Films The Official bit-tech Movie Thread - What have you seen lately?

Bullet Train

A good old fashioned comedy crime caper / 10, loved it

 

Baby Driver.

Went in with no knowledge or expectations beyond a nerd on YouTube saying "the colour grading in this film is neat". Was pleasantly surprised. It's in that odd adolescent zone between silly and serious, along with Kingsmen, Kick Ass and Tom Holland's spiderman films. I didn't exactly love any of those films, because I'm not the target audience, but I can appreciate what they're doing right and how well made they are, and insofar as this film is heavily indebted to all of them, it succeeds on the same points they did. Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx and Don Draper (that's his name to me forever, why learn another) are all excellent adult supporting roles, parallels to the Nick Cages, Colin Firths, Mark Strongs, Robert Downey Jrs and so on in the other films: serious grown-ups whose imposing presence and paternal shadow sets the boundaries that the adolescent main character must eventually transgress to self-actualize and grow.

The film replicates Guardians of the Galaxy's love affair with classic pop music, but somehow I found it more sincere and wholesome despite it having a whiff of hipsterdom. Maybe because it's all slightly more obscure and retro, less Top of The Pops 80s Edition. When Guardians blasted the opening riff of Moonage Daydream I enjoyed it, but I could also feel the grubby fingers of an executive somewhere, pulling it out of the Greatest Hits algorithm for maximum appeal. Baby Driver, by contrast, with its classic R&B, jazz, funk, blues and more, constantly gave me the same little impulse usually only inspired by Tarantino films: "oh wow, I need to listen to this song later". Baby Driver's soundtrack doesn't have grubby executive fingerprints on it: it feels like it was chosen with affection, by someone who just loves music.

This bleeds through to the film's visuals and sets, where music and musical imagery and allusions multiply unchecked. The marmite sequence is one - now YouTube famous - in which Baby struts and waltzes through a range of pop culture nods and images to his own soundtrack. It's insufferably precocious and arrogant, but while nobody liked Toby Maguire doing it, somehow when Ansel Elgort does it, it's charming too. Maybe because you can tell the creative minds behind the cameras are celebrating the youthful desire to dance in the street, rather than sneering at it. At the heart of Baby Driver's direction is a sentiment bound to divide us: that youthful ego and energy is a good thing that should be set free.

The joyful exuberance of that sentiment, the crackling energy of frustrated youth squashed beneath an adult world's restrictions and formalities, runs through the whole film. The colour palette is, indeed, bold and stylized. The sets are OTT and stylized. The characters are OTT and stylized. Even the dialogue has that polarising Tarantino-esque over-engineered quality about it. Pleasingly, to me, it is rather more family friendly and less lurid than Kick Ass and Kingsmen. Nobody is getting sliced in half by foot-swords, or murdered by children, or microwaved to death, for the sake of grossout/cool factor. There aren't cheap thrills. Where those films, in their gory and crass excesses, smack of entertainment pandering down to what adults think kids want to see, Baby Driver feels more like an adolescent film that respects adolescent audiences enough to treat them like adults, focusing on real story and character moments and heart. It's funny, violent or cheesy when it serves the film's higher goals to be funny, violent or cheesy, not for the sake of it.

I can see a lot of people hating this film for the same reason a lot like it. The whole film is tense with creative energy, the pacing, soundtrack, visual design, costumes, script, action, all wound tight. And its vehicle (ho ho) is Baby, young and highly strung and arrogant, while its opponents are all the parental and authority figures. This binary is bound to irritate some viewers. If you find youthful energy irritating, and resent teenagers, and cynically deride their puppy love, their fascination with fast cars, their risk taking, their bipolar unpredictability, their dancing and music and their obsession with style and culture, then Baby Driver (the film and the character) will probably infuriate you. But if even a bit of you remembers that coming-of-age time of life with a little nostalgia, and admires the grit and energy of those kids who stand up to meet it head-on, you'll find a lot to love in this film.

One criticism, though, and it's sort of a big deal for me: the driving scenes are actually quite weak. A few good car stunts, but most of the car action is noticeably second-rate, shot at low speed and with too many cuts. It's weird to compare this to Bourne Identity, which is so much older and lower budget and more mature in its aspirations - selling itself as an espionage thriller, not a car movie - yet has way better, way more exciting car action filmed with better techniques.

It's a minor fault considering all this film does really well, but I sort of went into it for car action, so finding out it was such a low priority for the film makers was disappointing.

Scores out of 10 are silly, as this thread's running joke routinely lampoons. Suffice to say, it's a good film and well worth watching if you're chill with jumped-up young uns and their cultural trappings.

 

I was slightly concerned for a while, it had been a long time since we'd seen a @boiled_elephant MegaReview, good to see you're still alive and kicking!

 

I just never get round to watching films at the moment! I'm a tree surgeon with a side helping of DIY backlog...I've forgotten what free time feels like mostly.

