BABYLON : Tuesday 24th January 2023.

'BABYLON', which I saw earlier this week at my local multiplex, is an MA15+ Rated American epic period comedy-drama film Written and Directed by Damien Chazelle, whose prior film making credits take in the highly acclaimed and multi-award winning 'Whiplash' in 2014, 'La La Land' in 2016 and 'First Man' in 2018. 'Babylon' saw its World Premier in Los Angeles in mid-December before its US release on 23rd December, and has divided critics with those who generally praised the cinematography, editing, score, and performances, but were divided on its screenplay, direction, graphic content, and runtime. The film cost US$78M to produce and has so far recouped US$31M but received five nominations for the 80th Golden Globe Awards and won one for Best Original Score, and nine nominations at the 28th Critics' Choice Awards winning one for Best Production Design. So far the film has won twenty-nine awards and been nominated a further 138 times (some of which are still pending an outcome from future awards ceremonies). The film has a run time of three hours and nine minutes.

The film opens up in Bel Air, California in 1926 with Mexican immigrant Manuel 'Manny' Torres (Diego Calva) helping to transport an elephant to a debauched, drug-fueled party at a Kinoscope Studios executive's isolated mansion in the Hollywood hills.

Later that evening the party, which by now is in full swing, is gate crashed by Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) and Manny very quickly becomes smitten with the very brash, overtly ambitious self-appointed 'star' from New Jersey. Upon meeting her and snorting a few lines of coke together, Manny states that he wishes to be part of something bigger. Meanwhile, Jane Thornton (Phoebe Tonkin) has overdosed on drugs during a golden shower routine on obese Actor Orville Pickwick (Troy Metcalf) and has the elephant walked through the room full of debauched party goers in order to distract them, while he helps carry the comatose girl out to her car and away to the nearest hospital.

Also at the lavish and out of control party are Chinese-American lesbian cabaret singer and title card writer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), and African-American jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo). The flamboyantly-dancing Nellie is spotted and swiftly recruited to replace Jane Thornton in a Kinoscope film having been told that she needs to be on set at 8:00am the next morning. Manny is introduced to and befriends Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), a benevolent yet troubled, several times married film star. Manny drives a drunken Jack home early the next morning. Jack is also due on set that morning and he asks Manny if he has ever been on a film set, to which he responds with 'no'. Jack helps Manny secure general assistant jobs at Kinoscope, which he manages to complete all tasks asked of him with seemingly relative ease and as a result quickly climbs the ladder within the studio system.

Nellie becomes almost an overnight sensation, turning her into the latest 'it girl', and is keenly covered by gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), who also follows Jack's career. As Al Jolson's 'The Jazz Singer' heralded in sound film so replacing silent movies from 1927 onward, Manny skillfully adapts to such technical changes, eventually gaining Directing jobs. Nellie struggles to navigate sound film's demands, and increases her drug use and reckless gambling, tarnishing her reputation despite Manny's seemingly unwavering assistance and persistence.

Nellie, hires her father Robert Roy (Eric Roberts) as her Business Manager. One night at a party together he tells many of the gathered guests of the time he fought a snake and lived to tell the tale. Nellie perks up and publicly asks everyone if they want to see her Dad fight a rattlesnake. Jack shouts out 'Hell yeah!' and so they drive out into the desert until they come across a rattle snake. As Robert siddles up to the snake he passes out in a drunken stupor and so she fights the snake, which bites her neck, and she passes out. Fay kills it by chopping off its head and sucks out the venom and when Nellie comes around a few moments later passionately kisses Fay. While running lines with his new wife Estelle (Katherine Waterstone), Jack is devastated to learn his longtime friend and Producer, George Munn (Lukas Haas), has committed suicide.

Come 1932, and Jack begins to feel that his popularity has waned since the advent of the 'talkies' and following a couple of Box Office failures. However, he still works in low-budget MGM films. Meanwhile, Sidney has secured his own musical film and orchestra, but is offended when Manny requests he use blackface makeup to darken his skin because under the studio lights he almost appears white, and the picture needs to appeal to Southern audiences. After finishing the film, Sidney leaves Kinoscope and goes back to his roots playing small gigs in bars and clubs. As Hollywood becomes less free thinking and free-doing, studio executives tell Manny to fire Fay, the Kinoscope title writer, because of her perceived lesbian affair with Nellie and the fact that movies no longer need title cards. 

Elinor and Manny attempt to rejuvenate Nellie's image by giving her elocution and deportment lessons so that she can fit in to Hollywood's high society and re-establish her career, but Nellie pushes back against upper-class snobbery at a party, ultimately vomiting violently on the host, and shaming the two people who gave her a second chance. 

