Film Review

Grateful Dead: Meet-Up at the Movies 2026 - 6/17/91 at Giants Stadium

by Doug Collette
August 29, 2026

Grateful Dead Meet-Up at the Movies 2026: 6/17/91 at Giants Stadium Majestic 10, Williston, VT August 20, 2026 Rhino Records/Trafalgar Releasing In the fifteen years since its inception in 2011, the annual Grateful Dead community event dubbed 'Meetup at the Movies' has included more than one repeat of content. Not surprisingly, The Grateful Dead Movie (Rhino, 2004) has been screened more than once--after all, the film documents an inflection point in the iconic band's ...

Peter Asher: Everywhere Man

by Thomas Cole
July 11, 2026

Peter AsherPeter Asher: Everywhere Man Greenwich Entertainment 2026 As the title of this documentary implies, Peter Asher was everywhere, a virtual Zelig-like figure in music history beginning in the 1960s. With the boomer theme running throughout, the film is framed around a 2019 live performance and monologue performed at Bimbo's in San Francisco with master of ceremonies Peter Asher addressing and singing for an invited audience of friends and colleagues. He recounts his history with humor, ...

Köln 75

by Maciej Stasiowski
April 19, 2026

Köln 75One Two Films / Extreme Emotions / Gretchenfilm / MMC Studios Köln GmbHDIrector: Ido Fluk2025 There is a scene mid-way through Ido Fluk's whimsical dramedy that plays like an European art-house tune. Three figures are traveling at night in a tiny Renault 4. Keith Jarrett (musician, played by John Magaro) is in the front seat, Manfred Eicher (label owner/producer--Alexander Scheer) at the wheel, and Michael Watts (with Michael Chernus embodying the universe's idea of ...

Best of the Best: Jazz From Detroit

by Paul Rauch
December 1, 2025

Best of the Best: Jazz From DetroitMagic Circle Productions LLC2025 The history of jazz music is told in hundreds of cities from coast to coast in America. From the cradle in New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta, the great migration of Black Americans northward spread the sounds that we know as the blues and jazz across the country. Millions headed to northern urban centers to escape the ravages of segregation and racial discrimination experienced ...

Köln 75

by Paul Reynolds
October 16, 2025

Köln 75One Two Films / Extreme Emotions / Gretchenfilm / MMC Studios Köln GmbHDIrector: Ido Fluk2025 November, 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of The Köln Concert (ECM Records, 1975), the live recording by Keith Jarrett that stands as the biggest-selling solo album--and piano album--in jazz history. To mark the occasion cinematically, Köln 75 hit select U.S. movie screens in October, 2025. The film defies expectations and takes risks, almost as much as ...

Sunday Best: A Netflix Documentary

by Thomas Cole
August 14, 2025

Ed Sullivan, at one time was the most renowned name in US television. Most of us hear that name and think of Elvis Presley and his electrifying game-changing performance in 1956. Few of us will ever forget the hip-shaking gyrations that captivated a nation. Nothing like it had ever been seen on national television. Or so the myth goes, as Elvis premiered on the Milton Berle Show a few months earlier. Or we think of and remember his introduction of ...

The Session Man: Nicky Hopkins

by Doug Collette
June 8, 2025

Nicky Hopkins The Session Man Alan Fergurson2025 The very title of Mike Treen's film The Session Man: Nicky Hopkins understates the singular stature of the documentary's subject. Nicky Hopkins was a British keyboardist/composer who played on over two-hundred vintage era recordings by genuinely iconic musical figures of contemporary rock like the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Who. In fact, Hopkins' prestige is such that the name of the documentary ends up sounding more ...

Marley: Collector's Edition (2DVD)

by Doug Collette
June 7, 2025

Bob Marley Marley: 2 DVD Collector's Edition Tuff Gong Worldwide 2025 There have been other works devoted to Bob Marley ostensibly as comprehensive as Academy Award-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald's picturesque historical film Marley. But the addition of this absorbing piece to a list including, but hardly limited to, Timothy White's print biography Catch A Fire (Elm Tree Books, 1983) and the 2024 biopic Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures, 2024), only clarifies the depth and ...

Bob Dylan: A Complete Unknown

by Doug Collette
January 10, 2025

Bob Dylan A Complete Unknown Searchlight Pictures2024 As with so many artistic efforts related to Bob Dylan, James Mangold's biopic A Complete Unknown may work best simply as the means to an end (and not just as inspiration to revisit the Nobel Prize winner's music). The film certainly benefits from not being taken too seriously, especially as it hardly pretends to be definitive, even in the designated 1961-1965 timeline of the screenplay by the ...

Medeski Martin & Wood: Not Not Jazz

by Doug Collette
August 10, 2024

Medeski Martin & Wood Not Not Jazz MVD Entertainment Group 2024 Director Jason Miller and producers Tyler Davidson, Jim Stark and Elie Weiss do not succumb to over-ambition with Not Not Jazz, their documentary devoted to Medeski Martin & Wood. The temptation would be to try and 'explain' the chemistry of the “avant-groove" band, but that would be an exercise in futility if there ever was one. And why try to eradicate the mystery of ...