Baby Driver

Michael J. Cinema started his review by saying, “There is a scene roughly halfway through Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 backstage masterpiece The Red Shoes where Ballet Russe impresario Lermontov comforts his understandably nervous principal dancer, Vicky Page.”

“Nothing matters by the music,” Lermontov assures her.

Cinema continued, “He hums the notes and Page relaxes, the steps have returned to her mind and her body regains confidence. Without the music, she’s just a bunch of limbs failing about; with the music, her body and her movements become a work of art.”

Maybe a post-war tragedy about that undying desire to create isn’t the most obvious connection to “Baby Driver” – the 2017 heist/getaway film from British writer/director Edgar Wright – Cinema noted, “but neither is Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 musical comedy Love Me Tonight. Or the candy-colored costuming and fluid choreography of Jacques Demy’s romantic French trilogy. Yet, there they are; up on the screen, alongside Walter Hill’s The Driver, Richard Rush’s Freebie and the Bean, and Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde. Much in the same way the French New Wave blew a breath of fresh air into gangster pictures, Wright makes a mixtape musical—a “rock opera” in his words—and brings the ghosts of the past to life.”

However, “Baby Driver” is more than just a summary of its reference points. It is an energetic race down the crime-ridden streets of Atlanta and up freeways of young love. Unknown to his girlfriend (Lily James), the protagonist Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a slave of a wheelman for crime boss Doc (Kevin Spacey). Budd (Jon Hamm) and Darling (Eiza González), lovers who steal for their drug habit, and Bats (Jamie Foxx), a stick-up man with, as Cinema described, “a proletariat ax to grind, round out the remainder of the crew.”

Sultry, sleek, and stylish, “Baby Driver” is more than just an exciting take on a familiar genre. It’s a great combination of music and movies. Pre-recorded rock ‘n’ roll, pop, jazz, R&B, and rap are no strangers to mainstream cinema, but few filmmakers have found ways to use it as cleverly. The songs are not here to carry the story when it drags or insert energy where there isn’t any. They are here because they are just as important to Wright’s work as the images. They collide against each other, fuse into one another, and drown out Baby’s tinnitus – a constant reminder of the car accident that killed both of his parents.

However, Baby doesn’t just listen to the music, he moves to it. He mouths the words, sings to himself and others, and, most importantly, he creates it. The songs he selects for each job are carefully crafted based on the energy and timing needed. In one robbery, a bit of improvising from the criminals delays Baby long enough that he has to restart his getaway song to get the timing right. Nothing matters but the music.

After hearing so much praise about this movie, I checked this out a few months ago on Amazon Prime while exercising. You can see this on Netflix and I highly recommend it. If you have loved Edgar Wright’s previous works, you will love “Baby Driver.” The car chases, the music, the action, everything is an adrenaline blast from beginning to end. I cannot do the film justice with this review. You have to see the film to believe it. I give it a high recommendation.

I was surprised to see that there is going to be a sequel to the film. I thought it ended off fine, but if this is going to get a sequel, great. I would love to see a sequel to this film and see what Wright has in store for his fans.

Alright, we have now reached the end of “Kevin Spacey Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed it and saw the films I recommended. I know that Spacey is not respected after all the allegations against him, but his films were still great. Wait a minute. Next month is October. You know what that means…HALLOWEEN MONTH!!! Stay tuned to see what spooktacular franchise I will be reviewing next month.

The World's End

You might not think a slapstick comedy about middle-aged bar hoppers racing with advanced alien invaders to have intelligence, heart and wisdom, but that’s “The World’s End,” a 2013 rare film that’s as much as you see.

Directed by Edgar Wright from a script by him and his regular protagonist, Simon Pegg, the film is nicely personal, despite the chasing and hunting and decapitation and exploding and the amount of blue blood going all over the place. The special effects are special, but they always tell the story and characters. Matt Zoller Seitz said in his review, “And even when Wright is paying homage to his filmmaking heroes (John Carpenter especially) or staging some of the most cleverly choreographed fights this side of an early '90s Jackie Chan film, you never get the sense that it's bored with itself when the characters are sitting around talking about their shared history over a pint.” Actually, they often talk about their shared stories while they’re attacking the aliens – and have a drink. Sometimes they have a drink during the fight. This is the type of movie you get.

