Well okay, this will be a review of two parts: the first is for people who haven't yet seen Baby Driver, the second for those who have. There are no real spoilers in the latter section, but without the context of having seen the film it'll only make limited sense. So, here goes...
Baby Driver is the new heist movie from British writer and director Edgar Wright. A smart, funny standalone action flick, it holds stylistic and thematic nods to his previous work, but no narrative ones. The story follows a young, automotively-gifted getaway driver who goes by the name of Baby (Ansel Elgort), and the interaction with his boss Doc (Kevin Spacey) as he tries to distance himself from an accomplished criminal career and an ever-changing crew of robbers, killers and outright psychopaths.
So as mentioned above the film is smart, the film is funny and there is plenty of action. While many are hailing this as an antidote to the Fast & Furious franchise, that's an unfair comparison as Baby Driver is a story about people, not machines. The car-chases here serve to drive the story forward, not the other way around. The film's not quite as smooth and zippy as its trailers might suggest, but that's because the promo-reels touch more on the style rather than the substance, and while the film never goes into melodrama mode, Wright carefully builds his central characters along the way, to the point where standoffs and shootouts feel genuinely perilous, rather than the through-the-motions setpieces we've become used to over the years.
The whole thing is also heavily soundtracked of course (more on that below), so if you get overwhelmed by the fast-paced scripting and editing, you can at least tap your along with your foot in the meanwhile.
The Summer-season is turning out to be a bit of a mixed bag. Baby Driver will be one of the highlights. It's great fun, see it soon…
So, why didn't I love this? Oh I liked it very much, but I'd be hard pushed to go further than that. Part of the problem could be the near-universal praise Baby Driver has had heaped upon it before the film is even on general release. I'm used to my brain wanting to automatically rail against that and find things wrong with a movie, but when it's a filmmaker I admire as much as Edgar Wright it almost becomes personal: 'I know what you're capable of because I've seen you at your best, so impress me - raise the bar'.
But the guy's bar is not only way too high to begin with, it's also beginning to recede into the distance. While I've enjoyed all his big-screen outings, I tend to rank Shaun of the Dead at the top and everything else pretty much on a (only slightly) downward-scale from there. I remember feeling slightly put-out that Wright had left Ant-Man mid-production, not least because I ended up loving that movie and wondered what there was about the final product that he'd disagreed with to the point where he'd quit altogether. So then I look at the tonal in-fighting there is throughout Baby Driver and think 'what was the utopian vision for this movie?', because I don't think the film I watched embodied that. There's a layer of genuine sentimentality across the whole screenplay which is more than welcome, but sits ill-at-ease with the snark and cynicism practiced by the characters. Neither comes across as genuinely as they should in an Edgar Wright movie, and the whole thing shudders as a result.
Speaking of which, the players. Ansel Elgort is refreshingly enjoyable in the central role*1, but still feels essentially miscast. For my money, Michael Cera would have been ideal for this, not least since he'd have had to leave his own comfort-zone as an actor. Lily James is also great to watch as always (although she gets comparatively little to do), but feels a little too clean for the role of a burned-out yet still optimistic waitress. Meanwhile, Kevin Spacey can't quite pass off the hard-edged cynicism he needs to as gang-boss and blasé murderer, Doc. But nor can he bring the warmth to the moments where he shows that he has some genuine fondness for his favourite and long-time driver.
On the plus-side (and with comparatively less screen-time), Jamie Foxx, John Hamm and Eiza González all fantastic as opportunistic career-criminals. Jon Bernthal has a minor role as Jon Bernthal™ but with a beard, which he pulls off with his accustomed ease.
But the biggest bugbear I have with Baby Driver is probably the relentless diegetic soundtrack. It's not that I disliked any of the tracks used*2, nor were songs were shoehorned in (I'm looking at you, DC), or that the idea was feeling strained (ditto, Marvel). More that it's over-used, to the point where a device which is to all intents and purposes a character in itself, loses relevance the closer the film gets to its third-act*3. And having punches, gunshots and explosions synced in time with the soundtrack works in a trailer but becomes distracting throughout an entire film. In fact many of the action sequences have the air of being tweaked in post-production to add more dynamic energy, but have instead come out feeling cluttered.
