The Ballad of "Richard Jewell"

Sam Rockwell and Paul Walter Hauser are good actors in a bad-faith movie. (Warner Bros.)

Billy Ray, the screenwriter of Richard Jewell—director Clint Eastwood’s disingenuous dramatization of the 1996 case of a security guard falsely accused of a horrific crime—spoke to my screenwriting class at UCLA in 2002 or 2003. I hope that if he’s still doing this some student will ask him how can justify defaming deceased Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs in his new movie while giving the (also deceased) FBI agent he has depicted as tipping her off in exchange for sex the dignity of a pseudonym. That malicious act undermines everything in the movie that’s any good. My NPR review is here.

Nobody Puts Baby Driver in a Corner!

You wouldn't guess it, but Ansel Elgort recalls the amateur auto racer Paul Newman.

I've liked all of writer-director Edgar Wright's movies, so it's no surprise that I flipped for his comic thriller Baby Driver. It sings like Freddie Mercury, it dances like Fred Astaire, it burns enough rubber to curl Vin Diesel's hair.  Run, don't walk; but for God's sake don't drive because you're likely to kill someone on your way home.