Damien Chazelle's offers a wild vision of Hollywood's earliest day while Bill Nighy delivers one of the year's best performances in a remake of a Kurosawa classic.
I’m debating whether to see Babylon while I’m on vacation this week. The main film this review reminded me of is John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust, with its apocalyptic vision of life in 1930s Hollywood that was made at Paramount nearly half a century ago, during a cycle that also yielded Merchant Ivory's The Wild Party, John Byrum's Inserts, Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon, Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon, and Ken Russell's Valentino. Goes to show this kind of revisionist history is hardly new.
more seriously: I have been underwhelmed by all of Chazelle's work to date. (Whiplash would be the one I liked the best, undercut by an ending that seems to refute the film preceding it)
Got to see Living this weekend and really loved it. Feels like it didn't/won't get much attention because it's not treading new ground (both literally and thematically), but it was a really lovely and well made film. As said in the review, it has a timeless quality to it and on the whole I found it very moving.
Nothing I hate more than reading a positive review for a film that Sony Pictures Classic won't release wide until Spring 2023.
edit 1/25: local AMC had promotional postcards advertising Living for 1/12/23 which is both a weird marketing idea and great news.
I’m debating whether to see Babylon while I’m on vacation this week. The main film this review reminded me of is John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust, with its apocalyptic vision of life in 1930s Hollywood that was made at Paramount nearly half a century ago, during a cycle that also yielded Merchant Ivory's The Wild Party, John Byrum's Inserts, Elia Kazan's The Last Tycoon, Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon, and Ken Russell's Valentino. Goes to show this kind of revisionist history is hardly new.
the previews for Babylon looked to me like Chazelle doing his version of Baz Luhrman. interesting that no reviews have made that comparison.
more seriously: I have been underwhelmed by all of Chazelle's work to date. (Whiplash would be the one I liked the best, undercut by an ending that seems to refute the film preceding it)
is Babylon likely to change my mind?
Quite a bit!
Got to see Living this weekend and really loved it. Feels like it didn't/won't get much attention because it's not treading new ground (both literally and thematically), but it was a really lovely and well made film. As said in the review, it has a timeless quality to it and on the whole I found it very moving.