But for all my grumbling, I should add that it's not a case of 'this film should be better', just 'I should have enjoyed it more'. There were parts of the movie which had me grinning like a lunatic, but there were far more that I found disjointed, or like a work-in-progress from an earlier draft of the script*4.
All of this is me just groping for a way to justify saying that Baby Driver is very good, but not Wright's best work (future or past) by a long shot. But the pre-built hype and my predisposition to enjoy the director's work makes it feel like saying "it's good" isn't enough, somehow. Fully aware I'm in a minority here, although I take no joy from that.
Oh, absolutely - it's big and loud and full-on enough to justify the ticket, certainly.
I think it does, but also that it could have achieved so much more.
It's not.
I won't.
There isn't.
Level 2: Lily James is in this, and she was in that Wrath of the Titans along with Liam 'Qui-Gon' Neeson and Toby 'Additional Voices in The Old Republic' Kebbell.
*1 Regular readers might recall the time Elgort played a terminally-ill teenager who I spent a film's run-time wishing would hurry the fuck up about it all. Although don't get me wrong, I found his character in this film deeply annoying for the first twenty minutes or so. Thankfully two things then happen: 1) we get to know a bit more about him and 2) he tones it down a lot, anyway. [ BACK ]
*2 Serious note though, writer/directors: your taste in music is nowhere near as quirky, clever, cool or interesting as you think it is, I promise you. I've currently got Slayer, Lady Antebellum and Così fan tutte on my iPod, but I wouldn't dream of shoehorning them into a screenplay for geek-points. At the risk of beginning a rant, I'm getting a bit tired of sitting in the cinema and imagining the initial phone call to the producer's office: "Hey guys! I've got a great idea for a soundtrack! …er, I mean film! Yes a film, that's it! I mean both, obviously, whatever…". Going to see an action/hero movie is increasingly becoming like arriving at a party to find one guy guarding the stereo in the corner because he's brought all his own records. And he then insists on describing why he's chosen each one as he goes (this is a broad simile of course; I don't go to parties. And if I find myself at one, I try to stay as far away from All The People as possible). [ BACK ]
*3 And as a slight aside, I should mention that it's explained in the film that Baby suffers from Tinnitus due to a childhood accident and almost constantly plays music 'to drown it out'. While I'd put money on there being some level of personal experience in the writing of his character, members of the audience who also suffer from the hearing disorder will be fully aware that while music is indeed a welcome distraction, the pasttime doesn't replace the humming/ringing/screeching noise, more that the listener gets music plus Tinnitus. Which, over time, leads to more Tinnitus.
Just saying, because that's not addressed in the script... [ BACK ]
*4 And for those of you who've seen the film, is there a significance behind the lack of internet/smartphones? Baby's obsession with cassettes and analogue recording works in the context of the story, but Doc hands out flip-phones to his crew for the duration of each job, and at one point his son Samm is seen with a PSP. I'd thought at first that maybe the film was set in the mid 00s, but since we get a flashback showing a 3-4yr old Baby receiving his first (and 1st-generation) iPod, it's reasonable to assume that took place circa 2001 and the story-proper takes place around sixteen years later, ie now. So is Doc keeping his criminal network nicely undercover by having them use phones that your grandad would get laughed at for using in public? Also ref the iPod, Baby's got a range of different devices all loaded up with different playlists (a nice touch), yet I don't recall seeing him use a computer at all (they ain't going to sync themselves)? I'm hoping there's a PC (with like, thirty user profiles on it) in the background of a shot in his flat, and I just didn't notice it... [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Now I haven't read the book of this, but I watched the film with someone who has and that's the next best thing. Burgeoning suspicions as to the original narrative's flow, complexity and undertones were pretty much confirmed by the time Mrs Blackout and I had reached the top of the steps outside the cinema.
