Given the amount of awkwardly snappy dialogue found in “Baby Driver” (2017), I shall feel no shame in turning this review into a gearhead punfest for a film whose plot stalls out just before the checkered flag. The backstory (good kid collides head-on with bad dude) is finely tuned and the setup (one last job, girlfriend waiting for a fast getaway) is a high-octane classic, but the leaky climax is all over the road, loose in, tight out and full of knocks, pings and run-on. Not even the music, which flows like pure diesel, can jump-start this poor-handling caper flick.
Archives for posts with tag: Kevin Spacey
If #metoo existed back when “Hurlyburly” (1998) was being filmed, a mob of anarchist feminists would have descended on the set and murdered all the male characters. Historians can debate whether we’d be better off. Anyway, this is probably the worst of those 1990s movies that tried to portray the vacuousness of Hollywood wheeling-dealing. It’s definitely the most misogynistic. And to think, 15 years later, Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey would team up again for “House of Cards.” And by the time she negotiated an equally inflated salary, he’d get me-tooed and she’d ultimately lose her job. It’s next-level karma.
“L.A. Confidential” (1997) is a modern film noir classic that unfortunately has fallen off the radar. So has its star, Guy Pearce, who plays an idealistic cop with a streak of self-promotion. The juicy role failed to ignite the Englishman’s career. Instead, an Aussie, Russell Crowe, became the box office gladiator, so to speak, after his co-starring role as a brutal cop with a streak of idealism. The plot is delightfully stylish and multidimensional without becoming ridiculous. So are the conflicted characters played by Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito and David Strathairn’s mustache. The Oscar-nominated score is great, too.
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