'Thoughtful' violence in Drive (2011) and You Were Never Really Here (2017) - or the principal elements of film noir ?

Responding to 'Thoughtful Violence in Drive & You Were Never Really Here'

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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Lines of thought sparked off by 'Thoughtful Violence in Drive & You Were Never Really Here' [Nancy Epton, writing for TAKE ONE]

Driver (D) and Joe (J) are, as one recalls, [capable of] being exploited

Drive says little or nothing why D does 'jobs' outside his mechanic's, etc., duties or does not seek better reward (from Shannon)

Allusively, Lynne Ramsay shows us much more about J, but both are film noir

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 25, 2019

* Ah, but I's car has over-heated - and she has shopping, and her son...

* The lift again, and her apartment

* The immediate dialogue :

I : So, have you just moved to LA ?

D : No, I've been here a while.

I : You're just new here [the building] ?

D : H'mm, m'mm.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2019

When Standard (Oscar Isaac) has been beaten up, and D finds B and him, he hears - as a man already hooked - the story of the mushrooming protection-money, and the job at 'the pawn shop in the valley' :

D has even driven B and I

Afterwards, I feigns not to know what S has told D

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2019

A whole other debate opens up, when one takes the nobility of the cause into account in cases of explicit revenge, as to whether the violence is justified, e.g. The Villainess (2017) [https://t.co/5OwELtTujd], or Tarantino's stylized fountains of blood in Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2019

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Don't look - just go : Internally, Joker (2019) gives advice to those watching ?

Responses to Joker (2019) [as seen at The Light Cinema, Cambridge]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

25 November

Responses to Joker (2019) [as seen at The Light Cinema, Cambridge]

Until the much-trailed scene where Phoenix dances down, and prances on, the steps*, Todd Phillips and Lawrence Sher (DoP) largely starved our eyes of visuals, let alone anything cinematic

* Heavy groan, when first presented with these steps as some gross symbol of upward battle pic.twitter.com/4ct8IPhAHt

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 3, 2020

Only 'a little' - not enough to make it :

* Feel like the best role by Joaquin Phoenix - which isn't even You Were Never Really Here (2017), Lynne Ramsay's film (on which this 'leans')

* Resemble a worthy successor to Roma (2018)

* Any more than Psycho (1960)'s insights

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 25, 2019

Or The Master ?

Or Peter Lorre (as Hans Beckert) ?

Or https://t.co/NyrFLwQB9G

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 19, 2020

The time is 11.10 - at the start / at Ha Has

Time on Murray Franklin show is c. 10.40

Don't look - just go, almost certainly a quotation from (or reference to) many a film (in a film that deliberately invokes Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver (1976)) and Norman Bates (Psycho (1960)) - yet does so with unimaginative cinemtography (deliberately)

There's something special about you ~ Murray Franklin to Arthur Fleck

P. Fleck (box 37 ?)
Penny / Arthur Fleck

Laboured and unsubtle as the solo** cello-line

** Doubling / electronics ?

Joker Light

A film with his name all over it (co-writer and producer as well as director), it is not as if @thetoddphillips repays even interest on the debt to Ramsay (and nor does Joaquin Phoenix ?) in @jokermovie, which hardly matches the psychological insight of Hitchcock's Marnie (1964). https://t.co/22yQr2IIGt

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 26, 2019

Lynne Ramsay - You were Never Really Here (2017) - be angry at JP for taking all her best ideas and doing them over for Todd Phillips ?


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)