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 moreDavid Fincher’s latest film Mank may be a little perplexing for those who don’t have an abiding love of movies, particularly the film often considered Hollywood’s finest, Citizen Kane. Mank depicts the period in the 1930’s in which renowned screenwriter and according to the film, gambling-addicted drunk, Herman J Mankiewicz aka Mank (Gary Oldman) toiled on the script for Kane
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 more