Jack tries to call MGM Studio Producer Irving Thalberg (Max Minghella) but is put off several times by his Secretary, telling him to call back at 1:00pm and then at 4:00pm. After 4:00pm and being told that Thalberg had left for the day, Jack drives over to Thalberg's office to find it empty but he finds a magazine with the cover story by Elinor about his declining popularity and confronts her. She explains that his star may have faded, but he will be forever remembered on celluloid. 

Meanwhile, eccentric gangster James McKay (Tobey Maguire) threatens Nellie's life over her accumulated US$85K gambling debt. Manny initially rejects her pleas for help, but later secures funds from on-set drug pusher and aspiring actor 'The Count' (Rory Scovel), and visits McKay with him to pay off Nellie's debt. McKay begins by pitching three outlandish ideas he has for movies. Manny starts to panic upon learning that the money is fake, made by his own prop-maker. McKay invites the men to an underground gathering space for debauched parties and they go, albeit very reluctantly. When McKay realises the cash is fake, he attempts to kill them, but they narrowly escape in a hail of bullets, killing McKay's henchman Wilson (Ethan Suplee) in the process.

After everything that Nellie has put Manny through, he still asks her to flee with him to Mexico, get married, and start a new life together. She resists, but eventually agrees. However, McKay's associate tracks Manny down as he was gathering up a few possessions, shooting The Count and his roommate dead but sparing Manny's life if Manny leaves Los Angeles straight away and never returns. Meanwhile, oblivious to this, Nellie reneges on her decision and dances away into the night. 

Jack encounters Fay at a hotel party at which she reveals she is leaving for new opportunities in Europe. After saying their farewells, a downhearted Jack returns to his hotel room, picks up his revolver, walks into the bathroom and shoots himself dead. A montage reveals newspaper clippings detailing Nellie being found dead in a hotel room at age 34, and Elinor's death at age 76.

We then fast forward to 1952, and Manny returns to Hollywood, California with his wife and young daughter, having fled to New York City and opened his own radio shop. He shows them the Kinoscope Studios entrance, and visits a nearby cinema alone to see 'Singin' in the Rain', where the film's depiction of the industry's transition from silents to talkies moves him to tears. Then, the last one hundred years or so of big screen entertainment taking in clips from '2001 : A Space Odyssey' to 'Terminator 2' right up to 'Avatar' follows as the focus finally returns to 'Singin' in the Rain' and Manny smiles through his tears.

'Babylon' is way too long for its own good, and Writer Director Damien Chazelle could easily have shown more restraint by slicing off thirty minutes of this three hour+ ode to old Hollywood rather than the self-indulgent nod to early cinema that is sure delight cineastes everywhere nonetheless. That said, the production values on display here are first rate; Pitt, Robbie and Calva shine in their roles; and there are some genuine laugh out loud moments here but it's also easy to see where audiences and critics have been divided in their opinions and why those audiences have decided to vote with their feet rather than their bums on seats. 'Babylon' is brash, bold, hedonistic and all credit to Chazelle for going out on a limb to make this ambitious film but I left the theatre feeling a little 'meh!' about the whole thing and how it's mostly all style over substance.

'Babylon' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve at Odeon Online-

Birthday's to share this week : 10th - 16th September 2017.

Do you celebrate your Birthday this week?

Max Minghella does on 16th September - check out my tribute to this Birthday Boy turning 32, at the end of this feature.

Do you also share your birthday with a well known, highly regarded & famous Actor or Actress; share your special day with a Director, Producer, Writer, Cinematographer, Singer/Songwriter or Composer of repute; or share an interest in whoever might notch up another year in the coming seven days? Then, look no further! Whilst there will be too many to mention in this small but not insignificant and beautifully written and presented Blog, here are the more notable and noteworthy icons of the big screen, and the small screen, that you will recognise, and that you might just share your birthday with in the week ahead. If so, Happy Birthday to you from Odeon Online!

Sunday 10th September

• Amy Irving - Born 1953, turns 64 - Actress | Producer
• Chris Columbus - Born 1958, turns 59 - Producer | Director | Writer
• Colin Firth - Born 1960, turns 57 - Actor | Producer | Writer | Director
• Guy Ritchie - Born 1968, turns 49 - Director | Writer | Producer
• Ryan Phillippe - Born 1974, turns 43 - Actor | Producer | Writer | Director
• Harry and Luke Treadaway - Born 1984, turn 33 - Actors  

Monday 11th September

• Brian De Palma - Born 1940, turns 77 - Director | Writer | Producer 
• Tony Gilroy - Born 1956, turns 61 - Writer | Producer | Director
• Harry Connick Jnr. - Born 1967, turns 50 - Singer | Songwriter | Actor | Producer
• Virginia Madsen - Born 1961, turns 56 - Actress | Producer  
• Elizabeth Henstridge - Born 1987, turns 30 - Actress 

