comment #1

Mark says ...

Crash Bennetton is funny. Don't pretend that it's the ultimate insult, even though you've long forgotten that you loved Crash when it first came out.

comment #2

tholl-yung says ...

Can't wait to see "Drama/Mex" in competish at AFI fest.

comment #3

Noel Murray says ...

I'm one of those critics who's mixed on BABEL, just as I was mixed on 21 GRAMS. I was a big fan of AMORES PERROS, but I feel that in their last two films, Innaritu and Arriaga have forgotten how to vary the speed of their pitches. The wit of AMORES PERROS has vanished, replaced by relentless miserabilism. Every crisis is ratcheted up to absurd degrees. In the case of both 21 GRAMS and BABEL, I felt for the first hour like I was watching a masterpiece, and then by the second hour I gave up on both of them, because the waves of angst kept gathering momentum and never crashing.

That said, I think Innaritu is a brilliant visual stylist, and the cross-cut party sequence -- Mexico and Japan -- in BABEL is some of the most thrilling filmmaking I've seen this year. I expect his movies to improve now that he and Arriaga are quits.

comment #4

erniesouchak says ...

Sure, they were made by the same creative team, but '21 Grams' and 'Babel' are obsessed with grieving in ways 'Amores Perros' isn't. Although I found all 3 films an occasionally trying sit -- even 'Amores Perros,' where I wished that supermodel would fall down the hole with little Richie -- my hat's off to these boys for focusing on ADULT subject matter, which American films avoid like the plague.

comment #5

Devin Faraci says ...

This is a battle of the elites, since the average moviegoer won't ever give a shit about this movie.

comment #6

JD says ...

99 times out of 100, Guillermo del Toro's taste would be anathema to Jeffrey Wells. On the one occasion that they agree, however, you better believe Jeff is gonna use it (while also calling people like Del Toro "bright and perceptive viewers"). Forget gossip columnist, I think Jeff may be a lawyer.

comment #7

MattyC says ...

JD:

Agreed. However, it's like Gene Siskel said the year that he and Ebert both chose Fargo as their #1 movie: If we disagree, one of us has to be wrong, but if we agree, you'd better believe we're right.

I'm paraphrasing, obviously.

comment #8

MattyC says ...

T.H.:

I feel like every little one-liner you write is for an audience of about 3 people, and I'm not one of them. Not a flame, just stating my own apparent ignorance of whatever inside-Hollywood info that would make this statement funny:

"Can't wait to see "Drama/Mex" in competish at AFI fest"

comment #9

The Winchester says ...

So let me get this straight, Samuel L Jackson dismisses Babel as Crash Benetton, then makes Snakes on a Plane.

And yet more people will listen to his comment then that of critics?

comment #10

tholl-yung says ...

A hardy, har-har, it's the last one.

http://filmguide.afifest.com/tixSYS/2006/filmguide/title-detail.php?Range=CD&ShowShorts=Y&ShowPast=N

comment #11

Hallick says ...

"Who's right? Obviously no one, but I know this: Caro & Co. are being overly harsh on a film that they know full well is, at the very least, quality merchandise."

Nuh-uh - they don't "know" that. You're trying to portray "Babel" as universally unassailable on at least some basic level when it's not (especially not, in this instance, for I really don't feel a concensus building anywhere close to where you're putting it) - but nothing else is either. Every masterpiece has detractors and haters and people who do not and will never get it. Babel isn't even an aforementioned Streetcar Named Desire moment of our times. And honestly, Caro and co. don't have to like or respectfully appreciate Babel. The world has masterpieces aplenty for every individual.

I wouldn't take this kind of condescending attitude towards my feelings about a particularly popular movie any more than you'd accept the same for your feelings about something like The Lord of the Rings.

comment #12

ltlewis3 says ...

Is BABEL a quality work? Yes. Is BABEL entertaining? Not in my opinion. But the same can be said for many movies people love and admire or heap awards on. One striking example is THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Having seen it once, I don't think I will ever sit through it again. Having seen BABEL once, I don't think I will ever sit through it again. The Japanese story doesn't fit well with the other two stories. You find out fairly early in the third act what the connection is. Then at the end when the connection is confirmed by the Japanese detective nothing new is added to make you say "aha, that is how it ties in." The girl at the center of the segment is not the character tied to the other stories. And the movie doesn't give me enough to, on it's own, make the link that her disability fits the overall theme.

comment #13

NYCritic says ...

I'm also one of the critics who didn't go ga-ga over BABEL. I line up with poster Noel Murray. I thought AMORES PERROS was very good, mostly because it was a breakthrough film for the director and writer. 21 GRAMS, despite the high profile cast, didn't quite work for me. It had moments but overall, I felt there were problems. BABEL falls into the same category. There are some superb moments, but after the first hour, I felt everything began to drag. I found it really hard to keep focused on the movie.

comment #14

Craig Kennedy says ...

For a week now I've been trying to pinpoint why this movie didn't grab me the way it did people who are raving about it.

My problem is that the Western tourist stereotype story that ties the whole thing together was the weakest part of the film for me. I loved the Japan story and the story of the Moroccan boys and the Mexico story but the lynchpin was a dud. Much of the film’s power was sapped and I left the theater having been moved only sporadically.

I’m still not sure why the central story didn’t work for me. Maybe it was because the characters were tired stereotypes and they were difficult to sympathize with. Maybe the whole thing works better for people with children.

comment #15

jesse says ...

Yeah, you know, I'm sorry, I don't buy BABEL as one of those movies where you have to acknowledge that it's high-level stuff even if you're writing a mediocre review. I kind of liked the movie, too, so I'm not particularly saying that it's *not* a decent effort on many levels. The acting is good, and the story is less of a miserable wallow than 21 GRAMS, the last overrated movie from these guys. But are the characters any less schematic or contrived than the CRASH batch? I'd argue no; they're just the artier-house version.

I frankly don't buy Innaritu as a virtuoso director, either; maybe I'm too surface-oriented, but I don't recall a lot of images or shots or anything from his last two films (I haven't seen AMORES PERROS yet, though, and it sounds like it may be the best of the three).

cjKennedy, I agree with you about the Morocco section. Pitt is very good and it's certainly a wrenching situation, but I didn't even get why those characters would be in Morocco in the first place. You see in their first scene that they're in a troubled marriage, and that she's obviously freaked out about even using the ice in this country. So at what point did they take these elements of their personalities and decide on MOROCCO as their marriage-repairing vay-kay?? It's not that I don't believe a couple wouldn't wind up miserable on a trip that neither really wanted to go on, but to suggest the natural place this would occur is a place neither character seems even remotely interested in pushes it for me. A minor detail, but it stuck with me.

Actually, a version of that disparity happened in the Mexico story, too -- people seemed to be behaving in a way that maximizes tragedy, not arriving at tragedy (or near-tragedy) in normal, human ways. It all seems so heightened to emphasize the lack of understanding and all that.

So while I might give BABEL a mild thumbs-up, it's actually exactly the kind of movie I can like while understanding totally why someone else would dismiss it outright.