‘Moonage Daydream’ Film Review: Immersive David Bowie Documentary Is a Bold, Seething Mass of Bowie-ness

thewrap.com:

seeming) celebration and immersion in all things Bowie. You won’t get a biographical breakdown, except in bits and pieces and through the process of absorption rather than explanation; what you will get is an assemblage of live clips and interviews and animation and effects plucked from throughout the Bowie archives and knitted together with an extraordinarily dense and at times even assaultive sound design.In case you’ve forgotten, the last line of the chorus in the song that gives this movie its title is “freak out in a moonage daydream,” which is pretty much what this movie does.If that description scares you, then “Moonage Daydream” might not be the Bowie movie for you.

But if you’re enough of a fan that you relish sinking into a seething morass of Bowie-ness, then by all means see it in the biggest, loudest place you can find once Neon brings it to U.S.

cinemas. The film takes an approach somewhat reminiscent of Todd Haynes’ brilliant 2021 documentary “The Velvet Underground,” which used music and experimental film to put you inside the Velvets’ music, and pushes it to another level.While Morgen’s best-known films include “The Kid Stays in the Picture” and “Jane,” “Moonage Daydream” is closest in tone to his 2016 film “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck,” where he used the late musician’s home recordings, drawings and journals to paint an intimate and mesmeric portrait.That film was likely a strong reason he was given access to Bowie’s exhaustive archives in 2017, shortly after the singer’s death.

Since then, Morgen has worked his way through that material — but rather than saying “look at this cool old stuff I found,” he’s used it to create a cool new thing.The opening stretch sets the tone.