Tag: Jon Hamm

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Baby Driver

Of all the movies in theaters right now, Baby Driver kicks the most ass. Edgar Wright says he first conceived his film in 1994, and it shows. That was the year Quinten Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction premiered, plunging the indie film world into years of hep cat criminals snarling stylized dialog at each other. Tarantino’s use of pop music, drawn freely across genres from the past and present, was something new. Everyone wanted to try it, but not everyone had Tarantino’s ear.

Ansel Elgort in Baby Driver

1994 is also the year the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion recorded Orange. The former Pussy Galore frontman had made a pilgrimage to Memphis the year before to discover Stax soul and record with lo fi legend Doug Easley. Orange opens with “Bellbottoms”, a 5-minute epic that shifts gears from lush Issac Hayes strings to Oblivians-inspired, runaway train punk. Wright opens Baby Driver with a bank-heist/car-chase scene set to “Bellbottoms” that he’s obviously been planning in his head since the first Clinton administration. With Baby (Ansel Elgort) lip synching the words as he tears balletically through Atlanta’s nightmarish streetscape, the sequence plays as a perverse marriage between La La Land and Mad Max: Fury Road.

The best way to experience Atlanta.

Atlanta is just as much of a character for Wright as Los Angeles was to Damien Chazelle. Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a creature of the streets, a supernaturally talented car thief whose knowledge of the city’s endless array of onramps to nowhere is surpassed only by his knowledge of banging tunes. His favorite leather jackets, with black body and white sleeves, make him look like Han Solo from a distance.

A while back, Baby tried to boost a car belonging to Doc (Kevin Spacey), a gangster in the mold of Harvey Keitel’s The Wolf. Rather than killing him, Doc decides to give him a job as a getaway driver, enabling a string of daring daylight bank robberies that, naturally, end in spectacular high-speed chases. The taciturn Baby is already having second thoughts about the collateral damage left behind by his partners in crime when he meets Debora (Lily James), a waitress at the local diner who instantly captures his heart. They make plans to run off together, but Doc keeps pushing him to do job after job, each one more dangerous and audacious than the rest.

Lily James and Ansel Elgort get cozy.

The plot’s pretty standard grindhouse crime fare, but it’s the execution that matters to Wright. Baby Driver sometimes feels more like a series of intertwining music videos than a feature film, with its 30-song soundtrack bleeding into the film’s reality at unexpected times. The editing by Scott Pilgrim cutter Paul Machliss is as immaculate as it is propulsive.

Ansel Elgort, Jamie Foxx, Elza Gonzalez, and Jon Hamm taking no guff.

Wright’s having a blast, and his fun infects the cast. Jon Hamm grows a beard and lays it on thick as a heavy named Buddy, who is hopelessly in love with the assault-rifle-toting sexpot Elza Gonzalez. Jamie Foxx brings unpredictable menace to Bats, a bank robber with a major impulse control problem.

But the music is the real star of the show. In yet another homage to Hustle & Flow, when Baby isn’t running from the law, he makes beats on his eclectic analog equipment. Carla Thomas, Sam and Dave, Martha and the Vandellas, The Beach Boys and The Commodores all get loving treatment. The Damned classic “Neat Neat Neat” becomes the car chase anthem it was always meant to be, while both T. Rex’s “Debora” and Beck’s “Debra” get dedicated to the leading lady.

Baby Driver aspires to be cinema, a film experience that brings fans together. It should definitely been seen in the theater, if for no other reason than to fully experience the mesmerizing sound design. It’s a terrible shame that, with a dozen channels of flawless digital sound reproduction at their disposal, the vast majority of filmmakers are content to just make explosions louder, or do that awful “whamp” noise from Inception again. Wright aims for a much higher bar, and clears it with ease.

Baby Driver

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie

I’ve been thinking about the concept of “guilty pleasures.” I’ve got some: ZZ Top, The Purge movies, Conan the Barbarian, “Weird Al” Yankovich, and Mario Kart, to name a few. And yet, what does “guilty pleasure” really mean? That there are some things we like that we have to feel bad about, because the object of our affection is clearly stupid, or unworthy of our cultural status, or just self-evidently bad. Now, I can justify my love for just about anything: ZZ Top is the quintessential bar band who were in the right place at the right time with the right music videos; director John Milius’ casting of language-challenged Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan was so inspired it eventually won the actor the governorship of California; “Weird Al” is a lyrical genius. But I still have the notion that I should feel bad about the fact that I want to zap annoying motorists with a turtle shell when I get behind the wheel IRL. Maybe life is too short to worry about what you’re supposed to like, and so you should just like the stuff you like—unless you like Michael Bay movies, in which case you should be ashamed of yourself.

