Encyclopedia
Repo Man
(Alex Cox, U.S.A., 1984): Arriving as it did in a time of high post-punk deadpanning — see also Penelope Spheeris’ Suburbia, Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise, the Coens’ Blood Simple and, a couple... Read More »
Searching for Sugar Man
(Malik Bendjelloul, Sweden/U.K., 2012): There’s probably no greater enabler of excessive pop cultural obsession than an elusive object — be it person, album, movie or otherwise lost treasure —... Read More »
Gainsbourg by Gainsbourg: An Intimate Self-Portrait
(Pierre-Henri Salfati, France, 2012): From the grave he always seemed to have one foot in, the late Serge Gainsbourg talks about his life, his music, his Russian Jewishness, his... Read More »
The Last Pogo Jumps Again
(Colin Brunton and Kire Paputts, Canada, 2013): The Toronto punk scene, which burned as intensely as any of its New York, London or L.A. counterparts — and developed contemporaneously,... Read More »
West of Memphis
(Amy Berg, U.S.A., 2012): At the beginning of Amy Berg’s West of Memphis, a feature length documentary which not only recapitulates the history of the controversial case against three... Read More »
The Paradise Lost Trilogy
(Joel Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky, U.S.A., 1993-2011): Arguably as good, compelling and intelligent as American documentaries get, the three HBO-produced films about a 1993 triple child murder in working-class West... Read More »
Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day
(Dick Carruthers, U.K., 2012): Lord have mercy. Five years after the fact, the utterly un-rushable corporate machine that is Led Zeppelin finally releases the instantly legendary December, 2007 concert... Read More »
I Got the Feelin’: James Brown in the ’60s
Truth be told, this three-disc set — also available as separate DVDs — is really ‘James Brown on TV in ’60s’, but that doesn’t make it any less vital... Read More »
Charlie is My Darling
(Peter Whitehead, U.K., 1966): This hour-long verité-styled doc, commissioned by the Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham as a kind of dry-run for future cinematic band endeavours — which... Read More »
The Who Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970/Listening to You: The Who Live at the Isle of Wight
“It’s a psychedelic concentration camp!” That’s how one disgrunted child of Aquarius describes the events at the Isle of Wight in August, 1970, a comment (heard during the DVD’s... Read More »
Jesus Christ Superstar (the 1973 movie)
(Norman Jewison, U.S.A., 1973): In which the rock star as Jesus metaphor comes full circle: this is Jesus as rock star, but the end result is as bleak as... Read More »
Wild in the Streets
(Barry Shear, U.S.A., 1968): The Bizarro World version of Peter Watkins’ Privilege, Barry Shears’ pulp political nightmare imagines the teen idol as messiah scenario from the other side of... Read More »
Lonely Boy
(Wolf Koenig, Roman Kroitor, Canada, 1962): Included on the Project X 2008 DVD release of Peter Watkins’ Privilege is this, one of the most influential pop documentaries ever made,... Read More »
Privilege
(Peter Watkins, U.K., 1967): There’s a origin story circulating that claims Peter Watkins’ Privilege, an extraordinarily presicient dystopian pop allegory about a rock star manipulated by a neo-Fascist British... Read More »
Tommy
(Ken Russell, U.K., 1975): In retrospect, Ken Russell now seems like the missing link between Federico Fellini and Mel Brooks, and that ain’t at all bad. Perfect, in fact for... Read More »
The Source
(Maria Demopoulos, Jodie Wille, U.S.A., 2012): The picture is gradually emerging, and it isn’t pretty: the seeds of hope and optimism planted in the 1960s had borne some truly... Read More »
Quadrophenia
(Franc Roddam, U.K., 1979): Time has not only been good to Franc Roddam’s down, dirty and doleful movie version of The Who’s thunderously bleak 1973 double album — a... Read More »
The Killing of John Lennon
(Andrew Piddington, UK, 2007): A curious thing this meticulous, nutjob-eye’s p.o.v. account of the events leading up to John Lennon’s murder, at once obsessive and pointless, driven and going nowhere.... Read More »
LennoNYC
(Michael Epstein, USA, 2010): It’s hard growing fresh grass on terrain as well-trod as anything Beatles-related, but this documentary, originally aired on PBS’s American Masters series as part of... Read More »
George Harrison: Living In The Material World
(Martin Scorsese, USA, 2011): The more you watch and listen to the Beatles, the more interesting George Harrison becomes, or at least so he became for me. Situated between... Read More »
The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit
(Albert Maysles, David Maysles, U.S., 1964): Seven weeks before they are to begin making their first movie with Richard Lester, the Beatles arrive in America for their inaugural visit,... Read More »
Let It Be
(Michael Lindsay-Hogg, UK, 1970): The Beatles in full dissembly, trying to tough their way through a misbegotten attempt to ‘Get Back’ — the movie’s original title — by stripping... Read More »
The Beatles Anthology
(Geoff Wonfor, Bob Smeaton, UK, 1995/2002): Being the perceptual phenomenon whereby the decade of the 1960s is compressed, expanded, intensified and generally distorted by being viewed through the extraordinary... Read More »
Help!
