A surprisingly attractive thriller despite using many cliches (how it could be different in this day and age?).
My blog reviews movies as political, historical or social commentary with intentional disregard for their artistic or cinematic value. One foe of American political scientists and economists is that they ignore movies as sources to inform them on changes in American culture, view exoticism as a hallmark of "foreigness" and, at the same time, impart American values and judgment to foreign movies.
Monday, January 30, 2023
Saturday, January 28, 2023
Babylon.
These days director's stature can be gauged by the ability to cast Margot Robbie. If Margot's vehicle "Amsterdam" was undercooked, Babylon is overcooked with too many plotlines to untangle them all by the end. To manage these plotlines they applied a device already employed (unsuccessfully) by the end of the "Boardwalk Empire", that is adding another plotline as a scaffolding to support the previous one. The scenes of fighting with the snake as well as the suicide of the Brad Pitt's hero, and, gigantic distraction in the form of underground palace of De Sadean pleasures would be completely unnecessary if the auteurs followed logic of the characters and made already existing plotlines deeper -- the personalities of the wives of Brad Pitt, his business manager, etc.