Babylon

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Babylon

source: Babylon

source: Babylon

I gave up after the first hour. I have been a follower of movies from the 20's 30's and 40's and amateur film historian for over 45 years. This is supposed to be a tribute somehow? At least try to capture the spirit and style of the 20''s please. Music, dancing, clothing, mannerisms, speech- no effort made to recreate the actual era. Mini-Halter dresses worn with high heeled boots, table dancing like modern strippers flashing modern day panties. People shaking like they're at a Sex Pistols concert instead of actual dances that were popular like the Charleston. Yes, the 20's in Hollywood were a lot more decadent than anyone let on at the time but this is ridiculous . Characters supposedly based on John Gilbert, Anna May Wong, Clara Bow, a few references to other actual real life people and incidents, but to anyone that is a true fan of early Hollywood mostly a degrading, insulting, historically inaccurate. Also extremely boring.

I love the cinema! Babylon is a spectacular epic film, truly a masterpiece. I think this movie deserves the Oscar for best picture of the year. It is a remarkable story following several characters living the dream and the starlight of Hollywood. Chazelle has created a movie that is a love letter to Hollywood not because of depraved parties or preventing talented minorities from becoming stars but from reflecting how far Hollywood has become. I was amazed by the Oscar-worthy performances from Margot Robbie. She is fantastic and deserves a nomination. Brad Pitt is excellent as well, and the newcomer Mexican actor Diego Calva wow, perfectly carried the whole movie; he had great chemistry with Robbie. Jean Smart was fantastic, specifically the cameo with Brad Pitt, and Tobey Maguire was hilarious. Three hours of such a spectacle from beginning to end. I loved the cinematography, and the musical score is out of this world. You feel you want to dance and sing. The story was great and nostalgic. Come on, people, I can see it was harsh for some prunes not to like the movie because of the sex and drug content, but it is far from being the objective. I loved the cameos of the movie sets that show the evolution from silent to talkies. If you love movies as much as I do, you will love Babylon, and finally, I want to tell you that the ending is epic; I don't want to spoil telling you about it. Please, see it on the big screen. Please do not read the low ratings of critics; they are full of it!

Babylon is cinematic marvel that Damien Chazelle is a messy, dazzling epic masterpiece that film hasn't yet accepted or had before. Damien Chazelle has called Babylon: "A hate letter to Hollywood and a love letter to movies," but his messy, dazzling epic doesn't support that simplistic idea. Set in the early days of cinema, when talking pictures were a jaw-dropping phenomenon and Hollywood was still being created, Babylon suggests a deeper reality: the film industry's raw, self-destructive, narcissistic impulses and its glorious, magical results have always been opposite parts of the same whole. Chazelle's ambitions are huge. Babylon is full of remarkable set pieces with richly drawn characters, music, dancing, love and betrayal. The film's strengths more than make up for its serious flaws, including too many endings and a wrong-headed reliance on Singin' in the Rain as a touchstone. But if Babylon makes you groan occasionally, there are many more times long, exhilarating stretches that are mesmerising. In one of the film's multiple endings, which leaps ahead to 1952, a major character sits in a cinema tearfully watching Singin' in the Rain. That enamoured-of-movies scene hasn't been fresh since Sullivan's Travels in 1941, not to mention Cinema Paradiso in 1988 and this year's Empire of Light. The fact that the scene can be viewed as a homage to all those films doesn't make it less cliched. And a montage of other movies through history is a bravura but needless coda. At its best, Chazelle's film is a cinematic marvel, evidence enough that movies are magical, as it sweeps us into the beautiful, terrible world we recognise as Hollywood even now. The cast up and down Babylon is amazing and almost eerily in sync with my own tastes. Actors I deeply love, like Taylor Nichols and Ethan Suplee, show up oh-so-briefly as if casting director Francine Maisler had thumbed through my own mental rolodex and said to herself "ah, here's another face Sonny would like to see." This is, perhaps, another reason I found myself drawn in by Babylon's excess: I just liked spending time with almost everyone up on that big, beautiful screen, I fell in love with the cast and the story. Believing Babylon to be over, thus missing the last few of its 189 minutes. This was itself a fitting, almost serendipitous, way to end the movie. Audiences come and go; they are as ephemeral and ever-changing as the names on the marquee. The darkened theater filled with flickering light? That's eternal, everlasting, deathless. The actors and the audiences alike come and go, but the show goes on forever.

A cinephile's dream exciting experience, Damien Chazelle created a wild movie creating and party animal! The kind of creation that gets me wishing so badly to work on cinema it's just much harder for an autistic guy. Anyway Babylon is about a journey of partying then making a movie then next day all of which was meticulously masterful; so much character development and genuine flow of events. Margot Robbie and Diego Calva (Manny Torres) plays producer so well with his beautiful stares and brilliant emotions throughout. Babylon is highly deserving of nominations like most of Damiens films except First Man was solid not as marvelous as others! Also I might be one of few to notice Babylon resembles Boogie Nights in a lot of ways even though the story is different there's a bunch of similar scenes.

Whether it be orgies, showcasing various bodily fluids, plot threads, or the runtime of the film, Damien Chazelle is fully unrestrained in his latest film. La La Land and Whiplash are some of my favorite films and I'm a big fan of Chazelle's directorial style. He shows flashes of that brilliance often throughout Babylon, but does indulge in his most extreme tendencies as well in this modern Hollywood epic. There is a lot I liked here. The opening sequence is a sight to behold and had me mesmerized with its vibrant energy. The film chugs along at a good pace for the next two hours to the point I really didn't feel the runtime for most of it. It's the last hour or so where Chazelle loses the story a bit. There were several instances where I thought the film was over, but another scene would pop up next. The runtime really feels unnecessary and there's honestly whole plot lines that could be cut out that wouldn't affect the film. Justin Hurwitz has composed another terrific score (with some nice hints of La La Land) and the photography, costumes, and production design are all stellar. Outside of some shoddy editing, especially a bizarre movie montage at the end that really did not gel, the technical aspects of the film are quite an achievement. Chazelle really needed someone to tell him no with this film. Some better editing combined with some self-restraint and this would be much closer to the epic masterpiece status he's clearly aiming for. As it stands, it's a pretty entertaining tale of excess and fame in early years of Hollywood.

Babylon is a long, messy, repulsive, and magnetic spectacle. Unfortunately despite the great performances and set pieces it doesn't live up to Chazelle's previous work. The movie wants to bring you down into the waste yard that is Hollywood then pull you out to see the beauty that grows out of the trash. The problem is the movie spends so much time in the mud, and goes so deep into it that by the time it tries to pull you out at the end it's too late. On the upside the cast are great and almost completely carry the movie, especially Margot Robbie's enthralling performance as Nellie. And as with Chazelle's previous work the set pieces are well executed and (some) characters are memorable. However, these positives could not completely overcome the movie's fundamental flaws which are -- going too far with trying to revolt the audience (to the point of childishness), not spending enough time with the characters or important scenes despite its decadent runtime, and the ending coming off as completely pretentious in the context of how practical/cynical everything leading up to it was. In the end, Babylon does serve its purpose as an entertaining spectacle, but like the Hollywood it critiques, its self-indulgence prevents it from achieving greatness.