Search
Search results
Phillip McSween (751 KP) rated Baby Driver (2017) in Movies
Feb 1, 2020
Will Baby Get Out of the Game?
A young getaway driver finds himself in over his head when he tries to get out of the crime game.
Acting: 10
Beginning: 10
Characters: 10
It’s really hard not to love main character Baby (Ansel Elgort). Sure he’s helping criminals do criminal things but he has a great story and a solid motive. From the minute he shows up on screen beating his steering wheel to the music, you immediately want to root for this guy. Baby answers to Doc played by Kevin Spacey who reads the role with a controlled seriousness that forces you to focus on his every word. Doc along with an interesting gang of thugs make for a solid supporting cast.
Cinematography/Visuals: 10
Whether it’s two lovebirds in a diner talking or a death-defying car chase, I really appreciate the way Edgar Wright uses different angles to capture the perfect moment. I don’t know how he did it, but the movie has an 80’s feel to it even though it takes place in modern day. The action sequences play out in amazing fashion on screen and keep the story moving.
Conflict: 10
So many angles to consider here. Will Baby get out of the game? Does he get the girl? Will the next heist be a success? Something seems to always be happening whether at the forefront or in the background. This is a movie where you can get up to grab a drink and totally miss something you wish you hadn’t. Not to mention Baby Driver seriously has some of the best car chases in film period.
Entertainment Value: 10
It’s a movie that makes The French Connection car chase look like amateur night. There is so much going on, so many layers, that you will be hardpressed to be bored. It has the feel of an indie with blockbuster moments.
Memorability: 10
Pace: 10
Moves at an extremely high clip. Even the dialogue scenes can feel action-driven at times due to the intensity of the conversation. It’s a movie that never really lets you get too comfortable, but rather continues to hit you repeatedly with more.
Plot: 10
Resolution: 8
While the ending is the weakest point of the movie, it doesn’t detract from the overall greatness of Baby Driver. I wasn’t blown away by the resolution, but it was complete enough to get a pass from me. Good, but not lifechanging.
Overall: 98
In addition to having great action, Baby Driver’s love story helps drive the movie (pun intended) as a whole. It’s movies like these I wish would get more love from the Academy as they help to keep the population in love with film. Proud to call this movie a classic.
Acting: 10
Beginning: 10
Characters: 10
It’s really hard not to love main character Baby (Ansel Elgort). Sure he’s helping criminals do criminal things but he has a great story and a solid motive. From the minute he shows up on screen beating his steering wheel to the music, you immediately want to root for this guy. Baby answers to Doc played by Kevin Spacey who reads the role with a controlled seriousness that forces you to focus on his every word. Doc along with an interesting gang of thugs make for a solid supporting cast.
Cinematography/Visuals: 10
Whether it’s two lovebirds in a diner talking or a death-defying car chase, I really appreciate the way Edgar Wright uses different angles to capture the perfect moment. I don’t know how he did it, but the movie has an 80’s feel to it even though it takes place in modern day. The action sequences play out in amazing fashion on screen and keep the story moving.
Conflict: 10
So many angles to consider here. Will Baby get out of the game? Does he get the girl? Will the next heist be a success? Something seems to always be happening whether at the forefront or in the background. This is a movie where you can get up to grab a drink and totally miss something you wish you hadn’t. Not to mention Baby Driver seriously has some of the best car chases in film period.
Entertainment Value: 10
It’s a movie that makes The French Connection car chase look like amateur night. There is so much going on, so many layers, that you will be hardpressed to be bored. It has the feel of an indie with blockbuster moments.
Memorability: 10
Pace: 10
Moves at an extremely high clip. Even the dialogue scenes can feel action-driven at times due to the intensity of the conversation. It’s a movie that never really lets you get too comfortable, but rather continues to hit you repeatedly with more.
Plot: 10
Resolution: 8
While the ending is the weakest point of the movie, it doesn’t detract from the overall greatness of Baby Driver. I wasn’t blown away by the resolution, but it was complete enough to get a pass from me. Good, but not lifechanging.
