Pictureland

There's really no subject more fearful than stage four back cancer.  Actually...technically...there is no such disease.   This does not stop Kyle (Seth Rogen) from using his friend Adam's recent cancer diagnosis to try to score chicks for them both.  Kyle divulges the "back cancer" to a bookstore clerk, playing the sensitive friend to help his friend, "the little guy over there in the cap," purchase self-help books.  This wins Kyle a date with the clerk.  But before more ill-gotten nookie can be had, the date is interrupted when Kyle sees Adam's girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) getting friendly with a another man at a gallery show while his ill friend lays forlornly on his couch waiting for her.  As identified by Kyle, Rachael is another Big C in Adam's life.  While not exactly a paragon of selfless friendship, Kyle is at least loyal and a rare source of candor.  The friend and soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend are just two dubious parts of Ada...

The laconic hero of Drive is not just a man without a name, the lonely fellow is a man without a decade.  "The Driver" (Ryan Gosling) sports an anachronistic white satin jacket through much of Drive , which is announced in titles whose pink script is consciously reminiscent of those of Risky Business .  Only The Driver's first getaway car, a late model Chevy Impala, ties him to the present .  "The most popular car in California," announces Shannon (Bryan Cranston), the mechanic who sets up the young man with the souped-up getaway vehicle for the first job we see The Driver perform with icy precision. The first action sequence during which Gosling's mysterious character is wheel man for two robbers gets Drive off to a bracing, promising start.  Before the Impala starts roaring along the streets and ducking into underpasses of nighttime Los Angeles, before The Driver pulls on his taut, leather gloves and inserts a trademark toothpick into his mouth, th...