I sometimes find the music in films almost manipulative. You watch something big and brash, like a *Transformers* or *Avengers*, and the aural aim is clear: use the score to generate the required emotional response from the audience. Here’s the hero, *BAM BAM BAAAAM*. Moment of loss; strings in a minor key. Racing through a jungle, peppering Colombian foliage with bullets? Have some dubstep to pass the time. What stands out for me more these days are films where the music is *part* of the story, instead of merely underpinning the action. *Inception*’s slowed-down *Non, Je ne regrette rien*; *Fury Road*’s war drums; Tarantino’s torture music. It’s an elevation of the material, a move that takes it to a whole level of blissful enjoyment.

But even the creative musicality of these great films cannot eclipse the groove of *Baby Driver*. Edgar Wright’s crime story is choreographed like a ballet, where every movement, spin and gunshot is rooted in the music blasting out, and the effect is somewhere approaching pure magic.

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