Honestly, the title is making it sound more exciting than it actually was. Sorry if that’s disappointing.
Babylon – Sigh. I put this off for a few weeks because a three-hour run time is quite daunting and the reviews for it have been all over the place. And unfortunately, more often than not, big ensembles like this have ultimately been a letdown. With all of that, I was neither impressed nor let down. It was just kind of a middle of the road experience. In normal circumstances that would have been fine, but it’s not fine for over three hours. I understood and appreciated much of what Damien Chazelle was trying to do here. He was telling the tale of the highs and lows of the film industry in the 20s – where talkies began pushing out silent films, and probably like the case of this fictional story, pushing out a lot of silent film talent. It was trying to be opulent, but it just mainly came across as egregious, and I wasn’t feeling it. Parts were fun and others made me laugh, but this is not something I’ll ever endure again.
The Pale Blue Eye – Wow! What a fun twist this film ended up delivering at the end! Retired detective Landor is tasked with solving an incident involving a hanged cadet in upstate New York. Although the heart was removed post-mortem, he deduces that the cadet was murdered. Pretty soon, Landor asks for the assistance of another cadet, Edgar Allen Poe (Poe really did serve in the military at a young age!) and the two start digging into a lot of intersecting stories. The local doctor and his family are quite strange, but they are only the beginning of a string of oddities that eventually lead to the truth. The story that ends up getting laid out at the end is intricate and tragic, and it was really interesting getting there! Both Christian Bale and Harry Melling as Landor and Poe, respectively, are magnetic to watch and make the story really tense as it goes along. Scott Cooper’s filmography is super random, but this entry is just as good as the rest!
Elephant Song – Ah, last week was clearly the start of a new obsession. That means not one, but two films featuring Xavier Dolan made the cut! This psychological dramatic thriller was not one of his own directorial efforts, but he was fantastic as 60s asylum patient, Michael Aleen. It seems that two traumatic incidents landed Michael in this psychiatric facility, but I got the feeling he was severely depressed and covering for it by displaying sociopathic behavior. I am not a doctor, so this is just my best guess, but either way it made for some juicy dialogue. Most of the film centers on him withholding information from the director of the facility, Dr. Greene, on the whereabouts of a fellow psychiatrist. The other players here are small, but their individual relationships with both Greene and Aleen make things even more complicated. Very entertaining!
Good Neighbours – I went even further back in Dolan’s acting filmography and settled on this film mainly because I learned last week that he is good friends with Letterkenny co-creator Jacob Tierny. What?! The two collaborated on 2018’s The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, and I’m just really taken by this friendship! Anyways, Dolan’s got a smaller part in this thriller featuring a lot of other well-known Canadians. Victor is a new neighbor in an apartment complex who quickly tries to befriend Spencer and Louise. It’s quickly obvious that the two almost live double lives, but together plot to pin recent serial killer-related murders on Victor! This was quite an interesting thriller, and I’m still blown away that this has any connection to Letterkenny.