Four Weeks of Neo-Noir: Drive (2011)

A nameless Hollywood stunt driver spends his nights working as a wheelman for hire - a life built entirely around staying detached, until his neighbor Irene and her newly-released-from-prison husband drag him into a job that goes wrong. Ryan Gosling stars alongside Carey Mulligan in Drive, which Nicolas Winding Refn shoots like a fairy tale that's wandered into present-day LA: long silences, synth-pop needle drops, and violence that arrives so suddenly it feels almost formal. Albert Brooks, cast wildly against type as a soft-spoken gangster, nearly walks off with the whole film. Refn took Best Director at Cannes for this, and its fingerprints are everywhere now - that scorpion jacket, that score, the surgical restraint of the whole thing became its own aesthetic movement almost overnight. What's easy to forget a decade on is how strange a bet this was at the time: a B-movie chassis dressed up in art-house patience, and it somehow worked on both audiences at once. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post called it low-key, sleek and sophisticated, delivering the visceral pleasures of pulp without sacrificing art, while Salon's Andrew O'Hehir described it as ultra-violent and ultra-stylish with calculated, hard-edged brilliance. Four Weeks of Neo-Noir: Drive Thursday, September 3rd | 8:00 PM | TicTic Free Entry & Popcorn - Arrive early for sofa, bed, or beanbag seating.