Movie Review: American Anarchist

American Anarchist *** / *****

Directed by: Charlie Siskel.

 

The Anarchist Cookbook was written in the early 1970s by an angry, 19-year-old young man named William Powell. The book combined information on weapons and combat, and how to make explosives, that Powell culled together from information he found in military pamphlets at the library, as well as Powell’s rage filled rantings calling from armed revolution in America to overthrow the corrupt system. It was published by a sleazy publisher looking to make a quick buck – and immediately caused controversy – a controversy that has never really gone away, although there have been long periods of time in the almost 50 years since it was published where it lies dormant. Powell himself sold off all the rights to the book for $10,000 at some point in the 1970s, so even though the book keeps on being published, he isn’t seeing any more profits. He has largely stayed out of the spotlight ever since.

 

The documentary American Anarchist is essentially all about Powell as he talks to director Charlie Siskel about why he wrote the book, and what he’s done with his life since. It seems like he quickly grew out of his anger – as many young men do – and became a teacher – one who often worked with kids with emotional problems. He seems more embarrassed by the book than anything else – he certainly no longer agrees with it, and thinks his angry rants in the book are now drivel. The book has affected his career – schools he applied to be more often than not sent copies of the book anonymously, which often sunk his chances from being hired. He seems like a quiet, intelligent well-educated, polite man. He has also mastered the art of denial – he has essentially buried his head in sand to almost all the incidents that his book may have help to inspire. He says he didn’t know of any of them until a friend of his saw Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine – and wrote to him about how the book was mentioned in the film, as being an influence on Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. At that time, he wrote a message for Amazon to put on the book’s page, saying he wants to the book to die a “quick and quiet” death. He wrote an op-ed for The Guardian 12 years later essentially arguing the same thing, when they approached him in the wake of another school shooting, in which the Cookbook was said to inspire.

 

Powell’s pleas of ignorance clearly are not enough for director Siskel – who grows increasingly frustrated throughout his conversations with Powell – as he pushes harder and harder (I would argue at some point, too hard) to get some sort of reaction out of Powell. He lists all the incident he could find – dating back to the 1970s and including things like the Oklahoma City bombing – in which the Cookbook was at the very least owned by the people who made bombs that killed people. He shows various Youtube clips of idiotic young people testing out the explosives Powell’s book told them how to make – including many, many close calls. Siskel very clearly wants Powell to take some personal responsibility for it all.

 

Honestly, I think Siskel pushed Powell too hard at points in the movie – not necessarily because I disagree with him - although, Powell is correct in saying that he never did anything violent to others, and the people who did, made their own choices, and certainly in the age of the internet, his book is no longer necessary for people who wants to know how to make bombs, or find the angry rantings of violent young, white guys – but more because I think the documentary is at its strongest when Powell trades to evade taking responsibility. I think about what a director like Errol Morris would do if he interviewed Powell, as Morris is a master interviewer at giving his subjects enough rope to hang themselves with, without every pushing as hard as Siskel does here (Morris does this brilliantly in both Mr. Death and The Fog of War – and tried in The Unknown Known). A simple, quiet scene like when Powell e-mails Senator Diane Feinstein, who called for the banning of the book, but giving up when he gets an automated response from her office, says more about Powell, and how he has dealt with the book than when Siskel pushes him to the point of anger.

 

In short, I think there is a better, more complicated documentary to be made about Powell and his book – which sadly, will never be completed, since Powell died a year after filming the movie took place. Siskel clearly feels righteous anger towards Powell, and wants the audience to as well – and up to a point, we do. A better, more confident documentary may well have examined the way in which Powell has compartmentalized the actions of his youth – has put it away, and doesn’t want to think about it anymore, because it’s easier not to. That’s something that anyone could relate to – and making us empathize with Powell is trickier than making us condemn him. As Powell’s wife says at one point, a lot of people have done stupid things when they were long – it’s just that most of ours didn’t get published.

Movie Review: I Called Him Morgan

I Called Him Morgan  **** / *****

Directed by: Kasper Collin.   

Written by: Kasper Collin.

