BABY DRIVER (2017) aka, the Edgar Wright/Ansel Elgort/Kevin Spacey/Jamie Foxx pop-song-and-car-chase Walter Hill homage(?)

I haven't seen this yet, and I'm not sure I have forgiven Wright for the vile Scott Pilgrim yet, but this did solid B.O. over the weekend, which is downright amazing for a non-franchise summer release. Reviews have been glowing. Thoughts?

it's fine.

in more words: great supporting cast (esp Foxx and Hamm), the pathos and romance didn't really land for me (really doesn't help that Lily Collins is more of a MPDG than anyone in Scott Pilgrim was) but it's fun and clever. an extra 15-20 minutes (aka Hot Fuzz length) or jettisoning the romance could have done it a world of good.

Intrigued by this new tinnitus cure, "listen to everything incredibly loudly forever", don't know why I haven't tried that

hahaha

I'm glad you started this -- I was about to...

Tremendous fun. I'm in love with Ansel Elgort and his sunglasses and skinny jeans. First-rate editing and casting (Spacey's best work in many years, close to Hamm and Fox's best0.

My idea of a smart summer blockbuster, I guess.

Elgort dancing to "Harlem Shuffle" while getting coffee >>>>>>> all of Drive

It was great fun but I think the handful of five-star reviews I skimmed beforehand led me to expect more. Not sure there's a huge amount of depth to it, but I'd have to watch again to be sure.

i liked the romance, it felt very sweet and genuine. I'd be much more inclined to cut the scene in the diner digging into Foxx and Hamm's backstories, neither of those characters was interesting even though Hamm was fun to watch.

the opening scene and really the first half-hour or so are so dazzling, I wish that kind of goofy spirit could have been maintained throughout, the film turns more and more generic the longer it plays.

let me be the first to say that

SPOIIIIILLLLLLEEEERRRR

Spacey's third-act turn didn't work for me, and was the sort of thing I'd like to have seen a little groundwork laid down for (I don't think the scene with the nephew suffices)

i enjoyed this. opening car chase was one of the best I've seen

some of the most inept movie cops I've ever seen tho

It's suggested that Spacey has a crush on Baby; he gives him a couple once-overs.

The nephew's one of the few recent plausible smart aleck movie kids. I did roll my eyes at the insistence on Baby's innocence (the nursing home scene at the end almost belted me out of the theater).

more like Edgar Wrong

I liked the way Foxx (or was it Hamm?) undercuts Baby's supposed innocence by pointing out that he didn't say word one about them endangering civilians until Debora showed up

I'm a little surprised folks seem to be mostly OK with Debora being such a thin character who mostly just waits around for Baby to show up

She bored me. I liked how she apparently doesn't own a cell phone.

I'm in love with Ansel Elgort and his sunglasses and skinny jeans.

My husband is too, which is why I am anticipating a rare (for us) trip to the cinema for this one.

yeah she was a cipher pretty much

the opening scene and really the first half-hour or so are so dazzling, I wish that kind of goofy spirit could have been maintained throughout, the film turns more and more generic the longer it plays.

this is an endemic problem with scriptwriting. it's much easier to be creative in your setup than in your resolution. life would be more rewarding for writers if audiences didn't demand resolutions in the third act, but were satisfied with a full exposition of unresolved complications.

I have long accepted that I am always going to love the set-up of a pop entertainment movie more than the resolution. It is why I was able to enjoy the goofy final-act revelation in Get Out, to pick the most recent example.

yeah she was a cipher pretty much

tbh romance has never been Wright's strong suit. he's much better at dealing with friendships.

The scene with Hamm in the diner in the last third was excellent.

I like Edgar Wright a lot, but there is nothing about this that looks remotely appealing to me. It seems like a parody of some post Tarantino 90's movie, except by most accounts it's not a comedy?

It's hilarious in spots. I don't often laugh watching movies.

Also, Wright is way more fun than Refn and Tarantino.

"Romance has never been Wright's strong suit" is the most charitable way to possibly account for the toxicity of Scott Pilgrim (though I'm assuming the source material is largely to blame as well), but that's another movie and another discussion.

Like, is it really another one last job ensemble heist movie?

The movie's at the service of the soundtrack, I might argue, but Wright's such a shrewd editor that Elgort moves with way more grace than Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone ever did in LLL.

