There is nothing modest about “Babylon,” the new three plus hour epic from “Whiplash” director Damian Chazelle, now playing in theatres. It is unapologetically epic in themes, in length and in sheer off-the-wall exuberance.
A multicharacter treatise on the movies and knowing when to leave the party, it is “Boogie Nights” by way of Fellini’s “Satyricon” with a dash of “Singin’ in the Rain” thrown in for good measure. Love it or hate it, and there are valid reasons for either response, it is audacious, chaotic, vulgar, and, like its leading lady, it always makes a scene.
The action begins in 1926 in Bel Air, then a dusty patch of dirt. Hollywood wannabe Manny Torres (Diego Calva) is an up-and-comer who’ll do almost anything to break into the film business. That includes the wrangling of full-sized elephant to be used as entertainment at a wild Hollywood party later that night. Pulled over by a cop who amusingly informs him, “You can’t drive an elephant without a permit,” the quick-thinking Manny talks his way out of a ticket and gets the job done.
Later, while working as security at the decadent bash, he meets Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a bombshell party girl with an attitude and a taste for cocaine and attention. “You don’t become a star,” she says. “You either are one, or you ain’t.”
She isn’t famous, but she is a star. To Manny she represents everything he aspires to be and it’s love at first sight. For Nellie it’s a chance to expose herself to the Hollywood elite and sure enough, her provocative wild child style catches the eye of a producer who hires her on the spot to replace an actress who overdosed at the party.
Meanwhile, as a live band, led by trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), blows the roof off the place, matinee idol Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) splits with his third (Or maybe his fourth. Who’s counting anymore?) wife and is drowning his sorrows in champagne and cocktails.
As the music blares, the dancers dance, the drinkers drink, the touchers touch and the snorters snort. It’s a bacchanal, the kind of party that only could have existed before the invention of the cell phone camera and TMZ.
As the sun rises, the party breaks up. Nellie drives off, on her way to the studio to make her big screen debut, and Jack takes Manny under his wing, giving him a start in that business called show.
There is more. So much more, but “Babylon” is not a film that lends itself to a Coles Notes treatment. Put it this way, one of the stars fights a rattlesnake, surely the climax of a regular film, but in “Babylon,” there’s still two more hours of story to go.
Chazelle’s maximalist vision is gloriously off the hook. He fills the screen with overstuffed detail, creating an avalanche of images and ideas. It is, by times, unfocused and sloppy, and begins to “Babylon-and-on” near the end of the 3-hour and 15-minute runtime, but the sheer exuberance of it won me over.
A story of loving something that can’t love you back, whether it is the movies, a gig, drugs or a person, Chazelle weaves a complicated tale of the highest highs and lowest lows, of glitz, glamor and grime that examines the notion of stardom and what happens when times change.
Adversely affected by shifting tastes is former matinee idol Jack, played by current matinee idol Pitt. A king of early Hollywood, he’s a Douglas Fairbanks style action star who always gets the girl in the final reel. He believes in the power of the movies—“What I do means something,” he says earnestly.—to uplift people beginning to feel the sting of the Great Depression but as the sounds of Al Jolson’s voice begins to fill theatres, Jack is the last to realize his time at the top has passed.
Pitt finds a balance between comedy and tragedy in Jack’s character. When we first meet him, he’s a hedonistic Hollywood a-lister who embraces the town’s loose morality. Often drunk, frequently ridiculous, he’s never less than charming. As the good times evaporate and the industry he loves, and helped build, moves on without him, there is real pathos in his downfall.
“You thought the town needed you,” says gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart). “It’s bigger than you.”
Robbie has a showier, if slightly less rich, character arc. Nellie is a rough and tumble Hollywood creature with a taste for cocaine and fame. Her rise and fall may be more predictable than Jack’s career collapse, but it is just as colorful. From all night coke binges to a vomit scene that brings to mind Mr. Creosote, she’s troubled and troubling, a person whose self-destructive motivations are only truly understood by herself. Robbie plays her as a brash and bold woman enabled by Hollywood, her youth and Manny’s unrequited love.
In a breakout performance Calva’s Manny begins his journey as an ambitious show business outlier. As he becomes an insider, Manny’s character becomes the avatar of the film’s theme of transformation.
Each of these main characters, including Adepo’s trumpet playing Sidney Palmer, are in flux. They are adrift in the winds of change, flailing about, at the mercy of public opinion and an ever-changing industry. Manny’s makeover is undoubtedly the biggest step up, mostly because he is the only character not living in the moment. “Everything is about to change,” he says after seeing “The Jazz Singer,” the first sound movie, and one of “Babylon’s” harbingers of transformation.
