Movie Review Babylon

Babylon (2022) 

Directed by Damian Chazelle 

Written by Damian Chazelle 

Starring Margot Robbe, Brad Pitt, 

Release Date December 25th, 2022 

Published December 12th, 2022 

Babylon is an outright disaster. From minute one to minute last, this careening, gross, nightmare of Hollywood decadence never finds its feet. The point, I assume. is for the movie to be dizzying and disorienting, but it's a little too effective at evoking that feeling. It's nice to be on wild ride but Babylon rarely relents to let you catch your breath. That might be okay if we were more invested in the characters caught up in this tornado of activity but these characters are too thin and stock for us to cling to them amid the storm. 

Babylon stars Margot Robbe as Nellie LaRoy, an ambitious young actress, eager to be the biggest star in the world while also being the biggest personality in every room. We meet Nellie at a party where she comes bursting in, in search of cocaine. Nellie finds what she's looking for with the aid of Manny Torres (Diego Calva), an assistant to the Hollywood heavyweight who is throwing this massive party. The party happens to have an entire room full of cocaine which Nellie gobbles up quickly and with abandon. 

Urging Manny to abandon his job, tending to the party guests, Nellie gets him enjoying the cocaine as well and the two develop a quick friendship, though it's clear that Manny is smitten. Circumstances part the new friends as the wild party finds a woman dying from an overdose that requires Manny to move her body, and a large elephant whose appearance gives cover to the body being smuggled out the back door of the expansive party. 

The dead girl is fortuitous for Nellie as the young woman was supposed to play a big role in a movie the following day. Nellie is spotted at the party and tapped to take the dead girl's place. Working on no sleep, running on pure adrenalin and cocaine, Nellie nails the part with her incredible talent for crying on command. This is a silent movie breakthrough for Nellie as the camera clearly loves her while the lack of lines needing to be memorized or performed, means her deep New Jersey accent is covered up. 

Meanwhile, Manny is tasked with tending to the needs of Hollywood's top leading man, Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt). After driving the drunken Conrad home, and watching him nearly die in a pool accident, Manny is invited to help Conrad get to the set of his newest blockbuster that same day. This means maybe an hour of sleep before a 16 hour day on set. Even with the exhaustion, the stars in Manny's eyes drive him to become essential to the finishing of the picture. 

It's Manny who gets the task or renting a new camera after several other cameras were destroyed in the midst of the epic filming of fight scenes involving Roman soldiers. Manny saves the day and his career as a Hollywood Producer, Director, and all around go-to guy begins. Naturally, this will bring him back into the orbit of Nellie though it appears that any romance between the two just isn't in the cards. Manny and Nellie appear to be star-crossed for life. 

The middle portion of the three hour car wreck that is Babylon, deals with the arrival of the talking picture in Hollywood. Nellie and Jack's careers are devastated by sound. For Nellie, having to memorize lines, being unable to move around under the strictures of a new sounds set up, and her New Jersey accent, stunt her career just as she was becoming a big star. Jack meanwhile, doesn't know how to project his star power with his voice. Suddenly, the period piece romances that had been his bread and butter, seem silly with his modern American accent. 

Manny, on the other hand, appears to thrive. He becomes a big deal at the studio where he works. He's a director and a producer and he oversees several film projects at once. Among his best work is making a star of a little known trumpet player. Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo) was seen at the party where the film opened and from there was hired to score some silent films. With Manny in charge, and sound pictures becoming a massive hit, Sidney becomes a superstar on the big screen, though not without some compromises that he's not all that comfortable with. 

Manny's fortunes turn on his attempts to save Nellie's career. As her career flounders, Nellie tries and fails to get clean, getting off cocaine and alcohol, but she's quickly sucked back into her addictions as she struggles in the sound era. Her career is officially flushed following an incident at the home of William Randolph Hearst where Nellie clashes with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies, and refuses to allow the famed newspaper magnate to grope her. How this scene ends is weird and gross, and a strong referendum as to whether you are willing to buy in on director Damian Chazelle's odd vision of Babylon. 

For me, I was out of Babylon just minutes into the start of the movie. One of the first things to happen in Babylon is an elephant pooping in epic fashion all over a poor day laborer. The metaphor is clear, the little people in Hollywood, the ones who make life possible for the rich, famous and powerful, are getting pooped on. In this case, that's not just a metaphor. A few short scenes later we're forced to confront a man with a fetish for being urinated on. And to make sure we cover all of our grossest bases, the Hearst mansion scene ends with vomiting that would make Mr. Creosote blush. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) 

Directed by Quentin Tarentino 

Written by Quentin Tarentino 

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbe, Al Pacino, Margaret Qualley 

Release Date July 26th, 2019 

Published July 25th, 2019 

Quentin Tarentino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a masterpiece of mood, tone and directorial command. The film is at once a classically Quentin Tarentino style fetish film, a film that explores and lives within the things that Tarentino has long shown an obsession for and a much looser, more relaxed movie than what Tarentino has made before. Yes, the characters are still whip smart and the dialogue comes in bursts of wordy pop aphorisms, but the mood is much more subdued than we are used to with QT and it works really well for this story. 