(Richard Lester, Great Britain, 1965): Having reduced London (and rock movies) to black-and-white rubble with A Hard Day’s Night, Richard Lester and the reluctant quartet take the show on... Read More »
A Hard Day’s Night
(Richard Lester, Great Britain, 1964): London is just too small to contain The Beatles, and here it is blowing up. With one foot in the black-and-white, brick wall and... Read More »
You’re Gonna Miss Me: A Film About Roky Erickson
(Keven McAlester, USA, 2005): With all due respect to the genuine pain and affliction suffered by such tortured pop visionaries as Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson, Daniel Johnston and Roky Erickson,... Read More »
Hell’s Angels on Wheels
(Richard Rush, USA, 1967): As a gas station attendant who tells his boss to get stuffed before skedaddling off with the Hell’s Angels, Jack Nicholson looks like Five Easy... Read More »
The Wild Angels
(Roger Corman, USA, 1966): If movies traded in content over style, Roger Corman’s awesomely nihilistic The Wild Angels would never have kickstarted a genre. But they don’t, of course, and... Read More »
Patti Smith Dream of Life
(Steven Sebring, USA, 2008): The single-most eye-rolling moment in Steven Sebring’s decade-in-the-making Patti Smith Dream of Life occurs when the punk high priestess expresses her amusement at being called... Read More »
Under the Cherry Moon
(Prince, USA, 1986): It’s hard to remember now just how big a star Prince was post Purple Rain, but Under the Cherry Moon is here to remind us. Made in... Read More »
Joy Division
(Grant Gee, UK/USA, 2007): The sound they made was extraordinary and (s0 far) timeless, and all the more remarkable for the fact that it was pretty much accidental, something that... Read More »
Blackboard Jungle
(Richard Brooks, USA, 1955): Rock was the soundtrack for trouble back in ’55, the year that Elvis went atomic, Rebel Without a Cause was released, and Blackboard Jungle hit screens... Read More »
Born to Boogie
Left, it seems, with too much money and time to spare after the breakup of the Beatles, Ringo Starr opened up a film division at Apple Records and pronounced... Read More »
The Ballad of Mott the Hoople
(Mike Kerry, Chris Hall, U.S./Great Britain, 2011): In which one of the most perplexingly uncategorisable, fundamentally unstable but unequivocally fucking great British rock bands of the 1970s finally gets... Read More »
Elvis ’68 Comeback Special
(1968-2004): Although Elvis never warranted particularly heavy rotation on my family’s hi-fi, we all tuned in to the December 3, 1970 Presley special presented by Singer sewing machines. Something... Read More »
Suburbia
(Penelope Spheeris, USA, 1983): From this distance, it seems increasingly obvious that California is where punk went to die. On its way westward it not only boiled itself into hardcore... Read More »
Rock Of Ages
(Alan Shankman, USA, 2012): Karaoke-kult adaptation of Chris D’Arienzo’s broadway musical, directed by Hairspray‘s Adam Shankman, set on an amusement-park conception of L.A.’s Sunset Strip circa 1987. It’s the... Read More »
David Bowie: A Reality Tour
Recorded in Dublin twelve months before the November, ’04 multiple bypass surgery that would temper his public activities dramatically, David Bowie: A Reality Tour might well stand as the... Read More »
Stop Making Sense
(Jonathan Demme, USA, 1984): This is the band called Talking Heads at their performance peak, astutely and immaculately captured by Jonathan Demme. It’s December, 1983 at the Pantages in... Read More »
Peter Gabriel: Secret World Live
Recorded over two nights in 1993 in Modena, Italy, this remains the best place to go for your visual Gabriel fix if, like me, only sporadic fixes are required.... Read More »
The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons
Dig this: on the final day of the Woodstock festival, The Jefferson Airplane appear on ABC’s The Dick Cavett Show. They performed at the big event only two days... Read More »
The Howlin’ Wolf Story
(Don McGlynn, USA, 2003): One of the very few full-length documentary portraits of a seminal bluesman, The Howlin’ Wolf Story is riveting viewing despite itself. Don McGlynn’s movie was... Read More »
When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors
(Tom DiCillo, USA, 2010): Tom DiCillo’s hypnotic documentary about The Doors has been widely criticized as an exercise in redundancy, but that criticism misses the point. This isn’t a... Read More »
Marley
(Kevin Macdonald, UK/USA, 2012): Messianic, mesmerising, mythic: three m-words that adhere inevitably to both Bob Marley and his appearance in this nearly two-and-a-half hour documentary portrait of the reggae... Read More »
Music From the Big House
(Bruce McDonald, Canada, 2010): One of four music-themed movies Canadian director Bruce McDonald completed in 2010, and possibly the most powerful and cohesive of them all. Following the Canadian... Read More »
This Movie is Broken
(Bruce McDonald, Canada, 2010): As productively restless a filmmaker as you’ll find, Bruce McDonald is willing to try anything, especially if there’s a musical backbeat involved. (Indeed, a fascination... Read More »
Trigger
(Bruce McDonald, Canada, 2010): The bitch goddess of rock might be even crueler to aging women than men, who can at least get old and ugly like Dylan. But... Read More »
The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show
