Babylon (2022) Review

Time: 189 Minutes
Age Rating: Sex scenes, violence, drug use, offensive language & suicide
Cast:
Diego Calva as Manuel “Manny” Torres
Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy
Brad Pitt as Jack Conrad
Jean Smart as Elinor St. John
Jovan Adepo as Sidney Palmer
Li Jun Li as Lady Fay Zhu
Director: Damien Chazelle

Decadence, depravity, and outrageous excess lead to the rise and fall of several ambitious dreamers in 1920s Hollywood.

Babylon was one of my most anticipated movies of 2022. Of the “newer” directors, Damien Chazelle is already proving himself as one of the best, with Whiplash, La La Land and First Man. His next movie looked to be interesting, set in 1920s Hollywood. I will admit I had some doubts, especially with some questionable marketing which didn’t exactly make the movie look good. But I was still interested in seeing it for myself, and the very divisive reactions only intrigued me further. After all that, Babylon ended up being one of my all-time favourite films of the year.

Babylon is by far Damien Chazelle’s most ambitious work yet, and even if I didn’t like the film, I would still applaud it for the massive swings that he takes with it. It’s an epic which covers multiple characters and their stories, and Chazelle did a really good job at making them intersect and cross over with each other. Some have called the movie messy and chaotic; I definitely agree that it’s chaotic but I wouldn’t call it messy, the story is still coherent. It is a very funny and entertaining movie, with some outrageous scenarios and moments. Babylon portrays the debauchery of the film industry, which is made immediately clear in the very in-your-face first 30 minutes. It also explores the eras of cinema and shows how film has changed, especially with the transition from the silent era to talkies. Part of my reluctance going into Babylon was that it was a movie about movies. That doesn’t inherently turn me off from a film, but there’s been so many love letters to cinema recently that I admit that I’ve been getting somewhat tired of them. But I still ended up liking this aspect in the movie. As expected, Babylon does celebrate cinema and so you can call it is a love letter to movie, but it also serves as a condemnation and scathing hate letter to the filmmaking industry and Hollywood. The film is essentially about outsiders navigating an ever-changing industry, and shows their rise and fall as their sense of self is slowly stripped away, often with their sacrifices to film. It is a very funny and entertaining movie with some surprising optimism even by the end, but the story is sad and tragic. It is a very long movie at over 3 hours and this will definitely be an issue for people who aren’t invested within the first hour, but I was enthralled for the whole runtime. I’ve noticed that some are a little divided over the ending, even among people who like the movie. While I was initially not sure what to think of it, I thought it worked, even if it’s a little drawn out.

Babylon has a massive and talented ensemble cast, with most actors being used to their strengths. Diego Calva and Margot Robbie give amazing performances, with Robbie quite possibly delivering her best yet. The relationship between their two characters is the heart of the film, and they share incredible and convincing chemistry. Brad Pitt is the other main protagonist, an aging movie star who is struggling to adapt to cinema’s change from silent films. Pitt fit this role well, and he delivers a restrained, lived in and believable performance. Some of the other prominent actors include Li Jun Li, Jean Smart, and Jovan Adepo; they are really good and help to bring their characters across. Even other actors with smaller roles like P.J. Bryne, Max Minghella, Katherine Waterston, Eric Roberts, Samara Weaving, and Spike Jonze work to make their roles stand out. Out of the supporting roles however, Tobey Maguire is the standout to me, delivering a weird, unhinged and creepy performance, and it certainly helps that he’s involved with one of the most memorable segments of the movie.

Unsurprisingly Damien Chazelle has done another phenomenal job at directing. The technical aspects are all top notch and brilliant, everything from the cinematography, production design, editing and sound are all amazing. It’s a very bombastic and stylish film, at times a sensory overload especially with the portrayal of excess. It’s a feast for the eyes; a lot of the time there’s so much happening on screen, whether that be the parties or filming of movies, and they are all captured excellently. The camera movements are outstanding, especially with the long takes, and there’s this constant frenetic energy from beginning to end. Finally, the music is just phenomenal. Justin Hurwitz’s composed music is nothing short of outstanding, it gave so much to the movie, and I am confident in calling it the best score of 2022.

Babylon is an ambitious, bombastic, enthralling, and exhilarating experience, and is amazingly well crafted. Damien Chazelle’s direction and the technical aspects are outstanding, and it has fantastic performances from the ensemble cast. It really is sad (but unsurprising) that it bombed at the box office. The label “not for everyone” for movies can be meaningless most of the time, but it certainly can apply to Babylon. However, it worked for me on so many levels, and it is one of my favourite films from 2022.