Roger Michell's heavy-handed retooling of the Daphne du Maurier mystery/romance novel (coming after several other screen versions, of course), is less of an immersive page-to-screen adaptation and more someone skim-reading the study notes. 106 minutes is by no means a lean running-time, but the tale has so much groundwork to cover that it's tonally all over the place. Characters laugh in one scene, cry in the next and are apparently head-over-heels in love before the ice has melted in your Diet Coke.
And it's not just the running time which is the problem. The film boasts an impressive cast, but they'd be more impressive elsewhere. Sam Claflin is always a joy to watch, yet Michell's script gives his character Philip nothing to emote into, instead turning into a flip-book of obsession and mania. Likewise, Rachel Weisz (as the titular Rachel, no less) is given neither the screenplay nor direction to produce the performance we know she's capable of. Holliday Grainger is completely wasted in a role which essentially becomes a hatstand with a pout, and Iain Glen has been brought in to play The Iain Glen Character™. He does that well, to his credit. Everyone else is in nondescript nineteenth century peasants' clothing, tugging forelocks all the way to the casting office.
But my biggest beef wasn't with the identikit Sunday-Night-Telly performances, sets or scripting, but the fact that this is purported to be a period-set, claustrophobic, psychological thriller mired in moral and emotional ambiguity. What I saw tonight was the director continually shouting his interpretation at the audience, because even he knows the film's too damned butchered to make proper sense of the story.
Looks pretty enough, didn't hate it, wasn't bored by it; just came to dislike both lead characters within about twenty minutes. And when you don't like the protagonists, you don't care what happens to them. You're just sloshing around your Diet Coke and wishing you had more ice…
Level 2: Tim Barlow's in this, and he was in that Hot Fuzz alongside Simon 'Unkar/Dengar' Pegg.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Wonder Woman (2D / Spoilers in the footnotes)
Cert: 12A / 141 mins / Dir. Patty Jenkins / Trailer
Well, the long-awaited day arrived, amid a flurry of media hype and no small amount of subsequent expectation. And so it was that a respectably-sized audience*1 gathered to see if Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman movie could live up to the buzz which threatened to overtake it.
Mythology meets alternate-history when the studious life led by a tribe of Amazons on the island of Themyscira*2 is interrupted when an escaping American WW1 pilot (Chris Pine's Steve Trevor) emerges through a dimensional portal, followed by a German battleship and its full contingent of furious Axis footsoldiers. Carnage ensues*3, leading to Diana (Gal Gadot) venturing back through the aperture in a bid to find and kill Ares the god of war, ending the global conflict. As her weapons, she has the purity of innocence, the conviction of righteousness, The Bulletproof Bangles™, The Sword of Omens™ and The Lasso of Overacting™. One of these gets used to the point where it's almost worn out. There is sass, there is action and there are big decisions to be made along the way, as well as a few laughs.
I'm quite surprised the Daily Express haven't made more of this movie, actually. It's literally Princess Diana vs The Evil Germans. All that's missing is a subtext on house-prices and they'd be frothing at the press...
But anyway, yeah, it's a pretty damned good film. Although if you've got a hunch that it sounds like half an hour of Thor, ten minutes of fish-out-of-water jokes, then an hour and a half of The First Avenger*4, with a few beats thrown in from X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy and Inglourious Basterds, you'd be absolutely right.
Gal Gadot does well in the lead role here, but she has a lot of cinematic-lifting to do. While we certainly get a refreshing central female-focus from director Patty Jenkins, there's no escaping the fact that the film was written by three guys*5. After the opening act on Themyscira where the women drive the narrative, the story reverts to more or less standard superhero form once Diana is over the threshold and into the First World War. Other than Lucy Davis in a small comic-relief role and Elena Anaya being wasted as an enigmatic and thoroughly underused Axis weapons scientist, it's just Gal Gadot surrounded by cardboard cutouts of gawping Boys Own heroes and villains*6.