Overall: 98
In addition to having great action, Baby Driver’s love story helps drive the movie (pun intended) as a whole. It’s movies like these I wish would get more love from the Academy as they help to keep the population in love with film. Proud to call this movie a classic.
JT (287 KP) rated Vehicle 19 (2013) in Movies
Mar 10, 2020
Paul Walker can’t seem to stay away from cars at the moment, in between Fast Five and the recently released Fast and Furious 6 Walker took the lead in Vehicle 19.
Walker plays Michael Woods whose recently jumped parole and heads out to South Africa to see his girlfriend, in the hope of rekindling their relationship. Picking up a rental car, a minivan, which is hardly fast or furious, it turns out to be the wrong choice as during his journey he’s chased down by the local police for the murder of a young woman.
The film for the majority of its entirety is shot from the inside of the car, with Walker rarely stepping out of the driver’s seat as he tries to navigate his way through a city he is totally unfamiliar with. Films that capture one location need to rely on a number of things, firstly the acting has got to be top draw and secondly you’ve got to pull out the tension and hook the audience.
Phone Booth and Buried which placed its protagonists in a confined space paid off pretty well, but here Vehicle 19 struggles and almost splutters as if gasping for more fuel. The problem is the despite Walker putting in a decent performance as a man with a goal who is pushed to the edge it lacks any real bite or conviction.
For the opening twenty minutes we see him converse with his girlfriend via phone, complain he’s got the wrong rental car and try to remember which side of the road he has to drive on. It’s dull, and when you compare it with Ryan Reynolds’s opening twenty minutes in Buried where he’s confined to a 6 foot box, Vehicle 19 is way off the mark.
Relative unknown director Mukunda Michael Dewil leaves it too late, and when Woods discovers a phone and gun in the glove box as well as a bound and gagged girl in the trunk many of us have already turned the ignition off. Woods is hunted by Detective Smith, a man with a terrifying accent that leaves genuine chills down your spine, for someone who only gets a minimal amount of screen time at the end he does leave a lasting impression.
It does have its rare moments and of course Walker gets to use his driving skills to full capacity as he’s perused through the townships and city streets by police cars that you’d expect would be able to catch up with a minivan.
It’s short but not so sharp, the surrounding locations begged for so much more than what was delivered. I’d much rather have seen Walker behind the wheel of a high performance vehicle…oh wait I can!
Walker plays Michael Woods whose recently jumped parole and heads out to South Africa to see his girlfriend, in the hope of rekindling their relationship. Picking up a rental car, a minivan, which is hardly fast or furious, it turns out to be the wrong choice as during his journey he’s chased down by the local police for the murder of a young woman.
The film for the majority of its entirety is shot from the inside of the car, with Walker rarely stepping out of the driver’s seat as he tries to navigate his way through a city he is totally unfamiliar with. Films that capture one location need to rely on a number of things, firstly the acting has got to be top draw and secondly you’ve got to pull out the tension and hook the audience.
Phone Booth and Buried which placed its protagonists in a confined space paid off pretty well, but here Vehicle 19 struggles and almost splutters as if gasping for more fuel. The problem is the despite Walker putting in a decent performance as a man with a goal who is pushed to the edge it lacks any real bite or conviction.
For the opening twenty minutes we see him converse with his girlfriend via phone, complain he’s got the wrong rental car and try to remember which side of the road he has to drive on. It’s dull, and when you compare it with Ryan Reynolds’s opening twenty minutes in Buried where he’s confined to a 6 foot box, Vehicle 19 is way off the mark.
Relative unknown director Mukunda Michael Dewil leaves it too late, and when Woods discovers a phone and gun in the glove box as well as a bound and gagged girl in the trunk many of us have already turned the ignition off. Woods is hunted by Detective Smith, a man with a terrifying accent that leaves genuine chills down your spine, for someone who only gets a minimal amount of screen time at the end he does leave a lasting impression.
