Baby Driver review

BABY DRIVER:

A NEAR-PERFECT BALANCE OF ACTION, HUMOR, AND TYPICAL EDGAR WRIGHT INSANITY!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** ½ out of 4

TRISTAR PICTURES

Ansel Elgort as Baby in Baby Driver

            This movie gives Fate of the Furious and XXX: Return of Xander Cage a run for their money, that’s my review of the new movie Baby Driver directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End) in a nutshell. I was already a huge fan of Edgar Wright’s work in the past and one of the few people who actually saw Scott Pilgrim VS the World in theaters but this film alone could make Wright go down in history as one of the best movie directors working today.

            He takes a concept as generic as a heist movie about a getaway driver and directs the Hell out of it. Baby Driver is a cinematic marvel; every shot is visually appealing, the action is beyond exhilarating, the characters are so good, the writing is clever, and the way the story is told and how the film is directed it feels as though I’m hearing this type of story again for the first time, not to mention its kickass soundtrack.

            The film follows a young man literally named Baby (Ansel Elgort-The Divergent Series, The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns) who is a getaway driver for criminals paying off a debt he owes a mysterious kingpin named Doc (Kevin Spacey-Superman Returns, Moon, Horrible Bosses) and relies on the beat of his soundtrack to be the best at what he does. Baby is partially deaf due to an accident that occurred when he was a kid and killed his parents which left him with permanent tinnitus that he uses music to block out.

            After a successful bank robbery with his crew, Griff (Jon Bernthal-Fury, Daredevil, The Accountant), Buddy (Jon Hamm-Mad Men, Friends with Kids, Million Dollar Arm), and his girlfriend, Darling (Eliza González-Sueña Conmigo, Almost Thirty, From Dusk till Dawn: The Series) Doc informs Baby that his debt will be paid off after one last job. Between jobs he meets a beautiful diner waitress named Debora (Lily James-Downton Abbey, Cinderella (2015), Pride + Prejudice + Zombies) and the two of them strike a friendship and a desire to leave the city with only the road, music, a car they can’t afford, and a plan they don’t have.

            The next day Baby runs his next job which is an armored car robbery with his new heist crew, Bats (Jamie Foxx-Collateral, Django Unchained, The Amazing Spider-Man 2), No-Nose (Flea-Back to the Future: Parts II and III, My Own Private Idaho, The Big Lebowski), and JD (Lanny Joon-Takers, Black Gold, Lucky Bastard) with Mike Myers masks and his debt is finally paid off. However, one night after he takes Debora out for dinner Baby runs into Doc who needs him for another job which he agrees to do so he can keep Debora safe.

            Now he must face the music when he is tasked with a heist that could threaten his life, love, and freedom.

            Overall, Baby Driver is one of the best action films I’ve seen in a while and one that manages to blend its wild action sequences with a good sense of humor, strong characters, and smart writing to boot. A lot of people forget silly action movies can be smart and clever with the right amount of thought and care put into it and that’s what Baby Driver did, it gives the audience crazy car chases and stunts and still treats them with intelligence.

            The action is well-choreographed and brilliantly shot and edited, there’s no shaky cams and the camera is focused on one car at a time and it feels like such an adrenaline rush. But with all the insanity that’s happening this movie surprisingly has a lot of heart and it never loses focus on its characters.

            Ansel Elgort knocks it out of the park as Baby, he’s got style and badass stunts but at times will show off his softer and sillier sides of his personality. Almost like a deaf version of Ryan Gosling’s character in Drive.

            Of course, the supporting cast is just as great, Kevin Spacey as a ruthless kingpin obviously that works and sometimes you don’t know that to make of his character. Jamie Foxx as the leader of the heist crew manages to be both threatening and funny at the same time and a huge improvement over his performance from Annie.

            The plot is a typical heist story but the way it’s told is absolutely brilliant, a lot of heist movies come off as predictable if you’ve seen a lot of them before. Baby Driver was one of those heist movies where I had no idea where it was going and I was hooked until the credits, never bored and never making fun of it.  

            Now let’s talk about that soundtrack without giving away the songs that are used but whenever Baby is listening to his music it somehow relates or connects to what’s going on and they’re never added in just for popularity or marketing. There’s actually a purpose for the music here and it’s such a clever way to use music in film.

            Baby Driver is a thrilling, humorous, and thoroughly fun experience and one of the best summer blockbusters of the year. Except this is one of those blockbusters not done in an obvious way and can be much more entertaining than a big budget Fast & Furious or Transformers movie.

Transformers: The Last Knight review

TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT:

MICHAEL BAY GOES OUT WITH A BANG, BUT DO WE REALLY CARE!?!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: * ½ out of 4

PARAMOUNT PICTURES AND HASBRO

Optimus Prime is back in Transformers: The Last Knight

            Ten years ago, director, Michael Bay (The Rock, Armageddon, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi) and executive producer, Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones franchise, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park) brought the world of Transformers to the big-screen and was a massive hit and even won several critics over. The first Transformers movie released in 2007 was an ambitious film especially because of Michael Bay’s reputation as a director, but with Spielberg onboard as well as some dazzling special effects and thrilling action sequences he turned out a decent product, undeniably flawed but a fun dumb movie with some impressive effects and action; one of my favorite films from that summer.