The more I think about it, the more I understand why Baby Driver struck a chord for me. It works in both directions. There's this prejudice, in our culture (maybe in a lot of cultures?) against young males. They're mistrusted, the default assumption being that they're trouble, untrustworthy, inconsistent, amoral, rough, lecherous, of poor temperament, disruptive. There's some truth to it, here and there. But it's still flourished over time into a full-blown bigotry, festering most successfully among the older generations who have little contact with adolescents beyond having to bat them aside to get into the corner shop.

I've been on both ends of this prejudice, receiving a lot of it when I was that age and, later, finding myself slipping into it and being unfairly prejudiced towards young males once I was past the age of about 25.

Baby Driver fires on all cylinders for me precisely because its main theme is the antagonism that this prejudice generates between young males and adults, the former skulking away from interacting with the latter by hiding behind screens and earbuds, the latter mistrusting and sneering at the former for their assumed incompetence and low practical worth. This prejudice is the film's main antagonist, and the character arc of Baby is his slow burn effort to overcome it.

There aren't actually many films that take that subject on directly. Most coming-of-age and adolescent films - think Juno, Scott Pilgrim, Breakfast Club, Mean Girls, Ferris Bueller - cast adults as this weird, remote secondary noise, a backdrop. They set the perimeter, or present some resistance, they show prejudice, but that's not usually the focus. The interaction between generations is not usually the focus. The victory is usually the adolescent character's ability to carve out a personal niche away from the adult world, but Baby's redemption is in finally succumbing to the adult world's judgement in pursuit of a higher end goal. He also finally achieves the respect and admiration of adults, and is saved, defended and partially vindicated by adult characters.

That's pretty neat, I think.

 

Millers Crossing was amazing, GabrielBryne on a savage one! Watched the series Shrinking, with Harrison Ford and Jason Segel

 

Eternals wtf/10

Finally trawling through some of the later MCU movies.

What is this mess? I think the random Harry Styles cameo acting like he's just walked into the local village am-dram for his first time sums it all up really.

Just terrible. Hopefully the subsequent ones aren't so bad.

 

I just rewatched last night, not sure it got any better 2nd time round but doesn't confuse as much, I liked the fights but ended up thinking I was watching Marvel's Justice League team.

 

You'll be disappointed when you get to Wakanda Not-ever then.

They can apparently make a tank-boat in the sea look realistic but have immense difficulty with a flying man, something you'd assume is kind of a superhero staple, especially for Marvel at this point. The CGI for Namor is atrocious (as is some of the stuff in Shang-Chi, actually). Coupled with an over-long, boring, derivative story and bouts of reverse-racism, it's a big No. When even the kids give up halfway through you know you've lost your audience.

 

...Reverse racism...? So, you mean... like... racism?

 

Yeah, I suppose it is, really. Didn't think about it like that.

 

I haven't enjoyed any of the MCU phase 4 films yet, not that the first 3 phases were exactly hitting it out of the park.

Lots of sloppy CGI, badly-written, oddly-paced films... Not what you expect for the money they plough into them. The biggest crime in 4 so far (for me) was Thor, what an awful film.

 

I haven't seen the film so I can't really judge that, but in general the whole "reverse racism" thing doesn't really exist: https://www.aclrc.com/myth-of-reverse-racism.

But maybe I'm just being "too woke" again.

 

phase 4 has been a total car crash. Probably not hleped by franchise fatigue and trying to follow endgame. The only one i would say has been great is No Way Home... all the others were meh at best.

 

Not up to date with the Marvel stuff not having seen any of the new Spidermans or anything of Phase 4 I think other than the new Thor.
But I liked the new Thor Bit ridiculous but then again it's a Marvel film about people with silly powers so didn't bother me too much.

 

There was a definitely a peak at Civil War, then some stuff, then the last two Avengers were really good - Infinity War and Endgame. Some of the not-trying-to-take-over-the-world bits were engaging, like Ant-Man with its humour and less grandiose plot, but I think MadGinga is right - franchise fatigue definitely seems like a thing now. Ticking off viewings to keep up to speed, ready for when the next phase launches (Secret War?), hopefully with more to play for.

 

I actually quite liked Black Widow but it may be just because Scarlett.

 

Lately, I've preferred the Marvel TV shows to the MCU itself.

 

Not actually given any of the spinoffs a look yet. Any standouts?

 

Hawkeye, She Hulk & Ms Marvel are really good IMHO. The latest one - "Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur" was a toon, though.

 

I would rank the series:
Moon Knight, Loki, What... If?, Hawkeye, Wandavision, Ms Marvel, She Hulk, Falcon & Winter Soldier

The latter 4 all fell down due to 1 or 2 silly elements.

Spoiler

Wandavision playing silly bugger with eastereggs (e.g. x-men's quicksilver)
Ms Marvel the "big bads" complete about face (i'm going to bring about the end of the world, oh wait, no, i'm going to stop it)
She Hulk was fun, but didnt really feel like it went anywhere, and why the random reveal/intro at the end? (Hulk's son)
Falcon & Winter soldier, have to force an issue to make the bad look actually bad, and use of existing character (sharon carter)