CRAZY STUPID LOVE: genuinely funny offbeat comedy

I liked CRAZY STUPID LOVE loads more than I expected to, and there's two reasons for that - Ryan Gosling and Steve Carrell. They're very different kinds of actors but they work surprisingly well together.

Gosling plays Jacob Palmer, super-cool ladies man who only has to look at a young woman to seduce her, while Carrell is nerdy, middle-aged Cal Weaver, who's been married so long he's forgotten how to relate to the opposite sex. Their paths cross in a trendy bar one night where Cal is getting drunk and complaining loudly about his wife (Julianne Moore) cheating on him with co-worker Kevin Bacon. For reasons that are never fully explained Jacob takes pity on this pathetic wretch and makes it his mission to return Cal to the land of the living and the world of available single women.
Gosling's success is in making Jacob a likeable character despite his womanising ways. There's nothing sleazy about this guy because he plays it almost for laughs, practically acknowledging to his prey that he can't believe she's falling for his undeniably cheesy pick-up lines, without making her feel cheap or used. Gosling is effortlessly smooth in the part with a sharp sense of humour and a knack for saying only what's necessary and nothing more.
Impressed as I was by his performance I was practically blown away by Carrell. I've not been a big fan of his work in 'The Office' or his efforts in 'Dinner for Schmucks', 'Get Smart' and 'Evan Almighty.' The comedy is too broad and blunt and it just seems like he's trying too hard. CRAZY STUPID LOVE reveals his real talent is for much more subtle humour. Cal is not a comedy character but rather a character who happens to be funny. The humour here arises from the situation rather than the situation existing solely to be funny. Carell is not trying to be funny here, he just is. This is the most impressive piece of work he's done since 'Dan in Real Life' with the advantage that this time he's in a film that's as good as he is.
Yes this is a romantic comedy but it's not a cookie-cutter by-the-numbers Jennifer Aniston-type rom-com. Directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa have created that rarest of cinematic beasts - a mainstream comedy that's just off-beat enough in its humour and pacing to give it a fresh, smart, almost indie feel without alienating multiplex audiences.

DRIVE: warning - contains scenes of extreme violence and coolness

DRIVE is so cool it hurts.

Everything about this production screams art house - from the stylized depiction of Los Angeles by night to Ryan Gosling's enigmatic driver to the lingering camera shots, DRIVE should be the antithesis to the 'Fast and Furious' franchise yet it isn't. This is a film that will appeal to the multiplex crowd if they'll just give it a chance.
Gosling plays the unnamed driver, a stunt driver for the movies, and garage mechanic who moonlights as a getaway driver for hire for criminals who don't have their own vehicle.He's a man of few words and is given to bouts of lengthy looking, sometimes at nothing in particular. It gives him an air of mystery which is perhaps not quite warranted.
The driver opens up a little when he befriends Irene (Carey Mulligan), a young woman with a young son who lives in the neighboring apartment. Her husband (the wonderfully named 'Standard') is in jail and she welcomes a man about the house who's willing to act as a father figure to her son. When Standard is released the driver's unwilling to give up his role as Irene's guardian angel and agrees to act as Standard's driver in a raid that will pay off a debt he owes some gangsters, but the raid goes wrong and the driver finds himself a hunted man with a price on his head.
All of this plays out at a pace that belies the tension in the story. The driver is a man surviving on his wits and his skill behind the wheel, putting himself into increasingly dangerous situations with an insouciance that borders on madness. Gosling is superb, oozing attitude and menace, and creating a character who is equally believable reading Irene's son a bedtime story, and stomping a man to death in an elevator.

Extreme violence is this film's other notable characteristic. It's unleashed suddenly and frequently with a graphicness usually reserved for those slasher movies where teenagers unwisely decide to split up to search for their missing friend. What's most surprising is that some of the most sadistic violence is at the hands of comedy actor Albert Brooks. He's almost unrecognisable here but very effective as an LA gangster boss who's thin veneer of charm barely conceals an utter ruthlessness.
The other star of DRIVE is Los Angeles itself. To the accompaniment of Cliff Martinez' 80s inspired electro-synth soundtrack, director Nicolas Winding Refn's camera glides along nocturnal streets and over the downtown skyscrapers creating a glamorous neon lit city of mystery and danger. Most impressively in an urban jungle of 9 million plus souls he finds empty spaces where the action can unfold unwitnessed by casual passers-by. It's a City of Angels that'll be all too familiar to watchers of 'Collateral' which is the blockbuster that DRIVE most closely resembles.
An impressive fusion of art house and multiplex, DRIVE also confirms Ryan Gosling's reputation as one of cinema's most interesting and adaptable leading men. Strap yourself in and prepare for one hell of a ride!

ALL GOOD THINGS: don't come to the viewer who waits

ALL GOOD THINGS is a well acted but ultimately frustrating exploration of a real life case which spanned three decades and involved 2 murders and 1 mysterious disappearance.

The common link is David Marks (Ryan Gosling), the rebellious but weak oldest son of a wealthy New York family which owns a large amount of land in mid-town Manhattan. His youthful rebellion against his domineering father (Frank Langella) takes the form of an unsuitable marriage (in dad's eyes) to Katie (Kirsten Dunst) and a brief spell running a health food store in Vermont. But when dad threatens to cut off the funding the couple return to New York and David reluctantly takes his place in the family business.
David's always been a little strange but once he's back under his father's control he starts acting seriously weird and there are incidents of violence against Katie. Then one day in 1982 she disappears never to be seen again. ALL GOOD THINGS wants to make the case that David murdered her, but because this is a story based on actual events and the real life David (under a different name) is still alive, director Andrew Jarecki is forced to be more circumspect than he would probably have liked. So what we get is an apparently solvable mystery if only one of the characters would ask the right questions. The same is true of David's behaviour. Several possible causes are hinted at but never explored by either friends and family or the police.
What we're left with is a bunch of fine performances - Gosling's portrayal of David over 30+ years is excellent, and Langella is particularly repellent as the father with an accounting ledger for a heart - but a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction. I didn't expect all the loose ends to be tied up with a pretty bow at the end of an hour and forty minutes, but a few answers would have been nice.