FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

(Thomas Vinterberg, 2015)

Chemistry is so important to on-screen romance. And in this tale of one woman and three men, it is important that she have some chemistry with at least two of them.
And while Cary Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts have an undeniable bucketload of chemistry as the two leads here - Batsheba Everdeene and Gabriel Oak, and yes, like Dickens, Thomas Hardy had a serious case of give-your-characters-apallingly-unsubtle-clues-to-their-personalities-in-their-names-itis - that mysterious quality is conspicuous by its absence in her scenes with Michael Sheen (as Mr Boldword) and Tom Sturridge (as the caddish soldier Frank Troy). And while that works in the movies favour in one sense (we really really want Batsheba and Gabriel to end up together), it absolutely does not in another (there is never really any doubt that Batsheba and Gabriel will end up together).
Still, three of those four actors are fine, and Sturridge is easily hateable as Frank, partly because the character is utterly unsympathetic and partly because he is so terrible in the role; modern and smug and posturing, he fails to communicate the suffering that has made Frank what he is.
Vinterberg's film does a good job of capturing what makes Hardy, well, Hardy. The landscape is a character here; beautiful and terrible and ever-present. Cutaways of nature between scenes suggest the small scale of the human problems on display. Passion broils beneath the surface of everyone, and Mulligan and - especially - Schoenearts do a good job of showing that, with each of their scenes seeming  on the brink of something. It always looks fantastic, with a rich palette of browns and deep greens reflecting the earthy passions of Hardy's world in contrast to the more delicate tones of Jane Austen, say. and while novelist David Nicholls' script skirts romcom cliche, it never quite mis-steps, instead finding the simple dramas in Hardy's tale.
All in all it works because it treats the cliches of period romantic drama as if they are not cliches at all, as if they are the best thing ever. And that makes them feel somewhat fresh.

DRIVE

(Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)

The film Drive reminded me of most is Stephen Soderbergh's Out of Sight. Not because they have anything at all in common in terms of story or style, mood or look. They don't. But because they are adaptations of fairly strong crime novels - in this case, of James Sallis' pared-down, hypnotically taut getaway-Noir story - which are elevated somewhat by directors with a thrilling sense of the cinematic.
Even then, elevated may not be quite the right word. Drive is a cracking genre entertainment, even if much of it is slightly over-familiar. The two films it has been most regularly compared with, Michael Mann's Thief and Walter Hill's The Driver, are both unavoidable points of reference. Just like Refn's film, each is a Neo-noir focusing on an existential romantic loner forced to choose whether to follow their code or discard it when an emotional attachment becomes a dangerous liability. But where Mann articulates the choice and makes it explicit and Hill turns it almost abstract while giving his world some of the grit and complexity of real life through a few characters and details, Refn instead opts to emphasise only the surface of his heroes situation. This is a movie movie through and through, and so we intuit that Goslings unnamed "Driver" follows some unspoken code, because we have seen similar characters do the same in similar films. This is pop-existentialism, without the seriousness or earnest ambition of Mann or Hill. For many, that can only be a good thing, for it makes Drive an easily accessible, narratively unpretentious film.
The simplicity of the set-up, the fairy-tale archetypes and the satisfyingly predictable genre beats give Refn time to focus on the style, and he has become a fine stylist. From the first scene, a forensically procedural account of the Driver at work, the visceral joy of driving is vividly present, and the sense of Los Angeles as seen through European eyes provides a pungent sort of cool which is only amplified by the 80s-esque electro pop on the soundtrack and Cliff Martinez's atmospheric score. Refn is excellent on the small, quiet moments, lingering just enough on Gosling and Mulligan during their (wordless) moony growing intimacy to let it register.
This all means that when violence intrudes into the story in the second half, it does so with a savage kick, and the shocking gore that follows - head-stampings, eye-stabbings, face-shootings - is all executed with near-unbearable power.
Gosling is all studied cool and charisma, suggesting just enough interior life to make it work, Mulligan may be slighly miscast but gets though on that lovely face and some clinging innocence, while stalwarts like Ron Perlman and Bryan Cranston offer excellent work in full-colour character parts. The stand-out performer, however, is Albert Brooks, frightening and believably cynical as a movie producer turned gangster.
Oddly, Brooks was also cast against type in Out of Sight, in which he also excelled.
Just like that film, Drive emerges as a dazzlingly executed piece of pure genre pleasure, and another fascinating cornerstone in Refn's growing career.