One of Hollywood’s hottest young directors, Oscar-soaked Damen Chazelle (La La Land, Whiplash, First Man) creates a lavish, somehow loving look at the decadent and depraved days of Movieland’s transition from silent pictures to talkies. To put it in Spinal Tap terms, if 11 is the highest setting, this film starts as a 12 and never comes down. It’s a story of relentless excess and a seemingly endless supply of amoral or even evil people. He gets a face full of elephant crap trying to help a Hollywood producer in one of the film’s earliest scenes and is the closest Babylon comes to a sympathetic character. Babylon is not the first film to look at early 20th-century Hollywood excess and it’s definitely not one of the best.

Source: The Star December 23, 2022 00:16 UTC