 

I Called Him Morgan is a beautiful, sad documentary about a great musician whose life ended far too early. In many ways, jazz musician Lee Morgan lived the clichéd life you think of when you think of jazz – a young, gifted, African American trumpet player, whose greatness was recognized early on, but whose life was derailed by heroin. Unlike many, though, he somewhat pulled himself together – even though he still ended up dead at the age of 32 – not from the drugs, but from his wife. That was Helen More, who was significantly older than Morgan, but found him at his lowest point, and helped to drag him out of it, and back into music. She was the jealous type though, and when he started seeing another woman – even if, by (most) accounts the drugs had such an effect on Morgan, he couldn’t “perform” that way even if he wanted to, she got jealous, and shot him one cold, stormy night at Slug – a Jazz club in New York. On many other nights, he may well have survived – but that night, there was a billiard, so it took the ambulance an hour to reach him – by which point, and it was too late.

 

Although the elements of I Called Him Morgan probably sound like the stuff of documentary cliché, as directed by Kasper Collin, the film becomes something altogether more haunting and beautiful than that. Yes, it has elements of True Crime – but it’s not a whodunit, and the reason behind it are simple and straightforward. It is a portrait of these sad people, who lives were full of regret and loss. The movie is built around an audiotape interview with More, conducted in 1996, the month before she died. She tells how she meet and fell in love with Morgan – she didn’t call him Lee, because she didn’t like that name – and how eventually she killed him. Collin intercuts clips from that interview with interview with Morgan and More’s contemporaries, families, friends, etc. – giving a fuller portrait of both of them, and the era. Oddly, there is not a lot of anger in the film –everyone seemingly feels empathy for both parties involved. There are fond memories though, and a lot of Morgan’s music – which Collin lets speak for itself, not providing much in the way of context or analysis for it.

 

I Called Him Morgan is an example of what I wished more documentaries would do. Far too often, documentary directors do not think visually or aurally when crafting their films – they simply set up a camera, film a few interview, throw in some archival footage, and call it a day. When the material is strong enough, this can still work – but the best docs have something a little extra to them. Collin has crafted his film, constructing it in a way that highlights the music, and underscores the sadness of the story. This isn’t just a series of talking heads – but something greater.

 

In the end, you’re left with a sad story of two people who in many ways destroyed each other. Morgan has been gone for more than 40 years – More, more than 20 now. All that’s left now is the memory of those who knew them, sadness over the wasted lives, and, of course, the music. This is a beautiful doc that hit me harder than I expected it would – because it goes deeper than most docs of its kind do.

Movie Review: Okja

Okja **** / *****

Directed by: Bong Joon Ho.

Written by: Bong Joon Ho and Jon Ronson.

Starring: Ahn Seo-hyun (Mija), Tilda Swinton (Lucy Mirando), Paul Dano (Jay), Jake Gyllenhaal (Dr. Johnny Wilcox), Byun Hee-bong (Heebong), Steven Yeun (K), Lily Collins (Red), Yoon Je-moon (Mundo Park), Shirley Henderson (Jennifer), Daniel Henshall (Blond), Devon Bostick (Silver), Choi Woo-shik (Kim), Giancarlo Esposito (Frank Dawson).

 

Bong Joon Ho’s Okja is not a perfect film by any means – yet, in its way, it shows why perfect films can sometimes be rather dull. The Korean auteur behind such great films as Memories of Murder (he least seen film, which is a shame, because it’s his best), The Host, Mother and Snowpiercer – has crafted something truly original and strange with Okja – a film that seemingly throws everything at the wall to see what will stick. Not everything does, of course, but I’d rather a film go for broke, and not quite stick the landing, than play it safe. Okja is by no means perfect, but it’s sure as hell memorable.

 

I’ve been struggling in coming up with a way to describe the film. It is a corporate satire, but also a dark children’s fantasy film. It’s got a clear political message against the factory farming of meat – and perhaps against eating meat at all, but it does find room to poke fun at people on all sides. It is a film that children would both relate to, and find utterly, completely horrifying. It feels like a large budgeted film for some bygone era in which they were allowed to contain ideas along spectacle. And man, is it ever strange.

 

Basically, the film revolves around a little girl in Korean named Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun), who lives in basically in the wilderness with her grandfather, a farmer. He was given the title character – Okja – a genetically modified “super pig” who will be part of a 10 year experiment, in which 10 of these pigs are distributed to farms around the world, to determine the best way to raise them in order to maximize their meat production. Mija and Okja are best friends – and do everything together, and trust each other – but when the 10 years expire, he’ll be given back to the company that created him. That is, unless Mija – with the help of an animal rights group – ALF – can save him.

