WOF: Top Ten Movies of 2023

 

Top Ten Movies of the Year 2023

1.     American Fiction - -- wonderful adaptation of a Percival Everett novel by first-time director Cord Jefferson with Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, Leslie Uggams, Erika Alexander, Tracee Ellis Ross and others. A great evaluation of how mainstream culture, particularly the publishing world, looks at authenticity in the African American literature world. So so funny, but also touching because it examines the main character, Thelonious Ellison's family life. For more thoughts on American Fiction, listen to the December 2023 podcast.

2.     Maestro -- actor/director Bradley Cooper's deep dive examination of the life of Leonard Bernstein, particularly his relationship with his wife, Chilean actress Felicia Monteleagre, played by Carey Mulligan, who is fantastic here. This movie is tough to get into, crowded as it is with marquee caliber names, rat-a-tat dialog, and extended fantasy sequences. Anyone who is not familiar with Bernstein's work and legacy is probably at a disadvantage here, but would anyone who is NOT familiar actually take time to watch? But the flick soon settles in to show Leonard's passion for music, his drive, his deep affection for his wife and family, but also his predilection for sex with men. Cooper is great, but at times his portrayal strays into a costume-party caricature impression of Bernstein rather than a full embodiment of the man. Also, the amount of cigarette smoking in the film is enough to grow cancer cells in the lungs of anyone watching. But overall, the acting and the craftsmanship are top notch. 

3.     Killers of the Flower Moon -- Martin Scorsese's latest featuring Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio is a riveting tale of American greed and deception played out in 1920s Oklahoma, where newly oil-rich Osage Indians are systematically targeted by any means necessary so that their wealth is funneled into white hands. The careful research on this true-life story, resulting in detailed costuming and sets, as well as beautiful cinematography and strong performances all around, particularly by Lily Gladstone, make this film a must-see despite its long running time. 

4.     Rustin -- kudos to actor Colman Domingo, whose performance holds this film together. The film is a somewhat stagey telling of how civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, a close associate of Martin Luther King, was drummed out of the NAACP after nasty rumors made him a liability. But Rustin's dedication to the cause led him to conceive and organize the March on Washington, eventually regaining the support of King and the NAACP and facing off against the racist forces of opposition in Washington. As played by Domingo, Rustin is an intellectual firebrand who also happened to be gay, and we see him push aside his white assistant/lover for a relationship with a closeted husband and minister who eventually rejects him because he has too much to lose. There is a crackling script but so many characters from history to keep track of -- Roy Wilkins, Medgar Evers, Adam Clayton Powell, MLK, John Lewis (look, Glynn Turman! Chris Rock! Jeffrey Wright!) -- that I was getting whiplash trying to keep them all straight, but that's OK. And if the piece came across as a bit stagey, it couldn't be helped -- the thing was directed by playwright and Tony winner George C. Wolfe, who is best known for his brilliant stage and stage-to-screen work. A bravura, tour-de-force performance by Domingo. 

5.     Barbie -- Greta Gerwig's entirely original take on the role of the Barbie doll in our changing society is equal parts silly and sharp, fluffy and profound. It's so sunny and bright, with dazzling colors and danceable music in its execution, that it is really hard to resist. Margot Robbie does a great job giving us the personification of an innocent who is no dummy, and Ryan Gosling throws himself into his role as Ken, who discovers then attempts to perpetrate patriarchy on Barbieland, with disastrous results. 

6.     The Holdovers -- Paul Giamatti shows off his brilliant acting chops once again as Mr. Hunham, an unpopular teacher shepherding students over the Christmas holidays at a New England boys academy in the early 1970s.  As he attempts to match wits with Angus, an angry teen who's been stashed at the school by an inattentive mother, we learn that Hunham has some secrets of his own. The film includes a standout performance by Da'Vine Joy Randolph, as the school's cafeteria manager who grieves the loss of her son to the Vietnam war. This is a film that peels back he layers of what makes each of these characters tick, and is being called a new Christmas classic. 