Wonder Woman is good fun and a step back to form for Warner/DC, certainly their most focused and relatable timeline-movie since Man of Steel. But the feeling never left me that rather than figure out their own way to tell stories, DC are still trying to be Marvel Studios*7 - and that's not their race to win…
Update: After sleeping on it*8, I have some final thoughts. With the best will in the world, I'm probably not going to see Wonder Woman again in its theatrical run, so I've updated the post to add them here.
The amount of online discussion and media-buzz prior to this release means it feels like one of those movies you should have a strong opinion on either way, and if the end result lands somewhere in the middle you end up wondering 'have I understood this properly?'. Truth be told, there's not that much there to understand, and that's absolutely fine. But who wants 'absolutely fine' as a pull-quote on their poster? After watching Wonder Woman, I think I certainly like it more for socio-political reasons than dramatic ones. Because at the end of the day, I don't really give two fucks about DC characters, and there's very little the film can do about that…*9
Wonder Woman is absolutely fine.
Well I think I've covered that already…
For big-and-loud, yes. It's a fine looking movie.
It does
Although I'm less convinced about what it sets out to do than whether it achieves that.
For Gal Gadot, possibly the best so far.
For everybody else, no.
Nope.
There isn't.
Which is bloody ridiculous as there are many, MANY perfect spots for one.
Level 1: Bern Collaco's in this.
Me neither, but he's Indian Regiment Soldier in Wonder Woman and he was Stormtrooper in Rogue One andFirst Order General in The Force Awakens. I genuinely hope he gets a character name next time around. Like, in anything. Seriously, look at the dude's IMDB page, it's a litany of anonymous sorrow. He's been in Eastenders twice and only got "Police Detective" and "Pharmacist".
*1And of for all those sitting in the room that night, only five of us hung around for the after-credits scene; there isn't one. Fair enough…[ BACK ]
*2And really though, imagine making a mythical island full of actors speak with a heavy eastern accent, just to explain away the suspicion that Gal Gadot can do no other…[ BACK ]
*3And while I'm very aware that this film is a certificate 12A, the beach-battle between a crew of fully armed soldiers and a tribe of expert archers and swordswomen is glaringly blood-free, other than a nasty scratch on Diana's arm in its final moments (the resulting scab/scar of which we don't see again throughout the film, but given she's a super-heroine that's understandable)[ BACK ]
*4To the point where, after recruiting a side-crew of international heavy-drinking misfits in a London boozer, Noble Captain Steve sacrifices himself by flying off in a German plane full of super-bombs intended to kill millions, and all his superbly capable brunette love-interest is left with is a sepia photo and memories of the brief time they shared. No, seriously, they did that.[ BACK ]
*5And Diana was not, I repeat not - I repeat NOT - wearing her armour under that blue dress. Those writers put her in the figure-hugging blue dress because they wanted to see Gal Gadot in a figure-hugging dress. Don't care about the back-scabbard, wasn't happening mate. If she'd have been wearing the armour underneath it, it would have looked like she'd turned up to the gala dinner party just to smuggle out the cutlery…[ BACK ]
*6And the next time I'm on complaining about Marvel's track record with slightly sub-standard movie villains, please please remind me that none of them have been as resoundingly shit as David Thewlis being Palpatine with a moustache and tweed overcoat. His performance in this film is nothing short of fucking excruciating. To the point where Richard E. Grant's Dr. Rice looks positively nuanced by comparison. Thewlis is better than this, and I just ended up feeling embarrassed for Patty Jenkins having to direct such utter, utter drivel. There. I said it.[ BACK ]
*7You would of course be perfectly justified in asking me "Oh, why do you have to compare DC films to Marvel?". Well, I'll stop doing it when DC do…[ BACK ]
*8Of course it'd be lovely to be able to ponder and sleep on everything I watch, before writing a balanced and intricate review of the film probably while sitting on a veranda in the mid-morning sunshine in a light flannel shirt and sipping an espresso. But my brain doesn't work like that. The stream of jumbled praise and nitpicking you read above the edit-point is what's in my brain as I get home from the cinema. If I don't write that down before I go to bed, it's lost like the contents of an unsaved file when you power off a computer. There might be an auto-backup, but you can't rely on it containing everything you need. All you'd get the next day would be "Yeah, it's pretty good I suppose, apart from David Thewlis". If I take notes in the screening (yeah I'm sometimes that guy) then I've got that dark-room-scrawl as well I suppose, but it all just increases the gap between me watching a film and posting a review. I'm not made of time y'know, I've got a day-job in which to be unfulfilled...[ BACK ]
*9That said, Man of Steel was the first movie to make me actually interested in Clark Kent as a character, so maybe Diana could have done with more emotional conflict rather than physical. But not with Gal Gadot driving, one suspects...[ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The A-word.
