Film Bank

A new film has been added to my "don't see" list: Babel. It joins Lost in Translation and Crash as mediocre films that strike it big with viewers who obviously think that if it's artsy, it's excellent.

My film buddy and I wanted to see all the Academy-nominated films prior to the awards, and this one has been on the to-do list. Buzz has been good, but today we learned that "buzz" is another way of saying, "you can fool some of the people some of the time, and most of the people most of the time."

It's another Crash, one of those out-of-focus, swirling camera work film montages of people's lives that somehow miraculously intersect: call it cosmic connection. This one features a rifle, a Japanese businessman who gave it to the Moroccan guide, whose son uses it to shoot at a tourist bus, which wounds an American woman, whose children are back in San Diego with a Mexican housekeeper who takes them to Mexico for her son's wedding ... and loses the children in the desert while their mother is struggling to live in Morocco. There's also the daughter of the Japanese businessman, a deaf mute who is seeking for something she believes she can find by taking off her panties.

It's not just the $8 to get into the movie, but it's the feeling of what the heck? This movie is mediocre at best, and pretty bad at worst, so why does it rate 3 stars? I guess if everyone speaks in their native tongue, we're supposed to think we're missing something when the performances aren't spectacular.

Brad Pitt walks through the role; Kate Blanchette wears her wound well and hits the pot she pees in; the natives from three different countries visually argue for better dental hygiene; and the director must have been surprised when he was nominated for the Academy Award because I'm sure he knew that the film fits the category of "best copy cat," rather than best film and/or best director.

Nope, not buying the Babel DVD, but I may see the film another friend saw today, Iwo Jima, which she said is so engrossing that she found herself rooting for the Japanese to prevail when the Americans invaded their turf. Now, that has to be a pretty good film!