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-

SPIDER-MAN : NO WAY HOME : Tuesday 21st December 2021.

'SPIDER-MAN : NO WAY HOME' which I saw at my local multiplex last week, is the eagerly anticipated M Rated American Superhero film based on the Marvel comics character Spider-Man and is the follow up to 2017's 'Spider-Man : Homecoming' and 2019's 'Spider-Man : Far From Home' and is again Directed by Jon Watts. This film is the 27th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is the fourth film in Phase Four of the MCU following 'Black Widow', 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings' and 'The Eternals' with 'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' coming next in May 2022 followed by a string of others through 2023. This film saw its World Premier screening in Los Angeles on 13th of this month and was released worldwide later that same week having so far grossed US$1.05B off the back of a production budget of US$200M and has garnered generally positive critical acclaim. A sequel is already in development.

After Peter Parker's (Tom Holland) identity as Spider-Man was exposed by Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) at the end of 'Spider-Man: Far From Home' with J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) the Executive Reporter of the sensationalist news website TheDailyBugle.net who is provided a doctored video exposing Spider-Man's identity prompting him to broadcast it to the entire world. He frames Parker for the attack on London, claiming Mysterio as a hero, and Spider-Man as a murderer. Needless to say Parker's life and Spider-Man's reputation are turned upside down. Parker, his girlfriend M.J. (Zendaya), best friend Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) and his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) are arrested without charge and interrogated at the Department of Damage Control. Lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is able to wrangle Parker out of any charges as the group wrestle with the negative worldwide publicity that has been thrown their way. Meanwhile, Parker, M.J. and Ned are eagerly awaiting the results of their applications to M.I.T. and when they arrive in the post they all convene at the cafe where M.J. works to open their envelopes at the same time. Needless to say, all three are rejected on the grounds of the negative publicity surrounding them which the university doesn't want to get entrenched in. 

Down but not out, Parker visits Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) at the Sanctum Sanctorum and asks for his help, in creating a spell that will make the world forget that Parker is Spider-Man. Reluctantly, Strange agrees and sets about casting his magic. However, during the process, Parker repeatedly interrupts by asking for exceptions that should include M.J., Ned and Aunt May and a few others to be precluded from forgetting. This causes the spell to become corrupted, but thankfully, Strange is able to contain it. Parker leaves, believing that nothing has happened. 

Parker decides to track down the M.I.T. Administrator who is on her way to the airport, at the suggestion of Stephen Strange to simply have a conversation and ask her to reconsider M.J.'s and Ned's applications as they were only innocent bystanders in the recent events that brought them all to this point. Stuck in traffic, Parker is suddenly attacked by Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina). Octavius tears open Parker's nanotechnology Iron-Spider suit which in turn links up with his own mechanical octopus tentacles which gives Parker the opportunity to take control and disable them. Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) then arrives and also attacks. Strange teleports Parker back to the Sanctorum and does the same with Octavius only locking the latter in a cell next to Curt Connors aka The Lizard (Rhys Ifans). Strange tells Parker that the corrupted spell briefly allowed people from other universes who know Spider-Man's identity to enter our own, and as a consequence orders Parker, M.J., and Ned to locate and capture them to minimise the harm they are likely to cause. 

Parker captures Max Dillon aka Electro (Jamie Foxx) and Flint Marko aka Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) as Osborn reclaims control of himself from his alter-ego Green Goblin persona. Osborn goes to a F.E.A.S.T. (Food, Emergency Aid, Shelter and Training) building, where May comforts him before Parker retrieves him. While discussing their previous battles with Spider-Man, Osborn, Octavius, and Dillon come to realise that they were pulled from their universes just before their deaths at Spider-Man's hands. Strange prepares a spell that will send the villains back to their own universes, but Parker counters that they should first cure the villains' powers to avoid them dying when they return. Parker steals the boxed spell, and following a foot chase in the Mirror Dimension in which Parker successfully traps Stephen Strange takes the villains to Happy Hogan's (Jon Favreau) apartment with Aunt May. There, using Stark Industries hi-tech, Parker is successful in curing Octavius, but Osborn's Goblin alter-ego takes control and convinces the uncured villains to betray Parker. As Dillon, Marko, and Connors all escape, Osborn and Spider-Man fight with the latter coming off worse. Osborn fatally injures May, who in her dying breath says to Parker that 'with great power, there must also come great responsibility' before succumbing to her injury. Parker is distraught at the death of his beloved Aunt. 

Ned discovers he can create portals using Strange's sling ring, which he and M.J. use in an attempt to locate Parker. They find 'Peter-Two' (Tobey Maguire) and 'Peter-Three' (Andrew Garfield), alternate versions of Parker who were summoned from their respective universes by Strange's spell. Ned and M.J. locate Parker and comfort him while the other Parkers share stories of losing loved ones. They encourage Parker to fight in May's honour. The three Parkers develop cures for the villains and coax Dillon, Marko, and Connors to the Statue of Liberty, where Peter-Two and Parker cure Marko and Connors. Octavius arrives to help and cures Dillon.

Ned frees Strange from the Mirror Dimension where he had been trapped for twelve hours, just as Osborn arrives and destroys the boxed spell, rupturing the barrier between universes. While Strange tries to maintain the barrier, an enraged Parker attempts to kill Osborn this time gaining the upper hand, but Peter-Two stops him. Peter-Three and Parker inject Osborn with his cure, so restoring his sanity. Parker realises the only way to protect the multiverse is to erase himself from everyone's memory and requests that Strange do so, promising M.J. and Ned that he will find them again. Strange casts the spell returning everyone to their respective universes and wiping everyone's memory of Parker in his universe. Two weeks later, Parker visits M.J. and Ned at the cafe to reintroduce himself, but thinks better of it. While mourning at May's grave, he has a conversation with Hogan who doesn't recognise him, but as a consequence is inspired to carry on. He moves into an apartment, makes a new Spider-Man suit and jumps out the window continuing with his web-slinging superheroics, just as J. Jonah Jameson beams over the airwaves that Spider-Man hasn't been seen for three weeks now and that he should come forward and reveal his true identity. 

Watch out for the mid-credits sequence featuring Eddie Brock aka Venom (Tom Hardy) and the end credits scene featuring a brief clip from 'Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness' due in cinema's in May 2022. 

'Spider-Man : No Way Home' deserves all the critical praise that is being bestowed upon it, and at in excess of US$1B at the global Box Office deserves to be the highest grossing film of 2021. Here Jon Watts has assembled a film that is chock full of heroes and villains, an impressive ensemble cast, large scale action, moments of laugh out loud humour, sharp dialogue, romance, emotion, grief and visual effects that very successfully pull together three Spider-Man franchises into one very satisfying well rounded conclusion. Here we see a grown-up more mature Peter Parker who is more willing to accept the consequences of his actions and take ownership of the end result, whilst still sharing a laugh and joke with 'Peter Two', 'Peter Three' Stephen Strange and Doc Ock in genuine heartfelt moments. Benedict Cumberbatch and Willem Dafoe add weight to an already impressive line up of acting talent. With a follow-up film already in development, who knows where the franchise will take us next, and even if Tom Holland will feature, but you can be sure that this will be a tough act to follow. My only criticism, and it's a small one at that, is that at a run time of two and a half hours, it could have been trimmed by fifteen minutes at least me thinks. That said, fans of the franchise certainly won't be disappointed. 

'Spider-Man : No Way Home' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-