Babylon (New Damien Chazelle)
- Thread starter Phoenix
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VoR
Take it or leave it
I really haven't gotten on with any of Chazelle's previous films, so I'll be approaching this one with caution.
Also, Margot Robbie really only does the one thing, doesn't she?
Also, Margot Robbie really only does the one thing, doesn't she?
I've absolutely loved his main three to varying degrees (I've never seen Guy and Madeline or the Netflix show), so I'm definitely here for this.
Margot Robbie neither here nor there for me really, she's never been the most interesting thing in any of her films.
Margot Robbie neither here nor there for me really, she's never been the most interesting thing in any of her films.
Finn
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I loved Whiplash, was a big fan of La La Land, and fell asleep in First Man.
I don't know anything about this, but the trailer is giving OSCARS FRONTRUNNER that ultimately wins very little but is nominated in lots of categories because it's about Hollywood and all the narcissist Academy members therefore see it
I don't know anything about this, but the trailer is giving OSCARS FRONTRUNNER that ultimately wins very little but is nominated in lots of categories because it's about Hollywood and all the narcissist Academy members therefore see it
rhythmbandit
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Another trailer:
3hrs 9mins long.
3hrs 9mins long.
VoR
Take it or leave it
Oh dear 
Jark
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who could've guessed? 
when will Hollywood learn? unless you're Tarantino, $80m+ on a period "comedy"-drama (that doesn't look particularly funny) with no discernible story—from the trailers, what can you glean about this film other than "it's about 1920s Hollywood"?—is money down the drain. movies about making movies have rarely been a big draw anyway.
Amsterdam suffered the same fate a few months ago. that also had Margot in but star power alone really isn't enough.
when will Hollywood learn? unless you're Tarantino, $80m+ on a period "comedy"-drama (that doesn't look particularly funny) with no discernible story—from the trailers, what can you glean about this film other than "it's about 1920s Hollywood"?—is money down the drain. movies about making movies have rarely been a big draw anyway.
Amsterdam suffered the same fate a few months ago. that also had Margot in but star power alone really isn't enough.
VoR
Take it or leave it
Honestly the main thing putting me off is the 3+ hour runtime. I think the success of things like Avatar and Avengers has given a false impression that people won’t be put off by that, but those are event movies. This is just a movie.
VoR
Take it or leave it
Editing really is a lost art in Hollywood.
VoR
Take it or leave it
Also, it's interesting that the press around this bomb so far seems to be pinning the blame on Robbie.
She is coming off a run of flops right now (Amsterdam, Birds of Prey) and I do think she's exposing her limitations the more times she recycles this crazy sexy party girl schtick she does, but it seems like she's reached her 'you've been too popular for too long and now we must destroy you' era, a la Jennifer Lawrence a few years ago
She is coming off a run of flops right now (Amsterdam, Birds of Prey) and I do think she's exposing her limitations the more times she recycles this crazy sexy party girl schtick she does, but it seems like she's reached her 'you've been too popular for too long and now we must destroy you' era, a la Jennifer Lawrence a few years ago
Iguana
Like beautiful robots dancing alone
She does seem to be EVERYWHERE and in EVERYTHING. Maybe she needs to say no more often and up the quality, but then again she probably just wants to make as much as she can before the bubble bursts!
It is a shame to see the general glee at this doing so poorly. It's been a massacre for adult orientated drama at the tail end of this year, with none of the prestige projects landing and the market seriously unbalanced in favour of CGI tentpoles. I'm still looking forward to this, but none of the Hollywood fare is really doing much for me at the moment.
But another Margot BOMB is bad news for her though. Unless Barbie hits HARD, she's toast.
But another Margot BOMB is bad news for her though. Unless Barbie hits HARD, she's toast.
rhythmbandit
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The three hour run time is off-putting but the bonkers trailer and the review at pluggedin.com means I'll probably end up seeing it when it's released on Disney+.
Jark
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it's a shame that Netflix didn't give Glass Onion a proper run in cinemas first. it made $15m in one week on 20% of the usual screens. they reckon a full release it would've made $40m+ opening weekend, $150m+ total and double that worldwide. that's the kind of adult movie smash that Hollywood could really use right now.
when the subject is interesting and the marketing is right, people will come. but it's a disaster for diversity of cinema if all the half decent adult movies go straight to streaming.