Tuesday 12th September

• Linda Gray - Born 1940, turns 77 - Actress | Director
• Rachel Ward - Born 1957, turns 60 - Actress | Director | Writer
• Freddie Jones - Born 1927, turns 90 - Actor
• Ian Holm - Born 1931, turns 86 - Actor
• Hans Zimmer - Born 1957, turns 60 - Composer | Songwriter |   

Wednesday 13th September

• Frank Marshall - Born 1946, turns 71 - Producer | Director 
• Colin Trevorrow - Born 1976, turns 41 - Writer | Director | Producer
• Jacqueline Bisset - Born 1944, turns 73 - Actress   

Thursday 14th September

• Mary Crosby - Born 1959, turns 58 - Actress
• Melissa Leo - Born 1960, turns 57 - Actress | Producer
• Sam Neill - Born 1947, turns 70 - Actor | Director | Producer | Writer | Winemaker
• Joon-ho Bong - Born 1969, turns 48 - Director | Writer | Producer
• Andrew Lincoln - Born 1973, turns 44 - Actor | Director

Friday 15th September 

• Tommy Lee Jones - Born 1946, turns 71 - Actor | Director | Producer | Writer
• Oliver Stone - Born 1946, turns 71 - Director | Producer | Writer | Actor 
• Tom Hardy - Born 1977, turns 40 - Actor | Producer | Writer  

Saturday 16th September

• Mickey Rourke - Born 1952, turns 65 - Actor | Writer
• Max Minghella - Born 1985, turns 32 - Actor | Producer | Writer | Director
• Amy Poehler - Born 1971, turns 46 - Actress | Producer | Writer | Director | Singer

Max Giorgio Choa Minghella was born in Hampstead, London, England to mother Carolyn Choa, a dancer and choreographer, and father Anthony Minghella, the multi-award winning film Director, Producer, and Writer who died in March 2008 and whose screen credits included 'Truly, Madly, Deeply', 'The English Patient' and 'Cold Mountain'. The young Max attended St. Anthony's Prep. School in Hampstead and then the independent day school, University College School also in Hampstead. From there he attended Columbia University in New York City where he studied history, graduating in 2009. During this time he was already carving out a career as an Actor, only working on films during the extended Summer breaks, to the extent that many of his fellow students didn't even know that he was an aspiring Actor with several credits already to his name. Growing up Max spent many an occasion on his father's film sets of which he has happy memories, and felt no pressure from his father to enter into, or to be successful in the entertainment business. He was inspired to become an Actor later in his teenage years after seeing a stage production of 'This Is Our Youth', and he subsequently dropped out from the University College School, and attended the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain.

At age thirteen, in 1999, Minghella scored his film debut in the seventeen minute short 'Tom Boys', and followed this up with a bit part in another short film 'Let The Good Times Roll' which also starred Bob Hoskins and Dexter Fletcher. It would be another five years before his first credited feature film eventuated with 2005's drama offering 'Bee Season' with Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche and Kate Bosworth, although he did appear as an uncredited extra in his fathers film 'Cold Mountain' in 2003. Also released in 2005 was the political thriller 'Syriana' as Directed by Stephen Gaghan and starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Christopher Plummer, Chris Cooper, Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Peet. The film secured George Clooney the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award wins for Best Supporting Actor, and all up picked up fourteen wins and 28 other nominations. 2006 saw Minghella star in the comedy drama Directed by Terry Zwigoff 'Art School Confidential' alongside John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Scoot McNairy and Anjelica Huston.

The next year brought Romantic Drama offering 'Elvis and Annabelle' with Minghella playing Elvis and Blake Lively playing Annabelle with Joe Mantegna, Mary Steenburgen and Keith Carradine. This was followed up by 'How to Lose Friends & Alienate People' with Simon Pegg, Danny Huston, Gillian Anderson and Megan Fox; then John Krasinski's 'Brief Interviews with Hideous Men'; and closing out the decade was 'Agora' - a historical biographical drama set in 4th Century Roman Egypt and also starring Oscar Isaac, and Rachel Weisz.



In 2010 Minghella was cast in David Fincher's 'The Social Network'. The film was highly acclaimed, taking US$225M at the worldwide Box Office off the back of its US$40M budget investment, and it collected three Academy Award wins and five other nominations; four Golden Globe wins and two nominations; and three BAFTA wins and three nominations out of a total haul of 168 wins and 168 nods. The film starred Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook upon which the film is based, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, and Rooney Mara. The George Clooney Written, Directed and starring 'The Ides of March' came next in 2011 with Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood. This film was nominated for one Academy Award, four Golden Globes, two BAFTA's amongst a total cache of nine wins and thirty-five nominations. High school reunion dramedy romance offering '10 Years' followed with Channing Tatum, Oscar Isaac, Chris Pratt, Anthony Mackie and Rosario Dawson before Sci-Fi action adventure alien invasion offering 'The Darkest Hour' with Emile Hirsch, Joel Kinnaman, Rachael Taylor and Olivia Thirlby.