"Romance has never been Wright's strong suit" is the most charitable way to possibly account for the toxicity of Scott Pilgrim

yes Scott Pilgrim has its own thread, but I would add that SP (which I recently rewatched) contains about 10,000 references to its main character being an asshole which really helps

I kept thinking this must have been an exacting nightmare to edit but I'm sure Wright was slick enough to make it as easy as possible

I think the main reason the movie disappointed me (even though I really enjoyed it for the most part) is the trailer made me think more of the film would be Baby and his love interest escaping his former life rather than it being tacked on at the very end.

some other details too bothered me, like why the corrupt cop gunrunners wouldn't first disarm the people they were planning to sell to.

this movie is v much not grounded in reality but v much a universe that exists only in crime movies (and it's a good thing in this case cos grounding woulda sunk this one fast).

it's a good thing in this case cos grounding woulda sunk this one fast).

and yet Baby likes the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

funny to see Sky Ferriera play Baby's mom, I can't recall if she had any dialogue but I guess for whatever reason it was important to Wright that the woman singing on the MOM tape was the same one actually playing the character.

One of the things I really like about Wright's movies and screenplays is how they tend to be strongly anchored by an actual moral, without ever feeling overdetermined or po-faced about it (being really funny helps). This keeps him in sharp contrast to his snarky/nihilistic, heavily postmodern peers. You could argue that "passivity is tantamount to complicity" is the moral to BD but the love story gets in the way of that and undercuts that strength a bit. (I should stress again that I liked this, it's just my least fave of his features.)

an awful lot of fatal car accidents happen in movies while people are driving and arguing simultaneously

also did I miss it, but why did Spacey talk about how he never uses the same crew twice other than Baby and then he re-uses Hamm and Gonzalez again 30 minutes later?

or did he just mean "exact configuration" i.e. Batts was subbed in for Griff so that = "new crew" even tho it was only 25% diff

also did I miss it, but why did Spacey talk about how he never uses the same crew twice other than Baby and then he re-uses Hamm and Gonzalez again 30 minutes later?

― Charles "Butt" Stanton (Neanderthal)

would you ever work with Flea again?

can I just

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/5e/f1/bb/5ef1bb3bfa7be1814b910ba59bd6e647--ansel-elgort-fun-facts.jpg

or did he just mean "exact configuration" i.e. Batts was subbed in for Griff so that = "new crew" even tho it was only 25% diff

this is how I took it.

First half great

Second half shit

Scott Pilgrim is a perfect, incredible movie.

I really wish the MIchael Myers mask thing hadn't been in the trailer cos it woulda been a lot funnier just showing up cold mid-movie

I feel like blind foster dad shoulda been like "dude I am already not ok with u robbin shit but at least if yr gonna do i can I like benefit from it and live somewhere decent"

Every character in this is a cipher fyi

I kind of expected that going in tho

this wasn't too horribly different from Driver other than I feel like this was a better movie and Gosling's character liked to use stealth rather than do doughnuts on the highway

It was transporter more than driver but it isn't as subtle or as adult in its themes or relationships as transporter

Wished the movie kept up the energy of the first half hour but whatcanyado. It was still a fun watch

Is it named after the Simon & Garfunkel song?

Kevin Spacey is not charismatic unless you are super into Kevin Spacey.

He is the actor equivalent of turning over a log in the woods and realizing there is some sort of horrible growth underneath.

Spacey was perfect in Glengarry Glen Ross, bitchy in The Ref, outstanding in L.A. Confidential, and perfectly cast here. His last Oscar win kicked off one of the most doleful run of films I've ever seen.

Jon Spencer did the heavy lifting

I’m not mad that I saw it, but will never see it again, and am not psyched about the director.

Edgar Wright is very good at moving the camera. But I always come away from his movies thinking that "I figured out a cool way to move the camera" was the sum total of his emotional investment in the project.

Baby and the Waitress were zeroes but Hamm and Foxx were shockingly bad.

Pretty bad movie

I’ll probably never see it again but the Barry White diner sequence was pretty masterful

I'm a sucker for the goofy tape editing scene ("was he slow..sl-sl-slow?")

I realise now that I've been mentally conflating this film and Drive into one not very good movie, maybe because I saw them both on planes. Also because they're both shite.

Baby Driver was a fine holiday weekend watch seven years ago, had no need to watch it again except for the opening scene, which I teach as an example of modern sound design + editing. Nothing loathsome about it except for the chicken hawk + twink subtext.

I liked Baby Driver fine. It was fun.

Drive suuuuucked.

This and Hell Or High Water are shining examples of the new subgenre of "Post-Concealed Carry Heist Films"

Concealed carrying a $40k MP5 in the passenger seat of your work truck

A marginally less shitty version of this movie is where that guy was working for another criminal organization who were laundering money at that bank and Spacey & Crew have to survive pissing off Los Zetas or something.

why is it called “baby driver”

Boss Baby got fired and had to take up driving UberEats to pay the bills.

hell or high water is a great movie tho, especially if you go in with the correct attitude "this is a real potluck vhs rental type movie"

This entire film was predicated on Wright having heard that one cool drum break in "Bellbottoms" and wanting to make a movie with a car chase scene with that in it.
And it has about as much content as that premise allows.