7.     Past Lives -- OK, this thing almost had me bawling. Twelve-year-old Koreans form a tight friendship bond, even vowing to marry when they get older, but Nora's family soon immigrates to Toronto, leaving Ha Seung behind. They reconnect years later on Skype, but their lives remain separate due to distance. After several more years, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) visits the U.S. on a pretense to see Nora (Greta Lee), and they spend time together in New York. But Nora, now married, has moved on. And it is painfully clear through the acting that Hae Sung is damn near speechless with love for his former school pal, his disappointment so palpable you can touch it. These scenes of the two of them together are so fraught with desire, regret, yearning, confusion, awkwardness, and love despite the spareness of their conversation that it is stunning. Not to mention that the cinematography on this flick is nothing short of breathtaking, and the musical score is also evocative and atmospheric. 

8.     Little Richard: I Am Everything -- documentarian Lisa Cortes creates a 360-degree view of pioneering rock and rhythm & blues icon Little Richard, delving into his roots as a performer and examining the divided soul that led him later in life to ping-pong between a lifestyle of reckless rock'n'roll abandon and that of strict religious fervor. And though in his later years it seemed as though he indulged in a lot of public whining about being overlooked, it was not without merit. The documentary proves that Richard was a one-of-a-kind trailblazer to whome generations of performers owe a significant debt.  

9.     You Hurt My Feelings -- director Nicole Holofcener's amusing yet probing examination of the white lies we employ in the service of shoring up our loved ones. Julia Louis Dreyfus stars as a New York City creative writing professor struggling to write a novel. When she inadvertently discovers that her struggling therapist husband hates it, despite all of his praise and encouragement, all emotional hell breaks loose.  This one makes you think about how often our efforts to be kind may ultimately be cruel.    

10.     May December -- In this Todd Haynes-directed outing based on the Mary Kay Letourneau case, Natalie Portman plays Elizabeth, an actress who visits Savannah, Georgia, to research the life and personality of Gracie (Julianne Moore), the middle-aged woman she is set to play in a movie. Gracie left her husband and children 24 years earlier for a relationship with a 13-year-old boy. Now in a marriage to that young man (Charles Melton), with three more children, Gracie warily welcomes Elizabeth into her seemingly normal suburban household. Elizabeth is deceptively predatory and voracious, pushing the boundaries of these relationships with her questions and her desire to inhabit Gracie. Despite her promises to be fair to Gracie in her portrayal, she betrays her trust over and over, An unsettling film character study,

Honorable Mentions

Origin, 
The Little Mermaid,
Oppenheimer,
Quiz Lady

Not So Much (In My Humble Opinion):

Spinning Gold – what could have been an interesting story about the life of Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart is told badly and cast badly, despite great 1970s costumes and of course incredible disco-era music. Disappointing.

Wish – I have long been a fan of Disney’s animated output. But this latest outing, with fave performer Ariana DuBose voicing the spunky teen main character Asha, just lacks a compelling story or enough character development overall to rise above the ordinary. Which considering that it has an original fairytale kingdom, animated animals, tons of songs and the talents of DuBose, is very disappointing indeed.

Asteroid City – I have long been a fan of the Wes Anderson canon of films, ever since Bottle Rocket. I loved last year’s The French Dispatch. But Asteroid City, a love letter of sorts to the 1960s fascination with space and the then-brand-new space program, as well as a look at how a broken young family heals, left me mostly cold. Despite one moment of surprise that had me braying with laughter, the Anderson formula of too-smart-for-their-own-good kids, confused and clueless adults, and the storybook presentation of characters and scenes is starting to show signs of congealing.
 
Saltburn – tried to get through it. Thought it would be a “Call Me By Your Name” type summer vacation flick, but soon began to look like a cross between “Brideshead Revisited” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” I didn’t find the fumbling Barry Keeogh or the current heartthrob Jacob Elordi riveting enough to keep watching. I understand some shocking things take place later on in the flick. I don’t care.

Napoleon – Ridley Scott has made some great films (Blade Runner, Alien, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, etc.), but Napoleon isn’t one of them. As great an actor as Joaquin Phoenix may be, he does not fit the role of the Corsican soldier who became the emperor of France and conquered Europe. The disconnect between Phoenix’s portrayal and the overall contemporary approach, contrasted with the period-perfect sets and costumes, was just too distracting. Didn’t get through it.

