“Now, when I see a rose, that’s perfect. I mean, that’s perfect! I want to look up to God and say, ‘how the hell did you do that? And why the hell can’t I do that?’”
So well shot and paced with the kind of adrenaline rush that’s quite rare to come by, Bob Fosse’s very personal piece All That Jazz clocks in on a self-destructive personality of your go-to party-, sex-, and big-headed celebrity wearing out his illusions as lethally as possible until facing near collisions with termination. Guilt finally becomes material for a deemed god only when its coerced into a last minute ordeal, and even at that, there’s still always a need to overdramatize those moments as an egocentric artist. I absolutely loved whenever the choreography of dances here were so sensually in-sync with the heated drama, plus the repetition of its spontaneous inserts and sound editing truly feels caged exclusively in the saturating mind of our lead star.
“8 1/2” needs to be coined as its own genre at this point though.
Verdict: B+
“All That Jazz” is now available to purchase from The Criterion Collection.
Published by