10 WTF Scenes In Otherwise Awesome Recent Movies
8. The Closing Movie Montage - Babylon
Babylon is undeniably one of the most divisive movies released over the past year, some seeing it as indulgent, Bacchanalian dreck and little else, while others laud it as a bravura work of auteur filmmaking like is rarely made today.
It's a film with its fair share of oddball moments, but nothing in Damien Chazelle's decadent examination of Hollywood's early Golden Age could prepare audiences for what he had in store for the ending.
If you thought seeing an elephant evacuate its bowels in the opening scene was something, Babylon ends with protagonist Manny (Diego Calva) returning to Los Angeles after a 20-year absence and watching a screening of the newly released Singin' in the Rain.
Manny is eventually moved to tears by the film, at which point Chazelle transitions into a montage of Hollywood's most technologically innovative works of cinema over the last century-plus.
It's extremely strange seeing clips of The Matrix, Tron, Terminator 2, and especially Avatar at the end of a three-hour period movie - a bold choice which heavily divided audiences.
Some embraced it as an earnest celebration of cinema while others laughed it off as unbearably corny, but something most everyone will agree on - it was weird as all hell.