Phoenix
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Well I ended up not liking it. It was a 6 for the first 2 hours but the 3rd hour really got me annoyed.
The movie starts at an 11, the first hour is just a lot of debauchery and quick cuts. Then you get the transition to talkies and the best scene of the movie is Margot Robbie shooting her first talking scene (it was the one that got the best reaction from the audience as well).
Brad Pitt gets 3 monologues for each phase of his career about CINEMA and its importance. The movie is just a series of monologues punctuated with scenes of excess.
The part that got me pissed is when Tobey Maguire is introduced as a gangster and we take another detour into a den of freaks and sex that was the straw that broke me.
The score was alright and the Jean Smart’s monologue was fine.
The movie starts at an 11, the first hour is just a lot of debauchery and quick cuts. Then you get the transition to talkies and the best scene of the movie is Margot Robbie shooting her first talking scene (it was the one that got the best reaction from the audience as well).
Brad Pitt gets 3 monologues for each phase of his career about CINEMA and its importance. The movie is just a series of monologues punctuated with scenes of excess.
The part that got me pissed is when Tobey Maguire is introduced as a gangster and we take another detour into a den of freaks and sex that was the straw that broke me.
The score was alright and the Jean Smart’s monologue was fine.
Ellie
Super talented triple threat
I liked this more than La La Land, way more than First Man but it doesn’t hold a candle to Whiplash.
Enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, but there are THREE films this awards season with the whole “love letter to cinema” theme.
Enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, but there are THREE films this awards season with the whole “love letter to cinema” theme.
You’d better not be including The Fabelmans in that lost!
Ellie
Super talented triple threat
Is it not? I haven’t seen it yet.
It has elements of that, but there's more to it. It's darker and weirder and more about the price you pay for indulging creative passions.
VoR
Take it or leave it
Punishingly long as this was, I actually really enjoyed it! Easily my favourite Chazelle movie, not that it’s a terribly high bar.
Shame it tanked, as I definitely felt the benefit of seeing it in a cinema.
Shame it tanked, as I definitely felt the benefit of seeing it in a cinema.
Phoenix
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I think he’s never been able to top Whiplash for me. La la land was a bit overrated and it just doesn’t stay with you, I can’t remember a thing of First Man.
This has potential and I think it will be declared a misunderstood classic in a few years. There’s a good movie in there it’s just drowned by the excess. It deserves a reverse director‘s cut.
This has potential and I think it will be declared a misunderstood classic in a few years. There’s a good movie in there it’s just drowned by the excess. It deserves a reverse director‘s cut.
VoR
Take it or leave it
It definitely could have been reigned in a bit. I don’t know if it has basis in some Hollywood urban myth but the whole rattle snake scene was just stupid and would have been an easy cut.
Also the scene at William Randolf Hearst and Marion Davies house was ruined for me by the vomiting at the end. Took it over the line to full-on cartoonish.
The orgy at the start and the desert film shoot could both easily have lost 10 minutes apiece too, but I guess Chazelle was in love with the scale of it all.
I actually enjoyed Tobey Maguire’s HORRIFYING cameo, but the conceit of the fake money was again pretty stupid.
All the performances were great though, and much as I criticised Margot earlier for relying on the same old bag of tricks, her performance was actually quite a TOUR DE FORCE. The crying scene on the movie set and the aforementioned sound movie shoot were both incredible.
Also the scene at William Randolf Hearst and Marion Davies house was ruined for me by the vomiting at the end. Took it over the line to full-on cartoonish.
The orgy at the start and the desert film shoot could both easily have lost 10 minutes apiece too, but I guess Chazelle was in love with the scale of it all.
I actually enjoyed Tobey Maguire’s HORRIFYING cameo, but the conceit of the fake money was again pretty stupid.
All the performances were great though, and much as I criticised Margot earlier for relying on the same old bag of tricks, her performance was actually quite a TOUR DE FORCE. The crying scene on the movie set and the aforementioned sound movie shoot were both incredible.
rhythmbandit
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I also enjoyed it alot. The cinema was about 90% full too which was nice.