Pitt, Robbie, Calva, Adepo and a stacked list of supporting players, including Tobey Maguire, Olivia Wilde, Flea and “SNL’s” Chloe Fineman, among others, are given lots to do, but the real star is Chazelle. “Babylon” is big and sloppy, but Chazelle shoots for the moon in a way that few other recent films have dared.
It’s difficult to know how to classify “The Violent Heart,” a new movie on VOD starring Emmy nominee Jovan Adepo and Grace Van Patten. It’s part “Romeo & Juliet,” part thriller and mostly melodrama. Director Kerem Sanga juggles the movie’s tonal shifts to create a movie about the aftershocks of trauma.
Set in the American heartland, the story centers around twenty-four-year-old Daniel (Jovan Adepo), a small-town mechanic struggling to move forward with his life after the murder of his sister, which he witnessed, and a stint in jail for accidentally blinding a schoolmate. When 18-year-old high school student Cassie (Grace Van Patten) drops off her dad’s (Lukas Haas) car to the autobody shop, sparks fly and romance blossoms.
Despite her parent’s disapproval the young couple bring out the best in one another, sharing secrets as Cassie encourages Daniel to follow his dream of joining the Marines. Both are looking to the future but soon learn tragic lessons on how the past has a nasty way of sneaking up from behind.
“The Violent Heart” never really gets the pulse racing, but is made compelling by the chemistry between the two charismatic leads, Adepo and Van Patten.
Adepo exposes Daniel’s deep wounds, psychological trauma that manifests itself in angry outbursts. “You start to not even notice it,” he says of his deeply rooted ire. “You just kind of become an angry person.” Still, he’s a work in progress, with his eyes locked on a better future. It’s an impressive, internal performance.
Van Patten is more external, a naïve young woman whose confidence is shaken by secrets and echoes from the past.
Together they are compelling, overcoming obstacles as a couple. But when “The Violent Heart” makes a hard U-Turn from star-crossed lovers into a detective story it loses itself in the plot’s twists and turns.
The supporting cast, including Mary J. Blige as Daniel’s mother and Haas as Cassie’s dad, do what they can with underwritten roles, but they’re mostly there to provide the puzzle pieces that complete the backstory of the leads.
In the end “The Violent Heart” succumbs to melodrama, but before the climax sucks the life out of the story, it is an interesting look at legacy and how the weight of the past can slowly crush a person’s spirit.
If I have one complaint about “Overlord” it’s that there aren’t enough Nazi zombies. The J.J. Abrams-produced is a smart addition to the sub-sub-sub-sub genre of undead Third Reich films but plays more like one of those episodes of “The Walking Dead” where they talk about the zombies as much, if not more, then battle them.
The film begins with the stuff of 100 war movies. A platoon of young American soldiers, some cocky, some terrified, are aboard a plane, June 1944 just hours before D-Day. Their mission? Locate and bomb a tower located on the top of a church in a tiny French town. Why did the Nazis put this tower on top of the church? “Because they’re evil SOBs.“
When their plane takes serious fire from the Germans the paratroopers bail. A small number of them, including newbie Pvt. Boyce (Jovan Adepo), Cpl. Ford (Wyatt Russell), the de facto leader with 1000 yard stare, gunner (Rosenfeld Dominic Applewhite), war photographer Chase (Iain De Caestecker) and loud mouth Tibbet (John Magaro)—survive the perilous parachute jump into German occupied France. On the ground they dodge bullets and the enemy before connecting with Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier), a French woman who lives with her brother (Gianny Taufer) and aunt in their target town.
There they come into contact with the local SS commander Wafner (Pilou Asbæk) and, after some grizzly discoveries in a Nazi lab, learn of a nefarious plan to create “the blood of eternity” which gives anyone injected with it super strength, immunity to pain and a really bad attitude. “A thousand year Reich needs thousand year soldiers,” snarls Wafner. Question is, the Americans survive the jump, landmines and regular Nazis but can they survive Nazi Zombies?
“Overlord” is a hybrid of styles. An old school war film meets zombie action film is given a Lovecraftian bio-horror twist courtesy of a Josef Mengelesque evil Nazi scientist. It’s pure exploitation; a movie that drips with chemically engineered blood and guts. Director Julius Avery embraces the pulp aspects of the story, from the stereotypically cocky soldier Tibbet to the heroic Ford to the pure evil of Wafner (“They have been given a purpose,” he says. “They will contribute in ways you can’t imagine.”). Combined it adds up to a heightened experience that delivers within the confines of the zombie genre. If only there had been more zombies.
CHIPs: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that writer-director-star Dax Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation from the classic TV show but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.
