The bad old daze
First, the good news: you have probably never seen a movie quite like Babylon before.
And now, the bad news: you will definitely not want to see a movie anything like Babylon again.
This is three hours of your life destined to be spent in a bumnumbing, finger-drumming, eyeball-dazzling, brainfrazzling daze.
The whole experience is like being trapped inside an overinflated party balloon as it is clumsily untied and let go.
Yes, you are guaranteed a wild and unpredictable ride. However, all those sudden changes of direction cannot change the irrefutable fact it will all end nowhere in particular.
Like the recent Steven Spielberg-directed biopic The Fabelmans, Babylon is a nostalgic movie about the miracle of movies.
In The Fabelmans, that miracle is one of lights, cameras and action fused through a youngster’s imagination in the early 1960s.
In Babylon, it is the mid-to-late 1920s, and the miracle happening daily in Hollywood is that movies even get made at all.
This is because on a nightly basis, the whole town is doing shots, taking snorts and losing clothing from sundown to sunrise.
The irony of this noisy spectacle is that Hollywood is still a silentmovie town, though it won’t be for very much longer.
The arrival of sound will have severe and lasting career implications for stars of all kinds, whether they be established or rising.
Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) may not have enough self-awareness left to see the writing on the wall. He’s a huge name with cinema audiences, but jaded Jack traded all of his fleeting success for non-stop excess some time ago. It is too late to turn back now.
Speaking of late, screen newcomer Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) may have arrived at the big party just as its most sensible guests are heading for the exits. Nellie wants the fame, but couldn’t care less about the fortune that comes with it. Another irreversible mistake is slowly being made.
As for Manny Torres (Diego Calva), he is simply too out of his depth to help pull Jack and Nellie out of their terminal tailspins.
His steady ascent through the Hollywood ranks starts as Jack’s gofer, and ends as a studio executive. Along the way, he becomes both an ardent admirer of Nellie on her way up, and a helpless bystander on her way down.
While Babylon as a movie is forever abundant with colour, atmosphere and impressively impulsive bursts of energy, it is frustratingly short on coherency or relevance. It is always showing us a lot, but never really telling us much.
While Pitt and Robbie exude their usual levels of irresistible screen charisma – and admittedly fit their roles perfectly – the movie just can’t rise to the occasion warranted by their presence.
A considerable part of the problem is their co-star Calva, a less-thangripping third wheel in proceedings who gets too much screen time for too little return. Babylon is in cinemas now
M3GAN (M) ★★★★☆
General release
It’s scary, it’s funny, it’s creepy and it’s campy – almost always at the same time. That should be recommendation enough for an expertly constructed thriller that will be as troubling or amusing as you wish it to be.
The title character is an artificial intelligencepowered android that deserves instant admission to the Creepy Movie Doll Hall of Fame. However, don’t go writing M3GAN off as some kind of Annabelle or Chucky clone. Nope. This eerily efficient and cheerily psychopathic robot is a true original, a traumatising trailblazer that will leave you never trusting technology or toys ever, ever again. The story begins with a M3GAN prototype entering the life of a lonely young orphan named Cady (Violet McGraw). Supposedly as a friend and companion, but increasingly as an over-protective bodyguard. Cady’s aunt Gemma (Allison Williams) just happens to be the roboticist who first programmed M3GAN into being, and is slow to realise there are some bugs in the software that need a quick fix. The problem facing all involved in an everescalating nightmare is that M3GAN is one selfupdating step ahead of her creator, which is bad news for just about everyone. This is clever, sharp and surprisingly impacting stuff. Do track it down if you like your horror lean, mean and mirthful.
MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (PG) ★★★★☆
Selected cinemas
This beautiful, touching and wryly amusing little movie is an unheralded gem just waiting to be discovered and treasured by those willing to go and find it. Though not directly targeting children or adults, this evocative and involving work of stop-motion animation will effortlessly connect with viewers of all ages in many telling ways.
The star of the show is Marcel (voiced by Jenny Slate), a thoughtful and well-mannered sea shell who befriends a documentary filmmaker and allows him access to a “community” otherwise undetected by the human eye. What follows is a whimsical, yet wise journey into the unknown that cannot help but charm the socks off you.
Lovely work that deserves to find and delight a much wider audience. Co-stars Isabella Rossellini.