Babylon (2023) - Movie Review

Damien Chazelle might be the single most self-confident filmmaker working in Hollywood right now. No matter how idealistic (the grand romantic tones in La La Land), or familiar (the story of Apollo 11 in First Man), or just downright goofy (the colourful string of expletives in the script for Whiplash) his ideas get, there’s never an inkling that he’s meeting any of it halfway. And even when I find myself on the wrong side of some of those aspects, I’ve been unable to deny that there’s a certain infectious quality to how much conviction the man pours into each of his directorial efforts thus far. But his latest seems to be the ultimate test for that methodology, as we’ve gone from a film that would merely benefit from that much confidence behind the camera, to a film that outright requires it to work even slightly.

The Boss Baby (2017) - Movie Review

Well, today’s feature marks another genuine first for this blog. Of all the weird and disheartening pre-ambles I’ve seen leading up to a film, I’ve never really come across a film that actively had to convince that it even existed. Seriously, this film comes across like a one-off joke that Baldwin would make in-between Trump caricaturing, or worse yet an Asylum rip-off of last year’s The Boss. It probably doesn’t help that, in the lead-up to its release, I have only ever seen the teaser trailer for this film which barely showed anything.

 

Between the dubious concept and the minimal sketch-length trailer, I can’t be the only one who thought that this thing was a bit suspect. (And yes, I know, Beauty And The Beast trailer thing; I saw this a few days before that hit the news so, over here, it still feels off) Then again, I had similarly negative thoughts with Dreamworks’ last film Trolls’ pre-amble and I ended up really liking that film. Maybe the same could happen here?