Definitely underrated. I keep trying to get my friends to watch this and none of them will for some reason. But yeah, this is one of my faves from the last few years.
It’s so strange that this never really made an impact. I’m not huge on most mainstream/studio American films (nor Chazelle’s prior works) but this is absolutely exhilarating. Seeing the IMAX sequences in an IMAX cinema was genuinely one of the most exciting moments I had at TIFF last year.
I’d say it’s far and away his best I’m not huge on his stuff before it though, so might not be the right person to ask
Whiplash, La La Land and First Man are all great and he helped write "10 Cloverfield Lane," which whipped ass, minus the tacked-on ending.
i think even most people who dislike la la land can concede that it's very clearly the work of someone with a lot of talent
I feel like this one went seriously under the radar and was wayyyyy better than a lot of people wanted to give it credit for.
I haven't seen this yet but I liked La La Land more than Whiplash, and I hate musicals. My perception is skewed compared to most people bc I'm a drummer myself but the disconnect between what jazz drumming actually is vs. how it's portrayed in Whiplash is really stark and kind of immersion breaking. The insane practice scenes are just.... what
stealing this review from Letterboxd bc it describes why I loved this movie way better than I could "an engineer witnesses the death of a child and and can't help but see it as a failure of technical precision and imagination. he willfully isolates himself in an effort to prove it, and through sheer obsessive will and technical process orchestrates a relatively pointless and performative but nonetheless very cathartic and very real miracle to see it through. he achieves the metaphysical and by the end is still isolated. what a sad fucking movie."