 

Okja, the creature, is a triumph of special effects – he looks like a giant, black pig crossed with a hamster, but he truly does have one of the most expressive faces of a CGI creation I have seen. This is crucial, because Okja is essentially about the bond between him and Mija – how much he loves and trusts her, and the expressiveness in the first act helps solidify that bond – and the sheer pain and horror on his face in the latter half, are truly horrifying. Little Ahn Seo-hyun does a great job for a child actress as well, displaying the kind of single minded devotion to principle and her friend that you really only find in children – before the world crushes it out of them. The love between these two characters is really the subject of the film.

 

The adult performers are more a mixed bag. I’m not quite sure what the hell Jake Gyllenhaal is doing in his performance – he plays a child friendly celebrity spokesperson for the company that created the super pig, and the performance is purposefully broad, but I cannot help but think it’s too broad to be at all believable. You have to kind of admire his devotion to it though, don’t you? I did like Tilda Swinton, once again playing twins – the evil sister who is now the head of the company, and the even more evil sister who used to be head of the company, and wants back in. I feel like Paul Dano could have been better as the leader of ALF, had the screenplay given him slightly more to do – the film pokes gentle fun at his obsessiveness, but I fear Bong liked him too much to push that element into the extremism that I felt the movie wanted to go in. In fact, much of the ALF stuff kept feeling like it was going to go further, and never quite got there.

 

Still, Okja is a film packed with ideas, and unlike Bong’s last film Snowpiercer – I didn’t feel a letdown by the ending. The ending here is a happy one – I guess – but not too happy to sell out what has come before it. Nothing really has changed on the larger scale of the movie – but it has on the smaller one, which here makes a difference. The film was funded by Netflix, who has done a great job with getting their TV shows in the spotlight, but a terrible one doing the same for their movies. Okja hopefully changes that – and also, hopefully, serves as their model going forward – give a great director money and freedom to do whatever the hell they want.

Classic Movie Review: The Police Officer's Wife (2013)

The Police Officer’s Wife (2013)

Directed by: Philip Gröning.

Written by: Philip Gröning.

Starring: Alexandra Finder (Christine Perkinger), David Zimmerschied (Uwe Perkinger), Pia and Chiara Kleemann (Clara Perkinger).

 

It is impossible to be entertained by a film like The Police Officer’s Wife. It is a nearly three hour film, separated into 59 different chapters – ranging from under 30 seconds, to about 10 minutes – complete with title cards announcing the beginning and end of each chapter. The film documents a woman’s long, slow implosion due to the violence she endures from her police officer husband – and the great lengths she goes to in an attempt to protect her young daughter from the truth. The film is mainly made up of long, static shots that observe the scenes as they play out in agonizing real time. This makes for a long, bleak viewing – where even the few scenes of joy are undercut by the realization of what else is happening. And yet, while it took the movie a long time to put me under its spell – it eventually does accomplish that goal. By the time the movie ended, I was surprised by how involved I was by the film.

 

The film was directed by Philip Groning – whose last film was the documentary Into Great Silence (2005) about life inside a monastery. That film generated great reviews – but somehow I missed it seeing back then. In The Police Officer’s Wife he brings a documentary approach to fiction filmmaking. He observes this family going about their daily routines – including Uwe’s (David Zimmershied) exacting routine when he comes home after work every day. His wife, Christine (Alexandra Finder) spends all of her time with their young daughter Clara (played by twins Pia and Chiara Kleemann). The play, dig in their garden, prepare dinner, etc. Basically, the first part of the movie is just about their domestic routines – contrasted with scenes of nature, and occasionally, the actions of an lonely old man (whose presence is never explained – but I think is fairly obvious, given the end of the movie). Gradually, Groning introduces violence into the equation – slowly and subtly at first, and seemingly unrelated to the family itself – a deer who is hit by a car while Uwe is at work, that forces him to take care of it, the daughter’s fascination with worms, etc.

