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

iPods didn't first come out til 2001 and a few seconds of someone making a call on a landline doesn't really scream NINETIES, or even particularly retro to me.
Guess the only bit that had me was the two stoner kids listening to Young MC.
The music seemed to be from all eras on there (lots of 70s stuff, so if 90s = 70s retro then fair enough). Didn't think it was particularly Tarantino-esque either, or at least no more so than any other action film that has absorbed Tarantino from the vernacular of action movies.

Yeah, I mean, that's fair. It's pretty movieland PoMo in its own right. But it definitely has the stylized too-cool-for-school crime violence, colorful criminals and romance thing going on, a la something like True Romance. All the diner stuff I kept thinking of Pulp Fiction, yeah, for surface reasons, but still.

BTW, lol at me that I can't even remember when iPods were introduced, and I was there!

Where were you picking up on Spacey double-crossing everyone, Darragh? That he always has new crews, or that he always has new crews apart from this one time? It passed me by but I can see the argument.

I think the crews was a ref to specifically the makeup of each one.

But

And I may not bother to remember detail or order correctly u understand

Foxx shoots up cops at weapons deal. Which may or may not have been a setup. We might not be meant to know either way but it had the air of stink before he acted. No explanation of why spacey wouldn't have dropped a hint as to the fact they'd be dirty cops which would seem cogent.

Dude weaponed up and ready to ambush the cru at the van holdup. Again, the direction, detail and the long looks we're given of this guy in advance of him turning into a have a go hero are all redolent of a plot thread that......goes nowhere? Never see him again.

Spacey's character has no thread we can follow that fits anything but a meta stooge wildly swinging the plot from one direction to the next, which I'm sure I've seen work when done well.

Foolishness to claim that my feeling that this was not done well validates or invalidates the unfollowed links of plot above, but what can I say? Didn't work for me at all once the bad guys became good guys and the good guys became bad guys and they all did the most stupid things possible in order to give us a messy conclusion after respective lifetimes spent as successful career criminals and fifty odd minutes of a pretty but pretty dumb driver dude ordering food in a diner.

I watched the trailer for this. Is the whole thing full of bad "Southern" accents like Lily James'?

that's all it is. just people doing bad southern accents at each other for an hour and a half

Great, I'm sold!

Any particular reason for thanks to Tarantino in the credits to Baby Driver?

— Paul (@reev0) June 27, 2017

He gave me car chase advice, general support and one cool script idea.

— edgarwright (@edgarwright) June 27, 2017

lol I guess it owes something to Tarantino

good god, I loved this movie but didn't give it much thought after I saw it. why so much hand-wringing? it was fun. i loved that he made tape collages. some cool music choices. short, fun, original script. GREAT! end of discussion...

We don't take kindly to fun round 'ere

You can't spell fun without FU.

Didn't earn the fun

"The movie's at the service of the soundtrack, I might argue"

Yeah I just came here to say it's a soundtrack in search of a movie. Violently meh. So meh that I'm somehow really mad at it. I passed up Valerian and Laureline for this drivel.

Andrew - yes, that's what I was referring to
Neanderthal - I was just using "twist" as shorthand. There was absolutely nothing apparent to me that docs character was suddenly gonna go all soft, esp when he's had baby in his debt since he was a kid and threatens his life. He didn't just let him off the hook - he let him off the hook after he fucked up a heist AND he got himself killed to save baby

This movie looked like it was totally gonna be my jam - but it just felt lame from beginning to end. Also I disliked all the music.

lol I only thought this was OK but it's several orders above Valerian xp

Atomic Blonde better not let me down like this

Also I disliked all the music.

― just1n3, Wednesday, 26 July 2017 02:11

!!!

*shrugs* it's just not the kind of music i particularly like

I wasn't into a lot of it but none of it seemed bad

Foxx shoots up cops at weapons deal. Which may or may not have been a setup. We might not be meant to know either way but it had the air of stink before he acted. No explanation of why spacey wouldn't have dropped a hint as to the fact they'd be dirty cops which would seem cogent.

Spacey's character doesn't go wildly in for explaining his actual business to the hired help

Dude weaponed up and ready to ambush the cru at the van holdup. Again, the direction, detail and the long looks we're given of this guy in advance of him turning into a have a go hero are all redolent of a plot thread that......goes nowhere? Never see him again.

This guy has nothing to do with Spacey, the cru, or the holdup. He's a random passer-by who keeps guns in his car bcz he's an ex-soldier nutbag and Georgia is an open carry state. We never see him again because we follow Baby, the titular character of the film, after the encounter, rather than branching off to follow this rando and examine his unhappy home life.

Agree that this film was a messy disappointment.