It's the bane of cinephiles, everywhere.
That book you love; the comic you remember; the show you used to watch; the game you lost an entire summer playing? Oh, someone's adapted it and it's getting made into a movie! Whether a cause for pre-emptive celebration or foreboding caution, it leads to only one thing: expectation. And expectation is the death of the 'clean' movie-viewing experience; no matter how closely the film sticks to its source material, or how much it tries to distance itself, it will be faced with the hurdle of comparison.
And while the movie industry loves the pre-built marketing buzz of 'now a major motion picture!', they loathe the comparative references which will be made from the first review onwards. Because many punters will expect to get exactly the same reaction from a completely different medium, to a story they already know. And therein lies the problem.
In this monthly series, we'll look back at some of the most respected and best-loved properties which have made the perilous journey to the big screen; often with some controversy, and almost always with far too much hype. This isn't so much a review of the films themselves, more an appraisal of their suitability as an adaptation.
V for Vendetta Alan Moore & David Lloyd (w. Tony Weare) (1982-1989)
Hahaha! Remember that time I read Watchmenand called it 'heavyweight'? Dear lord. If ever a book was unintentionally written for the age in which we find ourselves, V for Vendetta would be the one. Really, though. As with the film below, I hadn't read this before, although given my past-aversion to paying attention to socio-political matters, it's doubtful whether I'd have been the right audience for the it, anyway. It's not even the permanent story-threads of a broken society, chaos, anarchy and revolution which resonate, but the overriding view that humanity is its own worst enemy, ever willing to make a bad situation worse by revealing new depths of self-important immorality.
Although bound in one volume, the novel is split into three books, originally beginning publication episodically in 1982's Warrior anthology magazine and ending in its own dedicated comic title six years later. Set in 1997 London, we're introduced to a country ruled by a dictatorship after a nuclear war in Europe*1. An inaccessible police-state rules the streets after disposing of undesirables in 'resettlement camps' but a masked anarchist, Codename V, knows how brittle the short chain of command actually is and sets about reshaping the power structure in a long and self-destructive strategy game.
Much of the story takes place at night, and even daytime scenes are dirty and claustrophobic. At times,V's artwork feels like the Batman approach of drawing onto black paper, so that everything which isn't specified as a lit-object falls into shadow, a style which is all the more desaturated by the pallid colouring. Visually and tonally, the writing and art are pulling in the same direction, which is great if a little... overpowering.
I found the first book to be more intense and (say it quietly) coherent than its successors, although it's also a thing that being written over such a long period, the story adapted and changed from its initial trajectory. The result of this is a few threads left hanging early in the text which aren't picked up again. And it's certainly not a question of the story lacking direction, but David Lloyd and Tony Weare have a very loose art-style, combined with several characters who look quite similar and a script which shies away from over-using names once the players are established. As a result I found myself getting a little lost as I wasn't sure whose story I was following until several pages later when they were directly referred to by another sketchily-illustrated characters. It's the comic-equivalent of shooting a movie in low-light with actors who look basically the same and don't speak much. I enjoyed the book very much, but I was enjoying it more at the start than at the end.
