Fellmans Movie Reviews

RED = SPOILERS 

I am so horribly saddened that it took me so long to watch this movie, because this turned out to be one of the best movies that I have ever seen. Despite being ridiculously long, at a runtime of three hours and three minutes, it is well worth watching. The dialogue is some of the best you’ve ever seen, and the acting doesn’t get any better than Margot Robbie in most of her scenes. As far as comedy goes, you have to have a pretty dark sense of humor to like it. But if you didn’t have a dark sense of humor, you wouldn’t have decided to watch it in the first place now, would you?  

What’s it about? Overall, Babylon is about the turnover of the film industry from the silent film era to the talkie production era. It follows four separate people on their journey from one side to the other in a Seinfeld-like way, where each story interacts with each other through various coincidences. 

What’s good? Is it a cop-out to say “everything”? Because literally everything about this movie is good. The opening sequence is my favorite opening since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Which is, for those that don’t know, my favorite movie of all time… But nevertheless, everything is so great. The timing, the writing, the emotion, the interaction, it all just comes together so perfectly. I can see how it got to be so long, because they didn’t want to cut anything out of it. That’s how movies get to be like that. Great movies end up being really long because you can’t cut anything out of them because you need every scene that you’ve shot.  

What’s bad? To be honest, I thought the ending dragged on a little bit. It wasn’t bad, but the montage with him sitting in the theatre and the whole “acid flashing” thing going on wasn’t really doing anything for me. I can see what they were trying to do, and I get it, it’s a nice statement. I’m a huge advocate of cinema. (Duh…) But I don’t think it achieved what they were going for.  

The acting? Some of the best roles I’ve ever witnessed. I’ve never seen Brad Pitt do anything bad. Except for Troy… And Mr. And Mrs. Smith… And World War Z… Alright, I’ve seen Brad Pitt do plenty of bad things. But this isn’t one of them. Margot Robbie is fantastic as Nellie LaRoy. And the previously unknown Diego Calva is no longer unknown because he was nothing less than fantastic in this movie as Manuel “Manny” Torres. There’s also a bunch of other people you’d go “hey, look!” too. Flea, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tobey Maguire, Ethan Suplee, Eric Roberts. Well, maybe not a WHOLE bunch… 

The effects? The movie’s not really about effects, so there aren’t that many special effects to be seen. Not to mention, the timeframe of the movie is in the early 1920s, so they didn’t have all that much to be making up. The effects that they did do for the intro party and for the movie scenes that they were shooting were well done.  

A movie about movies. It’s kind of meta how it’s a movie about the changing of eras in the movie industry. But I guess that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? To make you think about how technology goes on whether you’re there or not. At the end of the day, there’s always gonna be somebody else making a movie or writing an article. The most you can do is contribute and leave your mark… 

Written in chapters. It’s not a movie in the sense that it follows a single storyline. It’s written more in the Tarantino form, where it goes in chunks. Some of the sequences are 15-20 minutes long. I like movies like that. It’s almost like mini movies. It gets you more involved and gets you even more entrenched in the story than you would be then if you were jumping around little by little.  

Great characters. Some of the characters are so imaginative and creative that it’s a wonder where they even got the idea from. Like Tobey Maguire’s character. He could just be a gangster. Just a regular old bad guy. But they got the idea to turn him into an ether-drinking murder junkie. And that’s what you call “good writing…” 

Unrivaled dialogue. The dialogue in this script is just fantastic. And, even if you miss half of what Diego says because you don’t understand Spanish, or you’re too busy staring at Margot Robbie’s… physical features… to listen to what she’s saying, the acting talent that comes along with the lines being delivered by all the people in this movie is so superb that it’s almost impossible to not be blown away by how well it really is done. 

This movie is from 2022 and I’m sad that I didn’t watch it until this year. It was easily one of the best movies I’ve seen so far. You should see it too; I guarantee you’ll love it. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…