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No love for Baby Driver?

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Baby Driver is brilliant, almost flawless, on a technical/craftsmanship level, and also it happens to have mostly uninteresting characters, a boring lead actor, and a shitty ending.

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For me, it was Dunkirk as the best of the year.

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Recommended: Lane 1974 – a movie about a girl growing up with self absorbed hippie parents who just wants a damned bowl of sugared cereal for breakfast. Winner of many awards.

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Apocalypse Cow said on January 4th, 2018 at 9:49 am

If you haven’t seen Three Billboards yet, you might want to reserve a spot at least on your Next Ten list. Everyone does a great job, but if Sam Rockwell doesn’t get at least a nom for best supporting actor, I will hold the box of matches for you 😉

I’d wager Coco would also make one of your two lists … Definitely in my top 5 Pixar films, maybe even top 3 …

Also, Blade Runner is conspicuously absent from either list — It’s definitely on my Top Ten of the year …

And I haven’t seen *any* of your top 5, so obviously I’m slacking =D Looking forward to I, Tonya, though, when it hits wider release (this weekend?) …

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AlexanderHammil said on January 6th, 2018 at 5:08 am

Baby Driver’s soundtrack was also insistently, weirdly dated. I assume that he’s been carrying that specific mix around since he first thought of the movie 20 years ago. Which is unfortunate, because the music isn’t new enough to be surprising, nor selected with enough distance to be particularly memorable. For a movie SO invested in music, I could barely remember any of the actual songs after they stopped playing.

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This article led to me reading dozens of your reviews, which were wildly entertaining. <3

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Not to be That Guy, but I think this:

except that he knows that it’s never one last time because the last time was supposed to be the one last time,

Isn’t true about John Wick 2 as a purely factual matter; when a guy does you a favor, and you hand him a marker that says “I owe you a reciprocal favor in the future, anything, at any time, you come to me and I’ll honor this” nobody involved in that transaction is under illusion that you are in “one last time” mode.

This doesn’t invalidate your interpretation of it, I don’t think, but Wick never actually thought he was out; he merely hoped old debts would never come due. There’s a difference.

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Nice list; loved Logan and Get Out, and I definitely intend to catch many of the others at some point. Have you had a chance to see Colossal? It was probably my favourite movie last year; quirky, oddball, with some surprisingly dark developments in the back half that really change how you look at the characters.

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The “John Wick 2 is a critique of capitalism” never occurred to me. I had thought the message was “John Wick is not the good guy.” In the first movie, John Wick stomped a hole through the Russian mob to avenge his puppy, who died at the hands of some little shit. In the second movie, John Wick willingly chose to work for some little shit and upset the balance of power in exchange for his own little peace. I say willingly because everyone, John included, knows Santino is a sadistic little shit who likes to screw people. Everyone, John included, thinks that Gianna is the preferable leader. Everyone, John included expects Santino’s inevitable betrayal. Which is why it’s hard to root against avenging bodyguard Cassian when he comes after John- yeah, Santino’s pulling the strings, but John knew what he was getting in to. And if he had decided to murder Santino’s entire operation, would anyone care?

I think the real moral is a mix of both- yes, the system is designed to screw over the little people. But John isn’t some random little person, he’s the guy you send to kill the fucking Boogeyman. He has power too, and he’ll selfishly use that power to slaughter any number of unknown goons who stand between him and his goals, even if it makes life worse for everyone else. John chose to sign up with Vigo, John chose to take Santino’s marker, John chose to kill Gianna. That’s why the scene with Bowery King Lawrence Fishburne is so important- the King was just another nobody whom John was willing to crush to fulfill his own goals.

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