DRIVE (2011)

This movie was too cool for me. I always try, when sitting down to watch a movie, to know as little as possible about the movie.  I like going in completely blank.  In this case, I did pretty good.  I only knew: the title, the DVD cover and that there was a million copies on the shelf at the video store which lead me to believe it was a popular film. I didn't even read the description on the back of the DVD case. So...based on the cover and the title, I figured the film was about a guy who liked to drive and since he was holding a bloody hammer I figured either somebody really pissed him off or maybe he was dressed up as ol' boi from OLDBOY for Halloween.

The movie starts out okay enough with a rather subdued car chase scene and I use the term "car chase" very loosely because it would barely even rate a 1-star rating on GTA. After that, we're more formally introduced to the character of Driver and there's not a lot going on there. In the daytime he's a part-time mechanic/stunt car driver and at night he's a getaway driver for the highest bidder. Sounds exciting, but it's not, because throughout all of this, Driver just calmly chews on a toothpick and stares into space like he might not be getting enough oxygen to his brain (or it could be that he never sleeps). Driver comes across kinda like a heavily medicated Forrest Gump. He has the personality of an ice cube and I guess that might be the point: maybe his robotic performance is some kind of complex social commentary by the filmmakers about desensitized, emotionally unavailable males in contemporary society or something like that. I don't know and I don't give a fuck. I'm a simple-minded man (aka idiot) and in my movies called DRIVE about getaway drivers holding bloody hammers I want to see cars wrecking! A lot.

Anyway, as Fate would have it (and Fate is really stretching it here) Driver's neighbor just happens to be in debt deeply to the same mafia gangster guy that Driver's business partner is in cahoots with. Small world huh? Anyway, Driver doesn't know this when he agrees to help his neighbor rob a pawn shop. Almost instantly the deal goes south and Driver ends up in a very bad situation.

The story is older than dirt, but oh well, it's nothing that a lot of character development, violence and jaw-droppingly awesome car chases can't fix. Too bad then there's a total of 7 minutes of car chases in this entire movie...and that's including the opening scene! The other 93 minutes are spent slowly telling a story that a better filmmaker could have told in 40 minutes and then beefed up with jaw-droppingly awesome car chases.

Bottom line: DRIVE is too in-your-face stylized for me, there's too many song moments that come off like music videos, numerous plot holes, the action (what little there is) is underwhelming, the story is ancient and filled with unsympathetic characters, the pace is torture and worst of all the Driver character is a bore. Not a bad movie, just one that I don't get. But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself. As for me I'll be in my room watching THE ROAD WARRIOR. Maybe I'll re-visit DRIVE in a few decades when I'm wiser.

Wow. Computer generated blood. Awesome.

RED RIDING HOOD (2011)

For what it is RED RIDING HOOD is an entertaining enough movie. It's kinda a dreamy, light-weight re-telling of the "Little Red Riding Hood" story, but instead of a girl walking to Grandmother's house there's a small village that's being terrorized by a werewolf. Unfortunately the "werewolf" doesn't look like a half-man/half-wolf creature, but instead like a large CGI wolf that walks around on all fours.

After the first few killings, not shown onscreen, just implied, a holy man (Gary Oldman) and his soldiers comes to the village to kill the wolf. Through all of this the beautiful Amanda Seyfried is caught in a love triangle between the man she's loved since childhood and the guy her family has arranged for her to marry.

I attentively watched the entire movie, but I would have been much happier if the filmmakers had went ahead and bumped it up some with the violence. With a PG-13 rating I assume they were going for a young teenage girl audience which is sad because this story had some real potential to be something unique, but instead they took the safe and easy path and ended up with a watchable but wholly forgettable film. The main thing RED RIDING HOOD accomplished was making me want to watch LEGEND again.

Worth a rent, but that's it.

THE THING (2011)

I'm not a filmmaker, but I would think the main reason that you would go through the trouble of making a prequel to a movie that you love (I assume the filmmakers here love John Carpenter's THE THING) is to expand the story and challenge yourself to try to make an even better movie. That's just my thinking, maybe I'm a fucking idiot. I'm using ALIEN and ALIENS as my scale of reference. So with those thoughts calculating into my expectations of this new THE THING I was really, really dumbfounded as to why this movie feels more like a remake than a prequel. In fact, if I didn't already know this was a prequel the only thing that would have clued me in while watching it was at lame tacked on ending during the closing credits. Other than that it felt like a remake...an unimaginative one at that.

A Norwegian research team accidentally discovers a huge alien spaceship in Antarctica. They call in a group of American paleontologists so they can stop talking in subtitles. A large alien "survivor" is excavated out, still encased in a large block of ice. The dogs start getting all upset, then suddenly the alien jumps straight up out of the ice like he's a goddamn acrobat and flies through the roof! Before you can say "Well, that was silly." out come the flamethrowers and everybody's in the wreck room getting tested to see if they're an alien. Yawn.

If James Cameron had gone this route, instead of Marines fighting an army of aliens and their mother on LV-426 he would have just told the Nostromo story over again, but with a CG alien. As far as I'm concerned, such a lack of imagination is inexcusable. I've seen more thought put into a porno parody than this movie.

Despite all that, I didn't hate THE THING remake, I mean, prequel . It was mildly entertaining, the pace was good and it wasn't blasphemous towards the 1982 version, but I'll never watch it again and after awhile I found myself admiring how attractive Mary Elizabeth Winstead is more than really caring what happened to the characters. Worth a single viewing, but that's about it.

Original - The Thing From Another World (1951)
Remake of original - The Thing (1982)