Damien Chazelle’s latest movie is a staggeringly ambitious, multi-tiered melodrama that follows several disparate characters amidst Hollywood’s transition from silent movies to talkies. Very much interwoven with this huge technological shift is the extended high that was the late 1920s, followed by the Wall Street Crash that ushered in The Great Depression. Lest we make this sound too highbrow, it is a film that includes car chases, explosive elephant excrement, orgies, projectile vomit, freak shows, bloody injuries, and mountains upon mountains of hard drugs. And don’t forget the snake fight.