The Circle: While it is a pleasure to see Bill Paxton in his last big screen performance, “The Circle” often feels like an Exposition-A-Thon, a message in search of a story.
The Fate of the Furious: Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly. “The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mash-up of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Vin Diesel and Company that more is not always more.
Fifty Shades Darker: Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword? “Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.
The Mountain Between Us: Mountain survival movies usually end up with someone eating someone else to stay alive. “The Mountain Between Us” features the usual mountain survival tropes—there’s a plane crash, a showdown with a cougar and broken bones—but luckily for fans of stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet cannibalism is not on the menu. Days pass and then weeks pass and soon they begin their trek to safety. “Where are we going?” she asks. “We’re alive,” he says. “That’s where were going.” There will be no spoilers here but I will say the crash and story of survival changes them in ways that couldn’t imagine… but ways the audience will see coming 100 miles away. It’s all a bit silly—three weeks in and unwashed they still are a fetching couple—but at least there’s no cannibalism and no, they don’t eat the dog.
The Mummy: As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.
The Shack: Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.
The Snowman: We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better. Mix a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Movies like the high gloss crime thriller “La Femme Nikita,” the assassin mentor flick “Léon: The Professional” and outré sci fi opera “The Fifth Element” have come to define director Luc Besson’s outrageous style. Kinetic blasts of energy, his films are turbo charged fantasies that make eyeballs dance even if they don’t always engage the brain. His latest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” not only has one of the longest titles of the year but is also one of the most over-the-top, retina-frying movies of the year. Your eyes will beg for mercy.
Wonder Wheel: At the beginning of the film Mickey (Justin Timberlake) warns us that what we are about to see will be filtered through his playwright’s point of view. Keeping that promise, writer, director Woody Allen uses every amount of artifice at his disposal—including cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s admittedly sumptuous photography—to create a film that is not only unreal but also unpleasant. “Oh God,” Ginny (Kate Winslet) cries out at one point. “Spare me the bad drama.” Amen to that.
THE UGLY
Song to Song: I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits. I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true. In “Song to Song” there’s a quick shot of a tattoo that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies. I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
EXTRA! EXTRRA! MOST COUNFOUNDING
mother!: Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Aronofsky’s story of uninvited guests disrupting the serene lives of a poet and his wife refuses to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?
Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the stranger’s sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.
“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.
There are many types of movies about people who deal in death to make a living. There’s the cold-blooded killer story, the revenge drama and even comedic takes on killing for fun and profit. Assassins can be men, women, children and even robots.
In this weekend’s American Assassin Michael Keaton is the teacher, a Cold War veteran who trains undercover executioners. He teaches counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp, played by Dylan O’Brien, the ropes of the killing game.
A quick look back at decades of death merchant movies reveals a set of rules and philosophies assassins will always follow.
When we first met John Wick he resembles the Sad Keanu meme. He’s a broken hearted man whose wife has recently passed away. He’s a loner until a package arrives at his door. It’s a puppy, sent by his wife just before she died, in the hopes that the dog’s love will help ease his pain. For a time it works, but when some very bad men break into his house to steal his Mustang, the dog winds up as collateral damage. With the last living touchstone to his late wife gone, Wick reverts back to his old ways as a mad, bad and dangerous to know assassin bent on revenge. We learn that you can quit, but you’ll always get pulled back in.
“People keep asking if I’m back and I haven’t really had an answer,” says Wick. “But now, yeah, I’m thinkin’ I’m back. So you can either hand over your son or you can die screaming alongside him!“
Charles Bronson, as the skilled slayer in The Mechanic teaches his young protégé, played by Jan-Michael Vincent, some basic hitman lessons. “Murder is only killing without a license,” he says, adding that when you shoot someone do it right. “You always have to be dead sure. Dead sure or dead.”
That’s key killer advice, but slow down, there is a progression to becoming a hitman.
In The Professional Leon (Jean Reno) details the system. “The rifle is the first weapon you learn how to use,” he says, “because it lets you keep your distance from the client. The closer you get to being a pro, the closer you can get to the client. The knife, for example, is the last thing you learn.”
Along the way movie assassins also learn that relationships are verboten.
Remember what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie)? “Your aim’s as bad as your cooking sweetheart,” taunts John to Jane, “and that’s saying something!”
Day of the Jackal’s would-be Charles de Gaulle assassin (Edward Fox) adds, “In this work you simply can’t afford to be emotional,” although sometimes feelings inevitably get in the way. Just ask Prizzi’s Honor’s Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson) who memorably said, “Do I ice her? Do I marry her?”
Once they’ve learned the ropes, one question remains: Why do movie assassins kill?