            I was down for a franchise after the spectacle of the first movie, sadly none of them were able to live up to it. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen offended, Transformers: Dark of the Moon just existed, and Transformers: Age of Extinction kept the audience hostage for nearly three hours.

            Now Michael Bay has given us his supposed final Transformers film, Transformers: The Last Knight, the fifth installment in the franchise and the second movie to star Mark Wahlberg (The Italian Job, Deepwater Horizon, Patriot’s Day) as inventor, Cade Yeager. You’d think with this being Bay’s final movie in the series he’d put more thought, effort, and care into it…he doesn’t.

            Transformers: The Last Knight is a rusty rehash of the exact same things we’ve seen in the earlier films. Despite being shorter than the previous sequels, the film is clocked in for a two-and-a-half-hour runtime with a thin script stretched out and filled with overblown action sequences, poor character development, obnoxious and at times pointless side characters, an incredibly stupid plot even for Transformers standards, and really, REALLY bad humor.

            After the events of Age of Extinction, Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) has left planet Earth and the Autobots in search for his creators on the remains of planet Cybertron. He confronts the creator of the entire Transformers race, a sorceress named Quintessa (voiced by Gemma Chan-Doctor Who, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) who corrupts Optimus Prime so he can do her bidding to bring Cybertron back by destroying Earth.

            Meanwhile the rest of the Transformers remain outcasts on Earth and as more of them arrived the government formed the Transformers Reaction Force (TRF) to hunt and destroy them whether an Autobot or Decepticon. After a few kids sneak into a war-torn part of Chicago and stumble upon a crashed alien ship that was piloted by a Cybertronian Knight they get attacked by a TRF Walker and shortly saved by Cade Yeager and the Knight gives Cade a metallic talisman.

            Yeager has been hiding out in a junkyard which serves as a sanctuary for many of the surviving Autobots including Bumblebee, Hound (voiced by John Goodman-Monsters Inc., 10 Cloverfield Lane, Kong: Skull Island), Drift (voiced by Ken Watanabe-Letters from Iwo Jima, Inception, Godzilla), Crosshairs (voiced by John DiMaggio-Futurama, Kim Possible, Batman: Under the Red Hood), and Wheelie (voiced by Tom Kenny-SpongeBob Squarepants, The Powerpuff Girls, Adventure Time), and while there he finds out one of the kids he saved named Izabella (Isabela Moner-100 Things to Do Before High School, Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, Legends of the Hidden Temple) followed him home because she has nowhere to go due to her family being killed by Decepticons during the Chicago battle and she wants to stay and fight them.

            An astronomer and historian named Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins-The Silence of the Lambs, Thor, Hitchcock) calls in Cade and an English Literature Professor named Viviane Wembly (Laura Haddock-How Not to Live Your Life, Da Vinci’s Demons, Guardians of the Galaxy) to explain the history of the Transformers and the purpose of his talisman. Apparently, the Transformers have been around since medieval times and fought alongside King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable and have battled in many of the world’s wars.

            Burton tasks Cade and Viviane to obtain a powerful staff to prevent an ancient machine from being activated and a collision between Earth and Cybertron that could result in the end of the world. It’s up to Cade, Viviane, Izabella, and the Autobots to find the staff, bring Optimus Prime back, and stop the Decepticons, led once again by Megatron (voiced by Frank Welker-Scooby-Doo, The Transformers, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) before they obtain Cade’s talisman and destroy the planet.

            The film also stars Josh Duhamel (All My Children, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, Life as We Know It) reprising his role as former N.E.S.T. commander and reluctant TRF member William Lennox, John Turturro (Barton Fink, Mr. Deeds, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan) reprising his role as former Sector 7 agent Seymour Simmons, Santiago Cabrera (Heroes, Merlin, The Musketeers) as TRF commander Santos, and Jerrod Carmichael (Neighbors, The Carmichael Show, The Disaster Artist) as Jimmy, and features the voices of Omar Sky (The Intouchables, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Jurassic World) as Hot Rod, Mark Ryan (The Bill, Charlie’s Angels, Black Sails) as Bulldog, Steve Buscemi (The Sopranos, Monsters Inc., Hotel Transylvania 1 and 2) as Daytrader, Jess Harnell (Animaniacs, The Emperor’s New Groove, Cars) as Barricade, Reno Wilson (Heist, Crank, Mike & Molly) as Sqweeks and Mohawk, and DiMaggio also provides the voice for Nitro Zeus.

