Going Around in Circles, Disjointed ‘On Swift Horses’ Is Frustrating Misdirect

Going Around in Circles, Disjointed ‘On Swift Horses’ Is Frustrating Misdirect

By Lynn Venhaus

Pretty people and sun-dappled scenery wind up being ineffective in a shallow head-scratcher, “On Swift Horses,” a stagnant 1950s melodrama heavy on turgid soap opera and light on authentic emotion.

Two card sharks, a freedom-yearning woman from Kansas, and a traditional breadwinner in the 1950s seek the suburban American Dream after the Korean War. While their lives intersect, they are actually very far apart in their wants, needs and desires.

Trying to imitate Douglas Sirk’s lush films from that era, director Daniel Minahan’s queer period piece addresses how homosexuals had to remain closeted during a very repressed and cookie-cutter time but fails to connect in any meaningful way.

An example of style over substance, this is the kind of film where chain-smoking cigarettes substitute for pensive thoughts and inner torment. And they all live in the shadows.

Sirk, who made “Magnificent Obsession,” “All That Heaven Allows,” “Written on the Wind,” and “Imitation of Life” from 1954 to 1959, captured attractive people who were trapped by social conditions, and his overwrought stories appealed because his filming featured splendid cinematic set pieces, and matinee idols like Rock Hudson and Lana Turner.

With such well-regarded performers as Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi and Will Poulter in what you may think is a seductive love triangle (trailer is a misdirect), one hoped they’d make us care about their journeys, but the story fails to provide reasons to be interested in what happens.

The trio is built up to appear “longing,” only they smolder and do not ignite. This disjointed adaptation of Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel by screenwriter Bryce Kass is overstuffed, not satisfying with basics. Neither did his lackluster “Lizzie” in 2018, which did not go far enough in fleshing out accused ax murderer Lizzie Borden.

Sure, they are a tempting pair, Elordi and Edgar-Jones, but do their character’s mutual connection benefit either? They spend most of their time in separate turmoil, with only a few scenes together.ccc

Oh, the trio try for big emotions, but it’s dialed down, as they speak in hushed tones and move around in scenes lit in such moody, murky atmospheres that it is almost too dark, so that is aggravating. Now, the stylish costumes designed by Jeriana San Juan, and distinct make-up and hairstyles are fabulous, but that can’t be the only selling point.

Muriel (Edgar-Jones) chafes at convention – doomed to be a typical wife in post-war America although she reluctantly attempts to fit in — while brothers Lee (Poulter) and Julius (Elordi) are Korean War veterans. The film starts in 1952 but it’s not clear how much time passes.

These young adults have different goals and desires, but fumble badly in their communication with each other. Lee talks in code about his wayward, secretive brother Julius who is always flirting with the wild side. “He has passions of his own. He’s just not like us,” he tells his wife.

The handsome Julius is a smooth gambler and gay hustler who falls in love with Henry (Diego Calva) while working in Las Vegas. Much of the interaction doesn’t feel genuine, and lack of convincing chemistry is an issue.

However, Elordi and Edgar-Jones have a spark when Julius and Muriel meet, becoming pen pals and share some, but not all, of their secrets. Don’t think this is going anywhere because it’s not.

At the diner she works at, Muriel overhears customers talking about their picks for the racetrack, so she starts playing the ponies with those tips. It’s a thrill for her to win and live a double life, stashing away the cash without her husband’s knowledge.

Lee, a total straight arrow who loves his wife and desperately wants the fantasy suburban life including a ranch house in a subdivision that signals middle-class prosperity. Developers are buying up farms and fields in San Diego for the “Baby Boom.”

One of the neighboring farms where Muriel purchases eggs and takes a shine to olives – and the woman selling them, Sandra (Sasha Calle). They become entangled in a clandestine affair.

Those hiding secrets are on a collision course for crash-and-burns, but whether you want to invest in their mess depends on how impatient you feel, for the pace is sluggish and resolutions are prolonged. And why does it take nearly 2 hours to tell this insipid story?

