Babylon

Babylon might be messy, but original film making doesn't come much better than this.

Babylon slowly builds up its wackadoo cartoon version of Hollywood to tear it down at its foundation.

I can’t say I truly enjoyed watching Babylon, or that I’d ever want to see it again, but I definitely haven’t stopped thinking about it since screening it earlier this month.

A great score, a talented ensemble, and expert cinematography—all are undeniable here. And yet there are narrative elements of Babylon that feel hollow from the very beginning and only get more so as Chazelle tries to inject some manipulative lessons into the final scenes.

The disappointment is that the movie wields so much and achieves so relatively little.

Boogie had a dramatic throughline, and something genuinely unsettling to say about the strange soul-bargaining of fame. Chazelle often steers his characters toward tragedy or anguish, without ever quite rooting his inscrutable thesis in anything real.

It’s a hyped-up cocaine conversation of a movie, throwing out lots of ideas and images and mammoth set pieces without ever amounting to anything.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Not good, not bad. A little bit too long. I cannot recommend this movie but I happy to saw it. Weird.

Babylon is one that blends far too many elements as yes it has some great acting and scenes but it certainly does try to be dazzling a lot.

There is a very good film there, somewhere, but I did not find it.

An excellent film, a splendid declaration of love for cinema... Of course, adding another actor of caliber to Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie would have been a perfect idea instead of the albeit very good Diego Calva... Let's say, a real star, like Leonardo di Caprio.. .. And then, instead of the pompous collage-finale, there could have been a good senseless action scene, like one of those movies made by Tarant.. OH WAIT...