Review of Babylon and M3GAN
Out in April on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK, we take a look at Babylon and M3GAN (scroll down) which hit the shelves later this month.
Babylon (2023) Dir. Damien Chazelle
From the film’s old Paramount logo we are whisked away to 1920s California in Damien Chazelle’s dirty and indulgent exploration of the movie industry as it move from silent to sound films.
Manny (Diego Calva in a great warm performance) meets Nellie LaRoy (a sleazy and riotous Margot Robbie) at an all-star mansion party and together they seek fame and fortune in the movies.
Nellie ends up as a background extra on a film set before becoming a star in her own right, whilst Manny meets Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), an experienced film star whose popularity is decreasing but one who helps him along in his career.
With both manoeuvring in the industry, the wise Manny adapts to the technical changes and becomes a director whilst Nellie begins a spiral of drugs, booze and high-stakes gambling. Despite Manny’s attempts to help get her life together, Nellie continues to spit (or vomit) in the face of her high-society peers and as he begins to rise, she falls further into desperation and debt.
The ensemble cast do well with their hedonistic adventures which the film revels in from the start. Lavish parties, literal p*ss and sh*t and naked flesh and thunderous music all appear in the first 5 minutes in a Gatsby party turned up to 11. The rise and fall period Hollywood narrative is hardly new but Chazelle injects a ton of black comedy set-pieces, gaudy locations and outlandish performances which I was more than on board for.
It’s been noted for its historical inaccuracy (go watch a documentary I say) and its distance from the true life issues but frankly I’ve been starving for a decadent slice of Hollywood glamour without all the baggage of a moral sermon. And Chazelle provides an appropriate portrait of the ghastly and ugly side of humanity – one in which we haven’t been allowed to wallow in since The Wolf of Wall Street. And I feel audiences should be allowed to do so without feeling guilty that we’re enjoying the many trials and troubles of these total shits.
Good support comes from Tobey Maguire as an outlandish gangster (he could be the next Joker based on this terrifying turn) as well as Jean Smart. And along for the journey are Margot Robbie look-a-like Samara Weaving and Olivia Wilde, and even crazier casting choices like Eric Roberts, Spike Jonze and even Flea.
There are flaws though – stories involving a Chinese-American lesbian cabaret singer (Li Jun Li) and the racism faced by an African-American trumpeter (Jovan Adepo) are severely lacking with their plots under-cooked. There was surely enough time in the film’s 3-hour length to expand upon their unjust experiences.
Babylon is definitely overstuffed, overplayed and overlong but I was totally here for all of it. I was swept up in its degeneracy and surface pleasures and it felt glorious not to be given a(nother) lesson on society’s ills. And Chazelle’s music-film background (La La Land, Whiplash) allows the up-tempo music, like the fast-paced visuals, to push us forward to the next debauched sequence.
In the end, Babylon is a cluttered, lewd and bawdy experience and one that takes us on a titillating voyage of vulgarity down the Hollywood walk of shame.
★★★★★
5/5
Michael Sales
Babylon is available on UK home release on April 3rd 2023
M3GAN (2023) Dir. Gerard Johnstone
“She looks demented”. Profound words it seems.
Well, since the dawn of cinema we’ve seen androids out of control in films like The Terminator and I, Robot, whilst murderous toy dolls (seen in every iteration of the Child’s Play franchise) are an established staple of the horror genre.
But now we see the two evils combine in a new tech-horror with plenty of tongue-in-cheek swipes at contemporary AI concerns. Allison Williams (who honed her satirical horror chops in Get Out and The Perfection) plays roboticist Gemma, who adopts her orphaned young niece Cady (an excellent Violet McGraw) and helps her overcome the trauma of losing her parents by providing a Model 3 Generative ANdroid (M3GAN) as her robotic pal.
Eventually taking on a parental role, M3GAN and Cady develop an emotional attachment but the ‘bot’s advanced learning means her protective programming has fatal consequences if she feels people are even a mild threat to Cady. M3GAN’s influences are many – the eye tracking boot-up is directly from Robocop, whilst fake adverts hark to Arnie films Total Recall and The Sixth Day – whilst the horror of a frightfully self-aware toy is pure Chucky territory.
The film doesn’t skimp around some interesting themes – spending less time with children and the detrimental effect of technology acting as a surrogate parent. A psychotherapist character acts as a Q & A for the audience and I found it mostly entertaining despite its heavy-handed borrowing from similar fare.
And at times the satire spills over into pure comedy - although it's fair to say that despite a jump scare here or there, it's never truly horrifying, gory or chilling. Maybe a little creepy with some real-life uncanny valley going on. But the kills and OTT violence come too late and it doesn't particularly get going until late in the final act.
From the Tamagotchi, through to Furby, Asimo and the current Boston Dynamic ‘droids, humans’ fascination with robots is timeless and M3GAN shows that although the path to AI is paved with honourable intentions, the moral and literal horrors of a speedy solution could be a downfall of our own making.
Plus, y’know, Skynet.
★★★
3/5
Michael Sales
M3GAN is available on UK home release on April 17th 2023
