Jonathan Romney at The Current:
Right from the start, Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream (2022) catches us off guard. It begins with an epigraph musing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead,” then takes us into deep space and onto the surface of the moon. It then unleashes an image storm of rockets, robots, and star-gazers, and rapid-fire fragments of early silent cinema, 1920s science fiction, fifties cartoons, and sixties and seventies newsreel footage, before lingering on a close-up of glittery varnish on fingernails. The effect is dizzying, and Morgen has fittingly described the film, a tribute to the late David Bowie, as “an experiential documentary.” This is not a conventional account of a rock musician’s life and work. Neither a concert movie nor an information-laden career overview, it is instead a free-associative hybrid of pop history and imaginative extravaganza—impressionistic, eclectically allusive, and, above all, immersive.
more here.