Memories tinkle to the tune of the warmest song sheet in this, Steven Spielberg’s gorgeous tribute to his formative years. Fictionalised but painstakingly true to life, The Fabelmans is a charmer of a film. It’s absorbing and Spielberg’s most personal work to date by far, bled through with all the flavours of half a century of filmmaking. The cast too delight, bringing to life tales from a past now immortalised for the ages. In so many ways, The Fabelmans feels like the film Spielberg’s career has been building towards right from the day Firelight make a single dollar in profit back in 1964. By the same stroke, it’s a film he was not ready to make until this very moment.
It’s a lot harder to ‘one line’ the sophomore film by Daniels’ Kwan and Scheinert than was the case with their first. If Swiss Army Man was Daniel Radcliffe’s farting corpse comedy, Everything Everywhere All at Once is…? Well, it’s the one with the weaponised dildos. It’s also the one with Michelle Yeoh’s googly third eye and hot dog fingers. It’s even the one where a pair of pebbles enjoy an existential debate on the meaning of life. When Jamie Lee Curtis declared her newest release would ‘out marvel Marvel’, she wasn’t just pot stirring. This is super stuff on a heroically limited budget.
From its first orgiastic rave on, Babylon is nothing short of exactly the film its director wanted to make. This is a DAMIEN CHAZELLE picture. A film that could only be made by a virtuoso at the height of his powers. Only a man with half a dozen Oscars on his mantle could get away with Babylon, a grossly self-indulgent anti-crowd pleaser. Sprawling, often brilliant, fabulously acted, exploitative and around an forty minutes overlong. It hasn’t a hope with the Academy and shan’t make a penny at the box office. Not that either is the true benchmark of success. Indeed, for the sheer impertinence of his efforts alone, Chazelle warrants commendation. Babylon is not for the faint of heart.
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