Nell Minow has been reviewing movies online as The Movie Mom since 1995, with over 3000 published reviews. Her books include 101 Must-See Movie Moments and The Movie Mom's Guide to Family Movies, and she appears on radio stations each week to talk about new releases in theaters and on DVD/Blu-Ray/streaming. Mastodon NOTE: Purchases from my links to Amazon pay me a small fee, usually well under one dollar.
Read My Interview With “Baby Driver” Writer/Director Edgar Wright
The songs inspired the movie and some entire scenes are completely dictated by the music. Songs actually dictate what the action was. ‘Bell Bottoms’ is a good example because it has maybe two and a half minutes of buildup to where the actual rock really kicks in. I listened to that track about 22 years ago and straight away thought: ‘Oh, this is the guy sitting outside. The other guys have gone into the bank and then while he’s singing along with the music he is looking at what’s happening in the bank. And then they get out and that’s where the chase starts. The song has these amazing little anchor points of where hero moments are going to happen.
Extended scenes of peril and violence with many characters injured and killed, guns, chases, explosions, many disturbing and graphic images
Diversity Issues:
None
Date Released to Theaters:
June 28, 2017
Date Released to DVD:
September 18, 2017
Copyright 2017 Sony Pictures
Fasten your seatbelts. This one is pedal to the metal all the way home. “Baby Driver,” written and directed by Edgar Wright, hits you like a jolt of nitrous oxide shot with adrenaline concentrate, Red Bull, electrical current, and rock music. The first time you see it, it will leave your eyes spinning like pinwheels. The second time you will begin to appreciate that it is more than a joyride.
Ansel Elgort (“The Fault in Our Stars”) plays Baby, who works for a crime boss named Doc (Kevin Spacey). Orphaned at age seven when his parents were killed in a car crash that left him with tinnitus, a persistent ringing in his ears, Baby is constantly listening to music via earbuds plugged into an endless collection of mp3 players. The brilliantly curated playlist we hear is only what he is listening to, and it ranges from the The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion to T Rex, the Beach Boys, Dave Brubeck, David McCallum (that’s either Ilya Kuryakin of “The Man from UNCLE” or Ducky from “NCIS” depending on how old you are), and Beck, to the Simon and Garfunkel song that gives the film its title.
Baby began stealing cars when he was still a child and became beholden to Doc. Now, he drives the getaway car for the teams Doc brings together for robbery and mayhem. Doc calls him “Mozart in a Go-Kart.” And Baby is counting down the jobs and the dollars until he and Doc are square and he can go. But he is just too good for Doc to give up, and once the debt is paid, Doc finds other ways to apply pressure.
Baby seldom speaks to anyone, except for one person who cannot hear, his foster father, Joe (CJ Jones), who is deaf and in a wheelchair. Their exchanges in sign language are warm and familiar in sharp contrast to his subdued presence with Doc and the criminals.
And then Baby meets Debora (Lily James of “Cinderella”), a waitress at the diner. And then Doc tells him that their relationship is not over.
Each action sequence is meticulously matched to the songs Baby plays — at one point, when there is a setback he literally stops to rewind because he times the chases to the music. But each action sequence is also a part of a narrative arc. With the first, Baby is literally outside the crime, waiting in the car (and bopping along to “Bellbottoms”) as the gang robs a bank. They come running out and he drives the getaway car so fast that they, well, get away. The next one gets more intense as he cannot pretend he is not a part of something lethal. Each time, he gets more involved. The sunglasses he wears all the time get broken and he cannot pretend not to see. He can drive others to escape the consequences of their actions, but can he do that for himself?
The sizzling all-star cast includes Jon Hamm and Eiza González as a seedy but fearless couple with matching “hers” and “his” tattoos on their necks, Jamie Foxx as the trigger-happy and appropriately named Bats, along with Flea and Jon Bernthal as other members of Doc’s crew.
Wright has the flair of Quentin Tarantino in balancing comedy, romance, action filmed to be both balletic and terrible, and increasingly visceral threats. But he has more sincerity, more heart. “Baby Driver” is cool as in appearing effortlessly accomplished, but not as in remote or removed. His moral and unabashedly romantic center is in the driver’s seat.
Parents should know that this is a very violent film with many chases and shoot-outs. Characters are injured and killed and there are disturbing and graphic images. It also includes very strong language and drug references.
Family discussion: Why was Baby called Baby? Why did Doc change his mind? Is the ending real or imaginary?
If you like this, try: “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and “The Transporter”
Trailer: Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood Marshall in “Marshall”
Posted on June 24, 2017 at 8:00 am
Chadwick Boseman (“The Black Panther”) plays a young Thurgood Marshall in this film, coming to theaters in October. His co-stars include Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, and “This is Us” star Sterling K. Brown.
