What do you do when you see a movie that just reminds you of other, better movies? “Babylon”
I won’t keep you. It’s New Year’s Eve and you (and I ) have better things to do. However, my last theatrical film experience may serve as a warning to not fall for all that glitters or that given a filmmaker whose work you don’t really like a second chance is not always the brightest thing to do or just to recognize that I will never get those three-plus hours back. “Babylon” is baloney. It’s beautifully shot, edited, and the performances are all strong; but so what, when the core of the film is so hollow? So what, when the performances are doing the heavy lifting of filling out something like characters but are written so blasé that it grows increasingly difficult to care whether they live and in a film that grows more and more tiresome to the point where you actively start wishing for a body count. Almost every scene is Damian Chazelle’s film echoes dimly something from a better film. His opening orgy scene conjures up similar images from Pasolini to Kubrick and even paintings by ...