 

If we know early on that Uwe likes thinks “just so”, and that something is not quite right between them – we actually get our first glimpse of just how serious things are in a one of the movie’s lighter scenes – a playful water fight between husband and wife, we first see the bruises of Christine’s body. These bruises will multiply and grow more severe throughout the movie. As the movie continues, there are fewer calm scenes, and more disturbing ones. Christine slowly sinks into herself – her eyes seem to recede into her head, she lets her hygiene suffer to the point where Clara complains that “Mommy stinks” – something that Uwe thinks is hilarious. But the further she seems to fall, the angrier Uwe gets – his outbreaks get worse and more frequent and violent. Clara is left to her own devices more and more often, and she starts to relate more to Uwe than the Christine – which just makes matters worse. Things will eventually explode – in chapter 54, the longest (or at least feels the longest) which is one of the most riveting and disturbing scenes you will ever see.

 

I am glad I saw The Police Officer’s Wife at TIFF. Had I tried to watch the film at home, I’m not sure I would have made it past an hour. The chapters, the title cards, the slow pace seemed to be a long, slow slog to nowhere for the first third of the movie. But a strange thing happened as I watched the movie – I feel into its rhythm. Not unlike Chantal Ackerman’s Jeanne Dielman (although that film is even more repetitious – by design, to make the title characters explosion at the more shocking), The Police Officer’s Wife has a pace all of its own, and you either fall under its spell, or else you grow bored and restless, and eventually just walk out. I cannot imagine ever watching the film again – it is such a painful film in so many ways, that watching it a second time would be torture. And yet, I cannot help but admire the film. Yes, the film is too long and too slow – and the unnecessary chapters and the title cards make things seem even longer than it otherwise might, and reeks of a director imposing himself on the material, and distances the audience for the action. Yet, the chapter headings are also somewhat reassuring – we know whatever we are seeing will eventually end, and we will be given at least a brief respite from the pain on the screen.

 

The performances by the three leads – who are the only people who have a meaningful in the movie – are about as good as the movie allows. Zimmerschied’s ordinary appearance makes his outbreaks all the more painful. Finder’s physical transformation is impressive, but her subtle quiet performance is better, and more striking, that just that. The Kleeman twins play Clara as a typical little girl – but one who sees more than she should. Occasionally, one or more members of the family will come on screen and look directly into the camera, and sing some nursery rhymes, which have never sounded disturbing than they do here.

 

The Police Officer’s Wife is precisely the film that Groning wanted to make. I cannot imagine what the audience of the film is going to be. Any foreign film with such disturbing subject matter is a tough sell – and the three hour running time doesn’t help matters. I admire Groning for making the movie, knowing that very few people would ever want to watch his film. So, did I like The Police Officer’s wife, or not? Or more importantly should you see the film? I have to admit it – I do think Groning has made a powerful film – but I cannot think of too many people who want to put themselves through the movie. But if you’ve made it this far into the review, you probably already know If they movie is for you or not.  If after reading everything I’ve written, you still think it’s something you`d like – than you`re probably right. For most though, The Police`s Officer`s wife would simply be a too slow, too creepy, too painful to watch.

 

Note: I saw this film at TIFF 2013, and at this point, I have to believe it’s not going to get a proper released in North America – so I decided to publish the review I wrote then anyway.

"Classic" Movie Review: The Front Line (2009)

The Front Line (2009)

Directed By: Renato De Maria.

Written By: Sandro Petraglia, Ivan Cotroneo, Fidel Signorile, based on the book Sergio Segio by Miccia Corta

Starring: Riccardo Scamarcio (Sergio Segio), Giovanna Mezzogiorno (Suzanna Ronconi).

 

From the late 1960s through the 1970s, a number of left wing terrorist group rose to prominence throughout the world. Americans no doubt remember the Weather Underground or the Symbionese Liberation Army, Germans no doubt remember the group fronted by Baader and Meinhoff, and in Italy a number of organizations sprung up. Among them was the Prima Linea (or The Front Line in English), and this is a film that follows of its founding members, Sergio Segio (played here by Riccardo Scamarcio), mainly from the late 1970s into the early 1980s. Unlike the recent German film, The Baader Meinhoff Complex which turned the events into a rip roaring action movie, this movie is somewhat slower and more methodical. It is also far more dull and uninteresting.

 

The movie flashes back and forth through time, and shows how Segio got involved in the group in the first, their early, non-violent days, to the point where the group escalated from staging marches and protests, until actually carrying out bombings and assassinations. Segio falls in love with another of the group’s leaders – Suzanna Ronconi (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), and remains enamored with her long after he has stopped believing in the cause that brought them together in the first place.