The Color Purple –This is the screen adaptation of the Broadway musical adaption of the original 1985 movie and 1982 book The Color Purple. This story by Alice Walker is pretty much canonized in Black culture by now. And the new movie looks beautiful, is well cast with Fantasia Barrino recreating her Broadway starring role, with Colman Domingo, Halle Bailey, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Corey Hawkins and others. The musical and dance numbers are all rousing and Fantasia’s gorgeous self-realization anthem at the end will give you the teary tingles. So here’s where I lose my Black Card, risk offending fave singer/songwriter Brenda Russell, and forfeit any possible future relationship with executive producer Oprah Winfrey: I just didn’t love it.  This version doesn’t really get into the emotional corners of the story, particularly when comparing Fantasia’s performance of Celie as a mute stalwart compared with Whoopi Goldberg’s surprisingly nuanced portrayal as a woman carefully navigating a minefield of abuse and prejudice.

Priscilla – I must confess to not being much of an Elvis fan, and I was never able to get through more than 20 minutes of Baz Luhrmann’s breathlessly praised Elvis! flick from last year. However, I was interested in learning more about Priscilla Presley, who got swept up into Elvis’ orbit at a pretty young age. I also have enjoyed director Sofia Coppola's other slow burn character studies, like Lost In Translation and Marie Antoinette, but this look at the life of Priscilla Presley is sooooo boring, principally because the lead actress, Cailee Spaeny, looks like a child and has no personality. Watching it gave me no clue what it was that Elvis liked about her and there seemed to be little chemistry between her and Jacob Elordi, who plays Elvis. Instead there is this paint-by-numbers, this is what happened, then this, then this progression of scenes that have barely any spark to them. The film is lushly photographed, and the clothes and interiors are impeccable. The music is mostly NOT Elvis, for which I was grateful, instead there are popular songs of the day with lyrics that not-so-subtly signal exactly what is going on in the script.

Looking forward to awards season. All the best for a happy and healthy 2024! 

Witless or Profound In The Old West: "Welcome To Hard Times"

Welcome To Hard Times (1967)
Directed by Burt Kennedy
Starring Henry Fonda, Janis Rule, Kenan Wynn, Aldo Ray, Warren Oates

With my lazy, no-working afternoons I've been watching more movies lately. Saw a depressing 1967 Western yesterday based on a short story by E.L. Doctorow, who used to be one of my favorite authors in the 80s (Billy Bathgate, Loon Lake, Ragtime). It's called Welcome To Hard Times with Henry Fonda.

 This was one of those stories where I was like, ???? There is a rickety little one-horse, nothing town on the plains in the Old West with one saloon, one store, and one cemetery. Fonda plays Blue, the reluctant mayor who had kicked around the country doing this and that until he decided to settle there. The town is in the valley below a busy mine, and the miners stream down the mountain on weekends to drink, carouse, and dally with the handful of hookers. 

But then Aldo Ray, "The Man From Bodie," shows up out of the plains, and he's just a wordless, murderous hellraiser who guzzles whiskey as the saloon keeper (Lon Chaney Jr.) just tries to jolly him up.  This man is so crazy violent that he has no patience for corks and such, he just smashes the tops of the bottles to pour alcohol into his maw. He then assaults, tortures and kills one of the girls, smashes up the saloon, beats and shoots people for fun. For no reason. 

When the townspeople go to Blue, a lawyer by training, and beg him to do something, he's unmoved, like: I ain't the law, I'm not trying to catch a bullet, what am I supposed to do? I'm watching this, stunned, thinking: Shoot the MF between the eyes! But no one does it, no one can stop him. One of the town's founders, a widower named Fee, tries to fight him, but gets his neck broken. The undertaker drives up in his rig, and seeing that the man has commandeered his horse, tries to reason with him and is shot down in cold blood. At this point, Blue and the rest are all standing around while this one-man disaster decimates their town -- and that's how this man 's actions are regarded, as some kind of natural disaster that they are powerless to do anything about. 