Pegg’s character, Gary King, wants everyone to call him The King and thinks he is a prince among men, but he’s the type of person you get aggravated with easily. His friends have grown tired of him long ago. They tell themselves they’ve matured. Seitz said, “Gary thinks they've sold out and become tediously conventional.” To the film’s credit, not one of these points-of-view is told completely wrong.

Oliver, played by Martin Freeman, is a whiny misery of a real estate agent with a Bluetooth always stuck on his ear. Steven (Paddy Considine), an architect who was once Gary’s enemy for the love of Oliver’s sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), is recently divorced and sleeping with a young fitness instructor. He brags about that last time to everyone who’ll listen, which is how you know he’s miserable about for the rest of his life. Peter, played by Eddie Marsan, who was badly bullied in his youth, was always the go-to nerd of the old group. Now he sells cars for his dad. Andrew, played by Nick Frost, is a lawyer who refuses to speak to (or of) Gary. Gary says it’s because he still owes Andrew six hundred pounds from long ago, but audiences will think that the real reason for the argument goes deeper. In fact it’s a bummer.

The first part of the movie is Gary “getting the old band back together,” as he says, to re-enact their great pub hopping mission from 1990, when they decided to go to all twelve bars in their old hometown of Newton Haven. Seitz says, “The quiet little town is home to bars with mythologically and otherwise suggestively loaded names: The Two-Headed Dog, The Famous Cock, The Trusty Servant, The World's End.” That the friends didn’t complete their mission has always annoyed Gary. He’s crazy about closing this chapter in his long-unfinished story.

Seitz says, “Running beneath the lively banter and knockabout slapstick is a sense of melancholy, at times despair, over lost youth and missed opportunities.” Gary is an alcoholic and drug user and chronic contort, the type of person who attracts other friends into tagging along which usually ends with humiliation or disaster. He’s first seen in a rehab facility, but looking at his appearance and behavior he hasn’t been there long. Seitz describes, “Pegg looks like he just crawled out of bed—a bed at the bottom of a mine shaft, most likely—and even his most jocular pronouncements have an undertone of manic desperation.” “Why should getting older affect something as important as friendship?” he demands, a question tough with unlooked guesses.

Seitz said, “If "The World's End" were only a picture about childhood buddies on a bittersweet pub crawl, it might have still been some sort of minor classic, so sharply observed is every shot, cut, music cue, line and close-up. When the film takes a right turn into science fiction conspiracy thriller territory—invoking "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" as well as such Carpenter films as "The Fog" and "Prince of Darkness"—you might worry that it's about to succumb to Gary's biggest fear, and trade spiky if heedless individuality for a tiresome grab at commercial formula. (This is the third Wright film in which a dull community proves a hotbed of slowly-creeping and highly secretive horror.) No worries: the sci-fi elements—which were hinted at in trailers, but which I'll write around in this review and maybe revisit later in a spoiler-warning-bedecked blog post—are audaciously funny and inventively designed, and they're always tied to the film's concerns. Nothing, no matter how extravagant or surreal, is superfluous.”

Fears of adjustment and instruction and the loss of youthful desire are never far from the movie’s thoughts. Neither is the all around thought and reasonable feeling that, while we should try to be better, kinder, more mature people, we still are who we are, and if we cannot stand one another’s flaws and treat each other respectfully, there’s no hope for mankind. Seitz said, “The film has great fun painting modern life itself as a prolonged and largely invisible conspiracy to rob people and their world of all personality. Every old pub the boys revisit has been Starbucked, as they put it, and later we get the sense that the very same digitally connected world that lets you read this review on a tiny handheld computer-phone is a means of social control as well. Odd as it might sound, the unexpectedly laid back climax echoes "A Clockwork Orange."” It shows a feeling that, while a completely safe and calm and perfect world might be possible, it’s not wanted, and might really be a large sin than anything that any person could do.

