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

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?

yes it plays over the credits

Lily Collins is more of a MPDG than anyone in Scott Pilgrim was

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Monday, 3 July 2017 18:43

Lily James.

I enjoyed this, it moved along well but I do wish it had something a little bit more to it.

Only complaint is Hamm doing the "you can't hide from me" thing later on.

I do wish it had something a little bit more to it.

yeah, i don't want a ticket purchase for this to result in more films like it being made.

you chuckleheads should be discussing Walter Hill's The Driver rather than that ludicrous POS Drive, get yr titles right.

that kid's legs are too thin, Alfred.

yeah, i don't want a ticket purchase for this to result in more films like it being made.

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius),

What, decent Hollywood froth for once?

that kid's legs are too thin, Alfred.

So were McCrea's.

Wright's a big Hill fan, but I see Streets of Fire in this more than The Driver.

i need to watch Streets of Fire, thx

sacrilege to compare a boy to Joel McCrea

You're in luck: SOF recently got a Blu-ray reissue, I believe.

And you can dream about it.

If I can hold it just right!

i didn't like this at all really. clever-clever w/o being clever. careless about violence. terrible dancing. cutesy and shallow instead of 'archetypical' or w/e. 90s in a bad way. jamie foxx was great though.

i did like how it was really in atlanta instead of an anono-city, but that only highlights some unappealing racial attitudes in the thing.

no you're a terrible dancer

Anyone see Triple 9, the John Hillcoat Atlanta set Heist Thriller with Casey Affleck and Gal Gadot?

Jamie foxx was as bad as everyone else

in the Michael Jackson sense

I was hoping for more from this, but the first hour was fun. It didn't stay as funny as I'd have liked.

spoiler alert - obv all the non white ppl die in this. which is very 80s just like most of the movie. good to know edgar wright absorbed the decade well. i thought foxx was actually very good, though obv his character is an arsehole. jon hamm proved he can only really act as don draper, even when playing a bank robber. i liked the film overall, the car park battle was a bit too cartoon tarantino, and excessive in a way the rest of the film wasnt, and something i thought edgar wright was above, but hey, its hollywood. i like that he got to make this in the structure he wanted, it was a lot of fun to watch, and kind of sweet, but the film was also a little culturally/emotionally empty in a way his british films havent been. the other odd thing i found was that apart from the bank job in the red car, many of the car sequences werent actually that amazing to watch. this might be as i find very few race/car action sequences as amazing as many seem to think (unless its the delorean in back to the future), but i thought wright would pull something more kinetic and inventive out the bag. tarantino did it better in death proof IIRC. the sequence of baby just walking around listening to music on the street when he goes to order coffee was more memorable than any of the car scenes.

(spoiler) Hamm and Spacey die and the black foster dad doesn't, so I don't think that first point really holds up.

jon hamm proved he can only really act as don draper, even when playing a bank robber.

This is a plus! Also, he's way more handsome when elegantly wasted than in the suits.

yes, also very much reminiscent of 80s racial tropes. the non white character gets to live... but only if hes sufficiently harmless and non threatening to warrant being saved/spared. got to have One Good Minority character. good in this case meaning perfect by way of being adorably deaf.

SPOILERS

the point is not that 'oh hey! white ppl die too! all lives matter! okay?!' but that no non white characters live except the one no one could ever dislike. because there is no way he could every harm anyone. thats how perfect the non white good guy has to be.

*ever

Elgort, Spacey, HMMMMMMMMMM

tbf Spacey's character has an inappropriate interest in a young twink whose employment conditions he controls and whom he manipulates

milo is 100%

this was dreadful after the first scene, which is an all time classic

absolutely one of the most insufferable films ever made

I thought this was really bad, but it kind of made me appreciate how good/charismatic Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx are in that it's still just about watchable when they're on screen. Jon Hamm is pretty good, but not good enough to ever momentarily fool you into thinking you're watching a movie that isn't bad.

Sometimes I feel I can only really calibrate how good an actor is when they're in something terrible, I thought the same thing about Tom Hanks in Turner & Hooch.

you are dead wrong about hamm and merely 98% wrong about spacey tbh

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.