Reluctantly, Blue tries to use saloon girl Molly as a distraction so he can shoot the dude, but he's too slow because he's conflicted about violence.  The stranger assaults Molly then sets fire to the few buildings on the main strip. The town is in cinders and smoke, one of the town's founders is killed, the undertaker's funeral wagon set adrift on the open plains by terrified horses, and poor Molly, we have to assume she took a beating or worse, and is found burned but alive, face down in the street. The crazy man rides away on a stolen horse laughing. 

Blue decides to stay on with Molly and the newly fatherless boy Jimmy while the rest admit the town of Hard Times is over and leave. Then Zar (Keenan Wynn) shows up on a wagon with a tent, liquor, and some goodtime girls, looking to drive up to the mine. Blue explains that the wagon would never make it up the mountainside and convinces him to stay in Hard Times and help rebuild the saloon and other parts of the town. Soon the storekeeper's brother arrives, unaware that his sibling has exited the scene, and Blue convinces him to stay and open the store again. A drifter, Warren Oates, shows up in the undertaker's found wagon and stays.

Blue tells the newcomers that Molly is his wife so she can live with him and heal, and not get put to work in the saloon. Except Molly is bitter, wants to leave, is convinced the Man From Bodie is going to return, and calls Blue a coward and not a real man every chance she gets. I'm like, Damn Girl! Give It A Rest! She's like, Do you have any idea what that horrible man did to me? We can only imagine. She doesn't understand Blue, even as she is falling for him. She and Blue then get into a battle for young Jimmy's soul: Molly pushing him to "be a man" and become a gunslinging trigger-happy revenge seeker (it was his pa who was killed), while Blue wants him to become educated, analytical, forgiving and well-grounded. This, I assume, is the crux of the film's message, which is, Does revenge ever achieve justice? How can peace ever be achieved when folks are so embittered that they continue to retaliate for the wrongs done to them? When does "turn the other cheek" become the guiding principle in a lawless world? 

With many of the buildings rebuilt, the fun-seeking miners and the stagecoach come through as usual and for a while, things are popping again in Hard Times. Relationships are cemented. Despite Molly's bitterness, she, Jimmy and Blue have formed a nuclear family. The new tent saloon does well. But then the seasons turn and the townspeople suffer through a hard winter. The mine closes temporarily, threatening all their livelihoods. And then, as soon as things warm up, The Man From Bodie shows up again, terrorizing the town just as he did before. 

Evil Man From Bodie

I couldn't believe my eyes, like the minute he rode into town they should have had Warren Oates, who was supposed to be the new sheriff not to mention a sharpshooter, gun the guy down before he even got off his horse. But they didn't. They let him drink a gallon of liquor, rough up and kill one of the new girls, and burn down the saloon -- AGAIN. When Oates finally goes into action, he mistakenly kills Keenan Wynn, blecch. 

Finally, finally, when The Man From Bodie runs out of bullet, Blue is able to shoot him down. And to shut Molly up, he hauls the dying maniac over to his house and throws him on the table. But then the Maniac opens his eyes, Molly goes for the knife but Maniac grabs her. Young Jimmy blasts him dead with a shotgun but of course catches Molly right in the gut with some buckshot. She's done for. Oh well, hookers always pay for their sins in the movies.  Besides, she was never going to be happy with Blue because of her belief that those sins from her past mark her as no good for love. Oh the irony. Still, the film ends on a semi-promising note, with Blue and young Jimmy surveying what's left of the town from the cemetery hill and imagining a new future. 

This flick was a complete downer and headscratcher. The immediate relief that The Man From Bodie is gone is tempered -- at least in my mind -- by the miserable deaths of all these folks, and the fact that Blue noted mid-picture that the barren lawless landscape of the West seems to breed up these types of violent characters. So there's the specter of another Man From Bodie, or Man From Somewhere, showing up to burn it all down in the future.  It's Sisyphean, an endless purgatory of building up the town only to see it decimated, over and over. 

The film tries to end on an upbeat note, but it's a Pyrrhic victory (what's with me and the Greek references today?).  Seems that many have to die in this atmosphere so just a few can live.  But at what cost?  And yet, doesn't every town and everybody face Hard Times? 