Wright is a smart director of fast-paced exposition, stylish but damaging action scenes, and graphically large comedic overload. Seitz said, “As in "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz" and "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," even functional closeups of beer being poured or ignition keys being turned are shot as if they were events on par with the Big Bang or the release of a new Kanye West album. Wright is a pop artist who's not inclined to relax; at times his movies play as if he'd decided to turn the first five minutes of "Trainspotting" into a career. There are times when I wished the "The World's End" had the confidence to linger more on the characters' conversations and nonverbal interactions. The group's chemistry evokes the best sad-sack male bonding tales of Barry Levinson ("Diner," "Tin Men"), and the performances are all superb, particularly Frost, who steals the film with an explosive physicality that's John Goodmanesque.”

However, at a time where mainstream movies not only have rhythm but look like they have forgotten how to dance, this one’s speed is inspiring. Its judgment is almost positive, and it has a feeling of fun that’s rare. Seitz said, “Like most genre films, "The World's End" is working things through in an extremely broad way and having a grand time doing it, and its self-deprecating wit inoculates it against self-importance. The movie wears its themes on its sleeve and pins its symbols to its puffed-out rooster's chest, swaggers about with a proud grin jabbing thumbs at itself, then walks into an open manhole.” This is just simply magnificent.

I know people might be wondering why this is referred to as “The Cornetto Trilogy.” That’s because in every movie, a Cornetto ice cream makes an appearance. See, in the USA, we do not get Cornetto, but it’s apparently a popular brand over in England. Also, being inspired by Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Color film trilogy, the Cornetto colors symbolize an element of the film. “Shaun of the Dead” is red for zombies, “Hot Fuzz” is blue for police, and “The World’s End” is green for aliens.

Now, I know that there might be people who do not agree with me on this, but I think that “The World’s End” is the funniest of the trilogy. People might disagree and say that “Hot Fuzz” is the funniest, but I found myself laughing at “The World’s End” more. This also makes another one of my favorite comedies. If you saw the other two movies in “The Cornetto Trilogy,” don’t skip this one over. Give it a watch because you will also love the fast-paced comedy that keeps this trilogy rolling.

Thank you everyone for joining in on “Edgar Wright Month.” I know that people probably wanted me to review “Baby Driver,” but I never saw that one. However, I did hear some really good things about it, and I might check it out one day. When I do, everyone will know because I will give it the right treatment.

Look out next month to see what I will review next.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Unleashed imagination is something that wasn’t really seen a lot in movies during 2010’s play-it-safe summer. I know we saw that in “Inception,” but then what? Looking at “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” an amazing refining of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s six-volume graphic novel. Peter Travers said in his review, “Many graybeard critics don’t understand what any sentient being past the age of reason could find of interest in Scott’s plight to win the love of dream girl Ramona Flowers by defeating her seven evil exes in mortal combat.” Even with the amazing Michael Cera bringing Scott to bright human life, the fact is that comic-book movies are Elementary. The haters laugh at the posing of calling a comic book a graphic novel, same thing as saying porn is adult entertainment.

Travers said, “Why should Scott Pilgrim vs. the World break the jinx? Start with director Edgar Wright, who co-wrote the bracing script with Michael Bacall.” The mastery of Edgar Wright is clear to anyone who’s watch the British filmmaker spook the zombie movie in “Shaun of the Dead” and bring every cop cliché in the book in “Hot Fuzz” What true movie lover hasn’t added those films to their DVD collection?

Making Wright in charge on “Scott Pilgrim” is perfect casting. The job needs Scott’s position as in charge of his own life, and his career as a bass guitarist for the garage band Sex Bob-Omb (Beck gave his fabulous songs for the group, which includes Alison Pill, Mark Webber and Johnny Simmons), combine music, comics, manga, anime and video games into a flawless method for storytelling. Travers said, “Wright also intuitively understands that age sets no limits on living inside your head. Look at Don Quixote. We’ve all been there. Plus, fantasy is liberating.” Once Scott wins a fight, his enemy disintegrates into coins. With the help of the talented cinematographer Bill Pope (The Matrix, Spider-Man 2), Wright creates a great realms that is literally a win.

