Baby Driver - Movie Review

Starring Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Jon Bernthal, Eiza Gonzalez, Flea and Lanny Joon.
Written & Directed by Edgar Wright.

★★★½

Edgar Wright has directed Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The World's End, and now this. He's 5 for 5 in my book.

Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars) plays Baby, a guy who's one of the best drivers on Earth. He's deeply indebted to a criminal kingpin named Doc (Kevin Spacey), so to pay off what he owes, he drives getaway for different groups that Doc hires. Mostly bank robberies. Baby has tinnitis and listens to music at all times to drown out the ringing, but the music is the soundtrack for his life. Everything that happens in the movie is done to the beat of whatever Baby's listening to. It's a cinematic trick that works.

Wright's talent is to take familiar genres and add thrilling new twists to them, and he does for car chase heist movies here what he did for zombies in Shaun, for buddy-cops in Fuzz, teen romance in Scott Pilgrim, and alien invasions in World's End. I really enjoyed what he did with Foxx and Hamm as two smooth yet dangerous bankrobbers. Baby's deep down a good guy who shouldn't be among these criminals, but he has no choice.

I had a blast watching it.

The World's End - DVD Review

Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, David Bradley and Pierce Brosnan.
Directed by Edgar Wright.

★★★

Pegg/Frost/Wright do here for the Body Snatcher films what Shaun of the Dead did for zombies and Hot Fuzz did for buddy-cop films. What I like about their films is they set up characters thought-out enough that even if mayhem didn't break out, the characters still feel like they have lives to lead.

Pegg plays the former leader of a band of mates from their school days, and one thing they tried to do in their youth but never finished was The Golden Mile - twelve pubs, twelve pints.  Of course, the other four friends have grown up and moved on with their lives, but Pegg's in a state of arrested development. The four friends decide to humor him and give him one last night of glory.

But that's when the robots show up. From there, they figure that in order to stay low and not tip off the body-snatchers they know what's going on, they finish what they started and carry through getting their pints...

Loved the ending too.