I fret that Elordi, promising as Elvis in “Priscilla” and as the rich golden-boy Felix in “Saltburn,” is a one-trick pony, destined to be the bad boy with the sad eyes. Let’s hope not, because he’s playing Heathcliff to Margot Robbie’s Catherine in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Bronte’s classic gothic novel “Wuthering Heights,” due out next year.

Poulter, who seems to be everywhere these days, recently in “Warfare” and “Death of a Unicorn,” is saddled with an underdeveloped character and being boxed in as the cuckolded husband. And would you believe he and Elordi are brothers?

After taking risks, Edgar-Jones’ character is mired in blandness. The actress, feisty in last year’s “Twisters” and superb in “Where the Crawdads Sing,” makes Muriel sympathetic but needed to give her more dimension. It’s a letdown.

Tell us something we don’t know and would like to know and not foist half-baked performative junk at us and call it alluring. “On Swift Horses” goes in circles and limps to the finish line with a clumsy ending that doesn’t answer any questions raised. It’s a safe bet you can skip this gussied-up charade.

“On Swift Horses” is a 2025 drama directed by Daniel Minahan and starring Jacob Elordi, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Will Poulter, Diego Calva and Sasha Calle. Its run time is 1 hour, 57 minutes, and it’s rated R for sexual content, nudity and some language. It opens in theatres April 25. Lynn’s Grade: D+

‘Babylon’ Is a Full-Tilt Skewering of Hollywood

‘Babylon’ Is a Full-Tilt Skewering of Hollywood

By Alex McPherson 

Vulgar, shocking, but irresistible, Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” is a toxic love letter to cinema that’s impossible to look away from, even in its most extreme moments.

Chazelle’s three-hour extravaganza mostly takes place in Hollywood from the late 1920s to 1930s, following actors and below-the-line workers navigating a ruthless world of celebrity as the industry transitions from silent films to talkies.

We begin with Manuel “Manny” Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican immigrant and aspiring filmmaker working odd jobs for studio bigwigs in the hopes of breaking into the industry himself, transporting an elephant to a party at a Kinescope executive’s mansion. While Manny and helpers try to push their oversized truck up a hill, the elephant proceeds to defecate all over them (the camera gives us an up-close look at the animal’s anus as it’s smeared in feces). Indeed, this outrageous moment accurately reflects the sort of gross-out humor prevalent throughout the entirety of “Babylon” — every type of fluid comes into play during the runtime.

The party Manny’s en route to is, unsurprisingly, completely insane, filmed in unflinching long takes by cinematographer Linus Sandgren. Drugs are plentiful, lewd sex acts take place wherever you look, and enthusiastic partygoers dance as a jazzy band (led by the established musician Sidney Palmer, earnestly played by Jovan Adepo) blares Justin Hurwitz’s jaw-droppingly amazing score. Plus, there’s that elephant. 

Amid the chaos, though, Manny meets the love of his life, a brazen, New Jersey-born starlet named Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) who crashes the gathering , and who — in between snorting a seemingly never-ending supply of cocaine — draws enough attention to herself that she scores her first film role (the original actor overdosed that night).

Brad Pitt and Diego Calva

Despite any and all red flags, it’s love at first sight for Manny — they’re both outsiders in search of something greater than themselves. In attendance as well is Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), an alcoholic, womanizing actor who’s made his career in silent films. Manny is tasked with driving him home the next day, and Jack helps him score some assistant jobs on sets. 

As the years tick by and these passionate souls experience soaring highs and cacophonous lows amid the changing tides of entertainment and mental health, “Babylon” refuses to slow down or give viewers time to process the crazy narrative on display.

By juggling so many characters — each encountering different facets of Hollywood’s less-than-glamorous side — the film can’t quite give each of them time to fully sink in, but the tonal whiplash ultimately works to its benefit. By the end, I felt beat up. But just like the ravenous cravings that drive the characters back to the silver screen, I wanted more.

