In Which We Remain By Jamie Foxx's Side At All Times

Real Blaxploitation

by ETHAN PETERSON

Baby Driver
dir. Edgar Wright
113 minutes

No film has ever represented the abduction of black culture into dominant white paradigms so much as Baby Driver; few films have ever been so brazen as to celebrate the same. When Baby (Ansel Elgort) meets Leon (Jamie Foxx) in the basement hideout of robbers intent on going after the U.S. Postal Service for some reason, Leon is immediately suspicious of a young white man who purports to embrace crime. (It turns out, subsequently, that he has a similar distrust of all such white people.) Leon implies, not so subtly, that he cannot understand why someone who is white and lives in the American South would ever resort to crime. What is the point of pissing in Paradise?

Edgar Wright, the stylish British director who frequently feuds with clueless studio executives, writes a marvelous scene to illustrate this misunderstanding. Baby is listening to "Tequila!" a 1957 song by the son of Mexican immigrants who was forced to sign away his royalties to the tune. That music, constructed by a person of color for the pleasure of all, is overheard by Leon. He instantly bristles at the appropriation. "I have enough to listen to with the voices in my head," he informs the crew's driver, who mainlines tracks in order to soothe his tinnitus.

The suspicion that Leon focuses on this young Atlanta resident is justified later on. Despite the fact that Leon never threatens him with violence or even speaks to him in anything like a raised tone, Baby wishes him harm, and ends up acting on his hatred in Baby Driver's most mystifying scene. Baby never even thanks Leon for saving his life when a militant witness to a bank robbery chases them from the scene. This is the hero of Baby Driver – a white man with no idea how good he has it.

In Baby's private moments, he fantasizes about his dead mother, who drove into the back of a semi because she was distracted. Baby sees a local Atlanta waitress named Debora (Lily James), who is five years his elder, working in the same restaurant his mother did before her untimely demise. He immediately begins imagining Debora in the role of his mother in similar "memories." This transference is not even subtle, and it suggests that Wright is consciously or unconsciously as disgusted by the life choices of his main character as we are. For her part, Debora has no qualms about pursuing a relationship with a wealthy criminal.

In order to humanize this thief, Edgar Wright has him live a double life as the kindly caretaker of his foster father (C.J. Jones). You see, we might feasibly theorize, it is fine that Baby derives his own identity from music composed by others, since he is a caring son to this mute, wheelchair-bound African-American. We never learn how Baby's foster father became mute, or how was ever able to take in an orphan boy in his condition, because Baby Driver is about as interested in the plight of an elderly black man as I am in the plight of an attractive white 23 year old.

The first hour of Baby Driver marches on quite blissfully without a single non-musical moment. Once Wright runs out of licensed music by blacks, Latinos or gays, the film sort of comes to a thudding halt. Attempting to spice up the diegesis is Buddy (Jon Hamm), who has been living as hard as the actor who plays him, sampling the finest cocaine with his wife Monica (Eiza Gonzalez), a former stripper. The two do not really have much in the way of chemistry and spend most of Baby Driver's running time making out gratuitously.

It is Elgort's magnificent performance as the title character that makes Baby Driver possible at all. Wright often obscures or brilliantly covers for the weaknesses of his stars, but outside of Hamm's broad, not-so-splendid performance, the entire cast is well-suited for these flashy roles. Elgort in particular makes every line meaningful and renders his silent moments as enthusiastically as his quiet vehicle operator is able.

Even among this group, Foxx steals the show as the only character in this milieu with any sense. Despite taking on a series of lesser projects that he needed in order to presumably pay escalating debts, Jamie finally seems to be growing into himself as an actor now that he has reached the place we all arrive at eventually: middle age. That Baby Driver consigns Leon to such an ignominious fate means that it misunderstands the events it describes about as thoroughly as this handsome young white fellow ignores his privilege.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.

In Which The Bank Was In Serious Trouble

Monaco Story

by ETHAN PETERSON

Riviera
creators Neil Jordan & John Banville
Sky

Julia Stiles is an actress who spent her twenties relegated to a variety of smaller roles. She was never really suited to being a young woman. In Riviera, as the widow of a prominent European banker, she inhabits middle age with a comfort and assurance that turns her in a completely different person than the agreeable girl she once was. Stiles' character, an art dealer named Georgina, married her wealthy client Constantine Clios (Anthony LaPaglia) a year before his death from a fiery explosion on a yacht.

Georgina is rendered shaken by the events that follow her husband's murder – a will held pending a criminal investigation, a secret apartment in Monaco and a safe in the basement of her house, an ex-wife who is about as wholesome as a cigarette. The children of her husband also occupy a central focus in Riviera. One is a compensating boy addicted to heroin and sunglasses; another is a lesbian teenager with a predilection for stripping; the last and most sinister is one Ramsay Bolton.

Neil Jordan sets much of Riviera in Monaco. This seaside metropolis is both overwhelmingly white and gorgeous, and yet sinister in its flimsiness. On the intensely saccharine walls of every house, the Clios family keeps photographs of themselves as they were. Having their family as witness to their indiscretions diminishes the individual guilt: Riviera is as heady an indictment of the fabulously rich as you are likely to witness.

Georgina's main friend in the art world is Robert Carver (the incomparably talented British actor Adrian Lester). He reveals several of her husband's various double dealings, and when an Interpol investigator named Jukes (Phil Davis) goes after Georgina, he protects her. Meanwhile, the naturally sinister Lena Olin plays Clios' ex-wife with a devastating aplomb. "I want my life back," she informs a co-conspirator, as the odds against Georgina continue to mount.