It could have been about an hour shorter and the elephant poo and vomiting scenes were a bit
and Little Britain-esque for me, but Margot and Diego were great lead performances. The academy award nominations were in the right categories, I felt.
It could have been about an hour shorter and the elephant poo and vomiting scenes were a bit
and Little Britain-esque for me, but Margot and Diego were great lead performances. The academy award nominations were in the right categories, I felt.
VoR
Take it or leave it
There were two other people in my screening and they left around the 90 minute mark
Ellie
Super talented triple threat
Well I’ve just watch the 160 minute long BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, which has been nominated for Cinematography. Honestly it was SUCH a slog, it makes Babylon feel like a sub-90 minute breeze in comparison.
So far of the films with hugely long running times this year, Babylon and The Batman are the ones that have bothered me the least.
So far of the films with hugely long running times this year, Babylon and The Batman are the ones that have bothered me the least.
RossN
Evil Tara Reid Clone
Babylon underperformed at the box office. I liked it more than many and I wish it had done much better but I'm not entirely surprised. Clearly this was Damien Chazelle's dream but I'm not sure who else this film was made for.
A three hour plus black comedy drama about the switch from the silent era to talkies was always going to be a tough sell to the masses no matter how fascinating it is to fans of classic Hollywood like me. I saw something similar with Hail Caesar! (2016) which I absolutely loved but belly flopped at the box office because the elements that appeal to the movie industry - the romance of movies vs the sweat and blood of actually making the things and the love for Hollywood past - just aren't interesting to the average cinema goer. Honestly part of it is the sheer tyranny of time. When Singing in the Rain (a film this makes numerous references to) was made in 1952 the Silent Era was well within living memory for most movie goes and it had the power of personal nostalgia. No one watching Babylon in 2023 is going to have a personal memory of going to the cinema in 1927. Really only The Artist (2011) which covers a lot of the same ground in a less lurid manner - Brad Pitt and Jean Dujardin even play almost identical characters in the two films - was both a box office and critical hit and that had the advantage of being both really good and having an eye catching gimmick.
Having said that I *am* that one in a million old Hollywood buff who is deeply interested in that kind of thing so at least that was fun for me. There is a lot of research poured into this film. Jack Conrad - Brad Pitt's character - is essentially John Gilbert and Nellie LaRoy - Robbie's character - draws a fair bit on Clara Bow (in fact in Chazelle's original draft she *was* Clara Bow.) There are minor allusions to other Hollywood legends including a tasteless scene obviously inspired by Roscoe Arbuckle and the death of Virginia Rappe. We even get a sprinkling of real historical characters with Irving Thalberg showing up on and off.
Chazelle, possibly stung by criticism over his previous La La Land (a film I deeply love) does make it clear the 1920s and 1930s are not a bastion of tolerance, and that if anything things took a turn for the worse. Li Jun Li plays Lady Fay Zhu an openly lesbian Chinese-American intertitle writer and cabaret singer who is a Hollywood fixture in the hedonistic days of the Roaring Twenties but finds both her job and her sexuality increasingly unwelcome with the dawn of the talkies and the Hays Code. Jovan Adepo plays Sidney Palmer, an African American musician who finds great success only to run headlong into the institutional racism of the times.
The central figure amongst all these people is Manuel "Manny" Torres (Diego Calva) a film assistant turned gopher for Jack Conrad and hopelessly in love with the self destructive Nellie. Truthfully he's a bit overshadowed by both Jack Conrad and Nellie LaRoy, partly because Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie both rolled natural 18s for their Charisma and partly because Jack and Nellie are simply grander characters than Manny. Still all three do good work and I don't want to overlook Calva's performance and importance as pretty much our point of view character into this crazy world.
The film has plenty of flaws including a truly exhausting runtime and a weird third act appearance by Tobey Maguire as a creepy mobster that really feels parachuted in from an entirely different movie. There is also some gross out scenes, though not that many given the sheer length of the film. It is also has some weird pacing with us spending nearly an hour on a two day period in 1926 covering a Hollywood bacchanal and a film shoot the following day, only to then spend two hours covering a period of almost a decade.