Max Von Sydow plays one of the great movie killers in Three Days of the Condor, Sydney Lumet’s classic story of conspiracies and murder. His reasoning for doing what he does is chillingly simple. “The fact is, what I do is not a bad occupation,” he says. “Someone is always willing to pay.” The Matador’s Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan) agrees, “My business is my pleasure,” he said.
Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the new psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Doesn’t appeal? Perhaps get your pulse racing with “It” instead. If it does, read on.
Lawrence and Javier Bardem are “mother” and “him,” a May-December married couple living in a remote and rambling countryside Victorian mansion. It’s a house with a history. Partially destroyed by a fire—which also claimed him’s first wife—the place has memories. Him, a poet, has been blocked ever since the fire, but finds solace in one of the few things to survive the blaze, a crystal that he now displays in his home office. Despite mother’s efforts to make the house a home—“I want to make a paradise,” she says.—a pall hangs over her wannabe Eden.
The weird factor amps up when a man (Ed Harris) shows and is invited by him to stay the night. He’s oddly antagonistic and inappropriate—“Your wife? I thought it was your daughter!”—but him treats him well, like a long lost friend. She feels like a third wheel in her own home.
The next day the stranger’s wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) arrives, making herself at home. She asks unusual, probing questions—“Why don’t you want to have kids? I have kids. That is what’s gonna keep your marriage is growing.”—and likes to booze it up during the day. Mother, unable to understand the new guests or her husband’s behaviour toward them, is further alienated when their aggressive, argumentative sons (real life siblings Brian and Domhnall Gleeson) show up. It begins to feel like a home invasion rather than a visit.
Paranoia grows as Mother becomes pregnant and a celebratory dinner turns to violence and murder. That’s not a spoiler. ‘mother!” is so bonkers mere words on a page can barely do it justice. Is that my failing or the film’s?
Aronofsky makes movies that refuse to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?
Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.
“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.
“Fences,” August Wilson’s rumination on race, masculinity, betrayal and dissatisfaction, won four Tony Awards, including best actor for James Earl Jones, when it first played on Broadway in 1983. The 2010 revival was also lauded, winning Tonys for Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, who now reunite in a big screen version of the popular play.Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, Washington (who also directs) is Troy Maxson, a former Negro League baseball player now working as a garbage man. Each Friday he turns over his $76 weekly paycheck to wife Rose Maxson (Viola Davis) before his co-worker and best friend Jim Bono (Stephen Henderson) blow off some steam with a bottle of gin. Troy drunkenly tells wild stories about beating up the Devil and lectures about the virtues of self-reliance and responsibility to himself and his family. Always teetering on the edge of a blow-up, he’s a thin-skinned man in a world that is changing rapidly around him, who builds a literal and metaphorical fence between him and the outside world.
Troy has a combative relationship with Lyons (Russell Hornsby), his son from a previous marriage, and a strict, disciplinarian rapport with Cory (Jovan Adepo), his youngest who still lives at home. Tension builds as Cory decides he wants to take a football scholarship in favour of learning a trade.
It’s tempting to suggest that “Fences” doesn’t have a plot. Certainly it presents a slice of Troy and Rose’s life that isn’t necessarily driven by story in the strictest sense, but the through lines from scene to scene create a loose narrative that paints a vivid picture of a man whose resentments and bitterness will soon have a palpable effect on everyone around him.
As a director Washington doesn’t do much to open the story up. It takes place on a handful of sets and feels very much like a play, but when the words are this good there isn’t a need to spice it up with flashy production work. Washington focuses on the script and the performances, allowing the power of Wilson’s ideas carry the movie. “Fences” may be set in 1957 but the Troy’s sense of fighting against almost constant injustice feels as timely as it ever has.
Towering in the center of all this is Washington’s performance. His Troy is beaten down but not beaten. He’s hardened to the cruel realities of his life, that integration in baseball came just a few years too late for him to make a go of it, that hope is for dreamers too lazy to get a real job. He settles into the character with remarkable ease, erasing any residual memory of his big movie star turns in films like “American Gangster” or “Flight.” It is as though we’re seeing him for the first time, and yet, to many his story will feel all too familiar.
He finds his equal in Davis who brings a quiet dignity to the often put upon Rose. Her transformation from stay-at-home wife to independent woman as she realizes the eighteen years spent with Troy have not meant what she thought is as remarkable as it is subtle.
As Mr. Bono New York stage and screen actor Henderson rounds out the main cast in a performance brimming with wit and wisdom.
As a showcase for ideas and performances “Fences” hits a home run, offering fodder for Oscar talk and intellectual discourse. As a movie going experience, however, it feels a tad overlong. As much of a pleasure as it is to watch Washington, Davis and Henderson interact, the film loses steam as it enters the final third.
