Babel (HD DVD)

Reviewed by:
Gene Newman

Finally, a movie that explains what Brad Pitt, a Mexican nanny, a horny/deaf/really cute Japanese girls and goat herders in Morocco have in common. It's pretty complex, but here's the short of it: Some kids playing with a rifle in the desert set off a global incident. Even though we're getting a bit tired of these movies with intersecting story lines, at no point did we want to turn it off. Even though some parts feel more like political statements. (The whole forced immigration arc belonged in its own movie.) Watching this in HD definitely made a huge difference; it highlighted the exotic locations perfectly and made the subtitles much less of a distraction. It's also available on regular DVD; but if you have the means, HD or Blu-ray are necessities. There aren't any extras, which is a shame since we were sorta interested in learning more about what director Alejandro González Iñárritu was going for. But we can see a superspecial edition on the horizon after awards season. It already took home the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture—Drama and an Oscar wouldn't be that surprising. Especially since this is just like Crash, only global and less preachy.

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