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Overlord (2018) Review

Time: 110 Minutes
Age Rating: Graphic violence, horror, offensive language & content that may disturb
Cast:
Jovan Adepo as Pvt. Boyce
Wyatt Russell as Cpl. Ford
Mathilde Ollivier as Chloe
John Magaro as Tibbet
Gianny Taufer as Paul
Pilou Asbæk as Dr. Wafner
Jacob Anderson as Dawson
Iain De Caestecker as Chase
Bokeem Woodbine as Sgt. Eldson
Director: Julius Avery

On the eve of D-Day, American paratroopers drop behind enemy lines to penetrate the walls of a fortified church and destroy a radio transmitter. As the soldiers approach their target, they soon begin to realize that there’s more going on in the Nazi-occupied village than a simple military operation. Making their way to an underground lab, the outnumbered men stumble upon a sinister experiment that forces them into a vicious battle against an army of the undead.

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I knew about Overlord for a while because it was the long rumoured 4th Cloverfield movie (which would probably be titled Cloverlord). Turns out this isn’t what the movie is at all, despite some consideration of the idea. Still, the idea of a World War 2 Nazi Zombie movie sounded like something exciting, and I was looking forward to it after hearing that it was good. While Overlord isn’t quite the Nazi Zombie movie that was advertised, it is nonetheless a really bloody and entertaining movie, a nearly perfectly executed B movie.

A couple things first, firstly as I mentioned this isn’t tied to the Cloverfield universe in any way, and honestly it’s all the better for it, it feels like its own sort of movie and not tied down to other movies or cinematic universes. Second of all, as I said earlier, Overlord is not really a Nazi zombie movie even though the trailers sort of made it seem like that. Not only does it take a while before it gets to that aspect, but they aren’t even really zombies. I can’t really describe it but let’s just say the ‘zombies’ here aren’t really like the zombies from Call of Duty. Overlord more comparable to the Wolfenstein games honestly. It really is a World War 2 action movie with a horror aspect to it, with Nazis as the villains. This is a B movie, it’s not full of great in depth characters or an interesting plot, but it knows what kind of movie it is. Yet it plays it straight faced enough that you care enough about what’s going on, and so it doesn’t just become a goofy action horror comedy or anything like that. The plot is simple enough and doesn’t get convoluted really at any point. The movie is an hour and 50 minutes long and that was the right length for the movie really, from start to finish I was really entertained by what was going on.

The cast generally do well in their roles. The main squad are pretty typical and familiar for a war movie, like you have Wyatt Russell as the hardcore and hardened sort of soldier who is solely focused on the mission and nothing else but the characters don’t border on the cartoonish side either. They aren’t given a lot of depth (some of them don’t really get any) but for this type of movie it doesn’t really prove itself a problem. They also have enough chemistry that you care about them enough. The main soldier character is played by Jovan Adepo and he was great, he was likable and believable in his role. The other soldiers were good as well, especially Wyatt Russell and Iain De Caestecker, even though the latter didn’t have a ton of things to do, he was really good with what he had (and had a particularly memorably great scene, one of the best in the film). The Nazis were also really good as villains but the standout is Pilou Asbæk as a Nazi officer who really ends up being the most central antagonist of the Nazis. Asbæk is so great at being absolutely hateable and ultimately worked well as the main villain.

While Overlord definitely is a B movie, it is actually directed really well by Julius Avery, I haven’t seen any his previous movie Son of a Gun but he did very well with this movie at least. The action scenes themselves are also well directed, you can see what’s going on and they are all rather entertaining. The practical effects also deserve a lot of praise, I think the vast majority of the effects are practical and I’m glad for that, it really paid off. There are some really gratifying and grotesquely gory moments and deaths. While its not a full on horror movie, it has a lot of horror aspects to it, and the body horror side of it was really strong (much more than when they tried to do genuine scares, with an overuse of jump scares which didn’t really work). The score by Jed Kurzel also added a lot to the scenes, amping up the tension even more. The only out of place bit of music was during the end credits, which really didn’t fit at all.

You may be a little disappointed if you’re expecting Overlord to be a Nazi Zombie movie based off the trailers, but it is still a really entertaining action horror flick. The actors all did well, the direction of the movie is great, it’s entertaining from start to finish, it really handles well all the aspects needed in a B movie. If you’re into violent action B movies and if Overlord looks good to you, this is definitely right up your alley, and you’re going to have a lot of fun with it.