The Director's Series: Damien Chazelle, No. 3


Throughout 2025 I'm turning my focus to Directors. They help craft the vision on screen that makes a movie work. This year I'm looking at five favorite films from 18 directors I admire and 10 films directed by different women that I have enjoyed. Join me Fridays and Saturdays throughout 2025 as we take this journey.

Babylon (2022)
Starring: Brad Pitt, Margo Robbie, and Diego Calva
Director: Damien Chazelle
About: Chazelle is a talented filmmaker that has made very different kinds of films. But all of them have a quality of comedy, drama, and music in some way. This ambitious film drew some mixed reviews when it was released three years ago, but it might be his most ambitious. It's a celebration of a certain madcap era in Hollywood. It looks at the town in the late 1920s as the Silent Film era was king, but was about to be replaced by talking films. It looks at a wild era in our country, too. We see it all through the eyes of different players in the world. It features some great performances, especially from Calva and Robbie. It's a fascinating and sometimes difficult story. But it features some incredible and wild sequences. I get why some people didn't care for it and the excess in some of the story. But the craft here is incredible and it's a great showcase of why Chazelle is so magical as a filmmaker.

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