The Essentials: The Films Of Edgar Wright

“Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” (2010)
A film unfairly labeled an expensive folly shortly after its initially underwhelming box office run that has been rightfully re-appraised as a new-school cult classic, “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” isn’t just Edgar Wright’s most visually expressionistic film, it ‘s also his most nakedly vulnerable. An ineffable melancholy informs every hyper-charged frame of this frolicsome video game love story, where an endearingly gawky Michael Cera stars as Scott Pilgrim, Toronto’s nerdiest, most unassuming rock n’ roll loverman. Based on Bryan O’ Malley’s series of graphic novels, “Scott Pilgrim” brilliantly realizes the metaphor of having to overcome a romantic partner’s past baggage by having Scott square off against his new girlfriend’s nefarious gallery of evil ex-boyfriends, a group that includes Brandon Routh as a telekinetic Vegan, Jason Schwartzman as the grotesquely douchey indie gatekeeper Gideon Graves, and Chris Evans as pea-brained action movie ass-kicker Lucas Lee. And yet, none of this frenetic bubblegum brilliance would register emotionally if “Scott Pilgrim” weren’t possessed by such a charmingly rueful undertow: this is a film about having the requisite self-love to love someone else, it just happens to act as a showcase for the earworm tunes of Canada’s very own Sex Bob-omb.

“The World’s End” (2013)
The looniest, saddest, and most profound entry in the Cornetto Trilogy, “The World’s End” might just be Wright’s most slept-on film on the whole. It’s a movie that takes everything that is indelible and memorable about its director’s filmmaking fingerprint and amplifies it a hundredfold; the result is not only an intoxicating marriage of John Carpenter throwback classics like “The Fog” and “Prince of Darkness” with old-school pod people horror and “Another Round”-style alcoholic buddy comedy, it’s also a wise, bittersweet look at what it means to age gracefully. Pegg has never been more despairing or poignant than he is as the aggressively immature Gary King; in many ways, “The World’s End” functions as the anti-“The Hangover”: Wright’s movie is here to critique codependent male boorishness, not flounder in it, although you might be dead inside—if you don’t at least chuckle at the sight of a sozzled Nick Frost drunkenly wandering through a glass door, or punching an alien invader straight in its gooey guts so that he may retrieve his wedding ring. For the record, the apocalyptic climax of this underrated jewel might just feature our favorite conclusion to an Edgar Wright movie to date.

“Baby Driver” (2017)
Wright’s flashiest picture is a barn-burning, Walter Hill-inspired rock n’ roll love story/heist yarn, where every beat, cut, and dialogue exchanged is perfectly timed with the notes of a soundtrack that plays exactly like one of the director’s expertly curated Spotify playlists, probably because, at one point, it was. Ansel Elgort stars as a teenybopper version of Ryan O’ Neal’s cucumber-cool professional from “The Driver,” with Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzalez, and Lily James all lending larger-than-life energy to lowlife parts that might register as one-dimensional if they weren’t delivered with such a knowing wink. The kinematic, endlessly inventive “Baby Driver,” which moves with daredevil locomotive speed, admittedly lack the soul of Wright’s more enduring comedies, and it is difficult to get past the casting of the once-cancelled Elgort in a tricky lead part he doesn’t always fit into, not to mention the presence of the ignominious Kevin Spacey as this movie’s scowling Big Bad. That said, even a slightly imperfect Edgar Wright movie is still an Edgar Wright movie at the end of the day, and when it comes to pure cool, “Baby Driver” has plenty of style to burn.