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Tag: Ansel Elgort

“Tokyo Vice”–Yakuza on Ice

Tokyo Vice, adapted from the titular 2009 memoir, by Jake Adelstein, retells and also fictionalizes the experience Adelstein had as a 20-something  American expatriate determined to be a reporter for the largest Japanese newspaper.  The first episode details Jake’s (Ansel Elgort of “Baby Driver” and “West Side Story)  obsession to  pass  the competitive entrance exam for one of the prestigious internships at Meicho newspaper.  Hired in 1999 into a newsroom with strict rules of journalistic procedures Jake fights the beaucratic...

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“The Goldfinch”–Art and Loss

Goldfinch (2020), based upon Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, tells the story of  a young boy, Theo ( the astonishing Oakes Fegley), who is walking through galleries with his beloved mother at the  Metropolitan Museum of Art.  They gaze at a Dutch Master painting of a chained bird, the Goldfinch,  when a terrorist bomb goes off. Theo’s mother dies and he escapes the rubble, clutching the 17th-century masterpiece and a dying man’s insistence that he take his ring.  The little boy’s life...

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“Baby Driver”–For Millennials

[Originally published for Blog Critics, July 3, 2017] The highly praised feature film Baby Driver, starring newcomer Ansel Elgort as Baby, tells the story of a millenial car driver getting in and out of trouble while trying to capture the love of his life. Baby drives fast and furiously, shifting gears and tapping tunes he hears on this iPod (yes, an iPod) on his steering wheel while waitng for the criminal types he chauffeurs around to complete their heists–robbing banks and the post office. Baby’s boss, Doc, (the incomparable Kevin Spacey in a role not deserving of his talent) is owed...

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