Cinecity Top 10 Film Poll – 2011 – Drive

With the festival looming, CINECITY has announced it build up campaign, and what kind of movie fan Brightonian would I be if I didn’t get involved. But what is it all about? Read on…

CineCity 2012, Brighton Film Festival is approaching, and from 15th November to 2nd December the City will be taken over by films fans attending events in 10 venues including the ever brilliant Duke of York’s Picturehouse. This yearn is a special one as it is the 10th edition. To help with the build up, the boffins behind the festival have asked us fans to come up with our TOP 10 FILMS OF THE LAST 10 YEARS. I have decided to run a series of 10 posts with a feature on my favorite film from the chosen year.

But what would you choose? Why not get involved yourself. All you have to do is tweet, facebook message, or blog your top 10 films of the last 10 years and include the hashtag

The top films will be compiled and the results will be announced during the festival, but do not panic I will report back here to announce the winners to those of your overseas.

But remember to see your fave, get involved!!

Drive (2011)

The hero of ‘Drive’ is played by Ryan Gosling (my man-crush of the moment), and is unnamed from start to finish. This is a fact that puts him in a very élite club, his peers include Clint Eastwood who played ‘The Man With No Name’ in three spaghetti westerns, Clint also played the Preacher in ‘Pale Rider’, and The Bride from Quentin Tarrantino’s Kill Bill Vol 1 (she is named in the second film). As I mentioned this is an exclusive type of club, to gain entry you must be unsmiling, unidentified and totally focused. If you HAVE to kill, you do it for a good cause. If you HAVE to drive, or ride, you do it with purpose and extreme gusto.

Driver (I am going have to call him something) is a man with an exceptional skill behind the wheel, this makes him a perfect stunt driver for Hollywood, and much more lucratively a getaway chauffeur for criminals. But he is of pure heart, he never commits the crimes, he just drives, no more, no less. This is a perfect set up, but it quickly gets turned upside down when he is involved in a heist that goes wrong and thus begins a race for his life that will make your stomach turn.

Falling for quite literally the girl next door, Irene played by Carey Mulligan, a young mother and wife who is waiting for her Husband to finish a prison sentence, the Driver is taken out of his calm and calculated realm and thrust into a situation that puts him in harms way. It is this emotional attachment and sizzling chemistry that kept this film from quite easily turning into a bloodbath with cars in it.

Director Nicholas Winding Refn weaves a highly sophisticated landscape that is consistently intense thanks partly to a haunting and atmospheric soundtrack. The use of reflections and shadows really gave the viewer more depth and insight into this particularly well-built environment. But Refn’s superb styling and direction is only one part of the success, the other half has to go to Gosling, his simmering but ever patient leading man is an utter pleasure to watch. It is such a strong performance, even when Refn just calls on him to brood and smolder heavily, you believe in the character completely. When Gosling is behind the wheel he is calm and collected, totally observant and completely in control of the vehicle, it is easy to forget exactly what is at stake because of his cool nature. Despite The Driver being slightly monosyllabic in nature he never feels two-dimensional, when he does break out with flashes of emotion it resonates with such vigor you can feel it like an electric pulse.

It is Mulligan’s Character, Irene, though that brings out this emotional side of Driver. At times she feels slightly miscast, her interaction with her son feels forced and awkward and Mulligan seems a bit bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to have actually had to deal with having her spouse in prisoned. But, when she is on-screen with Gosling the chemistry is hard to deny, they sizzle with drawn out stares and knowing looks that make the whole audience blush. The beauty of one particular scene in an elevator is so stunning that is will go down as one of my favourite pieces of modern cinema.

Drive is brutally punctuated with ultra violence. It is very gory but in itself very creative, each death is a little more extreme and more inventive than the last. Thankfully this violence does not take anything away from the beauty of the film, in fact I believe it actually adds to it.

Our previous instalments can be found here -

2002 - Talk to Her

2003 – Mystic River

2004 – Sideways

2005 – Walk The Line

2006 – Pans Labyrinth

2007 – There Will Be Blood

2008 – The Dark Knight

2009 - A Prophet

2010 – Barney’s Version

CINECITY BRIGHTON FILM FESTIVAL WILL RUN FROM 15TH NOVEMBER TO 2ND DECEMBER 2012 FOR MORE INFO VISIT THEHOMEPAGE HERE