Babylon (Damien Chazelle - December 2021) • Page 7

How much cocaine did you do before hand?

 

The edible kicked in at a good spot

 

damn didn’t know they made cocaine edibles now.

 

I really really wanted to like this more because I love Chazelle and at the end of the day it's an auteur throwing everything at a wall and going for broke in a way he couldn't do on his other films. It's really well made and great performances but ultimately it kinda falls a little flat.

It particularly fails when it's "OMG movies are amazing"

The length certainly hurts it and all I could really think was if it'd be better if it were structured like Nashville/Short Cuts/Magnolia.


and lol avatar(very curious what anyone who reads that spoiler without seeing the movie thinks of that)

 

90 minutes of this is god tier shit. Unfortunately it’s 3 hours and 7 minutes long.

 

Holy fuck this might be my new favorite film of the year

 

yep. Could’ve been a 2 hour masterpiece. Still enjoyed it but damn what the fuck was some of that third act

 

The ending is pure elephant shit.

 

Film school project energy

 

Absolutely!

 

Loved the ending. This is Chazelle’s masterpiece

 

Should have at least ended with

 

My fiancé and I are in our early thirties, live in NYC and work in film/tv. We’re in SC visiting my parents (Myrtle Beach specifically) and decided to see this yesterday. We were the youngest people in the theatre by 20-30 years in a crowd of roughly 15 people and at least 3 of them walked out. We were pretty much the only people laughing consistently throughout the first two acts of the movie. I heard a woman behind us utter “I hate this movie” towards the end when the Tobey Maguire bit was reaching it’s climax.

It was kind of a bizarre theatre experience but the movie worked for us. We both kind of loved it.

 

There is only one good moment in the entire movie. When the elephant enters the mansion, someone offscreen yells "what the fuck!?", but it is pretty clearly something added in post.

The first fifteen minutes of the movie features:
1. An elephant defecating on a man, shot in multiple angles.
2. A woman urinating on a morbidly obese man.
3. An army of fully nude men and women.
4. A midget stroking a giant toy penis that shoots fake semen all over everyone

After an exhausting half hour or so of a party and then straight to shooting, the film becomes really slow and starts doing its own version of Singin' in the Rain. They decide to do a Boogie Nights scene with the lead character trying to pay off Robbie's gambling debts, and we meet a jaundiced Tobey Maguire who boyishly throws money at a man who eats rats. It is an ode to bad taste. In case you don't know how callously Hollywood treats actors, Robbie is initially judged by not having large enough breasts. In case you don't know where the infamous "I Love You, I Love You, I Love You" scene comes from, the main character goes to see the movie at the end of the film, which ends up being a montage of much better movies, even taking Godard's Fin du CInema line. The film even features a scene with Robbie watching herself in a movie theater, which makes you wonder why you don't just watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood instead.

 

Could have been longer tbh

 

Unsurprising lol

 

Chazelle might be in director jail for a while with this one.

 

Oh yea this is a potential career ender

 

I’m surprised they gave him another big budget movie after “First Man” underperformed. But I figured they chalked it up to it having critical acclaim. This really feels like he knew it was gonna be his last big one so he threw everything out there.

 

When even Steven Spielberg bombs, it never really had a chance at that budget, and we are just going to see a bigger and bigger gap between the tentpoles and everything else. Andrew Dominik has gotten out of director jail a few times, so Chazelle will be back eventually.

 

I forgot to add the cartoon vomit scene that made me think of Problem Child 2.

 

Man my fiancé is REALLY gonna hate this isn’t she

 

He should keep directing and just get his Final Cut privileges taken away

 

As much as I hated this I would much rather directors have creative control instead of becoming bland clogs in the corporate filmmaking machine.