I'd lazily claim that that's all fine except for Wright clearly directing the movie to draw attn to these things then leave them dangling. That kind of chaotic confusion works in the tone of a Ronin or similar, for me it was smartypants messing in this one.

the first two times we see deborah she's rocking out to her own music, on her own headphones. baby's instantly drawn to her. a woman listening to her own music, that you can't hear, gives her a kind of power and independence, which is awesome, and it seems like baby responds to that, which is awesome. and then the movie just.. totally gives up on that dynamic. she knows more about music than he does (lol "trex") but somehow we end up with a "let me school you about music lil' girl" scene anyway. and then as noted upthread she just waits around in her ridiculously short costume dress in this impeccable, empty diner. where baby's blonde mom used to work! was anybody else just a liiitle bit skeeved out by that? just me? oh and she also pops up in baby's jimmy dean picture-postcard fantasies, draped over a mean set of wheels. it's so schematic that it's almost brechtian or something. it's absurd. but all played totally straight, no comment on the paper-thin pulp unrealness of it at all. which is maybe for the best, i dunno. it's a good point about the sickening violence of the climax feeling really out of place with the rest of it. i'd almost show it to my kids if it wasn't for kevin spacey getting graphically reversed over several times.

i really liked baby needing to rewind the song if something slowed down the heist, but it didn't add up to anything really?

lily james kept reminding me of a young jennifer jason leigh - the comparison didn't flatter her

but yes, i too am now in love with ansel elgort, i won't lie

oh and the movie i saw just prior to this, on the airplane, was guardians of the galaxy, whose hero also has a mother who died too young and left him an old cassette tape that he's willing to risk his life for. ??!

agree that spacey's turn at the end felt v lightly earned - and i was disappointed that baby never got to face him down. on the contrary, they became, like, buds!? after spacey set all this in motion and ruined his life? fuck outta here! hamm's just a random menacing heavy. i'm no expert in script mechanics but to this unfrozen caveman it was a fatal deflation of the stakes

I don't recall it being that violent.

the rebar thru jamie foxx was like nothing in the movie to that point. and for me spacey vs car was super gruesome

Glad to have u on board TH otm on each point

Many xps - I'm def not saying the music was bad, it just didn't do it for me

but yes, i too am now in love with ansel elgort, i won't lie

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand),

yeah...

I passed up Valerian and Laureline for this drivel.

― Conic section rebellion 44 (in orbit), Tuesday, July 25, 2017 8:23 PM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is infinitely better than Valerian lol

'messy dissapointment' is way ott wrt the plot (even if some of criticisms by Tracer are smart and legit, i just didn't care that much while actually watching it), but even so, forget plotting/character development for a moment--the car scenes are so meticulously and geniously EDITED!!! and comprise like 75% of the movie; more than compensates imo

Jesus I wish 75%

Valerian was marginally better imo but still disappointing.

oh come on Valerian was dreadful!!

does Ansel bottom in Valerian

Dane DeHaan is nearly as cute as Ansel and the voice he affects is unbearable; he sounds like an 11 year old impersonating his father on the phone

*is NOT nearly as cute

OTM and he looks all of 15

I think I had lower expectations for valerian than baby driver, which is why BD was worse imo

this was fairly fun, but every single thing in it pointed to Baby hugely outwitting everyone with a giant confusing amazing car chase sequence to cap off the film. They set him up as being super smart, but instead he suddenly turns stupid, fucks up the getaway royally and we get a pretty boring fight instead?

A good planner is not a good extemporiser!

He wasn't supposed to be super smart! He's super naive, and weirdly talented in one very specific area. Almost an idiot savant. And he was never the planner, Doc was. So, once the plan goes bad and he's no longer behind the wheel, he has no particular resources to draw on. He's just a kid.

atl folk (and others) might find this interesting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ry9X2FPfHM

I don't see action films of any kind, although there's probably a tiny bit of overlap with what I do see--I mean, No Country for Old Men had some action. I definitely don't see Fast and Furious-type films, but the music in the trailer for this one reeled me in.

The soundtrack did not save it; just one long reminder of why I don't see action films. Found the last half-hour (everything after "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1") particularly stupefying.

I really must insist you not use this as any exemplar of action films tbh, there are many brilliant movies released in the last several years

What you want to avoid, imo, is going to see shit movies because of a soundtrack

As soon as cars start hurtling all over the place, I just shut down. And that constitutes, what, a third of the film? It seemed like an action film to me.

I've seen one or two other films where Spacey "heads a crew"--one of them involved gambling, and Justin Timberlake was in it. Every other line's supposed to be charged with witty cool. He's terrible in these roles. And I think it might have been the first time I've seen John Hamm outside of Mad Men. Somewhat better than Spacey--he had a few lines that seemed like they came from an actual person--but equally terrible in that last half-hour. The other four principals--Foxx, the two women, and the baby driver--were comparatively okay, I guess. Did someone think Paul Williams carries a great deal of cultural resonance? "Wow--it's Paul Williams!"

Woah I didn't say this wasn't an action film

I just protest your seeming acceptance that it's in any way a good example of the genre.

On a separate note, Kevin Spacey is, and always has been, a very poor actor. In many ways as bad as John Malkovich.

That's not true, especially before 1995. Possibly opportunities exposed the limits of his range, but range is overrated anyway.