Babylon was one of the few movies ever downvoted on StreamGems. It’s supposed to be streaming recommendations, after all. It wasn’t that Babylon was all THAT bad. There are a lot of worse movies you can stream on any given night.
But if, like me, you were a huge fan of Damien Chazelle’s first three movies, Babylon felt like a really bad meal at your favorite restaurant. While everyone liked Whiplash and La La Land, First Man kind of bombed (despite pretty favorable reviews). Heck with that – it’s a terrific movie. I saw it in the theatres and liked it a lot. I saw it streaming and liked it even more. The effects are brilliant in the best possible way – you feel the rattle of every 60’s era screw. You feel the height of the Saturn V as the elevator goes up. This isn’t glitz, it’s story. Or perhaps I should say it’s art.
Gosling plays Armstrong like a kind of black hole of feeling. He sucks in more and more and more until you think the weight of the whole solar system must be packed inside that chest. All of which makes the incredible, desolate beauty of Chazelle’s moonscapes the perfect setting for a deeply moving climax. Oppenheimer was fine if flawed: overly complex, burdened by shallow ideas, and chopped into too many fragments. First Man is an order of magnitude better. A great story with nothing there that isn’t in the service of telling that story.
No one should expect justice at the box office, but streaming is an opportunity for a do over. (Netflix)