Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 107: Monday Apr 16

Thief (Mann, 1981) plus Drive (Winding Refn, 2011):
Prince Charles Cinema, 6.20 & 8.45pm


If you see one double-bill this year make it this one.

Time Out review of Thief:

'A silently professional night-time jewel robbery, reduced to near-abstract essentials and paced by a Tangerine Dream score, sets the electric tone for Michael Mann's fine follow-up to The Jericho Mile: a philosophical thriller filled with modernist cool. Caan's the thief, contradictorily building and risking a future mapped out as meticulously as any of his lucrative hi-tech jobs; testing his emotional and criminal independence to the limits; eventually recognising that he's either exercising or exorcising a death wish.'
Paul Taylor 

Here is the brilliant opening. 

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Chicago Reader review of Drive:

'Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn made a name for himself with the brutal, proudly amoral Pusher trilogy, then successfully exported his personal brand of mayhem to the UK for the fact-based prison drama Bronson (2008). This feature marks his Hollywood debut, and though it easily surpasses most American action flicks, it suffers from the old commercial imperative of making the protagonist a nice guy, something Refn has seldom bothered with in Europe. Ryan Gosling plays an impassively cool wheelman who divides his time between movie stunt work and criminal jobs as a getaway driver; after falling (unpersuasively) for perky Carey Mulligan and her cute son, he defends them from ruthless crime lord Albert Brooks, who'll do anything to recover the cash-stuffed suitcase her husband stole.'
JR Jones

Here is the trailer.

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