Drive

A little like Brick in a car, via Parker.

A lot less talking. A lot fewer characters. Less stylized; less affected. (Not saying that's universally good or bad; it worked for this story, is what I'm saying.)

The bottom line is that you've got young master Ryan Gosling being a guy-good-at-a-thing, driving a car around LA, and he gets "mixed up" (to put it glibly) in a series of elaborate relationships regarding money, power, obligation and ultimately life and death. You've got Carey Mulligan as a girl on the edge of his perception. And you've got Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman using their veteran acting skills to build an amazing tapestry of criminal hierarchy, with just a hint of affectionate Jewish comedy bubbling under the blood-streaked surface.

It's an excruciatingly intense two hours. You could cut yourself on Gosling's precision, and in this sense it's almost worth watching right after Brick to contrast with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's scattered, obsessive, brainy mile-a-minute internal patter.

But it was suggested to me that a much better way to dull the edge of this film's knife-twisting atmosphere in LA is to follow it with The Big Lebowski. And that is what I'm going to do the next time I host a movie night: Drive and Lebowski.

I'm so excited for this notion I could plotz.