It does have its rare moments and of course Walker gets to use his driving skills to full capacity as he’s perused through the townships and city streets by police cars that you’d expect would be able to catch up with a minivan.
It’s short but not so sharp, the surrounding locations begged for so much more than what was delivered. I’d much rather have seen Walker behind the wheel of a high performance vehicle…oh wait I can!
Sonic The Hedgehog Classic
Games, Entertainment and Stickers
10.0
Rate It
App
The Sonic game that started it all is now free-to-play and optimized for mobile devices! Race at...
Sonic the Hedgehog™ Classic
Games and Entertainment
App
Race at lightning speeds across seven classic zones as Sonic the Hedgehog. Run and spin through...
Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated Black Sea (2015) in Movies
Aug 6, 2019
Jude Law stars as Robinson, a former submarine captain made redundant after a long career with an underwater salvage company. Left without a pension, and blaming the company for his failed marriage, he learns from a former co-worker that a vast sum of Nazi gold is lying in wait aboard a sunken German U-boat at the bottom of the Black Sea. Upon securing financing and a submarine that has most definitely seen better days, he pulls together a crew of both British and Russian sailors, assuring every man that an equal share of the loot is to be had. Tensions among the crew soon arise and as one character chillingly questions, “What happens when one of them starts to figure out that their share gets bigger, when there is less people to share it with?”
A few too many easy coincidences drive this plot along, but if you’re willing to suspend just a bit of disbelief, there’s a great tale of paranoia, claustrophobia, betrayal and greed beneath the surface. Even through Jude Law’s dodgy Scottish accent, every performance (particularly newcomer Bobby Schofield as the inexperienced Tobin) is top-notch as both he and the supporting cast provide true believability to the disregard and distrust the two groups of men come to have for each other. Between Black Sea and his unexpectedly good turn in Dom Hemingway last year, Jude Law is firmly back on my radar, as he seems to be following in Matthew McConaughey’s footsteps by taking darker, more complex and challenging roles at this point in his career. From playing a father-figure for a boy frightened of what the future holds, to a man possessed of the determination, no matter what the cost, to return home rich, Law hits every note right and is more than capable of leading a cast this talented.
My only substantial complaint is the ending. On leaving the theater, it seemed one of the better solutions to the potential corner the filmmakers were painting themselves into, though the longer its sits, the more I think a film of this unrelenting intensity deserves an ending with some poignancy. Admittedly, I would have found something bleaker to be more satisfying. The easy route out taken in the last five minutes by director Kevin Macdonald and writer Dennis Kelly are a bit of a let-down when compared with the pulse pounding hour and forty-five minutes that precedes it, and for me it will only detract from Black Sea’s memorability.
With the mention of a submarine drama, it is almost inevitable that comparisons to Das Boot will be drawn. For the purposes of reviewing Black Sea however, I have been unable to do so as my only viewing of it was about a decade ago, when I very foolishly had the ambition to see not only the uncut 6-hour mini-series version that was put together for German television, but to do so in a single sitting. I was successful, but only in terms of completing the task. I know it was great and that it is above equal in the genre of submarine films, but at this point I’d be hard pressed to recall even a few minutes of it. It would seem, in this case, that Black Sea got a fair shake to be judged on its own merits (and that I now have a German epic to revisit, albeit in the slightly more truncated director’s cut form this time).
A few nitpicky complaints aside, and in direct contradiction with my take on the abysmally poor Blackhat from the other week, this is a fine example of a well-made, wall-to-wall suspense-filled thriller, and the film I wish I had started the year off with. Released in early December in the UK, where it has received generally positive reviews, it’s unfortunate that it has landed stateside in the January/February season of no-hopes.