As you can tell, “Babylon” isn’t for everyone. The full-throttle nature of Chazelle’s film will undoubtedly turn off many viewers — but lack of restraint is the point. With hectic editing jumping between characters and years, camerawork full of whip pans, zooms, and dolly shots (calling to mind the early work of Paul Thomas Anderson), and Hurwitz’s aforementioned dynamic music, the film is a near-overwhelming sensory overload.

Scenes of depravity and carnage are accompanied by those showcasing the movie-making process. We see Jack and Nellie shine in their element, all while film crews suffer in the background (some with injuries, or worse) — illustrating the blood, sweat, and tears going into the art we might take for granted. One extended scene featuring Nellie acting on a set that’s trying (and often failing) to record sound smoothly, is sweaty, intense, and darkly hilarious. 

Jean Smart as Elinor St John

The screenplay, by Chazelle, opts for broad satire most of the time, with humor that only sporadically lands. The skewering of studio bigwigs and working conditions is a bit much, to say the least. But again, the brutality serves to underline the idea of cinema being an art we’re drawn to through thick and thin — the power of images being an all-encompassing force of escape and transformation, visualized in the brilliantly trippy ending.  

These characters, with varying degrees of privilege, are swept up into a system that chews them up and spits them out as very different people. They’re shells of who they once were, having sacrificed their well-being for the purpose of entertainment. Manny ascends the corporate ladder, but loses part of his cultural heritage in the process, having to adapt to increasingly repressive policies.

Jack, crestfallen, struggles to accept his dimming star power, and Nellie (with Robbie fully in command of her craft), is chasing the next high (even if that means “fighting” a snake). She’s undeniably talented, yet deeply insecure stemming from a vague yet turbulent childhood and grappling with a misogynistic public sphere.

Li Jun Li plays Lady Fay Zhu and Jovan Adepo (back right) plays Sidney Palmer in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.

Palmer and Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li) contend with racist attitudes, forcing them to “change” to find success. It’s all rather depressing in the end, and it’s true that a more focused approach would have given “Babylon” additional emotional weight, but it effectively shows lives in flux, spiraling toward harsh reckonings.

Also worth noting are smaller turns from Jean Smart as an intelligent yet unhinged gossip columnist named Elinor St. John, a stressed-out Flea as a studio fixer, and Tobey Maguire as a skin-crawling mob boss James McKay. The whole ensemble — some heavily exaggerated, others more down-to-earth — perfectly fits this wild-and-woolly tale.

This is a maximalist, boundary-pushing, and meaty film to digest. Overstuffed though it is, “Babylon” is a thrill to watch, with assured direction and style out the wazoo. Fair warning, though: if you have a weak stomach, avoid at all costs.

“Babylon” is a 2022 drama written and directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva and Jean Smart. It is rated R for strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity, bloody violence, drug use, and pervasive language and the runtime is 3 hours, 9 minutes. It opened in theaters Dec. 23. Alex’s Grade: A-

Indulgent, Vulgar ‘Babylon’ Focuses On Sleazy ‘Show’ and Callous ‘Biz’

Indulgent, Vulgar ‘Babylon’ Focuses On Sleazy ‘Show’ and Callous ‘Biz’

By Lynn Venhaus

Loud, vulgar, and hollow, “Babylon” is an excessive look at nascent Hollywood without much to say and even less to feel despite its 189-minutes run time.

The drama traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during the silent-to-talking pictures era in early Hollywood, focusing on uninhibited decadence and depravity.

Meant to both celebrate Tinsel Town as a dream factory and to pull back the curtain on a morally bankrupt culture, “Babylon” is a cumbersome mess from writer-director Damien Chazelle, who has crafted pretty images – and some disgusting things that you can’t unsee — in a story without heart or soul.

Chazelle, the youngest Best Director in Oscar history for “La la Land,” when he was 32, has tackled a behind-the-scenes look at aspiring hopefuls in the industry before. But while that opus had characters you cared about and was sprinkled with pixie dust, the five storylines in this frenzied panorama are callous caricatures of ambition and downward spirals.

