Drive-Away Dolls (2024) - the movie that american cinema so desperately needs
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Film and Television Discussion
Sofie, RAF — 1 year ago(May 01, 2024 11:33 PM)
the movie that the american cinema so desperately needs – unapologetically crass, colorful, silly, an actual b-movie in the age where every other picture has to be Eventized
to move the needle. i admire drive-away dolls' lack of ambition, its willingness to be a short and sweet diversion by loading itself with episodic gags. this is a film in love with crash-zooms, canted angles, goofy transitions, off-beat henchmen and macguffins – it has a spiritual kinship with the work of rob zombie, especially his firefly trilogy and the munsters: not so much yearning wistfully for a bygone age of filmmaking, and more the pragmatic question of 'hey, why can't we do this thing here and now?'
ethan coen and tricia cooke find humanity and romance in the corners of all their jokes – qualley and viswanathan are a killer duo, two women with opposing personalities who actually feel like they'd fall in love. the casual tenderness by which their relationship unfolds is the antithesis of the way that hollywood tends to make lesbian women into either hypersexed fetish objects for straight men or has them be completely sterilized 'just like us' trinkets to earn political points. dolls swerves to the middle lane between these, achieving a vidorian vitality that emphasizes light-hearted fun while still being queer as hell.
this is what we should have more of, a movie unafraid to be short and sweet, an auteur being able to deliberately craft a 'minor' work which nevertheless contains more virtues than many other director's 'major' efforts – the cinema has to have room for LGBT stories that aren't dependent on franchise 'inclusion' or prestigey exploitation. drive-away dolls veers away from the self-important heaviness that's come to dominate our screens and points to the arbitrary exercise of power that allows such an attitude to persist – the substitution of the lesbian's dildo in place of the republican's dick directly begs the question 'if this is supposedly a free market of ideas, why is everything so homogeneous-yet-reverential?', and the film answers thus: the powers that be, both in the american political system and in hollywood, have elevated rhetoric over life, mannered cultivation over frivolous delights, artifice over art. let drive-away dolls be a counter-punch against this cultural conglomeration: the cinema is not a hierarchical church where sermons are decreed, it is a big-tent that can and must embrace everyone, especially those whose quieter voices are apt to be drowned out in the idiotic clamour of the aforementioned 'free market' – we can love pulp as much as we love henry james, as the dichotomy between them is transparently false and deliberately constructed by so-called 'taste-makers' and trend-setters.
in an age choking on the dissipating fumes of its own 'high culture' – whether nerd nostalgia or oscarbait – the antidote is served by two gay women, a car, and a 84-minute runtime to burn. don't take it for granted that films like this get made – miracles, as PKD reminds us, are always found first in the trash-stratum. 10/10 -
Sofie, RAF — 1 year ago(May 02, 2024 07:21 AM)
"put a meter on her pussy and we could all retire"
haha Beanie, go off you cute raunchy bish, i love you
ok so i just watched this little gem for a third time and it's easily my fav film this year at this point so far and even tho there are many more films still to come, i can already say that i absolutely love this one which is sth i didnt really expect to happen beforehand but idgaf what anyone says about it anymore, what i saw was such a sweet and wonderful film that doesnt deserve the hate it is getting for all the wrong minor reasons imo. it's a pity that a lot of people didnt seem to get it, they expected another Coen masterpiece i suppose which it isnt. it's so much more than just that
i love how it just celebrates sapphic love and lezzies and dyke attitudes without taking itself so seriously. it's co-written and co-directed by Tricia Cooke (Ethan's spouse) who identifies as queer. there are some offbeat sequences that may be a little weird, but they're more like sign posts. this film knows exactly what it's doing
not only that, it may even become my fav film that Ethan was ever involved in. that's a bold statement i know but in retrospect i can't think of any other one that i have loved so much, that would make it so easy for me to just let up, go with the flow and enjoy the ride all the way through. now, i'm just ready to have that again some time soon. mmh hell yeah -
sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(September 15, 2025 12:46 AM)
there are some offbeat sequences that may be a little weird, but they're more like sign posts. this film knows exactly what it's doing
Are you talking about the psychedelic sequences that kept popping up where "Maggot Brain" was playing? They were a bit jarring at first, but I got why they were there by the end.
Draft Barron Trump -
sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(September 15, 2025 12:43 AM)
I don't quite agree with the 10/10 rating, but this is an excellent review and the comparison to Rob Zombie is something I'd have never even considered. You're right that movies like this from a major director are few and far between these days. Small scale comedies and dramas used to be the bread and butter of Hollywood. Now it's all franchises, Oscar bait and indie movies that barely get released to cinemas and then show up on streaming at some point.
I enjoyed this more than any Coen brothers movie since
A Serious Man
.
Draft Barron Trump -
Tigereyes — 6 months ago(September 15, 2025 06:55 PM)
it's my fav film that Ethan was ever involved in. EVER.
but then, i still have to watch his new one,
Honey Don't!
with Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans and i will do that tonight. Oh YES -
sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(September 15, 2025 07:01 PM)
I'm watching
Eddington
tonight
But I'll check that one out soon.
The more I think about this one, I really see it as something of a throwback to early Coen crime comedies and the late '90s setting sort of emphasizes this. When they weren't taking themselves too seriously, just making rad movies. Joel going all Shakespeare post-breakup may be a sign that he was the issue
Draft Barron Trump -
Tigereyes — 6 months ago(September 15, 2025 07:09 PM)
oh
Eddington
is also HIGH on my to watch list of 2025 movies, along with:
Die My Love
(Lynne Ramsay w/ JLaw & The Patts)
Caught Stealing
(Darren Aronofsky w/ Austin Butler & Zoe Kravitz)
One Battle After Another
(Paul Thomas Anderson w/ Leo DiCap) -
sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(September 15, 2025 07:16 PM)
Definitely wanna see the last two, especially
Caught Stealing
after I heard some of the Idles soundtrack. Hadn't heard of the first. And I'm still looking forward to seeing
Life of Chuck
even though you said you didn't like it. Plus there are two new Richard Linklater films coming out and a film from each of the Safdie brothers!
Draft Barron Trump -
sheetsadam1 — 6 months ago(September 15, 2025 07:22 PM)
Linklater is hit or miss from me. I love when he's a bit more experimental and/or philosophical (the Before trilogy, Slacker, A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life) and usually not when he's trying to do crowd pleasers (with Dazed and Confused being an obvious exception and School of Rock remaining a guilty pleasure). Not really sure what mode he's in for these ones, but I'll never count him out entirely.
Draft Barron Trump
