‘Baby Driver’, ‘The Little Hours’, ‘Okja’
Baby Driver (TriStar Pictures) grossed $226.9 million worldwide on a $34 million budget and earned three Academy Award nominations, including a win for Best Film Editing at the BAFTAs.
Baby Driver follows a young getaway driver relying on the beat of his personal soundtrack to stay the best in the game. When he meets the girl of his dreams, he sees a chance to leave behind the criminal life and make a clean getaway. But after having been coerced into working for the boss of a crime syndicate, he is forced to face the music when a doomed heist threatens his life, love, and freedom. Directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) and starring Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars), Kevin Spacey (American Beauty), Lily James (Cinderella), Jon Bernthal (The Wolf of the Wall Street), Eiza González (Jem and the Holograms), Jon Hamm (A Young Doctor’s Notebook), and Jamie Foxx (Django Unchained).
Baby Driver Legacy and Sequel Status
The film’s sustained profile has kept Edgar Wright’s name attached to a sequel script that has been completed with tentative plans still listed for a possible 2026 start. The original’s mix of precision editing and needle-drop choreography continues to surface on best-of lists and in stunt-coordinator roundtables, which helps explain why studios periodically revisit the property even without a firm green light.
Cast Controversies and Retrospective Viewing
Kevin Spacey and Ansel Elgort each faced separate post-2017 allegations that have altered how some viewers approach repeat watches. The film itself contains no on-screen material that directly references those later events, yet streaming-platform warnings and occasional festival-panel discussions now routinely flag the context for modern audiences.
The Little Hours (Gunpowder & Sky) opened on June 30, 2017, reached a widest release of 173 theaters, and sits at 78 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Jeff Baena (Life After Beth) directs this wacky comedy, as a young servant fleeing from his master takes up refuge in a convent. The catch? The nunnery is full of sexual deviants and emotionally unstable nuns. Expect a whirlwind of pansexual horniness, substance abuse, and wicked revelry. Loosely (and we mean loosely) based on Giovanni Boccaccio’s medieval book The Decameron. Stars Alison Brie (Get Hard), Dave Franco (Neighbors), Aubrey Plaza (Dirty Grandpa), Kate Micucci (Don’t Think Twice), John C. Reilly (Step Brothers), Molly Shannon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation).
Indie Release Outcomes: Little Hours and Pop Aye
Both titles stayed within the specialty circuit yet managed measurable markers beyond opening-weekend chatter. The Little Hours logged a respectable theater count for a June indie comedy, while Pop Aye picked up the Best International Film prize at the 2017 Zurich Film Festival and served as Singapore’s Oscar submission in the Foreign Language category.
Okja (Netflix) launched on the platform June 28, 2017, earned an 87 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, and received a Criterion Collection edition in 2022.
The tale of Mija, a young girl who has been caretaker and constant companion to Okja – a massive animal and an even bigger friend – at her home in the mountains of South Korea. But the peaceful life they’ve shared together is about to be disrupted, as a multinational conglomerate takes Okja for themselves. South Korean auteur Joon-ho Bong (Snowpiercer) deftly blends genres to create a layered vision of the world, addressing the animal inside us all, as Mija travels to New York to rescue her oversized friend. Stars Seo-Hyun Ahn (The Housemaid), Lily Collins (The Blind Side), Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko), Giancarlo Esposito (The Usual Suspects), Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine), Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin), and Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead).
Okja and Bong Joon-ho's Career Arc
Seen today, the film’s critique of corporate farming and global branding reads as an earlier sketch of the class tensions that later won Bong an Oscar for Parasite. The 2022 Criterion release bundled new interviews that explicitly connect the two projects, underscoring how the director’s interest in systemic power has remained consistent across budgets and genres.
The Reagan Show (Gravitas Ventures) is now available on Tubi and Kanopy.
An all-archival documentary exploring Ronald Reagan’s made-for-TV approach to politics and the former performer-turned-president’s rivalry with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Directed by Sierra Pettengill (Town Hall) and Pacho Velez (Manakamana), The Reagan Show is full of wit and political irony, delving into archival news and White House footage created by the administration itself.
Pop Aye (Kino Lorber) won Best International Film at the 2017 Zurich Film Festival and was Singapore’s submission for the Foreign Language Oscar.
Newcomer Kirsten Tan directs and writes this beautiful and strikingly universal tale, as a successful Bangkok architect in the midst of a midlife crisis is reunited with an elephant he knew as a child. As the pair embark on a road trip to the man’s idyllic childhood home in the Thai countryside, a wonderfully diverse and colourful cast of characters is encountered along the way. Expect nonplussed local police officers, a forlorn transgender sex worker, and a mysteriously wide drifter.
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Looking for more films to see this weekend? Catch 2:22, The Skyjacker’s Tale, and The House – all out now in theatres.
