Inside Llewyn Davis

Grade: B +

Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

Starring: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, Adam Driver, Stark Sands, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund and F. Murray Abraham

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 45 min.

Traversing the basket houses and back alleys of the early 1960s, pre-Dylan Greenwich Village music scene, Inside Llewyn Davis is the Coen Brothers’ ode to the fuzzy line separating artistic purity from creative recalcitrance. Driven by a melodious period soundtrack, the film is part O Brother, Where Art Thou? and part Barton Fink, but with a brooding mood and protagonist that envelopes its occasional humorous flourishes.

For the uninitiated, part of the film’s fun is connecting its fictionalized characters to such real-life inspirations as Tom Paxton, Doc Pomus, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Peter, Paul and Mary. The titular folksinger is directly drawn from Village legend Dave Van Ronk, who once releasing an album titled Inside Dave Van Ronk and, like Llewyn, stubbornly stuck to folk forms in lieu of more mainstream or “marketable” deviations. “I thought you said you were a musician,” growls cantankerous jazz player Roland Turner (John Goodman) after Llewyn informs him he plays folk songs.

Llewyn’s also a hard person to like, as the perpetual dark cloud hanging over his head is often self-made, whether he’s sleeping with his friend’s wife (Carey Mulligan) or distaining a share of performance royalties to a novelty song written by that same friend (Justin Timberlake) that eventually becomes a hit, because Llewyn deems the diddy as beneath him.

Indeed, while Inside Llewyn Davis looks and sounds gorgeous, its message remains as enigmatic as its surly, depressed protagonist. A quick glimpse of a young up-and-coming legend taking the Gaslight Cafe stage near film’s end posits that perhaps Llewyn’s troubles are a consequence of the man, not his music.

*Originally published at Indyweek.com

Drive

That's okay...I'll just use the one downstairs

Grade: B +

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks and Oscar Isaac

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 40 min.

The narrative chassis supporting Drive is the sort of heist-gone-wrong story that Hollywood has made and remade a thousand times. As a parable about greed and its unintended, even violent consequences, there’s not a lot of daylight between it and the typical Coen brothers film – a Sophie’s choice offered near the end of Drive closely mirrors the one Anton Chigurh extends to Llewelyn in No Country for Old Men.

The pleasure of this vehicle is a matter of style, not substance. Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn (Valhalla Rising) fills his noir-ish fable with muscle cars and a nihilistic L.A. tableau, playing to the European penchant for stylized cinematic renderings of American culture. In this context, it is little surprise that Refn won the Best Director Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Based on James Sallis’ 2005 novel, the plot revolves around a taciturn Stuntman with No Name (Ryan Gosling) who also exploits his skill behind the wheel at night as a hired getaway driver. Credited as “Driver,” the part-time auto mechanic takes a shine to Irene (Carey Mulligan), a lonely mom living with her son Benicio in an apartment two doors down.

When Irene’s husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from prison, he carries home a debt still owed to mob-connected cons back in the big house. This triggers a series of increasingly harrowing events as Driver battles to protect Irene and her moppet from reprisal.

Picking out the cinematic influences becomes its own parlor game during Drive’s more meditative moments – the film feels much longer than its 100-minute running time. Refn marries the ironic action styling of Luc Besson’s early work with the bloody ultra-violence of Sam Peckinpah, although Driver is less emblematic of David Sumner in Straw Dogs than a steely-eyed, slightly unhinged Steve McQueen. Indeed, Refn credits the McQueen classic Bullitt as an inspiration, along with the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Discerning viewers will also spy sidelong references to Williams Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., Walter Hill and the sort of kitschy ‘80s action films that Bernie Ross (Albert Brooks), a film producer turned cold-blooded gangster, says he used to make.

The ultimate engine propelling Drive beyond its visual and aural stylings is Gosling’s portrayal. The young actor takes what in lesser hands would be a typical movie tough-guy role and, (blessed) with minimal dialogue, transforms it into a character full of charm, complexities and contradictions reminiscent of De Niro’s Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

That same surreal, contradictory air extends to Drive as a whole, making it a film that may not appeal to the movie-going masses. However, those willing to go along for the ride will like where they end up.

Neil Morris