The Film Stage by Luke Hicks
At a lengthy 140 minutes, the film flashes by. The deeper you go the more you want to know, and the more there is to know.
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Brett Morgen
Cast
David Bowie,
Russell Harty,
Lou Reed,
Dick Cavett,
Iman,
Bing Crosby
Genre
Documentary,
Music
Moonage Daydream illuminates the life and genius of David Bowie, one of the most influential artists of our time, and explores Bowie's creative, musical, and spiritual journey. The film is guided by the icon's own narration and is the first officially sanctioned film on the artist.
The Film Stage by Luke Hicks
At a lengthy 140 minutes, the film flashes by. The deeper you go the more you want to know, and the more there is to know.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It’s a glorious celebratory montage of archive material, live performance footage, Bowie’s own experimental video art and paintings, movie and stage work and interviews with various normcore TV personalities with whom Bowie is unfailingly polite, open and charming.
The Telegraph by Tim Robey
Moonage Daydream, a wildly creative tribute to everything Bowie achieved over four and a half decades, sets a sky-high bar as cinematic fan-service, and it leaves you buzzing.
Entertainment Weekly by Joshua Rothkopf
Pruning would hamper the unencumbered risk-taking on display, which extends to some atmospheric animation (as it did with Morgen's Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck), and instantly vaults the effort to the top of the Bowie docs. The music itself, gorgeously remixed by Bowie's longtime producer and friend Tony Visconti, has never sounded better or stranger, with isolations of instrumental passages that stick in mind.
TheWrap by Steve Pond
Moonage Daydream is a bracing, gloriously messy (or, more likely, gloriously messy seeming) celebration and immersion in all things Bowie.
The Playlist
The scope shrinks in the final third, as Morgen seemingly retreats into a more comfortable linear chronology — the last twenty years of his life blast past as quickly as his first — but whew, this is one helluva technicolor starship.
IndieWire by Siddhant Adlakha
More sensory experience than straightforward recounting, the documentary by Brett Morgen (“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”) is about feeling your way through a chaotic world with Ziggy Stardust as your anchor.
Total Film by Jordan Farley
Unconventional, almost to a fault, Brett Morgen’s impressionistic, experiential Bowie documentary is an electrifying oddity.
Screen Daily by Fionnuala Halligan
Much of this film has never been seen before, and it is a true treasure trove. It feels, like Bowie’s career, though, incomplete, and certainly the period between his later-in-life marriage to Iman and death after the final, unsettling Blackstar recordings is vague and reliant on what the director/producer/editor calls ‘musical mash-ups’ which he designed and edited to have a trancey, hypnotic effect.
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
Moonage Daydream is short on insight, and ends up feeling more enervating than enlightening.
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