Category: Theaters

I did my best to read all the books before watching The Dark Tower, and I am glad that I did, but the books didn’t help me gain any understanding with what was going on in the movie.  Not that the movie is confusing in any way, because it is constantly going out of its way to inform the audience with what is going on, but because it is a radical departure from the books.  That is not my main issue with The Dark Tower however, my issue is that they turned one of the craziest Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Western universes out there in to something generic.

The Dark Tower is about Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), who see visions of a strange land and a Dark Tower, and an ongoing battle between a Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) and The Gunslinger (Idris Elba).  Jake seems to think that the current series of world wide earthquakes are due to the Man in Black attacking The Dark Tower.  No one believes Jake of course, so he has to travel to Mid-World himself to find The Gunslinger and save The Dark Tower.

It probably made sense to the writers to make the movie about Jake instead of the Gunslinger because then Jake could be the avatar for the audience seeing all these strange things for the first time.  Of course if any of this was strange it probably would have been fine, but in all honestly had you told me that this was just the next Maze Runner movie and in this one they can hop dimensions, I would have believed you.  Mid-World is just a random place with a lot of broken stuff and a creepy Matthew McConaughey constantly feeding us Gunslinger trivia.  The only part of The Dark Tower that really works is when The Gunslinger comes to New York and does his best Last Action Hero impression.

Thankfully the cast they hired was excellent.  Even new comer Tom Taylor sold his role.  The fact these actors had almost nothing but exposition for dialog and almost pulled it off as natural is a minor miracle.  The Dark Tower would have been so much better had people just stopped explaining everything and just started having meaningful character interactions, or better yet shown us what they were explaining.

I don’t know if it was budget or lack of vision that kept Mid-World from being as interesting in the movie as it is in the books, but it was a shame that it felt stripped of everything that made that place feel unique.  I didn’t need a homicidal train in the movie, but it would have been nice to feel like one could have shown up at any minute.  Thanks to the great actors and the brisk pace The Dark Tower ended up being okay.  Almost like the cheep cable version of the book that made you want a real movie.  For people that haven’t read the books this movie might be easier to watch because they don’t know what they are missing.  Though they could also go out and watch The Maze runner or Divergent again and have just as much fun.

Ever since Edgar Wright’s dramatic exit from Marvel’s Ant-Man, we have been waiting to see what was next from this unique director, and if Baby Driver is anything to go by, Wright has got a lot left in the tank.  Baby Driver is cool, fun and funny.  Even if it could have used just one more chase scene.

Since Edgar loves to play with movie genres it should be no surprise that Baby Driver features a lot of clichés and tropes for him to manipulate, make fun of and ultimately revel in.  It is about, get this, a tormented getaway driver, Baby (Ansel Elgort), that has to do just one more job to free himself from his scary crime boss, Doc (Kevin Spacey).  Baby just wants to skip town with his girl, Debora (Lily James), and leave his life of crime behind him.

Now Baby Driver isn’t the crazy comedy that makes up the bulk of Edgar Wright’s work: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, but it still offers plenty of laughs.  This slightly more restrained version of Wright is no doubt what we would have seen from him if he would have been able to complete Ant-Man.  Which is a shame because Marvel could have stood to have its own studio turn its cinematic universe on its head.

The acting was all terrific.  Elgort was able to portray a kid who is gifted at his job but hates it, and Hamm, Foxx, and Gonzalez are all able to play varying shades of crazy gangster.  Spacey’s job was to deliver on the nose dialog without actually winking at the audience, and Spacey was in peak Spacey.  I am sure Wright’s direction for him was, “Can you be more Spacey in the next scene?”.

Baby Driver isn’t perfect.  It drags a little in the middle.  I think Edgar was worried that the audience may not like Baby, so he did some character building which I didn’t think was necessary, and for a movie about driving, it could have featured just a little more.  The reason I say this is because the driving that is in it, is excellent, but then it kind of tapers off as the movie progresses.

Baby Driver is a very good modern gangster film that knows and has fun with the fact it is a gangster film.  It is another great film to add to Wright’s portfolio.  Which already has a lot of great films in it.  It is a fun summer action movie to go check out if you are a little tired of them all featuring tights and capes these days.