The Latest Breaking News from Damien Chazelle

This year has seen the release of a varied collection of nostalgic films about film making. Damien Chazelle’s Babylon looks at the excesses of 1920s and 30s Hollywood; Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans explores the position of film in the director’s own childhood in the 1960s, and Sam Mendes’ Empire of…

Most true-story films are functional to a fault. These ones break the mold.

‘They would rack up lines of coke that were the size of hotdogs’

Despite star wattage from Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt, ​the ​La La Land​ director’s ​overcooked portrait of a nascent Tinseltown is more hysterical than historical

Tailor-made to divide audiences, this is the ‘La La Land’ director’s rocket-powered rebuke to claims he’s too sentimental

Babylon (18, 189mins)

Nothing better illustrates the unravelling of cinema’s transcendent role in our culture than that no one from within cinema, no matter how talented, is able to make a good movie about it.

‘We used to think the Twenties was sanitised, but this was the wild, wild, wild west’

Babylon, the latest from the director of La La Land, Damien Chazelle, stars Robbie, Brad Pitt, an elephant and a mountain of cocaine. But is it more a pile of dung?