Exactly what writer/ director Damien Chazelle was trying to say with his latest film, Babylon, a wild sprawling, occasionally funny, often ridiculous, exhaustingly manic, yet emotionally hollow homage/satire/savaging of early Hollywood is not entirely clear. It’s as if he’s poured all his memories of film making and watching into a blender, mixed them with lurid fantasies of Hollywood’s debauched underbelly
Read moreThe moon-shot movie has almost become a separate genre and with films the calibre of The Right Stuff, Apollo 13 and Hidden Figures, a consistently good one. Now, Academy Award-winning director of La La Land and Whiplash, Damien Chazelle has entered the space-race with First Man, the story of the original moon landing. Diverting from the slick style of most
Read moreLa La Land is Whiplash director Damien Chazelle’s exhilarating homage to 1950’s musicals and the artists who struggle to make it in the dubious city of dreams that is LA. Superbly crafted from its touching love story to its vibrant cinematography and sprightly musical numbers this is a cinematic experiment that works from beginning to end. Chazelle’s triumph is his
Read moreLanding somewhere between Fame, Black Swan and Full Metal Jacket, Whiplash is a gut-wrenching music drama, which, while flawed, is still one of the year’s most riveting films. In its best moments this is a searing examination of bullying, the forces that compel people toward objectionable even maniacal behaviour, the obsessive pursuit of success and the limits of emotional endurance.
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