In 1969, when Johnny Cash got his own TV show, he was at the height of powers and popularity: the San Quentin album was a triumph, his marriage to... Read More »
Music Scene: The Best of 1969-1970/The Best of 1969-1970 Volume 2
Here’s the thing, for me at least, about pop cultural memory: you remember things you’ve forgotten you’ve remembered until they’re re-activated by another encounter with the thing itself. The... Read More »
Rock Around the Clock
(Fred F. Sears, USA, 1956): Appearing a year after Bill Haley’s monster hit was heard beneath the credits of Blackboard Jungle, this Sam Katzman-produced quickie smartly aims to re-market... Read More »
Don’t Knock the Rock
(Fred F. Sears, USA, 1956): Once again, a dubious case is made for the virtue of rock & roll by dint of its dullness. Indeed, a pivotal moment in... Read More »
Biker Babylon/It’s A Revolution Mother
(Harry Kerwin, USA, 1968): Possibly one of the only examples you’ll find of an exploitation political documentary — think of it as ‘Mondo Pinko Mojo’ — this unsurprisingly near-forgotten... Read More »
The Wild Ride
(Harvey Berman, USA, 1960): As a hipster hot-rodder with sociopathic tendencies, the 23 year-old Jack Nicholson makes for a pretty convincing post-Brando, post-Dean JD. First seen running a motorcycle... Read More »
Sign O’ The Times
(Prince, USA, 1987): The ’80s were so crowded with rock gaudiness it’s all too easy to forget just how comfortably Prince wore it, but this (and not the terminally... Read More »
Hard Core Logo II
(Bruce McDonald, Canada, 2010): It took some balls for Canadian director Bruce McDonald to re-visit not only his most successful movie but his most passionately beloved, and then to... Read More »
T.A.M.I. Show
The teenagers filling the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in late October, 1964 (right between the Beatles’ first Sullivan appearance and the passage of the Civil Rights Bill), are playing... Read More »
Led Zeppelin: DVD
The path to awesomeness — 70′s hard rock, proto-metal division — or ‘How Led Zeppelin Became God For A While, Anyway.’ These four concert segments of varying length —... Read More »
The Blues/Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues
(2003): For boomer-aged music obsessives, which describes just about every director in this series, the blues are a kind of foundational mythology: where rock music came from, where the... Read More »
Let’s Spend the Night Together
(Hal Ashby, USA, 1982): This movie is so rich in things at their worst it amounts to something essential despite itself. So where to begin? It could be the... Read More »
Ed Sullivan’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Classics
(2001): This nine-disc Rhino collection, comprising twenty-four episodes of Andrew Solt’s VH1 TV series is both maddening and mesmerising. Maddening because the chipper, pop-historical framing of each episode conforms... Read More »
Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage
(Scot McFadyen, Sam Dunn, Canada, 2010): The service provided by this full-length documentary about Canada — or maybe the world’s — longest running prog-rock power trio is not inconsiderable:... Read More »
Ladies & Gentlemen… The Rolling Stones
(Rollin Binzer, USA, 1972/2010): Four long ago nights in Texas, and the Rolling Stones are actually making a compelling case for being the world’s greatest rock & roll band.... Read More »
Blow-Up
(Michelangelo Antonioni, Great Britain, 1966): This may be as dated as Sammy Davis Jr.’s nehru, but retro’s perfectly fine if it reveals the moment with age-defying clarity, and this certainly... Read More »
Straight to Hell Returns
(Alex Cox, Great Britain, 1986/2010): It doesn’t get any better, and that’s not meant in the sense you might hope it does. Despite being re-visited, re-polished, re-colored and digitally splatter-enhanced,... Read More »
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down a Dream
(Peter Bogdanovich, USA, 2007): One of the more convincing cases for rock & roll greatness around, Peter Bogdanovich’s four-hour history of an unassumingly great band is only that much more... Read More »
Streets of Fire
(Walter Hill, USA, 1984): With the freedom won from the box office bonanza of 48 hrs., the genre retro-fitter Walter Hill returned to Warriors terrain on a much grander scale,... Read More »
Lindsey Buckingham Live (with Special Guest Stevie Nicks)
You can forgive the guy caught yawning near the stage in this September, 2005, Soundstage episode featuring the former lead guitarist and principle studio architect of Fleetwood Mac: he’s... Read More »
Jesus Christ Superstar
Jesus Christ Superstar: When Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera concerning the final week in the life of Christ first started cracking the top-40 charts in North... Read More »
Hard Core Logo
(Bruce McDonald, Canada, 1996): Released the same year the Sex Pistols’ reunited for their dubiously triumphant ‘Fithy Lucre’ tour — in which they owned up to their own cynicism but... Read More »
Gimme Shelter
(Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte, Zwerin, USA, 1970): As one account of how (and why) the sixties ended, Gimme Shelter provides a powerful eye-witness testimonial to the doomed nature of... Read More »
Five Minutes to Live
(Bruce Karn, USA, 1961): The title song is not only composed and sung by Johnny Cash, but performed on screen by the man to the audience of one whose... Read More »