2013 brought us the Google based comedy 'The Internship' as Directed by Shawn Levy with Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Rose Byrne, and then dramatic fantasy horror 'Horns' with Daniel Radcliffe, David Morse, Heather Graham and Juno Temple. Another college reunion offering followed of a dramatic nature this time with 2014's 'About Alex' with Jason Ritter, Maggie Grace, and Aubrey Plaza and then the Joe Johnston Directed thriller 'Not Safe for Work'. Sci-Fi dramatic thriller 'Into the Forest' followed up in 2015 with Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood, and then an uncredited appearance in 'The 9th Life of Louis Drax' (which he wrote the Screenplay for in his Writing debut) with Aaron Paul and Jamie Dornan.

This brings us up to date in terms of feature length movies. In between time there were appearances on six episodes of romantic comedy television series 'The Mindy Project', the nine minute short film about cat sitting called 'Fluffy', and then the highly acclaimed and popular television series based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel 'The Handmaid's Tale', in which Minghella plays Nick Blaine in nine episodes out of the first ten of Season One released earlier this year. Season Two has already been commissioned and will go to air in 2018.

Next up for Minghella, is his Directorial debut in the feature length 'Teen Spirit' for which he also wrote the original screenplay. About a shy and retiring teenage girl growing up on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England (where Anthony Minghella was born and raised) who has dreams and aspirations of pop stardom as a means of escaping from her damaged family life and her less than inspiring surroundings. The film stars Elle Fanning as that girl, Violet.

All up, Minghella has twenty-five Acting credits to his name, two as Producer, two as Screenwriter and one as Director. He has three award wins under his belt so far each for the Ensemble Cast Performance for 'The Social Network' and a further eight nominations. Minghella was romantically linked to American Actress Kate Mara from 2010 through until 2014.

Max Minghella - has the movie business in his DNA, and it's hardly surprising given his fathers pedigree that he has turned to Writing, Producing and Directing already, as well as establishing himself as a sought after Actor. Is a star on the rise, in demand, and one to watch out for. Happy Birthday to you Max, from Odeon Online.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE DARKEST HOUR - archive from 1st February 2012.

Saw 'THE DARKEST HOUR' at my local multiplex last night. Another shoot 'em up Sci-Fi actioner that does have some redeeming features. Directed by Chris Gorak and Produced by Timur Bekmambetov ('Nightwatch', 'Daywatch' & 'Wanted'), this has all the latter Director/Producer trademarks all over it. Set in Moscow rather than the staple New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or San Fran this features a largely invisible alien foe who descend upon our planet and immediately set about vapourising our population to rob us of our natural mineral resources.

A largely unknown cast
except for Emil Hirsch and Rachel Taylor the story surrounds two US tech-savvy geeks - Ben and Sean (Max Minghella and Emil Hirsch respectively) who travel to Russia to promote their new social media/party locating software. When they are betrayed by their Swedish partner Skylar (Joel Kinnaman) the disappear to a club to drown their sorrows and meet up with two young holidaying chicks - Natalie from the US (Olivia Thirlby) and Anne from Australia (Rachel Taylor).

Exiting the club all together they witness strange lights up in the sky which then begin to decend to the ground and disappear. After the commotion a policeman standing close by approaches the scene whereupon he disintegrates, as do a number of other close bystanders. The lights as it runs out are alien beings protected by an almost invisible forcefield.

What follows is a fairly standard cat & mouse game as invading aliens wipe out all human life forms on sight, and the invasion is global. Our four friends duck, dive, bob & weave past oncoming alien attackers, through the rubble that once was Moscow, and into a short lived sanctuary where they learn that these pesky no-good alien varmints can in fact be thwarted by microwaves, and that they cannot see through glass.

Coming across various enclaves of hauled up humans fighting the resistance against said alien interlopers, our four heroes continue to fight and pass on their alien thwarting knowledge to others as they pass through. It all ends with a set piece on some Moscow river with a nuclear submarine parked up ready to take them to safety . . . and hope!!

The alien creature FX are well conceived and convincingly rendered, a post apocolyptic Moscow cityscape is impressively visualised, and the action set pieces are good enough . . . but still it lacks something! A little predictable, the 3D does nothing for it either, and there is plenty of other similar Sci-Fi end of the world alien attack fodder out there to choose from too. Costing US$30M to make it brought in US$65M so was only a modest commercial success but fared less well at the time from the critics. You can catch it now on DVD and BluRay.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-