Gosling rides high as thriller’s driving force
The Thing hits with hulking homage; Mockingbird stands up as a classic
Drive: Ryan Gosling didn’t get an Oscar nod for his work in Blue Valen
tine last year, and he got stiffed again this year for a standout performance in Drive, a noirish thriller with a shocking-pink credit sequence. Don’t think of it as genre confusion on the part of Bronson director Nicolas Winding Refn; think of it as Refn’s stylish foreshadowing of the many jolts to come, as Gosling plays a Los Angeles stunt driver who moonlights as a highly paid getaway chauffeur. In the opening sequence of this beautifully crafted, and emotionally syncopated movie that co-stars Carey Mulligan, Gosling’s character is established as a meticulous risk-taker and a consummate professional. We like him immediately because he keeps his cool, but the longer the volcano lies dormant, the more certain we are of his eventual eruption. Refn teases it out with dramatic restraint until just the right moment, ensuring this laid-back thriller floors it in the final act, as Gosling finds himself up against a scummy crime lord played with endless creepiness by Albert Brooks. Special features include four featurettes and an extended interview with Refn regarding the film’s $10-million budget and the road to Cannes. out of five
The Thing: There’s a whole lot of homage hulking around in The
Thing. This remake of the seminal postwar science fiction film about an extraterrestrial discovered in ice doesn’t just nod to the nightmarish original from 1951; it gives a wink to
Alien, Ridley Scott’s classic updated study of Other from 1979.
You couldn’t draw from two better sources, so even when this movie runs up against the wall of deja vu and genre cliché, it makes the most of the splatter.
The movie’s success comes down to newcomer Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.’s complete understanding of the form he’s working in.
He understands alien horror movies aren’t really about monsters; they are about ourselves, and our distrust of anyone slightly different from us. The enemy is hidden within, which means we can’t trust anyone in this movie — except, maybe, the heroine.
Picking up on Scott’s use of a female action hero, the movie introduces us to Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a woman working in a lab dissecting ancient frozen flesh. The mood is suitably dark, but the director holds his punches until just the right moment.
A surprisingly solid revisit to a Cold War genre, The Thing is more than just another Blob. Special features include Fire and Ice and The Thing
Evolves, extended and deleted scenes, audio commentary and Ucontrol features.
In Time: Justin Timberlake has only got four minutes to save the world, but his alter ego, Will Salas, hardly has any time.
In this alternative reality, money has been replaced by time as the central means of exchanging goods and services. Everyone has been genetically engineered to stop aging at 25, which opens up the possibility of im- mortality — as long as you can buy the minutes and the hours. Every human being comes into the world with 25, plus one year. However, because most parents have to borrow just to pay for their kids, that first year is usually all spent by the time they come of age and their clocks starts ticking.
The result: the rich can store time Dream House: An all-star cast walks through an open house of missed opportunities and strained dialogue in this device-dependent movie about a writer (Daniel Craig) who moves into a new house with his wife (Rachel Weisz) and family. By the time we realize this could be another “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” scenario à la The Shining, we’ve already lost interest in the movie, because the scenes never seem to lead anyplace compelling.
Psychological horror isn’t easy to pull off, and despite all the good intentions and crafty scene work of director Jim Sheridan, the movie never knits together in any satisfying way, as we come up against one unrealized moment after another.
The major upside, aside from costar Naomi Watts, is watching the blossoming chemistry between leads Craig and Weisz, who married shortly after wrapping on the picture.
As a genre film in need of a major renovation, Dream House is a disappointment. Special features include Burning Down the House, Building
the Dream House, Dream Cast and
more.
The Big Year: Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson play birders competing for the Big Year, the title given to the person who spots the most species in a given 12 months.
This B.c.-shot movie could have been a beautiful story about man’s relationship with nature, but the movie fails to deliver any sense of mystery or magic about the birds or the natural environment, and, as a result, deprives all these fowl-obsessed characters of credible motivation. In other words: a flightless turkey.
Special features include extended scenes, The Big Migration, gag reel and more.
To Kill a Mockingbird: An undeniable classic, this Robert Mulligan movie based on Harper Lee’s novel takes us back in time, when a small-town lawyer in Depressionera America defends a man accused of rape.
Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is one of the great screen heroes of all time: not only a doting father, he embodies the open-minded humanism America strives to represent.
Even 50 years after release, this movie still stands up as one of the all-time greats, from just about every perspective.
Peck picked up an Oscar for his performance, and Robert Duvall made his eerie screen debut as Boo Radley, all of which adds to the glorious folklore surrounding this shining piece of Americana.
This 50th-anniversary Blu-ray edition is packaged as a book, with 44 pages of printed extras, including set photos and script excerpts. Even bits and pieces from Peck’s own script, complete with his own notes, are included. There’s also a feature-length documentary, featurettes from previous editions, as well as new material such as an extended look at the digital restoration, as well as a U Control segment that allows the viewer to freeze the frame, with comments from Peck’s children, screenwriter Horton Foote and director Mulligan. A digital copy is available via redemption code.