A few too many easy coincidences drive this plot along, but if you’re willing to suspend just a bit of disbelief, there’s a great tale of paranoia, claustrophobia, betrayal and greed beneath the surface. Even through Jude Law’s dodgy Scottish accent, every performance (particularly newcomer Bobby Schofield as the inexperienced Tobin) is top-notch as both he and the supporting cast provide true believability to the disregard and distrust the two groups of men come to have for each other. Between Black Sea and his unexpectedly good turn in Dom Hemingway last year, Jude Law is firmly back on my radar, as he seems to be following in Matthew McConaughey’s footsteps by taking darker, more complex and challenging roles at this point in his career. From playing a father-figure for a boy frightened of what the future holds, to a man possessed of the determination, no matter what the cost, to return home rich, Law hits every note right and is more than capable of leading a cast this talented.
My only substantial complaint is the ending. On leaving the theater, it seemed one of the better solutions to the potential corner the filmmakers were painting themselves into, though the longer its sits, the more I think a film of this unrelenting intensity deserves an ending with some poignancy. Admittedly, I would have found something bleaker to be more satisfying. The easy route out taken in the last five minutes by director Kevin Macdonald and writer Dennis Kelly are a bit of a let-down when compared with the pulse pounding hour and forty-five minutes that precedes it, and for me it will only detract from Black Sea’s memorability.
With the mention of a submarine drama, it is almost inevitable that comparisons to Das Boot will be drawn. For the purposes of reviewing Black Sea however, I have been unable to do so as my only viewing of it was about a decade ago, when I very foolishly had the ambition to see not only the uncut 6-hour mini-series version that was put together for German television, but to do so in a single sitting. I was successful, but only in terms of completing the task. I know it was great and that it is above equal in the genre of submarine films, but at this point I’d be hard pressed to recall even a few minutes of it. It would seem, in this case, that Black Sea got a fair shake to be judged on its own merits (and that I now have a German epic to revisit, albeit in the slightly more truncated director’s cut form this time).
A few nitpicky complaints aside, and in direct contradiction with my take on the abysmally poor Blackhat from the other week, this is a fine example of a well-made, wall-to-wall suspense-filled thriller, and the film I wish I had started the year off with. Released in early December in the UK, where it has received generally positive reviews, it’s unfortunate that it has landed stateside in the January/February season of no-hopes.
Lee (2222 KP) rated El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019) in Movies
Oct 13, 2019
When we last saw Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), he was driving away in an El Camino car, having just been freed from six months or so of captivity and slavery. It was the final moments of what is arguably one of the greatest TV shows of all time - Walter White (Bryan Cranston) had come to the aid of his long time friend, and collaborator in the meth business, freeing him from the clutches of a gang of Nazis in what turned out to be a bloodbath. Jesse, clearly a broken man, drove away from it all, into the night, fighting back tears as he let out a scream of pain and relief.
As with all great stories, whether in a book, a movie or a TV show, you do naturally wonder what might have happened next to the characters who have taken you on a journey with them. If the finale is good enough, you can feel satisfied simply by drawing your own conclusions. In the case of Breaking Bad, did Jesse turn a corner, only to be met by a bunch of cops who then lock him up for the rest of his life? Or did he manage to find well deserved peace and solace, a chance to finally live out his days with some kind of normality? Series creator and writer Vince Gilligan clearly had some ideas of his own, and the result is this 2 hour Netflix movie, titled El Camino.
We’ve not been without our fix of the Breaking Bad world since the show ended in 2013 though. Better Call Saul, about to start its fifth season, has acted as a prequel, telling the story of the rise of Saul Goodman, the seedy lawyer who helped Walter and Jesse throughout much of Breaking Bad. It shares much of the same style and tone as Breaking Bad, magnificently scripted and proving to be compulsive viewing. It has also gradually begun weaving other familiar characters from Breaking Bad into the story too, helping us to understand what brought these characters to the point they were at in Breaking Bad, but never (so far) featuring lead characters Walter and Jesse.
El Camino picks up pretty much where Breaking Bad left off. Jesse is clearly a person of interest with the law - not only for his drug crime days, but also because they know that someone fled the scene where a machine gun massacre took place, resulting in nine dead bodies. It’s neither an immediate capture, or an escape to a happy ending though. Instead, we’re treated to something that’s a little in between, and El Camino closely follows Jesse to show us just how that all plays out for him.