Riviera gives us a nuanced and unique perspective on the vagaries of the art world. He uses work by Egon Schiele and others that seems to reflect the basic dysfunction at work in this community. There is a serious cruelty and evil accommodated in this part of the world, and those who were not born into this strata of wealth seem to resent and fear being excluded by it.

In one harrowing scene, Georgina is forced to spend a single night in jail. In any other movie, this would be a quick shot and no more. Jordan gives Stiles' character such a sustained and believable history that we recognize what a nightmare even a moment of imprisonment is for her, even as we are forced to admit she may in some part be complicit in her husband's crimes, to whatever minuscule extent.

Jordan has always been really in tune with how the tangible things we keep for ourselves reflect who we are. Chains and handcuffs play a consistent role in the drama; even a single locked door might be the difference between exoneration and incarceration. A local detective (Igal Naor) attempts to help Georgina, but she is no more trusting of law enforcement than she is of the husband who unintentionally or intentionally abandoned her to this fate.

Jordan's last venture in television was the dreary The Borgias, which never had any of the playful fun of his best cinematic work. Riviera never gets too bogged down in its somewhat intricate plot, humming along with a lively electronic-hip/hop soundtrack and relentless pace charted by a sensational group of directors.

Despite the rapidfire plot and eclectic cast of characters, Riviera is at its most enjoyable when we discover we don't quite know Julia Stiles' character as well as we thought we did. In private moments, in the rooms of her massive villa, she explores a depth of personality we have never seen before. Smashing her husband's watches with a ball-peen hammer, a glint of malice takes over her normally steely countenance. We might never know exactly who we are.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.

In Which He Remains The Right Man For Her

Used to Love Him

by ETHAN PETERSON

The Mummy
dir. Alex Kurtzman
107 minutes

Jennifer (Annabelle Wallis) meets Nick (Tom Cruise) in Baghdad. Although he is twenty-two years her senior, there is a serious paucity of English-speaking men in this city. She therefore invites him back to her hotel room, where he pleasures her as many times as his advanced age is able to accommodate. In her quiet moments, Jennifer hunkers down in front of her laptop, puts on a pair of optional eyeglasses – at no other time in The Mummy does she ever wear them – and checks in with her supervisor Henry (Russell Crowe).

These are the two men in her life. She might have chosen better if she had left Cambridge and took the job offer from an American company; instead she wanted to make her home in London, and work for an organization called Prodigium, which dedicates itself to the elimination of evil. It is subtly suggested in The Mummy that Jennifer is hoping to turn the focus of her company from the commercial exploitation of historic sites to a more active role in political affairs, e.g. Brexit and the like.

She is pretty lukewarm on Nick after the sex. She has given him her body, which is impressively sculpted, and when we see Nick in the nude during the weeks that follow we recognize why he is able to attract such a spry young woman. (Her cheekbones are particularly impressive; they radiate like the vibrant, enticing pouches of a squirrel.) She alleges that while the sex was consensual, Nick's theft of an important map she kept for reasons afterwards was most certainly not. She is very angry at him for awhile until they discover a tomb beneath the earth.

The couple escorts this historical find by airplane out of Iraq. On the way, the plane crashes and Nick gives Jennifer the only working parachute on the flight. She is grateful for his sacrifice, and when she finds out that he survived the crash through some kind of wonderful miracle, she is so appreciative that she is like, "Want to get dinner?" When a woman asks you if you want to get dinner, it means something very different from what it would ostensibly seem, and Nick's experience the following evening agrees with my observation.

Even though she now expresses to Nick that she cares for him and believes he is a good person, she never touches Nick again throughout the rest of The Mummy. She does take him to meet the other man in her life, I guess to compare them? Meanwhile Nick is having these little daydreams about another woman (Sofia Boutella), the woman in the tomb, an Egyptian princess who wanted to find a vessel for Set, the god of death. 

This embalmed creature of power decides that Tom Cruise is the ideal person to embody such a deity and drowns Jennifer. Before she dies, Jennifer tells Nick that she is scared. He loves her so much that he brings her back to life a few minutes later, and she does not even spit water from her mouth or lungs. His decision is understandable. I mean, how many more young blondes will allow him to save their life in the near future, do you suppose? Not many: they will all probably be brunettes, so he should cling to this Jennifer.

It is a serious, tragic shame that everyone hated The Mummy so much, since a sequel where Tom Cruise plays the Egyptian God of death would be top tier. Unfortunately the direction of Alex Kurtzman (Fringe) is pretty cartoonish for the material – he is better known as a writer, and this script feels like it was worked over by every scribe in Hollywood. Nick and Jennifer literally have no preferences at all – there is nothing they enjoy. They have no family, no friends. It is like they are already in a tomb.

The pacing also suffers. For an adventure film, The Mummy never really goes anywhere. After the opening scenes in Iraq, the film returns to a particularly garish part of London and never really leaves it. It is rather unclear what the film's $125m budget went to: Tom's trailer and jet? The princess' plan to take over the world or whatever is thwarted in a matter of scenes, in order to place the focus back where it belongs: the heart of Tom Cruise.

While she is imprisoned by Russell Crowe, the Egyptian princess threatens all the English people who have chosen to hold her captive. At first, she speaks in the old language. Nearby, London sits atop their quiet stronghold like a mother bird on a basket of eggs. The princess quickly learns English, proclaiming it a simple way of expression. Tom Cruise makes a face like he is maybe about to object, but then he blows out the air in his lungs and shuts the fuck up.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.