Still, messy, disorganised and too long as it is... I honestly kind of loved it and really wished it had done better. Pitt, Robbie and Calva are all great and much as of a disaster factory as the world it portrays is the sheer love Chazelle has for the era and the art bleeds through. I've seen people say Chazelle should have made this into a mini series and while they might have been right on a technical level they missed the point completely. Babylon is a movie about movies and how the most flawed people in history go through Hell creating the closest thing to actual magic.
Rating: 7/10
A three hour plus black comedy drama about the switch from the silent era to talkies was always going to be a tough sell to the masses no matter how fascinating it is to fans of classic Hollywood like me. I saw something similar with Hail Caesar! (2016) which I absolutely loved but belly flopped at the box office because the elements that appeal to the movie industry - the romance of movies vs the sweat and blood of actually making the things and the love for Hollywood past - just aren't interesting to the average cinema goer. Honestly part of it is the sheer tyranny of time. When Singing in the Rain (a film this makes numerous references to) was made in 1952 the Silent Era was well within living memory for most movie goes and it had the power of personal nostalgia. No one watching Babylon in 2023 is going to have a personal memory of going to the cinema in 1927. Really only The Artist (2011) which covers a lot of the same ground in a less lurid manner - Brad Pitt and Jean Dujardin even play almost identical characters in the two films - was both a box office and critical hit and that had the advantage of being both really good and having an eye catching gimmick.
Having said that I *am* that one in a million old Hollywood buff who is deeply interested in that kind of thing so at least that was fun for me. There is a lot of research poured into this film. Jack Conrad - Brad Pitt's character - is essentially John Gilbert and Nellie LaRoy - Robbie's character - draws a fair bit on Clara Bow (in fact in Chazelle's original draft she *was* Clara Bow.) There are minor allusions to other Hollywood legends including a tasteless scene obviously inspired by Roscoe Arbuckle and the death of Virginia Rappe. We even get a sprinkling of real historical characters with Irving Thalberg showing up on and off.
Chazelle, possibly stung by criticism over his previous La La Land (a film I deeply love) does make it clear the 1920s and 1930s are not a bastion of tolerance, and that if anything things took a turn for the worse. Li Jun Li plays Lady Fay Zhu an openly lesbian Chinese-American intertitle writer and cabaret singer who is a Hollywood fixture in the hedonistic days of the Roaring Twenties but finds both her job and her sexuality increasingly unwelcome with the dawn of the talkies and the Hays Code. Jovan Adepo plays Sidney Palmer, an African American musician who finds great success only to run headlong into the institutional racism of the times.
The central figure amongst all these people is Manuel "Manny" Torres (Diego Calva) a film assistant turned gopher for Jack Conrad and hopelessly in love with the self destructive Nellie. Truthfully he's a bit overshadowed by both Jack Conrad and Nellie LaRoy, partly because Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie both rolled natural 18s for their Charisma and partly because Jack and Nellie are simply grander characters than Manny. Still all three do good work and I don't want to overlook Calva's performance and importance as pretty much our point of view character into this crazy world.
The film has plenty of flaws including a truly exhausting runtime and a weird third act appearance by Tobey Maguire as a creepy mobster that really feels parachuted in from an entirely different movie. There is also some gross out scenes, though not that many given the sheer length of the film. It is also has some weird pacing with us spending nearly an hour on a two day period in 1926 covering a Hollywood bacchanal and a film shoot the following day, only to then spend two hours covering a period of almost a decade.
Still, messy, disorganised and too long as it is... I honestly kind of loved it and really wished it had done better. Pitt, Robbie and Calva are all great and much as of a disaster factory as the world it portrays is the sheer love Chazelle has for the era and the art bleeds through. I've seen people say Chazelle should have made this into a mini series and while they might have been right on a technical level they missed the point completely. Babylon is a movie about movies and how the most flawed people in history go through Hell creating the closest thing to actual magic.
Rating: 7/10
Bardo did very little for me either, one of the big disappointments of the year.
I didn't find the running time onerous though, but then I had just watched all 210 minutes of "Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" which would make you lose your wig Ells