There was some big news recently when it was revealed that a large number of Breaking Bad characters would be appearing in El Camino and speculation was rife as to who those characters would be. They appear either in flashback form, or in present day situations, and all justifiably serve to drive the story forward, whether it be as a moment of reflection and poignancy, an aid to understanding Jesse’s current actions, or just as a cool little Easter egg for fans of the show. I must admit though, I had to resort to Google to try and remember how some of the characters fitted into the Breaking Bad show, but that could just be down to my lousy memory!
El Camino is packed full of the steady, confident, detailed pacing that we know and love from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Action, drama, emotion, it’s all there as a determined Jesse tries to acquire enough money to be able to start over. There’s a constant feeling throughout though that this is a story we didn’t really need, but it is certainly a welcome one, and a real joy to be back in this world and in the company of these great characters once again, if only for a short while.
As with all great stories, whether in a book, a movie or a TV show, you do naturally wonder what might have happened next to the characters who have taken you on a journey with them. If the finale is good enough, you can feel satisfied simply by drawing your own conclusions. In the case of Breaking Bad, did Jesse turn a corner, only to be met by a bunch of cops who then lock him up for the rest of his life? Or did he manage to find well deserved peace and solace, a chance to finally live out his days with some kind of normality? Series creator and writer Vince Gilligan clearly had some ideas of his own, and the result is this 2 hour Netflix movie, titled El Camino.
We’ve not been without our fix of the Breaking Bad world since the show ended in 2013 though. Better Call Saul, about to start its fifth season, has acted as a prequel, telling the story of the rise of Saul Goodman, the seedy lawyer who helped Walter and Jesse throughout much of Breaking Bad. It shares much of the same style and tone as Breaking Bad, magnificently scripted and proving to be compulsive viewing. It has also gradually begun weaving other familiar characters from Breaking Bad into the story too, helping us to understand what brought these characters to the point they were at in Breaking Bad, but never (so far) featuring lead characters Walter and Jesse.
El Camino picks up pretty much where Breaking Bad left off. Jesse is clearly a person of interest with the law - not only for his drug crime days, but also because they know that someone fled the scene where a machine gun massacre took place, resulting in nine dead bodies. It’s neither an immediate capture, or an escape to a happy ending though. Instead, we’re treated to something that’s a little in between, and El Camino closely follows Jesse to show us just how that all plays out for him.
There was some big news recently when it was revealed that a large number of Breaking Bad characters would be appearing in El Camino and speculation was rife as to who those characters would be. They appear either in flashback form, or in present day situations, and all justifiably serve to drive the story forward, whether it be as a moment of reflection and poignancy, an aid to understanding Jesse’s current actions, or just as a cool little Easter egg for fans of the show. I must admit though, I had to resort to Google to try and remember how some of the characters fitted into the Breaking Bad show, but that could just be down to my lousy memory!
El Camino is packed full of the steady, confident, detailed pacing that we know and love from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Action, drama, emotion, it’s all there as a determined Jesse tries to acquire enough money to be able to start over. There’s a constant feeling throughout though that this is a story we didn’t really need, but it is certainly a welcome one, and a real joy to be back in this world and in the company of these great characters once again, if only for a short while.
Polnav mobile Navigation
Navigation and Travel
App
The New GPS Navigation App Download for FREE! Offline Map Supported. No More Boundary of the...
Wave Let’s Meet App
Lifestyle and Utilities
App
Wave Let’s Meet App - No more "Where are you's" Wave Let’s Meet App is the simplest way to...
What The Fox?
Games and Entertainment
App
What, The Fox? is a challenging puzzle adventure filled with funny foxes where the goal is simple:...
SmartDriver: Radar Detector
Navigation and Utilities
App
Smart Driver is all in one: radar detector, video recorder, and road camera detector. Smart Driver...
Ronnie (304 KP) Feb 1, 2020