Baby Driver (2017)

I'm a fan of Edgar Wright's work, but Baby Driver was a movie that caught me by surprise.  Judging from the advertising alone, I was convinced it was a generic heist movie, and thought nothing more of it.  After a while, I kept hearing more and more about how great it was, and finally decided to see for myself.  I was pleasantly rewarded for taking that chance, and will never doubt Edgar Wright again.
Baby Driver centers itself around the tale of a young, yet gifted getaway driver (played by Ansel Elgort) who calls himself Baby, appropriately enough.  While he enjoys driving, Baby wants to escape his secret life of crime after one last job, but his boss Doc (Kevin Spacey) is intent on keeping him under his thumb.  As the story progresses, Baby falls for Deborah, a local waitress (Lily James), which causes trouble for just about everyone.
I make no exaggeration when I say that this film will likely be studied by future film students.  There are some incredible stunt driving sequences, whip smart dialogue, a delightful attention to colour, and some of the best editing I've seen on screen in a long time.
These elements alone are enough to make Baby Driver a classic, but the soundtrack is what will solidify it into your memory.  Baby is a character with a deep connection to music, and as such, there is barely a moment that goes by that isn't punctuated with some sort of music.  This isn't simply music for music's sake, either.  It's clear that this soundtrack was very carefully curated, and has enough variety to suit any taste in music.  The songs featured range from The Beach Boys to Young MC to Simon and Garfunkel, and not one feels out of place.  The songs serve to enhance the action as well as add some extra emotional context for the characters.
Speaking of character, Baby Driver has a wealth of talent from start to finish.  Ansel Elgort's acting is reserved, but perfectly attuned to the other personalities in this film.  It helps that this rising star has some excellent backup in the supporting cast.  Lily James plays a perfect girl next door, with Eiza Gonzalez as Darling, her criminal opposite.  Jon Hamm plays the mercurial Buddy, who steals a fair number of scenes with his simmering performance.  Finally, Kevin Spacey ties everything together as the fatherly and tyrannical crime boss.
With Baby Driver, Edgar Wright has combined eye-popping action, an impressive soundtrack and an extremely memorable cast to make a film that will be remembered long after it's gone from the big screen.   

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

The movie that got us all 'hooked on a feeling' in 2014 is back!  This time around Peter 'Star Lord' Quill (Chris Pratt) and friends find themselves on the run from a golden-skinned race known as the Sovereigns after they discover a small theft by Rocket (Bradley Cooper).  During the chase, they are rescued by a mysterious man known as Ego (Kurt Russell) who reveals himself to be Peter's father.  The Guardians are invited to his home planet, where we discover his surprising motivations for searching out his son.  Meanwhile, Yondu (Michael Rooker) and his space-pirate crew the Ravagers have fallen on hard times, resulting in an internal power struggle.  Eventually Yondu's crew catches up with the Guardians, but by this time, their situation has changed dramatically.  Banding together for the greater good, the Guardians, along with Yondu and Nebula (Karen Gillan) face off against an unexpected villain in a fight that will determine the safety of the entire galaxy!
As is expected with any Marvel film, Guardians Vol 2 is full of eye candy, from the excellent makeup to the outstanding visual effects.  Thankfully, the quality of writing is just as good as the effects.  Every character gets a good amount of screen time.  Peter and Gamora (Zoe Saldana) continue their indecisive attempts at romance, Rocket and baby Groot (Vin Diesel) get numerous chances to explode people, and Drax (Dave Bautista) begins to understand the nature of love, as well as having some of the funniest moments in the movie.  I also appreciate that this sequel put a spotlight on the 'villains' from the first instalment, giving them some very complex new depth of character.
It would be irresponsible of me to talk about a Guardians film without discussing the soundtrack.  Once again, the music is made up of various hits and one-hit-wonders of the disco era, but something about this soundtrack doesn't feel quite the same.  It still has some very well chosen songs for the big moments, but overall, it doesn't seem nearly as vibrant or memorable as the first movie.  After some reflection, I think this has something to do with the context of the first film.  Guardians of the Galaxy started from a deep emotional place, which imprints itself on an audience very strongly.  As well, the first film was our introduction to these characters we now love, so those musical moments become even more ingrained in our unconscious, much in the same way we associate John Williams's Imperial March with Darth Vader, for instance.
As is the case with any Marvel movie, there is a small collection of post-credit sequences.  A few of them are chuckle-worthy, but unless you're well-versed in Marvel comics lore, there's not much worth sticking around for.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is full of action, laughs and adventure.  But more than this, it has a serious emotional story to tell.  Ultimately, it's a story about family.  We don't get to choose our relatives, but we do get to choose who we call our family.  Guardians explains this to us in a very clear and poetic way, and is a big reason I think it improves on the original.  If you're a fan of the original, or just like Marvel movies in general, I highly recommend you see this while it's still in theatres!

