#justwatched

It barely took five minutes for me to fall in love with this film. Perhaps I'm overly sentimental, overly sensitive but I found it to be enthralling. Watching a fearless little girl be inspired to be a hero by the women around her was just utterly brilliant and the hero she grows up to be engages so many of the timeless issues women face. But Wonder Women isn't just a hero for women, she's a hero for humanity. A lot of her words about cowardice ring true with contemporary events. Diana calling the British Generals out for letting innocents die in the name of war seems like a barely veiled statement about the West's actions in Syria and other recent wars. But the film never becomes sanctimonious. It balances the morality against action and humour with great ease making the whole piece a pleasure to watch. It's also set apart from it's comrades because it works as its own piece. You don't need to worry about watching any previous films and it doesn't get hooked up on setting up a sequel.

Wonder Woman isn't immune from blockbuster problems. The editing during the action is a little choppy, sometimes missing shots that would help the action make sense. The final fight might be two Gods fighting each other but it doesn't excuse it for being a bit messy visually and narratively speaking. I was dubious about Hans Zimmer's theme which seems to come out of nowhere in the trailers but in the context of the film it worked great. Everyone is so well cast and like Robert Downey Jr. is Iron Man, Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman. Others might criticise the film for being too on the nose at times, with its use of slow-mo for dramatic-effect and grand speeches but you know what? It's allowed too. The first major female superhero film from this generation is allowed to drive the point home, to let us soak up the image of a woman walking into No Man's Land to save innocent lives and punching a tank in the process. I find myself genuinely looking forward to Justice League if it means I get to see more Wonder Woman.

It's been a long, hard road but Patty Jenkins has struck a huge blow for female superheroes and female blockbuster directors. This film deserves to do extremely well and perhaps other characters will finally start to get the screen-time they deserve and studios will stop unfairly questioning whether a female director can deliver the goods because Jenkins has delivered with Wonder Woman.

Baby Driver has a cool concept, stellar cast and great soundtrack. It's clearly trying to riff the road-movie genre in an urban setting by making it a road-movie that can't actually hit the road. But ironically enough that's kind of the problem with the film, it never manages to shift gear and become anything but what you see on the surface.

The film is all style and no substance, much like the women in the film. It's becoming clear that Edgar Wright has the inability to write women. Lily James' Debora pries into Ansel Elgort's Baby's backstory, creating a wounded, lonely but talented and misunderstood guy that we've seen a million times before. But we get no such insight into Debora herself apart from the fact she wants to runaway to nowhere which conveniently makes her the ideal girl for Baby who himself wants to do nothing but drive off away from his forced life of crime. Darling, played by Eiza González, is barely more than Buddy's (Jon Hamm) drive to steal, and later, seek vengeance. The women are present just to accekerate the story of the men. And it seems pretty clear that Baby is really only attracted to Debora because she reminds him of his Mother, which is more than a little creepy.

The film sells itself on its cool soundtrack and the fact the editing is heavily timed to the music. This sounds fun on paper and offers a slight laugh when a heist gets stalled and Baby has to start the song over. In practice however it becomes tiresome and results in a glorified music video. The editing is choppy, making it hard to tell what's going on. At one point we're watching a chase between two trucks and one of them ends up with the nose of the truck jammed under a moving lorry. I couldn't tell which truck was trapped because we're rarely offered a wide shot to take in what's going on. The well choreographed car chases are hidden in close-ups making it so hard to tell what's going on. Maybe this is an attempt to make us feel part of the action but if anything it isolates the audience.

It's also not clear if Wright wants us to suspend our disbelief and just go along for the ride or if we're meant to be invested in these characters and their experiences. It's clear we're meant to sympathise with Baby as he realises people are getting hurt during the heists (he's only realising this now?) and he doesn't want to be a part of this violence. But when he decides to fight back against the more loose-moraled criminals he straight-up murders them. In pretty horrific ways. We're also made to understand that although Baby is an excellent driver, he's also an awkward person, often walking into people, uneasy when he's out of his comfort-zone. Turns out the in third act that Baby is Batman. An expert at basic parkour, a marksmen, can run over the top of cars that are charging at him and has the ability to disappear mid-conversation when people look away for a second.

Edgar Wright needs to pick a lane because trying to drive in all of them results in an unsatisfying film. Also Edgar, if I can push the car analogy a little bit further, please let a woman at least share the driver's seat with you because female characters deserve better than this and you obviously have a learner's permit.

This is one of those films that just has you, that grabs you and doesn't let you go and when it gets rough it won't let you look away no matter how tempted you might be.

I utterly loved this. It's style was unforgiving. You're thrown straight in. There's no exposition, no unnecessary padding. Characters are carved quickly with effective dialogue, their behaviour leaving you a little uncomfortable, laying the groundwork for later. Then comes the green room in question and what follows is an impeccably well-paced and suspenseful story that had me enthralled until the credits rolled. It's a great example of every craft of film working in harmony.

Coincidentally, in the unbelievable period we find ourselves living in, this film serves as a reminder (a reminder most of us never need) that Nazis are the bad guys. Even when they're being played by Patrick Stewart. The methodology exhibited by these skin-colour-obsessed monsters is truly terrifying, made all the more scary by the fact that people carrying these attitudes are finding a resurgence right now. They've watched films, right? Surely they know they're the baddies?