The British TV series Absolutely Fabulous definitely falls in my “guilty pleasures” category. The tipsy adventures of PR guru Edina Monsoon and magazine editor Patsy Stone, played by Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, gained a sizable American audience when Comedy Central imported the show in the mid-1990s. Like the best British comedy, it was simultaneously brainy and raunchy, pushing boundaries of good taste and decorum while skewering every facet of British life. But the first butt of Saunders and Lumley’s jokes were always themselves. Eddie and Patsy are entitled monsters from the English id. Like their American counterparts in ’90s cringe comedy, Seinfeld, they never miss the opportunity to make the worst decision possible in every social situation. Saunders, who did the lion’s share of the writing alongside her sketch comedy partner Dawn French, took devilish pleasure wallowing in the shallow end of fashion and celebrity. Lumley drew on her experiences as a former model and Bond girl to imbue Patsy with just the right amount of contemptuous consumption of drugs and men. Making Eddie’s daughter Saffron (Julia Sawalha) the only reasonable and responsible person on the show was a little bit of genius, because it allowed the eternally indecisive Eddie to vacillate between her daughter and best friend and push the limits of what audiences would consider a sympathetic character. Eddie’s always trying to do better, but Patsy pulls her back into the Champagne vortex.

Joanna Lumley (left) and Jennifer Saunders are still guilty of being Absolutely Fabulous.

The film adaptation seems to come too late. The show’s officially been off the air for the better part of a decade, appearing only for occasional Very Special Episodes, including one centered around the 2012 London Olympics. Amazingly, Saunders, Lumley, and the crew pick up right where they left off. Eddie and Patsy are still living the high life, even though they’re both blatantly broke. Eddie thinks she’s got a big ticket book deal brewing, but when her assistant Bubble (Jane Horrocks) transcribes her manuscript as “blah blah blah,” it’s back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, at a disastrous fashion show, Patsy learns that supermodel Kate Moss is looking for a new PR person, so she and Eddie plot to to beat rival relations rep Claudia Bing (Celia Imrie) to the punch by using her granddaughter Lola (Indeyarna Donaldson-Holness) as a lure at a glitzy party. Predictably, the plan is a fiasco that ends with Moss falling into the Thames and Eddie and Patsy fleeing a murder rap to Cannes, France.

Saunders’ dialogue is as dense and witty as ever, and she gets much mileage out of the now-60-year-old Eddie’s oblivious out-of-touchness. Patsy’s late-game subplot riffing on Some Like It Hot is particularly fun and keeps the momentum from getting too bogged down by the endless parade of celebrity cameos, including Moss, Jon Hamm, Gwendoline Christie, and Rebel Wilson as a mouthy flight attendant who would be a good candidate for a recurring role if the show were to go on. The movie suffers from mandatory fan service moments requiring the insertion of every minor character who ever appeared on the show, and the predictable pitfalls of expanding a half-hour comedy to feature length, but Saunders and BBC director Mandie Fletcher navigate those obstacles better than Sex and the City or The X-Files films. If you’re considering coming in cold, you’re probably better off binging on the ’90s heyday of the show instead, but if AbFab‘s already on your list of not-so-guilty pleasures, you’ll find a lot to like.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp

When I first watched the 2001 film Wet Hot American Summer, I only responded to the unexpected pang in Michael Showalter’s romantic plot and the non-sequitur trip-to-town sequence. But my 25 subsequent viewings had a Lebowski-ian effect. Everything bloomed with dry confidence. Mundane teen movie staples turned first from deadpan parody into casual emotional violence, then into reassuring absurdity. The charm was in how the movie knew when and when not to try. There were “rake gags,” where a bit went on so long it became hilariously absurd. There were moments where a key prop, stunt, or exit was left out or drastically undercut, which called attention to the ridiculousness of the actors’ histrionics. (In the update, for example, a toxic waste spill is represented by a Day-Glo green puddle.) There was also the comedic freedom of unrestrained expression without consequence. Horniness, despair, and aggression were deployed for comedic effect and then forgotten a minute later. In addition to playing with tropes, writer Showalter and director David Wain were arguing that human emotions are mechanical, that they come along regardless of whether or not there is a prop or plot to excuse their expression. Teens (and the adults playing them) flail and scream because their conditioning tells them to, then rationalize a grandiose reason later.

