Babylon Is a Frenzied Ode to Early Hollywood

The writer-director Damien Chazelle was just shy of 13 years old when Paul Thomas Anderson’s breakthrough second feature, the porn industry epic Boogie Nights, debuted to ecstatic raves. That film, so cool and vivid and coked-up, helped establish Anderson as one of the new American greats, drafting off of the indie energy of the 1990s while paying homage, as so many others have, to Martin Scorsese. Twenty-five years later, Chazelle is an Oscar-winning director (a feat Anderson has not yet managed) attempting a riff on Anderson’s modern classic. (While, of course, doffing his cap to Scorsese.) His new film, in… Read Full Article