Every movie we see # 117: The Drop is dark and exhilarating.
This is a great week for the movies, and we haven’t even seen Nightcrawler or Esprit de Corps at the Cinema One festival (or Esoterika Manila, which we wrote but is totally an Elwood Perez movie).
The Drop is terrific. Tough, unsentimental, uncomplicated, brilliantly-acted, excellent use of the pooch. It’s directed by Belgian filmmaker Michael Roskam and based on the Dennis Lehane short story, Animal Rescue. We’ve never seen a Dennis Lehane adaptation we didn’t like—Mystic River, Gone, Baby Gone, Shutter Island. This time Lehane adapts his own story.
If you choosing between The Drop and Interstellar, here’s a comparison you may find useful.
The Hero
Interstellar: Matthew McConaughey with a space ship
The Drop: Tom Hardy with a puppy. They had us at “woof, woof.”
The Female Lead
Interstellar: Anne Hathaway, who can’t help but make us like her.
The Drop: Noomi Rapace, who doesn’t care what we think.
The Blonde
Interstellar: Jessica Chastain
The Drop: Matthias Schoenaerts. Did you see him in Rust and Bone?
The Ghost who sends messages across space and time
Interstellar: The ghost who moves the books
The Drop: James Gandolfini. We still choke up.
The Setting
Interstellar: The universe.
The Drop: Brooklyn.
The Threat
Interstellar: Desertification, famine, food riots
The Drop: Chechen mobsters with slicked back hair. Aiiieeeeee!
The Hole
Interstellar: The black hole near the planets they plan to colonize.
The Drop: The drop, the slot where bookies place bets.
Spectacle
Interstellar: Wow.
The Drop: Tom Hardy doing something we haven’t seen him do before.
The Emotion
Interstellar: Excitement, wonder, filial love.
The Drop: Dread.
The Future
Interstellar: Bleak.
The Drop: What future? And yet it is strangely uplifting.
Man Vs The Universe
Interstellar: We may not be alone in the universe.
The Drop: We are definitely alone in the universe.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