Travers said, “Still, the pyrotechnics would be nothing but shameless showing off if Wright wasn’t equally adept at building characters.” When we first meet Scott, he is a Toronto resident in his twenties with one bad relationship with him – Envy Adams, played by Brie Larson, did something worse than break up with Scott, she became a rock star and really took his life to a toll. Scott has a new crush with the jealous Knives Chau, played by Ellen Wong. Problem is Knives is only 17 means Scott is in deep with his sister, Stacey (Anna Kendrick), and his gay roommate, Wallace Wells (Macaulay Culkin’s younger brother, Kieran Culkin). However, it’s only when Ramona Flowers, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, comes in that Scott knows true passion. Ramona changes boyfriends more often than hair colors, but Scott will win her over, even if it means he’ll die.

The seven exes go from her junior-high crush (Satya Bhabha) to the leader of a gang (Jason Schwartzman, who is downright hilarious) with time for a movie action actor (Chris Evans), a strong vegan (Brandon Routh), twins (Keita and Shota Saito) and even a girl (Mae Whitman). Travers said, “It’s a character pileup, but Wright wrangles the killer cast with the skill of a world-class ringmaster. Scott Pilgrim is a breathless rush of a movie that jumps off the screen, spins your head around and then stealthily works its way into your heart.” No need to think a lot about hugging and learning and everything. Just enjoy these non-messy last moments when two people finally get everything together on who they are to make a genuine, love connection. This is really a change.

You should definitely see this movie because it’s like watching a fighting video game happen on the movie screen. Completely different from watching someone play the fighting video game online or streaming them. This is another great comedy and you should not miss the chance to see this because you will have a great time watching this. I would probably say this is another one my favorite comedies, but I have to think about that.

Alright everyone, next week we’ll be ending off the Cornetto Trilogy. I promise everyone, that trilogy ended off with a bang. You’ll have to know what I mean next week when I finish off “Edgar Wright Month.”

Hot Fuzz

Our next film in “Edgar Wright Month” is the funnier film in the “Cornetto Trilogy,” “Hot Fuzz,” released in 2007. Martin Chilton started his review out by saying, “Hot Fuzz reunited Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) in a comedy film that could be loosely described as The Sweeney meets the Vicar of Dibley.”

Simon Pegg plays prudish policeman Nicholas Angel, who is promoted to sergeant and sent from London to the dreary Gloucestershire town of Sandford because his work habits was showing up the rest of the Met police.

The plot is not supposed to make a lot of sense. Chilton said, “A spate of grisly murders in Sandford is shrugged off with the observation that "accidents happen".”

The village elders, who hide some dark secrets, are played by some veteran British comic actors, including Billie Whitelaw, Paul Freeman, Edward Woodward and Anne Reid. However, the best of them are Jim Broadbent as the police inspector and Timothy Dalton, who plays an evil supermarket manager.

The enjoyment is in the recurring jokes about the village (including a missing swan) and there is a smart comic shooting in the local Somerfield supermarket, with jars of pasta sauce used for bloody effect.

There’s also a great part when Angel and his hilarious drunk partner Danny Butterman, played by Nick Frost, stay in one evening to watch action movies, including “Bad Boys II.” “The best way to describe this movie is The Midsomer Murders as if directed by Tony Scott,” said Pegg.

Chilton ended his review by saying, “Hot Fuzz could easily have been trimmed by 20 minutes but it's a funny and affectionate tribute to British uncool and a homage to the best of the Hollywood action genre – and wonderfully deadpan with it.”

This is a great movie and another amazing comedy, one of my absolute favorites. If you loved “Shaun of the Dead,” then you will definitely like this one more because of how hilarious of a cop comedy it is. One of the things people say that “Hot Fuzz” actually got right is the amount of paperwork that cops have to go through on a daily basis, something that every cop movie neglects to show. Well, we have this movie to thank us for showing that. All of the great one-liners come back later in the movie to pay off some great insults in the final action scenes. Do not miss your chance to watch this movie because you will be missing out on one of the funniest movies ever made.

Now I know I said at the beginning of this review that this is the second in the “Cornetto Trilogy,” but I will not be looking at the last installment next week. Instead, I will be looking at another Edgar Wright movie that I think is still really funny. Don’t worry, I will get to the last in the trilogy, but I am reviewing all the movies that I have seen in order of release date, as I feel that is the right way to do it. Just stay tuned next week to find out which film I’m talking about for “Edgar Wright Month.” I think everyone might have a good guess at which film I will be reviewing.