Three Years On: Classic Jazz In "Soul" and "Sylvie's Love"

I had written brief reviews of these two films from 2020, then promptly forgot about them. Though they are in two different genres -- an animated comedy and an old-fashioned romance -- they both use music, specifically jazz, as an essential part of the life of the characters. And two years on, they are both worth watching. 

1. Soul (2020)
Directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers
With the voices of Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Phylicia Rashad, and others

I am generally fond of animated movies, and this one is special for a number of reasons. It's the first Disney animated movie to feature a modern-day African American man as the main protagonist. It's a story that centers on the value of an African American music genre, jazz, and shows in detail what it is to perform it and how transforming it can be for listeners and creators. It posits an African American woman instrumentalist as the leader of her own jazz band. It shows specific aspects of African American life, such as the role of the barbershop, and makes New York City look both realistic and magical. Its  deeper story is an examination of what gives us human beings, regardless of race, our unique personalities and special spark to live to the fullest the life that is gifted to us. 

The film is both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, and the voice characterizations by Jamie Foxx as a middle-aged, middle school music teacher and Tina Fey as a disaffected and stubborn new soul resisting being sent to Earth are wonderful. Through their tandem journey to reclaim Joe's life -- cut short by a freak accident -- they both come to gain a powerful appreciation for what it is to exist. 

The Pixar animation is stunningly detailed in the Earth-set sequences, especially the work showing Joe's piano playing. It calls to mind the work done on The Secret Life Of Pets, where city life is charmingly delineated. The studio consulted with several musicians, including Grammy winners Terri Lyne Carrington and Herbie Hancock, and photographed pianist Jon Batiste, who also contributed music, to get the images just right. The film also employs alternate animation styles incorporating line drawings and amorphous shapes and colors to depict the alternative plane where souls are launched and recycled. 

It's a delightful, refreshing, and thought-provoking film worth checking out over and over again. 

2. Sylvie's Love (2020)
Written, directed and produced by Eugene Ashe
Starring Tessa Thompson, Nnamdi Asomugha, Ryan Michelle Bathe, Regé-Jean Page, Aja Naomi King, and Eva Longoria 

A gentle but affecting story of Black romance in 1960s New York City, this stars Tessa Thompson as music-loving Sylvie, the daughter of a record shop owner and a prominent black etiquette school operator, much like Harlem's trailblazing Ophelia DeVore. Engaged to a soldier fighting overseas in the Korean war, Sylvie is biding her time by watching "I Love Lucy" and helping her father sell records when she meets saxophone player Robert, played by football player turned thespian Nnamdi Asomugha, who also produced. 

Sylvie slowly falls for the talented and sexy Robert, who her father has hired to help in the record shop, and despite her engagement to the upstanding, well-connected Lacy, Sylvie gets swept into a romance through a series of dates: picnics in the park, time spent on "tar beach" on the roof with her cousin, and dancing in the jazz clubs Robert frequents. THe film is set in 1960s America, and the audience is aware that prejudice still exists, but Sylvie is able to pursue a career in television production. Once again, jazz is treated as an essential and pivotal art form and a path to success for Robert, whose band is offered a rare opportunity to play an extended gig with his band in Paris. 

This type of melodramatic romance -- a love that nearly doesn't happen, blazes into passion, is lost, then found -- has the familiar tropes of classic tearjerking Douglas Sirk films of the 1950s like All That Heaven Allows and Magnificent Obsession, where social class and family expectations separate the lovers. Though tempted, Sylvie decides not to accompany Robert to Paris, thus seemingly dooming their relationship. But Sylvie has a secret and makes the choice so as not to tie him down and stall what looks to be a promising musical career. 

This plot turn also put me in mind of two French-set musicals of the early 1960s: Fanny, starring Leslie Caron, and the French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, starring Catherine Deneuve. In both films, a youthful and passionate romance ends with the young man going off on a compelling mission, and the young woman left to raise the child the man didn't know they had.  But unlike those classics, Sylvie's Love gives its heroine a chance to reclaim both her love and a sense of agency in her career. 

