Something to watch tonight: Thursday 5 September

Babel (Iñárritu, 2006)

Just a quick one today, but a good one all the same. Babel by Alejandro González Iñárritu has just landed on Netflix and the algorithm might not bring it to the surface for you.

Back in January 2007, I wrote this little capsule review:

Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu) is one of the best films of this or any year, a serious, meditative snapshot of our world thorough a stranger’s eyes. Four stories are told in parallel, three immediately linked and the connections with the fourth gently revealed by the end. It has a kind of science-fiction feel about it as we see four very different world cultures presented as if they could be other planets, alien territory yet eerily familiar.

I realise that, since Birdman and The Revenant, Iñárritu has ceased to be lots of people’s cup of tea but I think his work is still worth reckoning with. I notice that his most recent film, BARDO: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, didn’t even get released in New Zealand (it did in Australia) but is also on Netflix and no one thought to tell me.

Also in that 2007 summer holiday rundown from the Capital Times: a “Disfunctional Royal Family” double-feature of The Queen (Stephen Frears) and Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola); Shawn Levy’s Night at the Museum and Tony Scott’s “preposterous time-travel thriller” Déjà Vu; a “bravura performance” from Ed Harris as the great composer in Copying Beethoven; the “moody and evocative” Argentinian drama The Aura; the animated penguins of Happy Feet and the animated farm animals of Charlotte’s Web; The Valet, The Prestige and Four Last Songs; and finally the “sadistic violence” double-feature of Saw III and Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto (“… the usual Hollywood rubbish dressed up in National Geographic clothing. Gibson is a dangerous extremist – not just in purely cinematic terms – and the foul politics of Apocalypto are not made up for by the boisterous filmmaking.)

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Where to watch Babel

Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Ireland and UK : Streaming on Netflix

USA: Streaming on Paramount+