Postmodern prequel with an all-star cast

Fourteen years later, as a Netflix series, Wet Hot is very successful at mimicking the beats and rhythms of the original, from the bright grass greens to the absurdist, Brechtian schtick. It is a prequel, set on the first day of the camp, whereas the first one took place on the last day. Showalter, now conspicuously overweight, bewigged, and 45, is playing an even younger teenager, whose lovelorn crushes are even more about entitlement and possession. He is specifically labeled “a nice guy” who can’t deal with the fact his quasi-girlfriend (Lake Bell) wants to sleep with a visiting Israeli (Wain), who has wonderful patter: “The tongue in the mouth, it can mean so many things … This is the true meaning of community, of kibbutz.”

The scope widens to include spies and undercover reporters, but it’s basically the same as other work by Showalter and Wain, like Wainy Days and Stella. The huge cast (Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, H. Jon Benjamin) is supported by ringers (Michael Cera, Jon Hamm). The core players from comedy troupe The State are true to form, if less fresh-faced. They still make familiar Hollywood devices feel dumb and unnatural, while grounding them in feelings of longing, rejection, and the sense of otherness.

On first viewing, it’s a little too dry. Comedy that comes from character more than unbridled absurdity is better. I enjoyed another recent online show involving idiots yelling, Other Space, more for this reason. Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp is a fine example of a postmodern prequel, but it’s still a prequel, with all the expectations and emotional baggage that entails.

Categories
Film/TV TV Features

Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, and Edward Hopper

Spoiler alert: If you aren’t current on Mad Men, be aware of thematic and plot revelations in this review. And, if you don’t know what Mad Men is, Google it and get busy catching up. Also: Consider where you may have gone wrong in your life.

“Previously on” the Flyer‘s TV review page: Contemporary scripted TV is our equivalent of masterpieces of fine art. Our museums and galleries are HBO, AMC, Showtime, the basic networks, FX, Netflix, and Hulu. The Sopranos is a Caravaggio; Parks and Recreation is a Keith Haring. Breaking Bad is Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Triumph of Death.

Mad Men is an Edward Hopper. It’s Nighthawks and Chop Suey and Office in a Small City and Intermission and a dozen more, all rolled into one: gorgeous, perfectly designed, lonely, contemplative, sexy, and gender-inclusive. Creator Matthew Weiner paints Mad Men with pure confident brilliance. Mad Men is social commentary with the benefit of decades of perspective.

The big knock commonly advanced about Mad Men is that nothing much ever happens in the show. The times that the show has truly shocked viewers can probably be counted on one hand: A lawnmower comes to mind, as does a man’s severed nipple. But, taking place during the tumultuous history of the 1960s, Mad Men usually prefers to let the big moments happen in the public consciousness and take the personal histories at a more glacial pace. Pacing is actually Mad Men at its most honest: The world may change overnight, but people don’t.

Weiner ramped up for Mad Men as a writer on The Sopranos. His episodes, including “Chasing It,” “Soprano Home Movies,” and “Luxury Lounge,” are more sociological, observational, and digressive than most other Sopranos episodes. Weiner never seemed as interested in the big plot points of the New Jersey crime family as he was with what effect this was having on individuals. In Mad Men, he doesn’t recreate the scenes of those seismic national events but instead focuses on what they mean for the characters — similar to how author James Ellroy explores “the private nightmare of public policy” in his Underworld USA trilogy.

Last Sunday, Mad Men‘s Season 7 signed off until 2015 with “Waterloo,” a half-season finale in the middle of a bifurcated final round of episodes. (Don’t get me started about how annoying a network ploy this is.) But, at this point, I’m ready to stop debating if Mad Men is the best show of all time: It almost doesn’t matter what happens in the show’s final seven episodes, Mad Men has surpassed other great hour-long shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, M*A*S*H, Breaking Bad, and whatever else is presumptively the title-holder. (And comparing the relative value of dramas versus comedies is too difficult and too dependent on preferences. Apples to apples, I’ll take Parks and Recreation over any other comedy and Mad Men over any other drama.)

Until late in Season 7, Mad Men hadn’t yet tipped its hand about ultimate intentions: Is it a show about things falling apart or coming together? As “Waterloo” ends, things are hopeful. Don finally has the inclination and means to simply do and enjoy his work. Sally picked the earnest nerd over the cynical football player. Peggy found her voice. Things may change again in the second half of the season. Mad Men might do its thematic version of the Altamont Free Concert. Either way, it’s a cultural alchemy that is a joy to behold.

Watching Mad Men isn’t like watching paint dry, it’s like watching a great painting dry: Hopper’s Morning Sun oxidizing into immortality.