 

And herein lies the problem. From the beginning of the film, we know that Segio will become disenfranchised with the group and their actions, and in fact, he seems to be fairly disenfranchised almost from the beginning. This is not the story of a true believer who later regretted his actions after he was caught and sent to prison. This is the story of a man who never really believed in what he was doing in the first place, but kept right on doing it for more than a decade. It makes for a rather dull and lifeless film.

 

The lead performance by Scamarcio does little to help this. He is as dull and lifeless as the film itself, always staring at the camera with his sad eyes, and on multiple occasions from his prison cell he delivers long monologues (while staring directly into the camera) talking about how terribly wrong they were to do what they did. Say what you want about Steven Soderbergh’s four hour Che biopic, but there is passion in Del Toro’s eyes as he plays Guerrva – you feel that he truly believes that what he is doing is the only course of action for him to take. Segio spends so much time thinking, and whining, about what he “has” to do, that he becomes a thoroughly uninteresting character. Because the movie is built around him, this spells death for the film itself.

 

Mezzogiorno is a little more lively as Ronconi, yet we never truly get to understand what led her to join the group in the first place, or why she though their actions were the correct course. But at least she is interesting. Director Renato De Maria shots the film with a nice cinema veritie style – his handheld camera is always moving, yet he cannot bring the movie to life. The movie just sits there on the screen and never really becomes an interesting film. It certainly is not a terrible movie, but it is a thoroughly disengaging one. A movie like this should be engrossing. This one never is.

 

Note: I saw this film at TIFF 2009, and at this point, I have to believe it’s not going to get a proper released in North America – so I decided to publish the review I wrote then anyway.

Movie Review: T2: Trainspotting

T2: Trainspotting *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Danny Boyle.   

Written by: John Hodge based on the novels by Irvine Welsh.

Starring: Ewan McGregor (Renton), Jonny Lee Miller (Simon), Robert Carlyle (Begbie / Begbie's Father), Ewen Bremner (Spud), Anjela Nedyalkova (Veronika), Shirley Henderson (Gail), Kelly Macdonald (Diane).

 

Let’s get this out of the way off the top – no, we really didn’t need a 20 years later sequel to Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting – the film that really made his career as a director, and made Ewan McGregor into a star. When I re-watched the film recently – for probably the 6^th or 7^th time – but the first time since about 17 years – I was once again sucked into the propulsive energy of the film, while at the same time I saw the film differently than I did as a teenager – I liked these people less, and their journey wasn’t as romantic as it once seemed. I have a feeling that the filmmakers felt the same way, because the awkwardly titled T2: Trainspotting (why not just Trainspotting 2?) really is a more melancholy experience than the first film – a film about how it may be romantic to be young and lost, but it’s really kind of pathetic to be that way in your mid-40s. Boyle doesn’t try to shoot the film with the same, constant drumbeat of energy as before, and his characters seem more tired than anything else. There is once again a plot with a scam at the center of it – but everyone’s going through the motions even more than they did in the first film. I surprised myself by how much I liked the film.

 

The setup is simple – 20 years after Renton (McGregor) double crossed his friends Simon (Johnny Lee Miller), Spud (Ewen Bremmer) and Begbie (Robert Carlyle), take the 16,000 quid from their big score for himself, and fleeing Scotland, he returns. Spud has bounced on-and-off heroin for all those years, and immediately forgives Renton (he, after all, could have joined Renton all those years ago). Simon seemingly forgives him as well – at first he’s pissed, but he figures he can use Renton for his own purposes – opening up a “spa” aka brothel, with his new, younger “girlfriend” Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova). Begbie has spent all these years in jail, and is pissed, and escapes and is more pissed, and then finds out Renton is back, and is event more pissed than that.

 

I think the way T2: Trainspotting works is because it doesn’t delude itself into thinking these guys were ever going to grow up and turn themselves into anything all that useful. Spud may be lovable – but he’s also the weakest of the group – a guy who is a horrible father, and partner to Gail (Shirley Henderson). Simon was always a conman, and he was never really going to change. Begbie was a psycho 20 years ago, and all that time in prison won’t help. Renton at least had the right idea – get out, get away from everyone and everything you know, give yourself a chance. Even that didn’t really work. When he comes back, he falls into his old habits – and the movie knows that this a regression more than anything else. McGregor is excellent here, as a man reeling from a life that is falling apart – and wasn’t that good to begin with – trying to recapture some of that youth.

