Taxi Driver

When I started writing about cinema almost eighteen months ago, there was one film above all others which I was nervous to write about. A year and a half, over five hundred reviews and approximately 470,000 words later, the same film was still looming large over me. That film was Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, my favourite of all time. The unease came from two perspectives. On the one hand I didn’t feel as though my writing, limited in experience and knowledge as I am, could do it justice while I was also conscious about penning a review which ran for thousands of words and which no one would have the interest or time to read. It wasn’t until earlier this week when a friend said with some surprise that he couldn’t find Taxi Driver on my A-Z that I thought that time to review it had come. So with the added expectation of an audience waiting, I sat down to watch my favourite film once again.

Within ten seconds of the film starting, a bright, broad smile shone across my face. The entire film came back to me within the first few frames and I began to think ahead to the magnificent scenes which were to follow over the coming hour and fifty minutes. My excitement grew as the quickening snare and saxophone of Bernard Hermann’s score rose to meet the opening shot of a New York taxi appearing from behind a column of steam. The movie creates an off-kilter sensation within these first few seconds and it’s a feeling which continues to ride throughout the movie. The opening titles are a deep shade of blood red and forebode the bloodshed to come. The closeness of the taxi as it brushes past the static camera also creates a sense of excitement and danger and the jumping; out of focus lights as seen from inside the taxi make the viewer try in vain to pinpoint something recognisable. The eye darts across the screen in search of an image to grasp but is left wanting. Wanting that is until Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) walks out of the steam and into a taxi office.

This is 40

This is 40 is being described as the sort of sequel to 2007’s Knocked Up in that the central characters first appeared in that movie. Besides that there is little to connect the stories of the two films although the early mid life crisis that Debbie (Leslie Mann) and Pete (Paul Rudd) found themselves entering five years ago are now fully formed. Debbie and Paul are a married couple on the cusp of their fortieth birthdays. Their two children (played by Mann’s and Writer/Director Judd Apatow’s real children Maude and Iris) are finding it difficult to get along and both parents are in turn having problems with their own fathers. In the background is a financial noose which threatens to envelop their necks at any time.

I believe that This is 40 contains some of Judd Apatow’s best writing to date. This might not sound like much of a compliment considering his writing credits have included You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and Funny People but in amongst the poorer stuff, Apatow has written some very good comedy. This is 40 is not only very funny but also sweet and contains a lot of realistic relationship talk, arguments and situations.

Drive

"... I don't sit in while you're running it down. I don't carry a gun. I drive"

A Hollywood stunt driver / part time wheelman for L.A’s criminals (Ryan Gosling) gets embroiled in a crime that puts him on a collision course with the Mob after taking a job in order to protect perhaps the only two people in the world that he has any feelings for. The cool and unflappable Driver seeks out those who have wronged him and attempts to save his own and his love interest’s lives.

This was easily one of the top 10 best films of 2011 and possibly inside my top ten of the last several years. The film and its central character are effortlessly cool and both have become both instant classics and cult favourites. Although the film’s time period is never specified it seems to have a foot both in the present and in the 1980s. The style, design and music reminded me of the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City as it has that kind of 80s Miami almost art deco style-stucco style. The colour palette is beautiful and dominated by the colour gold, perhaps in a nod to its L.A setting and also the Driver’s nostalgic view of L.A with its strong silent movie stars and dames in need of rescue. The whole film has a very Noir feel to it. The gold is most noticeable in Gosling’s wardrobe as he sports golden shoes and a fantastic gold scorpion jacket. More subtlety though the sun kissed L.A streets also glisten gold.