and Hollywood stuntman that moonlights as the best wheelman you will ever be able to hire. You give him a time, place and destination and you have him for a 5 minute window. Anything that happens a minute before or after is your problem, but within that five minutes you are his. After that, he will easily lose anyone that may pursue you thanks to not only to his driving ability but his steely eyed intelligence.
He has a boss named Shannon that gets him his legal and otherwise jobs, who wants them to setup a stock car that he borrows money from his old friend Bernie, a Jewish gangster who works with a violent gangster named Nino. Shannon charged a bit too much one time and Nino crushed his pelvis, forcing him to wear a brace the rest of his life. Nino is not a man you want to cross, simply because there is no guarantee he will be reasonable.
At the same time in the heart of the movie, the Driver is pining for his neighbor Irene, a not so single mother with a husband on the inside for an unknown crime. The Driver is at his most human when he's around her because of his obvious attraction for her and care for her son. He manages to integrate himself platonically (yet with obvious sexual tension) into their lives as a surrogate husband and father, until Irene's husband Standard is released early from prison, effectively ending the relationship.
However Standard has gotten himself into trouble by owing protection money from his prison time to an Albanian gangster named Cook, who is demanding that he pay the money back by robbing a pawn shop. Standard doesn't want to do it but Cook has already had him savagely beaten and his family's next. The Driver volunteers to help as a wheelman to keep Irene and her son safe. Things go wrong, awfully wrong because this wasn't a simple job, this wasn't a simple pawnshop, nothing is simple anymore and nothing will be the same.
Back against the wall of ours
With the strength of a will and a cause
The suits some called outstanding
Though, emotionally complex
Against the grain of dystopic claims
Of stop thoughts your actions entertain
And, you have proved to be
A real human being
And, a real hero
-A Real Hero
Drive is a film that doesn't tell you shit and that's best exemplified by The Driver. We never find out his name, we never find out where he comes from, he doesn't ever talk about himself except to reluctantly say what he does for a living. Shannon says he came out of nowhere 5 years ago with perfect skills and that's all he can actually say about him despite being his arguably best friend. He never says what he feels, never exposits, he only talks the minimum it takes to get through life. The movie doesn't tell us anything about him.
But it shows us everything we need to know. We see his actions, we see his reactions , we get a sense of the pattern of his life and personality. We're invited to sit there and watch him because his face and body language will tell us what is going on with him as he interacts with other people and the world around him. His sleep schedule is minimal or non existent. He might be slightly autistic. He might have an unsavory and violent past that forced him to move. Ryan Gosling does more with a pair of gloves than a lot of actors do with their whole bodies.
This is of course made possible by the fact that the movie is intelligently and frankly perfectly shot by the somewhat uneven Nicholas Winding Refn. We see what we need to see, he uses every square inch of the screen to tell a complex visual story. How does Irene feel about her husband being home? Watch her look sad and depressed at his coming home party and faking happiness when he pays attention to her. A closing elevator door between two characters is a gut punch of a period on the relationship between two characters. The opening, and brilliant, car chase feels more like a submarine movie than a chase scene as without saying anything, we understand that avoiding detection is what's important in escaping from the police, not pure speed and driving. The searchlight of a helicopter is akin to depth charges and the adjustment of the radio gives clues to how close safety is. Dialogue would be unnecessary.
The movie looks haunting. A blowhard coming out of the movie trying to impress his date said "Wasn't I right about it being dreamlike?" but I would describe it as the opposite. Drive is a movie that feels like you've been awake too long, the feeling of those who get off work when the rest of the world is just waking for theirs. Combined with probably one of the most perfect scores and soundtracks, and you have a movie with a solid, visceral feel even in the moments where there is nothing happening. When things do happen, its short, intense, violent, and focused. There are no real action scenes here, its all about the tension before the violence, much like how Sergio Leone was bored by violence but fascinated by the preparation for it. The creak of the gloves gripped around a hammer, the pushing a person gently behind you, the opening of a car door, the wearing of a stunt double mask as you stalk your prey, the eating of a meal. When a man has his vein fatally opened by a person telling him to relax, that's all the pain there will be and you know that they were really friends before things went wrong.
Drive is a movie where nobody says anything and I could talk for days about every single glorious second of it.
teslashark
One of the brother site’s janitors
- Location
- Somewhere
(Trying my hardest to not squee at the mentioning of Cranston's name)
This is the kind of movie I want to make. It's actually very grand. The background music is also good enough to not be ruined by Lameloft using it in their Gangstar game.
This is the kind of movie I want to make. It's actually very grand. The background music is also good enough to not be ruined by Lameloft using it in their Gangstar game.
Last edited:
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The man wears a fucking silver jacket with a gold scorpion on the back, yet manages to completely own it. How do you do that?
This movie awakened me to a whole music genre I'd never considered before.
I've semi-jokingly described Drive as a Hotline Miami movie to people and it's wrong but also right kinda? You know what I mean?
In my head this takes place in the same universe as Nightcrawler.
This movie awakened me to a whole music genre I'd never considered before.
I've semi-jokingly described Drive as a Hotline Miami movie to people and it's wrong but also right kinda? You know what I mean?
In my head this takes place in the same universe as Nightcrawler.
teslashark
One of the brother site’s janitors
- Location
- Somewhere
Or Breaking Bad. Or GTA HD.
The music reminds me of Phil Collins and Daft Punk.
Sufficient Juice
A steady supply of vitamins
- Location
- The carbohydrates
It's the same movie, except Nightcrawler uses the soundtrack to put us inside his head. Here it's all droning tones and creepiness to communicate that this guy is too comfortable with murder to hang out with; Nightcrawler has upbeat music, because what's so bad about Bloom anyway? He's perfectly normal and the world works as he says!
Also my headcanon mixes all Refn movies together to say that the Driver is so fucked up because he killed his own father. (Quiz: how many Refn movies does this refer to?)
Ellimist system
Newly cracked system full of traumatized yahoos.
- Location
- Floating on a rock with my headmates.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Other
Both you and Saoirse have made me download the soundtrack. The entire thing is making me cry.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Any reason why?
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
don't kinkshame
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Cute, but it's a legit medical purpose. Just not often done.
I can't speak for Athene, but I usually have to have blood drawn from the top or side of my hand, because my arm veins are shy. That is, they're very hard to find, to the point that a perfectly competent phlebotomist can miss eight or nine times trying for an arm vein
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Exactly, just curious, is all.
Athene
Rise for the Shadow Queen
- Location
- Dream of The 90s
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, this.
I was prepared for the normal way but they suggested we try this despite my intense fear of needles and but I thought "WWEDD? (What Would @EricD Do?) and stoically rode it out as always, while thinking of Marcus Aurelius.
(Just kidding, I turn my head, slow my breathing and then look back at it)
Get a good phlebotomist and it's not so bad. Get a bad one, though... A couple days before they released me from the hospital back in August, they were down to trying for blood just above my wrist and below my thumb. After the third try I said no more. I nearly passed out from the pain. I saw stars and got dizzy and everything.