Rated R for language including some sexual references
Profanity:
Strong and explicit language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:
Very serious illness
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
June 24, 2017
Date Released to DVD:
September 25, 2017
Copyright Amazon 2017
The more specific the story, the more universal. This is a very specific story. Indeed, you are unlikely ever again to see a romantic comedy with one of the pair spending half of the film in a coma. And that is not the couple’s biggest obstacle. Kumail Nanjiani (“Silicon Valley”), plays a character named Kumail Nanjiani in a story based on his relationship to Emily V. Gordon (played by Zoe Kazan and called Emily Gardiner in the film), who is now his wife and the co-screenwriter of the smart, touching, heartfelt and very funny film. It is beautifully directed by Michael Showalter, as always unsurpassed in meticulous casting of even the smallest roles.
Real-life Nanjiani and his movie alter ego are Pakistani immigrants from traditional families. Every time he visits his parents for dinner, an unmarried Pakistani woman “happens to drop in.” They have made it very clear that they expect him to marry a woman who is Pakistani and Muslim. Gordon is neither; she is white and from North Carolina. Just after they break up because he could not say that they could have a future together, she suddenly becomes critically ill and is placed in a medically induced coma. He gets the call when she is hospitalized and has to be the one to call her parents. He meets them for the first time in the hospital waiting room, where they are understandably frosty (he broke their daughter’s heart) and preoccupied (she’s in a coma).
They would rather that he not be there. And his parents find out that he has not been honest with them and they tell him they cannot accept his feelings for Emily. So, in the second half of the movie there is another kind of love story, about the love between parents and their children and the partners their children choose.
It is also a story about a man learning to be honest with himself about who he is and what he wants. What lifts this out of the recent glut of arrested development movies is its compassion for all parties (the film nicely acknowledges that Nanjiani’s brother has a very successful and satisfying marriage arranged the traditional way and presents as one of the candidates a woman so seemingly perfect for him that we almost root for her) and Nanjiani’s thoughtful, self-deprecating but confident performance. The best stand-up comics mine their own lives for material, with observations that make us see our own lives, and especially our follies and irrationalities, in sharper relief — that’s relief in both senses of the word.
Best of all, the movie itself is proof that they lived happily ever after.
Parents should know that this movie includes strong language, sexual references and non-explicit situations, family conflict, and very serious illness.
Family discussion: Why didn’t Kumail tell Emily about his family’s concerns? How should you decide what traditions to keep and which ones to leave behind?
If you like this, try: “Ruby Sparks” (also with Kazan, who wrote the screenplay) and “50-50” with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen, also based on a true story
Rated PG-13 for some thematic content and brief sexuality
Profanity:
Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Alcohol, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:
Tense family confrontations, domestic abuse, illness, sad death
Date Released to Theaters:
June 24, 2017
Date Released to DVD:
October 10, 2017
Copyright Sony Pictures Classics 2017
Maudie Lewis was severely disabled and abused. She lived in a tiny house with no electricity or running water in the unforgiving climate of Nova Scotia. And she decorated her tiny world with vibrant, joyful images that captivated the people who came to her door to buy them, usually for as little as $5. Her home, the walls covered with bright flowers and birds and cats painted over 35 years, is now seen by art lovers in the museum where it has been lovingly preserved, and she is recognized as one of the foremost “outsider” (untrained) artists of the mid-20th century.
In “Maudie,” the infinitely gifted Sally Hawkins gives an incandescent performance as the woman whose indomitable spirit shines through her art.
After her parents died, Maudie lived with an aunt who treated her with contempt. She left to take a job as a live-in housekeeper for Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke), a fisherman taciturn to the point of being a recluse. “You walk funny. Are you a cripple?” he asks bluntly. And he tells her that she comes after the dogs and the chickens in importance. And that he expects her to sleep in his bed as a part of the job. When he wants more, she tells him that he must marry her, and he does.
With some leftover house paint, holding the brush in her arthritic fingers, she paints a flower on the wall. And surprisingly, Everett does not disapprove; he only tells her to leave one section of the wall alone. A summer visitor from the US spots one of her paintings and brings it back to New York. Vice President Richard Nixon buys one, too. Everett is glad for the income and worried that Maudie will become independent and leave him.
Director Aisling Walsh insisted on filming on location and created a meticulous replica of the tiny Lewis home, and the setting itself, bleak and beautiful, with minimal musical score becomes a character in the film. So do Maudie’s pure, simple paintings, expressing her unquenchable joy in observing the world around her and in expressing what she sees. Hawkins is a marvel in every scene; like Maudie herself, she commits herself completely to the creative spirit.
Parents should know that this film includes sexual references and situations, references to out of wedlock child, mistreatment of disabled character, and a sad death. Characters drink and smoke.
Family discussion: Why did Everett tell Maudie not to paint one part of the wall? Why did he change his mind about selling the painting she said was not finished? What was happiness to Maudie?