My friend, jazz artist manager Karen Kennedy put it: "In Sylvie's Love we finally have a Black film that is delightfully mundane - no histrionics, no fights, no maids or slaves. No black children saved/rescued/adopted/elevated by white women or white coaches. No prison story, no ghetto escape, no gang violence, no token Black intellectual, no surprise appearance by the 'articulate and bright' guy. Just straight up excellence with  narrative, casting, acting, producing, composing, filming. styling, editing, makeup. Tessa Thompson & #nnamdiasomugha are a slice of real. I feel seen and heard, I feel good. I feel normal." 

When a jazz professional heaps praise on a jazz-related story, you have to give it props.  

Movie Magic and the Dark Beauty of "Babylon"

BABYLON
directed by Damien Chazelle
Starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Tobey Maguire, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li

Was watching my favorite classic movie channel, TCM, this morning and got pulled into a classic black and white Western that I had never seen before. I didn't catch the beginning of it, but it was 1940's Wagon Train, with no major stars in it. 

This film was truly rough and tumble, showing all the aspects of what pioneers moving into the West faced in a really visceral way. Their own humanity and vulnerability -- they could sicken, be wounded, get food poisoning, lack water, or starve and so could their horses. Their wagons could break down and lack the resources to be fixed while on the trail. They could be decimated by fire or wild animals.

I'm not going to address the historical breach of white settlers into land belonging to indigenous Americans here, that's been documented; the film shows the dangers the pioneers (OK, what are they pioneering again? OK, I said I wasn't going there) faced from native tribes who wanted to attack and stop their encroachment on their lands. But it also showed that they faced treachery and dishonest dealings from their own: Outlaws trying to elude justice by masquerading as settlers and hiding among them, trail robbers holding them up, unscrupulous businessmen swindling and overcharging them for supplies. In Wagon Train, the main issue was a vicious man trying to control the food supply available at the Pecos, NM, trading post this wagon train was heading for, deliberately leading them to deprivation and starvation while fattening his pockets. 

As I watched this film I began to think about the effort and coordination it took to film it. This wasn't some drawing room comedy on a closed set. In Wagon Train there was a huge cast of extras and horses out on a set on the plains and in the mountains (according to Wikipedia, it was filmed in Kanab, Utah and in Wildwood Regional Park in Thousand Oaks, California, home to the movie industry's Janss Canejo Ranch where dozens of Westerns were shot). Those wagons had to be built. Those cameras had to capture horse-back chase scenes, shootouts, fires, Indian attacks, and an all-out galloping gun battle between men on horses and a cavalcade of wagons led by horse teams careening through the landscape at breakneck speed. These actors were living this reality to get this film and others like it made. 

What is the point of all this?  It made me reconsider a recent movie. 

So as I was watching and thinking about the grit and gumption and grueling effort it took to make this movie just as a piece of enduring cinema entertainment, I began to recall watching the 2022 film Babylon, a Damien Chazelle-directed black comedy about 1920s Hollywood that was released toward the end of the year and has been mostly panned. I will agree that Babylon is an ooey, gooey, mad, mind-melting MESS of a film, but it had extended moments of brilliance. And chief among its pluses was its expression of the pure unfettered JOY and transportive MAGIC of making movies and watching them.

We've seen sooo many movies about movies, about those hungry for film stardom; about the pace, the tradeoffs, the price, the sacrifices; and about the rise and fall of Hollywood personalities: The Bad and The Beautiful, Inside Daisy Clover, A Star Is Born, The Day of the Locust, Sunset Boulevard, The Last Tycoon, more recently Hail, Caesar!, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, The Fabelmans, and Chazelle's own La La Land. And, of course, Singing In The Rain, which Babylon references. But in no other flick that I can remember do two characters -- aspiring actress Nellie (Margot Robbie) and ambitious factotum Manny (Diego Calva) -- sit down and enthuse joyfully about how watching movies makes them feel inside.

The movie has great cinematography and some beautifully orchestrated shots. Another plus is the film's score -- its bright orchestrations that evoke the 1920s but add swagger and charm. In fact, it was Babylon's music that reminded me that this was a Chazelle film, as I loved the original Justin Hurwitz music from La La Land (though I did not like the movie as much). 