 

What this does mean about T2: Trainspotting is that the film is nowhere near as fun or entertaining as the original film – and it doesn’t try to be. By Boyle standards, the direction is subdued (so by most people standards, it’s still pretty amped, but definitely tamer than normal). T2: Trainspotting clearly won’t have the same cultural impact its predecessor did – this isn’t a film made for the college age crowd the first one was, complete with poster that adorned every dorm room imaginable. This is a film for those people, who 20 years later, are still confused, and don’t know where to go with their lives. That can be fun in your 20s – by your 40s, that just sad. And T2: Trainspotting knows that.

Movie Review: Baby Driver

Baby Driver **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Edgar Wright.

Written by: Edgar Wright.

Starring: Ansel Elgort (Baby), Kevin Spacey (Doc), Lily James (Debora), Eiza González (Darling), Jon Hamm (Buddy), Jamie Foxx (Bats), Jon Bernthal (Griff), Flea (Eddie), Lanny Joon (JD), CJ Jones (Joseph), Paul Williams (The Butcher).

 

Edgar Wright’s career as a writer/director has often seem liked a tour through various film genres – zombies in Shaun of the Dead, to early ‘90s action in Hot Fuzz, comic books in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, paranoid sci-fi with The World’s End – but all with his own unique, funny perspective. He loves the films of the past, isn’t afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve, but he isn’t just making copies of them either. With Baby Driver, it looked like perhaps he was going to the heist genre – which, in a way, he is, or perhaps the existential action films – a noted inspiration for the film is Walter Hill’s The Driver (which I saw last week for the first time, and I think is his best film – although, I’m not much of a Hill fan) – but Wright is too much of a romantic for that. His main character, Baby (Ansel Elgort), may well want project that he is like Ryan O’Neal’s Driver – who doesn’t have a name, because he doesn’t need one – he is what he does – but he’s too sweet natured for that. In the end, Baby Driver is more a musical than anything – which is odd, since there isn’t much actual singing going on in the film. But the film does hum with a constant musical beat, and everything is perfectly choreographed – from the various car chases (the best seen on the big screen in years) to smaller moments, like Baby walking down the street for coffee. The characters in Baby Driver don’t sing – but the movie does.

 

In terms of plot, Baby Driver is fairly straight forward. Baby (Elgort) is under the thumb of an Atlanta crime boss named Doc (Kevin Spacey) – and needs to pay him back for a mistake in his youth. He does that by being the getaway driver for various heists, with a revolving door of criminals, that Doc sets up for him. The movie opens with Baby showing us – and his cohorts – just how great a driver he really is. He is on the verge of paying off his debt and getting out – it will just take that one last job to do so. As with every “one last job” in cinema history though, things don’t go as planned. All Baby wants to do is hit the open road – but doing so may put his elderly foster father Joe (CJ Jones) in danger – and also threaten his blossoming romance with Debora (Lily James – who is somehow just as adorable and lovable as Elgort in the film). So, he’s teamed up with husband and wife robbers Darling (Eiza Gonzalez) and Buddy (Jon Hamm), and Bats (Jamie Foxx), who seems to be always one step away from killing someone.

 

Everything about Baby Driver works. The car chases are the best you have seen in a while, and are choreographed like dance numbers, with Baby’s car careening around corners, weaving in and out traffic etc. – and doesn’t rely on the type of rapid fire editing that gives most modern action movies the false sense of energy. The soundtrack – full of standards, and oddities – somehow always hits the right note. The cast are all essentially playing archetypes, but you don’t really care when they are this good at doing so. Foxx, James and Elgort are the standouts – but there isn’t a weak note in the cast. The dialogue by Wright walks right up to the line of being too cute, but somehow never crosses it – in part, I think, because the cast never sets a toe over the line.

 

Most of all though, the film is just pure, out and out entertainment. You’re unlikely to have more fun at the movies this year than you will at Baby Driver – and its coming at just the right time of year for that. I’ve skipped more of the summer “blockbusters” this year than I normally do – and even still, I’m already tired of the explosions and CGI and franchises. Baby Driver is not an overly original film – but it is an “original” – a film that doesn’t need to worry about setting anything up, or continuing anything, etc. It’s just straight ahead, old school movie fun. You know, the type of summer movie Hollywood used to know how to make, and has somehow forgotten.