Homework -- Week 4

DFV 363

Homework Week 4

“Analyzing the Analyzer”

Choose a favorite film from 2011/2010; anything that you’ve seen recently or know well will work. Find three different reviews written by three different critics. This assignment is an exercise is breaking down the content and style of different reviewers to help prepare you to construct your own professional review. Read the three reviews very carefully, it helps to read it twice and find each critic’s take on the following:

Theme and director’s intention

Separate elements and their relationship to the whole

Objective evaluation of the film

Subjective evaluation of the film

The film’s level of ambition

Words you found interesting.

Relationship to film movements/genres/ relation to other filmmakers’ work.

Cite your three reviews in proper format:

Scott, A.O. “Fasten Your Seatbelts, the Chevy is Taking Off” Rev. of Drive, dir. Nicolas   Winding Refn. The New York Times 15 Sept. 2011

Turan, Kenneth. “Drive” Rev. of Drive, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn. The Los Angeles Times 16 Sept. 2011

Mesh, Aaron. “Solitary Bagman” Rev. of Drive, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn. Willamette Week 14 Sept. 2011

Here is a BRIEF example. Yours should have at least three quotes, one from each reviewer in each category.

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Theme and director’s intention

“The virtuosity on display is also the director’s, of course, and that, for better and for worse, is pretty much the point of “Drive,” the coolest movie around and therefore the latest proof that cool is never cool enough.” -Scott

Separate elements and their relationship to the whole

“Impeccably shot by Newton Thomas Sigel, "Drive" always looks dressed to kill.” –Turan

“Making fine use of Los Angeles locations, particularly the lonely downtown streets around the L.A. River, "Drive" has a slick, highly romanticized pastel look calculated to win friends and influence people.” -Turan

Objective evaluation of the film

“When boy meets boy in Drive, homicide is inevitable. But first boy meets girl. The boy is Ryan Gosling, a stunt-car driver with illegal sidelines and a stockpile of toothpicks. The girl is Carey Mulligan, a waitress with a young son (Kaden Leos) and a husband (Oscar Isaac) about to get out of jail. Their courtship is as much an act of protection as desire.”-Mesh

“Coolly played by Gosling, the driver is a monosyllabic loner with a monotone voice, a toothpick in his mouth, and a fondness for a silver racing jacket with a giant yellow scorpion on the back. By day he works in a garage on Reseda Boulevard run by hard luck Shannon ("Breaking Bad's" Bryan Cranston) and does stunt driving for the movies. Once the sun goes down, he drives getaway cars for criminal types.” –Turan

Subjective evaluation of the film

“It's a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal.” –Turan

The film’s level of ambition

“It raises the question, finally, of whether a great movie has to be a moral movie. Is it enough that it is true to its own code? What if that code is ultimately tribal and barbaric?” -Mesh

“For fans of director Refn, known among chaos aficionados for made-in-Europe violent fare like "The Pusher" trilogy and "Bronson," this is bloody business as usual. But the mayhem here so clashes with the high style and traditionalism of the rest of the film that when the bloodletting goes into overdrive, so to speak, it throws you out of the picture, diluting the mood rather than enhancing it.”- Turan

Words you found interesting.

Relationship to film movements/genres/ relation to other filmmakers’ work.

“And I have a sliver of justification: The entire history of noir, stretching back to The Maltese Falcon through Drive’s obvious influences like Walter Hill’s The Driver and Michael Mann’s Thief, is a lot of macho, self-pitying poppycock. That does not diminish the power of those movies. If Drive, a deliberate throwback, belongs in their company, it is because it is unreservedly committed to the decadent masochism of its fantasy.” --Mesh

“His own love of movies can hardly be doubted, and there’s nothing wrong with his taste. He likes the stripped-down highway movies of the 1960s and ’70s — the kind that Quentin Tarantino celebrated in “Death Proof” — and also the atmospheric masculine melancholy associated with Michael Mann. You might also catch a hint of Paul Schrader’s “American Gigolo” and, with respect to the story rather than to the visual style, a whole bunch of Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone westerns.” - Scott