Baby Driver

Tonight I saw Baby Driver, starring Ansel Elgort and Jon Hamm.

Baby (Elgort) isn't your average getaway car driver. He's young. He's distracted (by music of his own choosing). He's got a seemingly endless supply of sunglasses.

He's not meant for a life of crime.

This story, really mostly about him, is a ride in itself—a genre-bending, hilarious, tragic, sentimental, endearing, tense thriller that doesn't give you much of a chance to breathe between scenes.

Baby's boss, Doc (Kevin Spacey), promises him he can leave the life once he's settled a debt that's unbeknownst to us. He achieves this in a heart-thumping heist scene and calmly returns home, where he cares for Joseph (CJ Jones), an elderly deaf man, in a run-down apartment. He also gets friendly with waitress Debora, who works at a nearby diner.

All along, Baby has a continuous soundtrack playing in his ears. The excuse given is tinnitus, but his knack for making music from his secretly taped conversations leads us to believe there could be more to it.

He gets to know many of the criminals he drives for along the way. Smoldering Buddy (Hamm), evil Bats (Jamie Foxx) and others. They are suspect of his youth and his earbuds and his incredible skill at operating motor vehicles.

There are too many twists and turns to properly take the story any further without spoiling, so I'll leave it there and simply say: Edgar Wright has outdone himself.

I'm a fan of his other work (Shaun of the Dead probably the most recognizable), but this is better. It's smarter. Sharper. Faster.

Above all else, it has rhythm. Since the storytelling is woven through music that our protagonist selects for his various moods and jobs, the film radiates with a series of songs that wouldn't feel out of place in the world of Tarantino. And yes, there's violence. And some language too.

But it remarkably doesn't feel gratuitous, and the Georgia accent on our hero makes him all that more appealing. There's even a love story for the romantics to fall for.

I may have to see it again.

~~~

Moon

Tonight I saw Moon, starring Sam Rockwell.

Films about loneliness will always keep our attention because no matter what our background, finances, marital status or age, we can all at times be vulnerable to it.

In Moon Sam (Rockwell) has reached the end of his lonely rope. He is in the final days of his three-year corporate mission to the moon (yes, THE moon) to help mine clean energy, and is desperate to return to his wife and daughter on earth.

We witness him going about his daily tasks—eating, working out, tending to 'house' plants, etc. We even see him watching the obligatory obviously-not-live television as he barely pays attention to a classic episode of Bewitched. If the TV technique weren't so over-used (i.e. Wall-E and I Am Legend), it would help reinforce the isolation, but it doesn't need to in this film. The cold white of the walls and surroundings mixed with the industrial nature of just about everything (right down to Sam's helpful robot Gerty, voiced by Kevin Spacey) tell us we're in a place devoid of love and warmth.

As Sam gets closer to his return date, his health begins to deteriorate and hallucinations materialize (or at least they appear to). One of these sightings causes him to wreck the vehicle he's using to complete his work "outside" on the surface of said moon. Next thing he knows, he's awake in the moon station infirmary seeing himself outside of his body. But he's not dead—and for me to say anymore would be to spoil, so I'll have to stop there.

What I can say is that Director Duncan Jones (coincidentally also David Bowie's son) creates a very realistic exterior for what the moon must somewhat be like. The quiet darkness he invokes results in a strange feelings of peace contrasted by hollowness. When the tires of the work vehicles scrape across the dirt, you can almost feel grains of dust in your mouth.

Also, the performance by Sam Rockwell, who plays against no one else, is all of the things it should be: funny, confusing, heartbreaking, life-affirming and frustrating. He's well cast and well-played. Of course, something should also be said about Kevin Spacey's voicing of Gerty. It sounds like an easy task, but to evoke emotion from a screen that registers different emoticons based on what it's saying can't have been that simple. His intonation and soothing tones make the ideal "humanized" machine.

All in all it's a very classic science fiction journey wrapped up in a modern-day pod. What makes it good is its exploration of people needing people, no matter where or when they are.

~~~

Shrink

Today at SIFF I screened Shrink, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Williams.

I will speak about it on an upcoming episode of Cinebanter, so stay tuned!