Sample This (2012)

Sample This is a documentary about The Incredible Bongo Band, the group who created Apache, a song which had a great influence on hip-hop music years later.  Unfortunately, this documentary suffers from a lack of focus.
Let's begin with the presence of Gene Simmons.  While he has a great voice for narration, Gene Simmons has very little (if any) business being in a documentary about hip-hop.  While his appearance is eventually explained, it still doesn't bear enough of a connection to the subject to satisfy me.  Thankfully, there is a good deal of interview footage with people like Questlove and Grand Wizzard Theodore, which does give this doc some element of credibility.
The documentary covers a range of topics through interviews and some archival footage.  It looks at the cultural background of the 1970s, provides profiles of the band members and their producer, and finally gets into the influence of Apache on hip-hop culture via artists such as DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash.  For me, this wide view of the subject makes this documentary suffer.  While the stories of things like political assassinations and music production are somewhat interesting, many of them have very little connection to hip-hop culture, which is supposedly what this documentary is all about.  I was left feeling frustrated to find that the parts I wanted to see only made up the last half hour or so of the film.
Sample This is an interesting documentary that examines some interesting people who unknowingly changed the culture of music.  However, if you're most interested in the song itself and its influence, there's a lot of irrelevant material you'll have to sit through.  There are many better films and documentaries on the subject available, and they won't make you wait for the payoff.

Pirate Radio (2009)

Pirate Radio (known as The Boat That Rocked in the U.K.) is based on the true story of how a handful of renegade DJs influenced the future of music forever.  In the 1960s, rock and roll was incredibly popular in Britain, but it only got a fraction of airtime on the radio.  A few enterprising radio people sought to remedy this, and began broadcasting 24/7 rock and pop music from ships stationed in the North Sea.  The pirate station known as 'Radio Rock' was the most popular among them.
It's into this picture that we are introduced to young Carl (Tom Sturridge), who has recently been kicked out of school and is sent out to sea to visit with his godfather Quentin (Bill Nighy), the de facto manager of Radio Rock.  Dave (Nick Frost), one of the many DJs on board, takes a liking to Carl, and before long the rest of Radio Rock considers Carl to be one of their own.  While the DJs go through various exploits of debauchery and clashes of ego, Carl discovers one of the DJs on board may be his father, and he decides to seek him out before his return home.  Meanwhile, on the mainland, Sir Alistair Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh), and his new assistant, one Mr. Twatt (Jack Davenport) are determined to shut down the noise pollution of rock and roll for good, whether it's done by legal means or otherwise.  Carl eventually discovers the identity of his father, but only moments later, the entire crew are put into a life threatening situation at sea, and brought out of it in a most unexpected way.
The first thing I noticed about Pirate Radio was the amount of sexual content.  While I was a bit shocked at first, it was certainly true to the era, and it would hardly be fair to judge a movie for that.  The other major attribute of this Pirate Radio is that it's an ensemble film.  Thankfully director Richard Curtis has done very well with other ensemble films like Love Actually.  No one character ever truly feels left out of the story, even if they appear for a few brief moments.  In fact, one could argue that these brief moments are more impactful than the larger set pieces of the movie.  One of my favourite scenes in the film is an exchange between Carl and early morning DJ Bob (Ralph Brown).  It's a very short scene with very little dialogue, but there's a great deal of emotional information packed into that little scene.  I think this stands as both proof of my theory and proof of the great acting and direction of this movie.
As I mentioned above, just about everyone in this film gets their moment in the sun, and each character is memorable in their own way.  One of the most memorable characters is 'The Count' (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who bursts with the kind of rebellious spirit and bullish confidence that could only come from an American.  On the flipside of this, we have Kenneth Branagh's performance as the humourless, yet fiercely determined bureaucrat Dormandy.  He's a character you instantly hate, not only for his personality, but also for what he represents to the fun loving people of Radio Rock and their fans.  These are just a few small examples, of course.  Pirate Radio is so well cast, I could easily pick any given actor and have something good to say about them in this film.
It would be negligent to talk about Pirate Radio without mentioning the music.  What's most interesting is the sheer variety of music there is to hear.  It seems that not a scene goes by when we aren't hearing something play in the background.  The soundtrack is filled with all kinds of different music, from Smokey Robinson all the way to a novelty Christmas song by the Beach Boys.  At its heart, the love of music is the driving force of Pirate Radio, and it communicates this tremendously well.  
If you're fond of classic rock and roll, or have an interest in radio, Pirate Radio is a great movie for you.  It has a good mix of seriousness and comedy, and a brilliantly curated soundtrack to hold everything together.