But like all the best works, I know I'll get more out of V for Vendetta by reading it again. Not right at this moment though, I'm not made of time. And by then of course, I'll also have the cinematic-version rattling around my head. But I've read the book to lay the groundwork, so that's the important thing.
The alterations in the cinematic version of the story are upfront, and unapologetically so. Set in 2028 rather than 1997, and with a nuclear winter being replaced with the aftermath of a biological attack on Britain resulting from a prolonged war, the core aspects of the story mechanics are there. But many secondary characters have been removed and the Wachowski's*2 screenplay is more linear and audience-friendly than its origin (Alan Moore's name is conspicuously absent from the main burst of credits). As it goes on, the film takes considerable liberties with the original story structure, but given the slightly haphazard nature of that, it's perhaps no bad thing.
Much like Watchmen, no matter how hard the film tries to be gritty and urban, there's something very 'clean' and normal about this dystopian futurescape (although maybe that's the point?). The state-control doesn't feel particularly oppressive and the regular families under its influence don't appear to be suffering too much when we join the story. Which sort of makes you wonder where the angst is going to come from? In the fight-choreography, the film feels almost like Tim Burton's Batman, and much like the caped crusader, V is presented from the outset as more of an idea, leaving his actual identity satisfyingly unnecessary.
Natalie Portman is outstanding here, not only with the range she gets to display but also a near-faultless Brit accent. Hugo Weaving's on slightly less solid ground, although he does well with a character whose theatricality has been amplified through the screenplay to be almost pantomime at times (and his turn as a subway vagrant who sounds like Alan Bennett). The only other really notable performance is John Hurt in full scenery-chewing mode, thoroughly over-egging the pudding and not at all like his literary counterpart, although I'm also sure that's exactly the turn he was hired to give.
James McTeigue's V for Vendetta is a solid enough reworking of the ideas in the book, but as an adaptation of the story and themes, it's lacking somewhat. It feels like the journey to the screen has stripped the original tale of its quiet, pragmatic nihilism in place of an Anarchy™ everyone can feel comfortable with. Although maybe that's the real subversiveness?
Apart from anything else, this film shows the sun setting at 7pm on the 4th of November, when anyone who's spent a winter in the UK will know that happens at around half-past four at that time of year. Still, that's alternate-reality for you…
It is.
…it is, but I don't think it's as good, and that's taking into account my reservations about the book, too.
*1 And while you may furrow your brow at the notion of any survivors at all after a global nuclear conflict, this is a naiveté. which Moore himself addresses in his 1988 introduction to the completed work. [ BACK ]
*2 Okay genuine question, and one for whose clumsiness and insensitivity I apologise in advance. The screenplay for V For Vendetta was written by the Wachowskis, the creative sibling team who directed The Matrix and Cloud Atlas, of course. The Wachowskis consist of sisters Lana and Lilly, formerly known as Larry (who fully transitioned in 2008), and Andy (likewise in 2016). My question is, what's the accepted way of identifying them in a film-criticism/historical context? Obviously common courtesy would dictate that Lana and Lilly Wachowski wrote the movie, since it's not as if someone transforms into another person when they transition gender (quite the opposite, in fact). But it's also true that the names listed in the film credits are Larry and Andy, and I'd be surprised if the payslips they received from Warner Bros in 2006 said any differently. I don't want to refer to each of them as 'different' people in reference, but at the same time I'm a stickler for accuracy (or at least I try to be). I only ask because it feels awkward to refer to them just as The Wachowskis, as if I'm making some subtextual point by not referencing their first-names or gender (they were previously known collectively as The Wachowski Bros).
Anyway, hit me up in the comments and let me know, unless of course I've stepped over the line completely, in which case tweet me about my indiscretion so I can come back and quietly edit this bit out and we'll all pretend the whole dreadful incident never occurred. Much like I've tried to do with their more recent film Jupiter Ascending... [ BACK ]
*3 Seriously though, if I can level-one Toby Kebbel for having done that, everyone in there gets a mention. It'd be at the top of my CV, certainly until I appeared in one of the films anyway… [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
