Popular reviews

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  Review by Adam Friedland 5

  Had to watch this in my room because nick and stav were making fun of bob Dylan.

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★ 3

  Even after 45 years, no one can agree on why Bob Dylan called that tour “Rolling Thunder Revue” — it might be one of those things that only gets more elusive over time. The “Revue” part is easy enough: Dylan was famous enough to do what he wanted, but too frazzled to do it alone, so he extended an open invitation to the best minds of his generation to join him for a series of intimate shows across the United States; it would be a folk happening and a freewheeling gypsy caravan and a chance for a busful of beautiful seekers to go out and look for whatever it was they were trying to find.

  The reason for “Rolling Thunder,”…

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  Review by Nick Newman

  Personal taste, interest, preference, the like would leave me pretty biased in favor of this. Putting all that aside, it is the best film I’ve ever seen.

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  Review by Richard Chandler ★★★★★ 15

  "Life isn't about finding yourself or finding anything; life is about creating yourself and creating things."

  Disclaimer: When it comes to Bob Dylan, I don't have an objective bone in my body—only wonder and gratitude. Though if you're looking for criticism, I will have a bit for Martin Scorsese down the line.

  I think it would be instructive to begin with a thumbnail description of the actual Rolling Thunder Revue's celebrated first leg because Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese intentionally (and mimetically) obfuscates the subject at its heart. Somewhat crestfallen by his lucrative but dispassionate 1974 return to national touring (with The Band) following eight years off the road, Bob Dylan approached friend and…

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  Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★★ 8

  Being a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE Bob Dylan fan and being a HUGE Martin Scorsese fan, and hearing positive things, I think my expectations were a little bit overblown. This documentary alternated between being the BEST EVER and approaching the most WTF ever. It averaged out to a 3/5, but please take that rating with a grain of salt.

  It focused on a very specific time in Bob Dylan's career, relying on older footage interspersed with more recent interviews. Now, I am aware that this was a faux-documentary that made claims: some of them true, some not (a link to The Wrap's breakdown of the film is included at the very bottom).

  I was horrified when Sharon Stone claimed that Bob…

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  Review by cuckoochanel ★★★★★ 5

  As the lengthy title would suggest, there are actually two films here working strangely in tandem despite their apparent dichotomy—a pristinely restored concert documentary highlighting the first five weeks of The Rolling Thunder Revue in the fall of 1975 and the perplexing, titular Bob Dylan story by Martin Scorsese, a meticulously arranged cornucopia of lies, fairytales and fallacies that completely obscure any honesty and mystify all candor presented in the various interviews that frolic tauntingly between sets from the iconic concert, intimate moments backstage, footage from the road, benefits, afterparties and detours.

  Continuing in the Dylan tradition of obfuscation, Scorsese yarns histories for a host of characters supposedly connected with the tour, including a fictitious filmmaker who captured the Rolling…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★½ 4

  I know very little about Dylan and have no real attachment to his work or the mythologizing of it, so for me it's a big fat balloon that didn't really need to get popped. That said it could be about pretty much anyone and I'd still think it's all a little too pleased with itself, a little too cheeky (Michael Murphy as Tanner, opening with Méliès, you get it) for its own good. So mostly an MP not a YP. Great footage though.

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  Review by Luke Bauerlein ★★★★½

  "You who saw it all, or saw flashes and fragments, take from us this example, try and get yourselves together, clean up your act, find your community, pick up on some kind of redemption of your own consciousness, become more mindful of your own friends, your own work, your own proper meditation, your own proper art, your own beauty. Go out and make it for your own eternity." ~ Allen Ginsberg

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  Review by Brendan Michaels ★★★★★ 2

  tired: Beyoncé’s Homecoming
  wired: Rolling Thunder Revue by Martin Scorsese

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★ 4

  Scorsese has now devoted six full hours to Bob Dylan (not counting Dylan's guest slots on The Last Waltz), and, by design, he has come no closer to solving pop's great paradox. Where No Direction Home epically danced around the figure who could not be solved by any amount of biographical detail, The Rolling Thunder Revue is an active, almost prankish attempt to obscure the figure. Falsified details recast a 19yo Sharon Stone as the tour's costume designer, bring back the lead character from Robert Altman's Tanner '88, and just generally scramble all truths so that you can't tell if the look of mild displeasure on the current Dylan's face when he says he stole the tour's face-painting idea from…

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★½

  “This wouldn’t exist without me, I’m the filmmaker here”

  Welcome to Scorsese’s pseudo documentary

  It’s an interesting commentary on the fact that in one way or another all documentaries are fables, because in a sense you’re dealing with unreliable recollections and opinions, but my biggest issue with this is that since it’s full of fables that are purposely sprinkled in, it prevents me from becoming fully invested in the actual story.

  For this kind of statement I feel like it should be a complete fable like Peter Jackson’s masterful Forgotten Silver

  Despite my reservations there’s still some fantastic footage that does a great job of catching a specific magical moment in time.

  “I’m searching for the Holy Grail….I’m gonna search until I find it, like Sir Galahad.”

  
  Cinematic Time Capsule - 2019 Ranked

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★½ 3

  AKA The Buried Secret of Bob Dylan

  More at ScreenCrush.