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton. Rick is a former television star, the star of the NBC series “Bounty Law” on which he played famed bounty hunter Jake Cahill. However, since the series went off the air several years before the story we are being told here, Rick has struggled to get parts, settling most often to play bad guys to a new generation of Jake Cahill’s eager to get a shine off of punching Jake Cahill in the face. 

This new reality for Rick is brought home in a conversation with an agent played by Al Pacino who does not mince words. The agent is trying to seduce Rick into using what is left of his star power to make several Italian spaghetti westerns, a move that would force Rick to move to Rome for six months. Rick doesn’t like the Italian westerns, he feels they are beneath him. The offer is an indication to Rick that his career has truly hit the skids. 

Keeping Rick from a full on meltdown is his best friend and stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Cliff is a pragmatist who points out that spending six months in Rome making westerns is better than sitting at home doing nothing, something that he’s been forced to do more often of late since his stunt career hit the skids. There is a rumor about Cliff that has made the rounds in Hollywood and his work as Rick’s stunt double has come to halt. 

Now, Cliff works as Rick’s driver and Man Friday, someone who handles tasks that Rick has no time for. Being that Cliff doesn’t have much to do, and because he genuinely does like Rick, Cliff actually appears content to live on this way, running errands for his friend, driving him around and generally just hanging out at his modest trailer with his dog, drinking beer and watching Mannix. It’s not much of a life but it is Cliff’s life. 

Running parallel to the stories of Rick and Cliff is the story of Sharon Tate. History tells the tragic tale that Sharon Tate, the bright, young rising starlet, married to the hottest director on the planet, Roman Polanski, is best remembered for having been murdered. Sharon was one of the victims of The Manson Family, another thread moving through the background of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Margot Robbe plays Tate at her most breathtaking and youthful. Her beauty and effervescence underlines the tragedy of what is to come. 

The Manson Family provides one of the most unique and fascinating sequences of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a brief mini-movie within the movie. Cliff becomes enamored of a young Hollywood hippie hitchhiker named Pussycat (Margaret Qualley). After offering Pussycat a ride, Cliff finds himself at Spahn Ranch where he and Rick had filmed many episodes of Bounty Law some 8 years earlier.

Arriving at the ranch, Cliff is surprised to see the former film lot is now the home of a large group of hippies. The place is a full on commune but with a palpable sense of cultishness. Cliff was once familiar with the much older owner of Spahn Ranch, George Spahn (Bruce Dern) and is curious to find out if the old man has truly allowed this mob of young people to live on his ranch. You will need to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to see how this plays out but the tension and the tight, well held mood of this sequence is riveting. Brad Pitt’s movie star charisma carries the scene and I could not take my eyes off of him. 

The Spahn Ranch sequence is part of the remarkable second act of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which separates our three leads into their own mini-stories. For Sharon Tate, she is in downtown Hollywood and decides to go see herself on the big screen in her first major role, opposite Dean Martin in one of his Matt Helm adventures. Here Tarentino crafts a breathtaking sequence where his Sharon Tate is watching the real Sharon Tate on the big screen and it is magical. There is something so innocent and beautiful in the way Robbe’s Sharon delights in the antics and acting of the real life Sharon. 

As for DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton, he’s on the set of yet another younger star’s television series. Timothy Olyphant plays James Stacy, a long time fan of Bounty Law who is excited for the chance to best Jake Cahill on his show, Lancer. Rick is anxious and struggling with deep angst about his place in Hollywood when he encounters Trudi (Julia Butters), an 8 year old who practices in Method Acting, insisting on being called by her character’s name, Marjabelle. 

Through his emotional encounter with Trudi, Rick will have a breakdown and breakthrough moment that is an absolute must see. DiCaprio is incredible in this sequence in ways that must be seen to be believed. DiCaprio has always been a terrific actor and movie star but here, in this series of scenes, we are watching some of the best work of DiCaprio’s career. DiCaprio has presented Rick as a star beset by anxiety and vainly concerned about his star status and DiCaprio makes him vulnerable and even likable in these moments even as he is also an arrogant, self-obsessed, over-privileged actor. 

I won’t talk about anything regarding the third act of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood other than to say it left me floored. It’s Tarentino in all the best ways and you need to see it for yourself. Mind you, it’s not for the squeamish, but it is incredible in the most unexpected and exciting ways. It must be experienced to be believed. The last act of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood brings the fairy tale of 60’s Hollywood to a close in remarkable fashion. 

I completely adore Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The film is deeply compelling, remarkably cool and filled to the brim with those classically Tarentino moments. If you have loved Tarentino’s previous films, as I have, you are going to adore this one just as much. It’s a success of brilliant pace and unusual moments of ingenuity. The mini-story structure is perfect, each little story within the larger, overarching story works brilliantly into a whole movie that could not be more compelling or entertaining. 

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is one of the best movies of 2019.