Concealed carrying a $40k MP5 in the passenger seat of your work truck

The Future Republicans Want!

I loved Baby Driver & it made me cry!

The premise that as fast as you run, you can never run away from yourself & wherever you go, there you are was meaningful to me, hit me pretty hard for a high adrenaline popcorn movie

John Waters loved it too

The one thing I didn't like - some of the "good" song choices are a little heavy handed

Remember thinking, based on some of the song choices, 'I'll bet the director is a huge Sparks fan' whadda ya know

I have not enjoyed any of his other movies oh well.

Nu "Running Man" looks fun and, for a remake ... fresh?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4LWhnvydQU

Oh so that’s what Edgar Wright has been up to, and it looks like the ending might even be far closer to the book

a natural sequel to a baby driver tbf

lol

Driving Baby vs Running Man

I rewatched Last Night In Soho a week ago and definitely didn't like it as much as I did the first time.

Never loved it, but I thought it was competently written/directed with some a good visual sense. Watching it again all of the plot holes opened up and it was dopey and stupid with a good visual sense. Which is how I remember Baby Driver.

The World's End has become my favorite movie of his. It's the only one that was better upon a rewatch and it has the more meat on its bones than the others. It really seems to be about something and Wright seems to care about the subject (aging with adolescent fuckup tendencies).

I need to rewatch that, feel like it reaches for State of the Nation stuff towards the end there that muddles the more well realised personal story.

dopey and stupid with a good visual sense

tbf that's pretty much the giallo brief!

i don't think giallos are dopey or stupid. incoherent, sure

the ghost men cgi in last night in soho is so disgustingly ugly that i can't remember anything about the visual sense beyond that. a few good mirror tricks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ0aFq1ve0M

i don't think giallos are dopey or stupid. incoherent, sure

I guess. Incoherent sounds a bit harsh, dopey and stupid are good things.

World's End would have been better if it hadn't insisted on being a film about aliens. Fun fact: Much of it was filmed in and around my home town

And apparently his!

The quickest public transport from Wright’s home town to the main locations for The World’s End involves 90 minutes on a coach to a train station, 90 minutes on a train to London, a train across London, and nearly an hour on another train out of London. You’re probably thinking of David Leitch.

Glen Powell is not good-looking enough or charismatic enough to be a romantic lead, and he's not tough enough to be an action movie star. He does not move like a real person — he passes through scenes like an actor, acting. I am impatiently waiting for his moment to pass.

crazy talk

Irl lols @ deems joke

unperson otm

I've only seen Hit Man, but found him very difficult to connect with. He looks like a 1980s catalogue model: a strong chin but he doesn't make sense in motion.

I don't understand that guy's ubiquity, but we're talking about a movie where Powell is playing a part made famous (?) by Arnold Schwarzenegger, so I think the bar is low, or at least flexible. I could see Hollywood finding a place for Powell as a new Bruce Willis-type, maybe that's what his people are pushing for.

The quickest public transport blah blah

I was thinking of "Hot Fuzz," that was the one apparently filmed in his hometown.

I saw Baby Driver on a plane recently. It was ok I guess. Sort of mind-numbing. It was like Drive meets Garden State (with a splash of, idk, Suicide Squad?). There was a lot of stuff that seemed hack that I had a hard time telling if it was supposed to be hack or not. Kevin Spacey and Jon Hamm are both actors that I find annoying.

Wright is an interesting example of a guy that favors style over substance but is fun and technically adept enough that so far it's never been a bad time, imo. He's slick but sort of homegrown, a la Sam Raimi or someone like that.

He's yet to top Shaun Of The Dead for me but part of the appeal of the Cornetto trilogy was seeing that kind of...hesitate to say it but a 'Real Britain' on the big screen (see also Attack The Block), especially in the context of otherwise surreal and improbable events. Obviously this is lost in his subsequent US films. TRM does look like big stupid violent fun tho.

Baby Driver is his only US film tbf

was thinking of "Hot Fuzz,"

mcbain.gif

I'm excited for this as an action movie, but it's a bummer to see him become more and more conventional. Maybe Pegg didn't get enough credit for the collaboration.

Well I dunno Pegg's post cornetto work hardly makes a case for him as the brains of the operation.

Talk to him about brains when he's lying by several swimming pools paid for by Mission Impossible and Star Trek movies.

You don't need brains to get rich, as many examples attest.

That's for sure. You just need to pretend to listen to Tom Cruise discuss Dianetcs and nod your head politely.