            Overall, Transformers: The Last Knight is just another lousy Transformers sequel and quite possibly the one I disliked the most. Yeah, I thought it was worse than Revenge of the Fallen and even Age of Extinction because the action sequences have gotten even more stale, the humor is very forced and sometimes ruins the rare genuinely funny moment, and the plot is more of the same to the point where all these strikes against it made me overlook some of the film's more entertaining aspects; though this one thankfully didn't give me a headache like Age of Extinction did.

            On a positive note, the climax doesn’t rehash the desert or city battle and despite looking like Transformers and Top Gun crapped out Avatar it’s actually kind of a fun sequence and a refreshing location change for a Transformers fight scene and there's a creative action scene early on involving Bumblebee's limbs that's pretty great. Sadly, the movie doesn’t improve on its character development Wahlberg’s just doing his usual shtick, Haddock is just another Megan Fox/Rosie Huntington-Whiteley clone despite some quirky moments in the beginning, Optimus Prime is barely in it and the whole plot about him going bad is resolved relatively quickly, the side characters are forgettable, and the only standout characters are Anthony Hopkins completely off his rocker and Isabela Moner who despite not really doing much in the story gives a decent performance with what she's given and will hopefully have a bright acting career in the future. 

            This is it, the worst Transformers (and Michael Bay) movie I’ve ever seen and I really hope Bay sticks to his word on his departure from the franchise. Because he managed to “Transform” a huge 2007 action spectacle with a lot of potential into a complete joke and lazily rehashing the exact same stuff.

            I’m sure kids and tweens will eat this movie up, buy the toys, and be thrilled by watching giant robots punching each other with fiery explosions in the background, and they’re such troopers for sitting through five of these damn movies without getting tired. But after you’ve watched the exact same thing for ten years now with little variety or new elements, it’s time to throw this franchise into the scrapyard.  

Resident Evil: Vendetta review

RESIDENT EVIL: VENDETTA:

BRINGS THE HORROR ASPECT ON TOP OF INSANE ACTION SEQUENCES AND STAYS FAITHFUL TO ITS BELOVED SOURCE MATERIAL!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

STAGE 6 FILMS AND CAPCOM
Chris Redfield is locked and loaded in Resident Evil: Vendetta

            You wanted a faithful Resident Evil movie? You got it with Resident Evil: Vendetta, the third CG animated film based on Capcom’s popular Resident Evil video games, the first two being 2008’s Resident Evil: Degeneration and 2012’s Resident Evil: Damnation. The movie completely scraps anything Milla Jovovich or Paul W.S. Anderson related and delivers a thrilling and dazzling film that is sure to put a smile on any fan’s face.

            Set in between the events of Resident Evil 6 and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the film follows BSAA, Chris Redfield (voiced by Kevin Dorman) as he enlists the help of American government agent, Leon S. Kennedy (voiced by Matthew Mercer-Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos, Kill la Kill, Sailor Moon) and Professor Rebecca Chambers (voiced by Erin Cahill) to stop a death merchant named Glenn Arias (voiced by John DeMita) with a taste for vengeance and plots to spread a new deadly virus on New York City. After a tragic incident on his wedding day Arias seeks revenge by transforming everyone in New York into flesh-eating zombies and undead mutant experiments.

            Chris, Leon, and Rebecca lock and load and blast their way through the zombies and other threats to stop Arias and find a cure for the virus. What follows is action overload with gunplay, gore, motorcycle stunts, and some encounters with horrific zombie experiments.

            Overall, Resident Evil: Vendetta delivers everything fans want, over-the-top action sequences, familiar characters, terror, winks and references to the games, and some imaginative zombie designs as well as dazzling computer animation. The film’s animation was created by Sega’s Marza Animation Planet who will also be providing the animation for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and it’s absolutely stunning and energetic especially during action scenes, had my eyes glued to the screen and couldn’t look away haven’t felt like this since Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

            I really applauded this movie for not making up their own protagonist like what the live-action films did. They stuck with characters from the games and nothing more…Well, okay there are some characters made just for the movie but no Alice.

            It pisses me off that this film only has a one-night theatrical run while the live-action movies were given wide releases. The original Resident Evil movies aren’t the worst adaptations of a video game but they’re action/sci-fi-driven movies by name only with characters from the game as side characters…Weak.

            This on the other hand is a thrilling action extravaganza with some zombie scares thrown in that understands its source material and delivers what most video game movies don’t. It probably won’t sit well with mainstream movie-goers, if you have no idea what Resident Evil is like I wouldn’t recommend watching it on its own.

            Resident Evil: Vendetta is the best Resident Evil movie I’ve ever seen, one of the best video game movies I’ve seen, and a film I’d buy on Blu-Ray when it comes out. It’s no masterpiece but a movie based on a video game turning out to be good is so rare today and I’d rather be watching this several more times than any of Milla Jovovich’s movies.

            Hopefully this will lead to more CG films based on video games in the future and it shows that adapting a video game into film is possible with the right amount of thought, effort, and understanding of the material it’s based on. If you don’t understand it then you’re no less evil than the Umbrella Corporation.