The Place Beyond the Pines reunites Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance and star Ryan Gosling. It is another character driven and rather heavy dramatic tale that again does not follow the traditional three act screenwriting structure.

Blu Valentine is an emotionally wrought film about the highs and lows that some go through over the years of an evolving relationship from meting to dating to marriage to conflict and disaster. When I saw it at the Mayfair a couple years back, my friend who accompanied me and I were both single, and the film left us rather emotionally crushed. It was quite the mountain climb to watch the characters jump back in fourth in time from happy to sad, and we roller coastered along with them. In fact,she leaned over to me at one point and said "I don't think I can get through this".

We gritted our teeth and made our way through the rest of the excellent film, even though it made for depressing results and makes one feel like you shouldn't bother to have a relationship ever again. I am happy to report that not only did the movie end up Oscar nominated, my friend and I both found much better significant other luck than the characters in the movie soon after.

I was quite impressed with their latest collaboration. It's a bit of false advertising if you go into it thinking that it's a bank heist movie starring hunky Ryan Gosling. That is a portion of the movie to be sure, but it is actually a generational tale about crime and conscious and family and forgiveness featuring talent like Eva Mendes, Bradley Cooper, Ray Liotta, Bruce Greenwood and Dane DeHann (who I thought was great in Chronicle).

You can see if you agree with me or with the critical negativity that seems to have been lashed at the film, we screen The Place Beyond the Pines tonight at the Mayfair at 6:30pm