Brad Pitt appears to be on automatic pilot as hard-drinking matinee idol Jack Conrad, a suave player with a trail of ex-wives. Margot Robbie is dialed up to 11 as coarse New Jersey-born Nellie La Roy, a combative, self-destructive starlet. Newcomer Diego Calva stands out as dreamer Manny Torres, who becomes useful as a studio ‘fixer’ but is unfinished as a character. Jovan Adepo is gut-wrenching as Sidney Powell, a black bandleader facing demeaning requests – in a too-brief storyline. And Jean Smart has one showy scene as Elinor St. John, a powerful gossip columnist modeled after Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, but otherwise her performance is perfunctory.

Tobey Maguire

That results in a very busy scenario, with a sprawling cast. Tobey Maguire has an unsettling cameo as a degenerate who thrives on sleaze. And blink and you’ll miss Olivia Wilde as one of Jack’s wives, Katherine Waterston as one of his soon-to-be ex’s, Max Minghella as Irving Thalberg and Chloe Fineman as Marion Davies.

The opening 30-minutes are a shocking display of debauchery – those squeamish about bodily fluids, you are warned — and it gets worse from there, but is there anything new to say in concentrating on bizarre grotesqueness and cocaine-fueled party guests?

If you are familiar with Kenneth Anger’s tawdry tattletale, “Hollywood Babylon,” published in 1959 but so controversial that it was unavailable 1965-1975, and its follow-up in 1984, then you’ve read about the headline-grabbing bad behavior of fame-seekers in that era.

The film begins in 1926, then depicts how the change to talkies affected the business. In perhaps the best scene, the problems in the transition wreak havoc on a set with La Roy the ingenue. Frustration leads to more belligerent actions and escalating tirades, and a casualty happens that’s treated so cavalierly, it’s just hard to wrap your head around the attitudes.

The film’s assorted narcissists, posers, and hangers-on — people who may have sold their souls and are drawn, like moths to a flame, to the star-making machinery – eventually burn out or fade away. But Chazelle cheats us with an unsatisfactory wrap-up of their fates in a puzzling finale.

A stunning presence on screen, Robbie demands attention as someone who craves the spotlight but loses her luster when she has too many walks on the wild side. She has played complicated women before – Tonya Harding in “I, Tonya” and Harley Quinn in “Suicide Squad” and “Birds of Prey,” but it’s hard to muster sympathy for such an unlikable character as vainglorious Nellie.

Take away the outrageous examples of living out loud and the gross-outs (projectile vomit, bone-crunching rat-eating, kinky sex acts and funhouse freaks), “Babylon” is hard to figure out the endgame. Why should we care?

Technically, the artisan work is first-rate. Justin Hurwitz’s jazzy propulsive score captures the hedonistic time while cinematographer Linus Sandgren goes big on a grandiose scale, as does production designer Florencia Martin. The man-made opulence contrasts with the undeveloped Southern California hillsides that the cinema pioneers used for their sandboxes and playgrounds.

Above all, disappointment rests with Chazelle, who needed to get out of his own way – and pick a lane. You can’t have it both ways. He demonstrated such a flair for imaginative storytelling in “Whiplash,” “La la Land,” and “First Man,” that “Babylon” made me angry. He took the joy out of make-believe, which is his point, I suppose, but made it repulsive.

We need the magic of movies as an escape from cruel everyday realities, to engage us with flights of fancy. “Babylon” collapses from the weight of its ambition, a nihilistic abyss. It’s a colossal waste of time, talent, and money.

“Babylon” is a 2022 drama written and directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva and Jean Smart. It is rated R for strong and crude sexual content, graphic nudity, bloody violence, drug use, and pervasive language and the runtime is 3 hours, 9 minutes. It opened in theaters Dec. 23. Lynn’s Grade: D.

Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.