It doesn't go anywhere. You see the same things over and over. So you might as well get off.

Babylon — 2/5

Yeah yeah, you like making movies about the pros and cons of being an artist. Listen, I love that as a theme!!! I think it's great!! But where La La Land and Whiplash (which has grown in my eyes since my so-so review) manage to capture the greatness underlined with unhappiness, the trade-off that has to occur, the deal at the crossroads with the relative devils to live fulfilled but still unsatisfied lives... here it's just trainwreck. There's no sense of the highness that comes with the low, the low that are capable of highs, the majesty at the swamp. The first thirty minutes, arguably, can speak to that, but it's all just hedonistic excess, the party you want to be invited to, blown pupils from staring directly into the light, but it doesn't feel like the world I want to be a part of, so despite my enjoyment of the energy, it doesn't hook me and then when the rest of the movie tears the hook out of the fish's mouth, I in turn don't feel the pain that I think he wants me to feel. Maybe it's just a problem for me. I think your enjoyment of the movie comes down to whether you'd want to be at the party at the beginning of the movie. It's not for me. And so it's that album the artist makes after they're rich and famous and all they talk about is how much money they have and how hard it is to be famous. True, for them, and for some, but they've crossed into the void of unrelatability. In the end, it's just a bigger and lesser version of 'Hail, Caesar!'; it's final scene a poor approximation of 'Cinema Paradiso.' It's the Cary Grant quote about the trolley. It's a collage of all the worst things about the things you love.

Also, I feel bad for Margot Robbie. I feel like she's a genuinely great actress, and she does a good job in everything she's in, but the worlds around her rarely match up to what she's bringing to it, and this one doesn't fit her at all. She's outside of time and space.