Shaun of the Dead

Guys, you’re in for a great month. The reason why I said that is because this month will be dedicated to the Edgar Wright movies that I have seen which he directed and wrote in. With that said, let’s take a look at one of the funniest comedies ever and the first in the “Cornetto Trilogy,” “Shaun of the Dead.”

The movie is a 2004 British comedy about oblivious loafers who basically revolve around the local pub. For them, the zombies are not a threat to them as they are for us, but an intrusion with their happy hour. When it becomes clear that London is filled with zombies, best friends Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost) take a small group of survivors to the obvious monopoly: the Winchester, their local.

The paradox is that Shaun’s girlfriend Liz, played by Kate Ashfield, has been giving challenges, asking Shaun to decide between her and the pub. She lives with Di (Lucy Davis) and David (Dylan Moran), who thinks that in a decision Shaun would chose the pub over his girlfriend. When Shaun insists them to barrier themselves inside the Winchester, David is not encouraging: “Do you think his master plan is going to amount to anything more than sitting and eating peanuts in the dark?” This is not really fair, since Shaun does have a weapon: He uses his cricket bat to knock zombies on the head. Roger Ebert said in his review, “A cricket bat is to British movies as a baseball bat is to American movies: The weapon of choice for clueless heroes going downstairs to investigate a noise that was inevitably made by somebody packing a lot more than a bat.”

Ebert described, “Liz, Shaun and Ed the best friend have a relationship not unlike the characters played by Jennifer Aniston, John C. Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson in "The Good Girl" (2002).” Liz is smart and determined and wants to move forward in life, but Shaun is happy with his entry-level job in retail and his free time spent with Ed, watching TV and drinking beer – at the pub, mainly, or at home in a dash. When Liz complains that Ed is always around, Shaun says “he doesn’t have too many friends,” which is a common argument for not becoming one.

Ebert said, “"Shaun of the Dead," written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright and directed by Wright, is a send-up of zombie movies, but in an unexpected way: Instead of focusing on the Undead and trying to get the laughs there, it treats the living characters as sitcom regulars whose conflicts and arguments keep getting interrupted by annoying flesh-eaters. In the first two or three scenes, as he crawls out of bed and plods down the street wrapped in the misery of his hangover, Shaun doesn't even notice the zombies.” Sure, they’re on the TV news, but who watches the news? For Shaun and Ed, the news is just there to comfort them that the set will be functioning when the football game begins.

The supporting characters include Shaun’s stepfather Phil (Bill Nighy) and mother Barbara (Penelope Wilton). Ebert described, “Nighy is that elongated character actor who looks as if he may have invaded Rhys Ifans' gene pool. He has a quality that generates instinctive sympathy, as in "Love Actually" (2002), where he played the broken-down rock star still hoping patiently in middle age for a comeback.” Here there’s something appealing about his response when he is bitten by a zombie. Once bitten, you have got to go. However, listen to Phil comfort them, “I ran it under the tap.”

“Shaun of the Dead” has its enjoyments, which are gentle but real. Ebert said, “I like the way the slacker characters maintain their slothful gormlessness in the face of urgent danger, and I like the way the British bourgeois values of Shaun's mum and dad assert themselves even in the face of catastrophe. There is also that stubborn British courage in times of trouble. "We never closed," bragged the big neon sign outside the Windmill strip club in Soho, which stayed open every night during the Blitz.” In this movie, the Winchester pub displays the same spirit.

Good thing the movie is about more than zombies. Ebert said, “I am by now more or less exhausted by the cinematic possibilities of killing them. I've seen thousands of zombies die, and they're awfully easy to kill, unless you get a critical mass that piles on all at once. George Romeo, who invented the modern genre with "The Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead," (1979) was essentially devising video game targets before there were video games: They pop up, one after another, and you shoot them, or bang them on the head with a cricket bat.” It’s much better to sit in the dark eating peanuts.

Don’t read this review, go out and see the movie for yourself. You will have an uproarious time laughing from beginning to end. Definitely see this, especially if you’re one of the zombie fans out there. It's one of the best comedies ever made and one of my absolute favorites.

Look out next week when we continue “Edgar Wright Month.”