Baby Driver makes a palpable and committed bid to attain the action sublime. It is a work of testosterone-auteurism that falls short of the sheer aesthetic bravado and emancipatory charge of Mad Max: Fury Road but at least matches The Raid in the top tier of ‘10s action cinema. Its style spreads like a pandemic, sidewinding into the realm of avant-pop music video, turbo-charged but with flickers of whimsy where restive full-throttle motion is contraposed by plateaus of stillness and silence that reveal writer-director-mad-scientist Edgar Wright as a true summoner of the cinema. He conjures the long-dead spirits of style-as-substance ‘70s car thrillers that matched pedal-to-the-medal with moments of melancholy and pensive reflection about the nature of a life lived watching your rear-view-mirror, hurtling at a hundred miles an hour but never truly moving forward. Continue reading →