Babylon
Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is a behemoth about Hollywood excess in the silent era, a feisty female ingenue’s rise and its biggest male star’s fall, and the arrival of the talkies and how that changed everything. It packs a lot in and moves at pace but whoah is it long. At three hours and a handful of minutes it covers more or less the same ground that Singin’ in the Rain or The Artist did with 90 minutes to spare. Chutzpah on Chazelle’s part, you could say, or a lack of discipline, maybe. It’s big and baggy and overegged yet undeniably glorious. The first two hours are brilliant and the last hour-and-a-bit brilliant too. … Read more