Another week, another movie that has the nerve to open in the middle of it. This time out it is Edgar Wright’s latest Baby Driver, a film that many are excited for and many are saying has “a really dumb title.”

To prep, we have a duo of films. Drive selected because of the obvious connection of a driver for criminal enterprises and the possible redemption via love plotline. Also, sometimes you just want to talk about Drive.

The World’s End makes less sense in terms of plot but more overall as it is Wright’s previous film. That makes sense, yes?

Ok, pull on your gloves and slip behind the wheel of your distinctly cool car. Here. We. Go!

Unexpected sub-theme for this week's Throwback reviews: real human beings. (eskipaper.com) — Unexpected sub-theme for this week's Throwback reviews: real human beings. (eskipaper.com)

DRIVE

Drive is a very particular movie. I think many have gone it expecting spectacular car chases and cool widescreen action and Drive has no interest in being that kind of movie.

That’s not to say it is not filled with cool—and often beautiful—imagery. While Refn continues to be a divisive director, I don’t think anyone would deny he has a gift for use of light, color, and shot composition.

It is an interest clash of image and tone. The film is quite chilly in script and performance while beinga hot (emotionally, not sexually) movie in terms of plot and, often color. It makes the whole affair constantly disconcerting. I find that to a be strength, a way into the uneasy world the film unfolds in, butcan understand if someone else found it just unpleasant.

Overall, Drive is one of those movies that you find yourself talking about how much you like it and then a friend says something like, “Oh, maybe I’ll see that this weekend,” and you, knowing your friend well, suggests that maybe they do not do so. If you can sit in the vibe of the movie, the payoff is high. If you are not that kind of person though, Drive will not be a pleasant experience.

Oh, additional shout to the music. Drive has a great atmospheric soundtrack in which score and song are both wonderfully dispatched.

Life is hard, but try not to lose your head. I hate myself for this caption (timholmesblog.blogspot.com)

THE WORLD’S END

The World’s End is one of those movies, for me, that trips up my “logical” mind while I’m watching it and I just cannot seem to get out of my own way the rest of the time. In particular, the robot thing. I just…I can’t figure the size and scope of what happens. The amount of robots, what happened to the people they replaced, what about the rest of the world, this kind of thing.

I get this way with zombie movies too—oddly Wright’s Shaun of the Dead being one of the few that has never triggered that response in me—and we all know my feelings about zombie media.

End never gets as bad as zombie movies get for me. My desire to know the mechanisms behind the events in the movie never gets so big as to blot out the film itself for me and I think a big part of that is how well realized the characters are. Just behind the a-plot—finds reunite for a pub crawl, find out town (and again, maybe the world?) is being conquered by alien-robots along the lines of Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ pod people—lies a rich story about getting older, knowing how to mature, unaddressed issues, the friendships that endure and those that don’t, and mental illness. That story…that never pulls me out of the movie. It feels real and right every step of the way. Even Gary King’s (Simon Pegg) confessional speech—which in another movie could have ground it all to a halt—is delivered well and at the right moment.

So, definitely recommended but be warned if you are like me the mechanics of the robot invasion might keep dragging you into speculation world.