Tag Archives: The Italian Job

Academy Awards, Featured

Baby Driver (2017)

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baby2I recently watched Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz for the zillionth time. This was partly to assuage my excitement for Baby Driver, Wright’s latest, and partly because the discovery of a commentary track by Wright and his buddy Quentin Tarantino was too good to pass up. Usually commentary tracks feel slight, strained, straight-up unnecessary; Wright and Tarantino have a casual chat that’s nearly as bonkers as Hot Fuzz itself. The pair share a vast encyclopedic knowledge of film and music, and throughout the course of the commentary they discuss nearly 200 films — basically everything besides Hot Fuzz — and if you’re thinking someone should write out that list, well, yeah: reddit.

Their knowledge is enviable, yes, but it’s not nearly as enviable as the fact that both writer/directors manage to make movies that are unlike any other movie you’ve ever seen. Baby Driver, it should be stated at the outset, is unlike any other movie you’ve ever seen. Wright, like Tarantino, has fresh ideas that swing for the narrative fences, and like Tarantino he also has the prowess to actually achieve his vision. This time around the vision is something people are calling a “car chase musical”, which seems only half-accurate because it doesn’t quite do Baby Driver justice.

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Featured

Dope (2015)

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As the Academy Awards have shown us, there are a lot of important elements that go into a great movie: costumes, acting, production, story, etc. In the case of Dope, the most standout category is certainly the soundtrack, featuring killer mixes from the best in the ’90s hip-hop game to current hip-hop and R&B rockstars. Busta Rhymes, Santigold, A Tribe Called Quest, and Public Enemy are just a few of the radio masters that come to mind, but trust me — if you see this movie for nothing else, see it (or I guess hear it) for the soundtrack.

Beyond the soundtrack, Dope delivers on being a fun movie with some important messages about what it’s like growing up as an outsider, and defying the expectations of your neighborhood and culture. The film starts off by introducing us to Malcolm, a straight-A student in Inglewood, California working towards the end of his junior year to get into his top college selection. Malcolm, joined by his best friends Jib and Diggy, struggle to get by as the “nerds” of the school, often falling victim to bullying, petty robbery, and of course, verbal abuse.

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Featured

Focus (2015)

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There was a time when I’d never met a movie about con artists that I didn’t like. You name it: the almighty Sting, the classic you-didn’t-even-know-this-was-a-con Usual Suspects, George C. Scott’s The Flim-Flam Man; modern takes like Matchstick Men, Catch Me If You Can, American Hustle; the super-rewatchable original Italian Job and the super-rewatchable remake Ocean’s Eleven. Some of these — like, say, The Spanish Prisoner — technically aren’t that great as far as cinema is concerned. Maybe that’s part of what’s so damn endearing about them: they’re movies, not films, which means they could conceivably appeal to just about anyone because style and fun outweigh technique and competence. I think I was just fine with that for a while, and I might still be.

But I also remember taking issue with Christopher Nolan (you: “who the hell are you to challenge Christopher Nolan?”; me: “I have as many Oscars as he does“) when he made the following comment about heist movies in an LA Times interview while filming Inception:

I originally wrote [Inception] as a heist movie, and heist movies traditionally are very deliberately superficial in emotional terms…they’re frivolous and glamorous, and there’s a sort of gloss and fun to it. I originally tried to write it that way, but when I came back to it I realized that — to me — that didn’t work for a film that relies so heavily on the idea of the interior state, the idea of dream and memory. I realized I needed to raise the emotional stakes.

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