I miss the days when movies occasionally had long weird names like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?and To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar. The long name certainly didn’t indicate excellence, but rather a quirky nature; this was not meant to be a mainstream movie.

Those usually have short names that are easy to remember, like Gladiator and The Notebook and Lincoln. The differentiation isn’t always true, but when you see a title like The Place Beyond the Pines nowadays, you know it’s going to be artsy. And I like artsy, and I like weird, and I like experimental. But the thing about experimental movies is that experiments are done to see if something works. The Place Beyond the Pines, despite writer-director Derek Cianfrance’s Herculean efforts at creating country noir and Ryan Gosling’s smolder, doesn’t work. Continue…