Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

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Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Career Over Like Mike(NJJ) »

"Them pigs is in hog-Heaven, the only way they identifying us is with a ouija board!



Any movie which starts with a bank robbery/car chase that's set to the full 5 minute 18 seconds of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's Bellbottoms is alright in my book.

Best movie of 2017 thus far, imho :gyeah: :gyeah: A musical that's not a musical.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by drizzle »

Can't wait for this
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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Career Over Like Mike(NJJ) »

It's essentially Wright's own video for Blue Song by Mint Royale



Meets Walter Hill's The Driver



With Scorsese circa Casino's eye/ear for marrying music with moving pictures.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by drizzle »

Had no idea about that video but super glad to see his regulars already in play early in his career
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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by alpha »

This looks so good.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Spartan »

Love Edgar Wright and I want to check this out, but I have not really liked any of his films since Hot Fuzz.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Career Over Like Mike(NJJ) »

This is definitely his best shit since that.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Trademark »

It's essentially Lucky Number Slevin meets Drive. It's fun as hell though, and the music and action are well choreographed and executed. Not great, but a good time in the summer.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Spartan »

Only four screenings at my local cinema. All at really inconvenient times for me. Meanwhile, Spidey gets eighteen.

Guess I'll wait for the home rental.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Career Over Like Mike(NJJ) »

Plz try and see it soon so I don't have to suffer Trademark's basic opinionz as the sole other take on this.

"Many people have seen Baby Driver and said 'oh, it reminds us of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive!' No, it reminds you of Walter Hill's The Driver..."


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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by ric »

this shit is fucking dope for what it is. best use of pop music as soundtrack since guardians of galaxy 1. movie feels great. previews make it seem cheesy and one dimensional but I wouldn't exactly say that. a cool movie going experience. nothing particularly virtuous about this one. just a solid movie

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by drizzle »

SPOILERS



Had a great time with this but it fell a bit short of my expectations overall (which tbh might've been unreasonable). The plotting felt a little too cluttered, Wright tries to do more than the concept calls for, and it feels like the action-musical thing runs out of steam a bit in the second half.

The first third is where I think Wright made the most of the underlying idea, it's wonderful synthesis of genres that seem disparate but are actually closely related. Then, as it goes on, the kinetic pleasures of Baby bopping along to cool choons get a little bogged down with plot mechanics and it starts to feel a little more like a generic action thriller. Some streamlining that minimizes the usual heist movie tropes in favor of emphasis on the stylistic excess that's meant to drive the movie (no pun) wouldn't hurt.

It's interesting that Wright opens the movie with a very light and frothy 2 Singing 2 In The Rain tone but then proceeds to raise the stakes continuously. He makes sure to shine a light into the dark corners of crime movies to show you innocent bystanders getting hurt and to show that Baby is objectively morally Good but has made some bad choices and those choices will have consequences etc etc. I appreciate the effort but I'm not sure it's actually needed here. The movie is conceived as a fairy tale and its cool when fairy tales get dark, but they don't need an injection of reality or moralism. There would be nothing wrong with Baby and Debora just riding off into the sunset without having an extended coda about going to jail to pay for your mistakes. If there was ever a movie that could've just embraced the weightless improbability of magical movie logic, this is it.

But the things Wright does get right, which is a whole whole lot, definitely outweigh his stumbles by a large margin. His direction is really great, the action scenes are very good (the opening one was probably the best), the music choices are on-point. The cast is great too and that helps a lot. Even though the characters are pretty slight, the actors make a lot out of them. The girl who played Debora really stood out in that regard. Foxx almost steals the movie, evil Hamm and Evil Spacey were a lot of fun too. There were also some really funny asides that I wish were been explored more, like Spacey's nephew and the gung-ho civilian.

So it's not quite the crystalline perfection of Fury Road but still very high above the usual bar for modern action.
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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by ric »

@drizzle
If there was ever a movie that could've just embraced the weightless improbability of magical movie logic, this is it

was thinking the same thing mid movie. and then it slumps a bit at the end. not necessary in any respect in my opinion. thankfully. the very ending sequence is short enough nothing is ruined really even though less dope. the feeling could've been corralled a little more but I like that the writing doesn't force a huge knot untangle. they could've gone that route and I prolly would've been satisfied but I feel like you get some good quality stringing out here even if some of the middle-end drags on

my biggest gripe here is that while the kid is at times pitch perfect he doesn't stand up 100% with his co cast when he kinda needs to and I feel like the dramatic balance is cut. but the chick is actually pretty goddamn good through and through

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by drizzle »

In retrospect Wright asks a lot from this Ansel kid - Baby has to be simultaneously a kind of vacuous cypher, as per the archetype this movie is based on (Hill's Driver etc), but also a cute endearing muppet so you can buy him singing and dancing. I think he does pretty good with it.
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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by ric »

he's great when he's carrying it solo because there's nothing else to look at or cue from but most of the rest of the time it doesn't feel right to me.

anyway a lot of good stuff here. glad you guys made the thread or I might even just completely ignored it as the trailer looked like shit.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Mindbender Futurama »

bit disappointed and vaguely underwhelmed. not as good as the hype said it was, but it was decent.

the hyper-edited percussive creativity wore off by the climax, as did the coherence and logic.

Jon Hamm made the classic 70's era Bond villain mistake in the grand finale and it's like :bunk:

Jamie Foxx was awesomeness and the prequel should explore his character's origins and 'someone always dies' stories :ironmike:

Kevin Spacey did what he was paid to do. Kinda didn't enjoy the neo-cliched heist boss angle he spoke from, even if it did frame the film

Ansel Elgort did a solid job of holding his own in his big debut, but he wasn't as unflappable and lethal as my boy Taran Egerton of Kingsmen: Secret Service. And it was cool it not a tad expected that the modern hiffop! chune they would go for is Run The Jewels... but they shoulda used some of the lyrics too. Meh.

This talk about a sequel is odd. But I suppose there is something down the road for the Baby Driver. Maybe the gun-happy samaritan can reappear. :rockout:
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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Career Over Like Mike(NJJ) »

Get your tranny-fucking ass outta this thread.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by zombie »

watched this movie last weekend and thought it was pretty cool

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Career Over Like Mike(NJJ) »

This is one of the G.O.A.T opening 5 minutes of any movie, imho :gyeah: :gyeah:


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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by AWAE »

movie is terrible

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by alpha »

No it's not. Troll

Agreed about the ending. Him going to prison seemed uncessary since it was a happy ending anyway.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by AWAE »

the only reason people are praising this is because wright did it

the plot is so basic and uncreative

if michael bays name was on this people would be shitting all over it for dumb it is

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Career Over Like Mike(NJJ) »

Michael Bay wouldn't/couldn't ever make a car-chase movie that's actually a musical. Nor could/would he ever soundtrack his musical-in-car-chase-movie's-clothing with songs by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Damned, Incredible Bongo Band, Googie Rene Combo etc etc.

Reminds me, another thing I liked was the musical okie-dokes, where you think it's gonna be Jump Around/Theme From Shaft/The Next Episode but it turns out to be Harlem Shuffle/that young MC song/David McCallum's The Edge.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Hush »

Career Over Like Mike(NJJ) wrote:Reminds me, another thing I liked was the musical okie-dokes, where you think it's gonna be Jump Around/Theme From Shaft/The Next Episode but it turns out to be Harlem Shuffle/that young MC song/David McCallum's The Edge.
This. Got me every time.

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Re: Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Post by Spartan »

This was cool, but a really messy film overall, though.

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