Babylon starts with a bang -- the distressed fart of exhaust from an overloaded truck hauling a full-grown elephant up a hill to the debauched party of a Hollywood tycoon -- and never lets up. From the mountains of cocaine, nudity, golden showers, elephant poop, champagne, drug overdosing, drunkenness, and hot jazz of the party, Babylon follows the entwined trajectories of brash New Jersey newcomer Nellie LaRoy and Mexican-born Manny Torres as they become further drawn into the pre-talkies era of movie making. Outrageous Nellie is already a star in her own mind, and soon becomes a Hollywood sensation when she turns a walk-on role in a B picture into a breakout acting turn. Manny makes himself indispensable to fading film star Jack Conrad (a highly entertaining and sympathetic Brad Pitt), and soon his proximity and a knack for being a fixer boost him like a rocket into the top tier of the studio film production ranks. 

Along the way, we get a tour of all of Hollywood's quirks, personalities, and dark secrets, but we also get a real-time glimpse of how films of the era were made in a visceral, you-are-there way, particularly those Western and Roman epics made on those outdoor film lots in the California hills, much like Wagon Train. We experience the seven circles of hell of Hollywood society, from the ridiculous fawning and posturing of the rich elite in their mansions and luxury hotels, to the middle rank of working stiffs who keep the cogs turning day to day, to the dank and gritty underworld of hustlers, addicts, poseurs and fringe-dwellers who also play a key role in keeping the Hollywood machine grinding. 

The movie depicts a rare woman film director; a Chinese American lesbian cabaret performer (Li Jun Li) who moonlights as a script title writer; and shows the experience of an African American trumpeter (Jovan Adepo), who gains more opportunities to appear in films as sound becomes the norm while undergoing more racist humiliations (until he walks away). We get to know these characters and others intimately, Ultimately, though, it's Manny's story and we see things unfold from his perspective; except for most of the film actor Diego Calva is reacting, running, or feverishly trying to reason with a range of difficult personalities.  It isn't until later in the film, when Manny is looking back on all that he went through, that we see actor Diego Calva dig deepest emotionally. 

With its combination of deep character revelation, riffs on longstanding in-jokes and stock characters, a mix of actual history and Hollywood film lore, and shockingly hilarious set pieces (vomiting in a fancy mansion, a snakebite in the desert, a miscalculated payoff with fake movie money that leads to an underground freak den and a shootout) Babylon owes as much to Monty Python, the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino as to Preston Sturges (Sullivan's Travels) or Stanley Donen (Singing In The Rain, On The Town, Charade). 

Ultimately, Babylon is an intense cautionary tale. It shows that stardom is a constantly shifting status that even once attained, has to be constantly chased. In particular, the innovation of the talking picture played havoc with the careers of countless 1920s screen actors and that is the catalyst that changes the fortunes for the lead characters, ground covered by Singing In The Rain. We see it here again: Those who cannot adapt are quickly left behind, as are those whose time in the sun of stardom comes to an end. And those who cannot come to grips with the fact that the party is over are doomed.

But Babylon is also too much -- like when someone orders rounds of shots toward the end of the night and you know you've already had more than enough. We feel for the perpetually drunk, philosophizing and melancholy actor Jack Conrad, who can't cope with his own obsolescence, but his demise seems unearned. The Nelly character is relentlessly loud, self-centered, undisciplined, self-sabotaging, and ruinous not only to herself but everyone around her (but we know why). Margot Robbie is amazing -- she throws herself into the role with furious and physical abandon. But Nelly's antics become tiresome after a while, and we are left to scratch our heads about how many times Manny is willing to sacrifice for her. Extreme circumstance forces him to leave her behind, and while that's a heartbreaking end to their torturous romance, it's the only reason Manny survives to live the next part of his life.  

 

The movie is long, and in places I was enduring it more than enjoying it because it definitely assaults the senses with its relentless pace. Chazelle's drive to keep upping the stakes for the characters, fill each scene with eye-popping color and detail, as well as crank up the level of comic shock and awe is frankly exhausting. But this is also what makes the film so uniquely exhilarating. 

I have to say that for all of its excesses, Babylon haunts me. I suspect that this one will become a cult favorite as time goes on and people will come to appreciate its comedy, its craft, its rawness, and the thread of truth running through the outrageousness. For all of its darkness and cynicism, it's also a love letter.