The Place Beyond the Pines opens with a sublime bareboned, one-take tracking shot that follows Ryan Gosling walking through a carnival, hopping on a motorbike, and then entering a 'globe of death'—in which 3 riders simultaneously circle inside a cramped sphere at rampant speeds. The simplicity of the tracking shot in contrast to the high-risk (and thunderously loud) act immediately sets the tone for the film: a grounded drama with spouts of danger.

The first 50 minutes are absorbingly strong as Goslings character and the dynamics between his son and Mendes is built up, he keeps attempting to be the father he never had and goes through life-gambling ventures to achieve it. The downward spiral of this character mixed with…

OK so first I'm going talk about what I loved about this film, then I'll explain why it loses the 5th star. I absolutely loved this film up until a key point where something happens that causes an abrupt change in the overall tone of the film but more on that later.

I'll start with performances. Ryan Gosling is once again fantastic. I believe he is the character he plays and he's more than convincing. Bradley Cooper after that terrific turn in Silver Linings Playbook is once again exceptional here. The supporting cast which includes such names as Ray Liotta and Eva Mendes is also solid.

The story had me completely invested through the first two acts. I even got…

I'm not a big college football guy, but anybody who even casually follows it knows that you can compete for a national championship if you lose a game... that loss just better come at the beginning of the season and not at the end. Basically, you're penalized for leaving a bad last impression.

If only this triptych's final section was as satisfying as its first and second, through most of which co-writer/director Derek Cianfrance offers a consuming meditation on masculinity, parental legacies and the slippery slope of compromise one traverses when making misguided, desperate decisions.

But then, such a reversal simply wouldn't have been possible with "Pines," since Cianfrance's primary preoccupation seems to be payoff, the culmination of his carefully…

The Place Beyond the Pines is a tricky motherfucker, and is not what it seems. If you saw the trailer and went to see this, you ended up with much more than you bargained for. And i am so glad you did, because i was so very wary that this would be a forgettable run of the mill crime drama. Please continue to mask your complexities.

Running in at 140 minutes, it runs dangerously close to meandering and lamenting, and it does, momentarily throughout, causing me to teeter over the 3 or 4 star mark, but ultimately, i think the runtime is justified. Pines moves at such a rate through time and character that it never really loses you for…

The Place Beyond The Pines is one fickle beast....

Derek Cianfrance has created a very unique and compelling story here that rides the lightning for the first half but crashes and burns in the second. If you break up the film into 3 distinct parts and rate their quality it would probably go:

Part 1: Fucking great.
Part 2: Pretty good.
Part 3: holyshitwhatisthis

If the first two parts were the two Godfather movies,(not saying the Bradley Cooper storyline in this film is comparable to Godfather Part II) then the last part would be Godfather Part III.

Alright. You get it. The last third of this film is filled with problems. It technically shouldn't have existed. The first two parts…