There are a lot of movies about movies on the fall docket, but only one is brave enough to actually look like a good time. Yes, filmmaking is about human stories and capturing images and being a nerd about it, blah, blah, blah, but it’s also about the eccentric egomaniacs clawing their way up the ladder of fame, and the glitz and the glamor, that exist when the camera stops rolling. Damien Chazelle’s Babylon understands that nascent Hollywood debauchery is a much more fun story to tell than one about the transcendent power of cinema — at least, that’s what I can glean from the official trailer. The very first shot insinuates that Margot Robbie, who plays aspiring actress Nellie LaRoy in Jazz Age Tinseltown, has snorted a Paramount-logo-shaped pile before she gives an impassioned, if a little manic, monologue about becoming a star and spending money on fun things. Juxtapose scenes of nearly every character on a nightclub bender partying next to elephants with footage from those same character’s epic film sets and you get something akin to that feeling that Nicole Kidman describes in her AMC commercial. Brad Pitt and Diego Calva star in the ensemble cast with Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, and Jean Smart. Babylon is in select theaters December 25.
Babylon Trailer: Margot Robbie Snorts the Paramount Logo
