Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

Conan O'Brien is not funny. O'Brien's longtime sidekick Andy Richter on the other hand is. I know this because the only times I laughed during the documentary about O'Brien's self serving stand-up comedy tour was at Richter's subtle sense of humor. For all of O'Brien's protestations about how much he loves to perform, his efforts come across more as an addiction than as a gift.

After the much-publicized debacle that left O'Brien without an NBC produced nightly television show after 22-years of service, the applause-starved entertainer turned to the creation of a "music-and-comedy" tour entitled "The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour."

Director Rodman Flender takes a vérité approach that reveals his lanky, red-haired subject to be a petulant man-child with a chip on his shoulder the size of Gibraltar.

O'Brien's proclivity for bullying his staff with humiliation tactics and physical punches comes off as mean rather than infused with the Goddamned-I'm-funny innocence that O'Brien pretends exonerates him for any responsibility for his actions. "30 Rock's" Jack McBrayer gets an especially uncomfortable treatment during a backstage visit that will make your skin crawl.

Rehearsals, meetings, backstage meet-and-greets, and performance clips from the 32-city tour make for a less than satisfying audience experience. Most oppressive is the lacking level of musicianship O'Brien exhibits as he sings and plays guitar on songs like "Polk Salad Annie" and a parody version of "On the Road Again." Even with a band of professional musicians and back-up singers behind him the musical performances fall woefully flat. Jack Black, Conan O'Brien is not.

After getting a $32.5 million settlement from NBC to keep him off the air until September 1, you have to ask yourself why he felt the urge to show how much contempt he has for his staff and his audience. For anyone interested, this movie is enough to make you never want to watch Conan O'Brien again.

Rated R. 89 mins. (C-) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

The Wildest Dream: Conquest of Everest

Brothers of the Rope
George Mallory's Quest is Brought Full-Circle
By Cole Smithey

Just when you were fed up with the whole idea of people climbing Mount Everest like it was a rollercoaster at Magic Mountain, documentarian Anthony Geffen reclaims a significant aspect of the mountain's storied history.

The 1999 discovery of British explorer George Mallory's frozen body in Everest's famous "Death Zone" by American mountaineer Conrad Anker, lays down the parameters for a biographical essay on Mallory. Mallory's heartfelt letters to his wife Ruth during their time apart provide a condensed spectrum of his poetically expressed romanticism undaunted by the aspiration that consumes him. His promise to leave a photo of Ruth on the mountain peak plays into the mystery of Mallory's famous climb. Amazing archive film footage from Mallory's 1924 expedition, cherished photo stills, and a roundelay of gifted narrators that includes Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Hugh Dancy, and Natasha Richardson combine to create a time-flipping effect to put the viewer in touch with the momentous breadth of its subject.

For his attempt to climb Everest in 1924, the 38-year-old Mallory chose as his climbing partner 21-year-old Sandy Irvine for the younger man's strong physicality as an Oxford oarsman and for his technical ability with oxygen tanks. Neither men would survive the climb, and the question of whether or not they were the first men to summit Everest is one of the central issues the film addresses in an unvarnished way.

In 2007, 83-years after Mallory's doomed expedition, Conrad Anker and his co-climber Leo Houlding attempt to climb Everest during the exact same late season May/June time period that Mallory and Irvine did. They take with them gabardine jackets and hobnail boots identical to the ones that Mallory used, to test the clothing's practicality for such a rigorous journey. A particularly spectacular aspect of their mission to recreate Mallory's climb involves removing the aluminum ladder, that a group of Chinese climbers installed in 1975 in the Death Zone, to take a crack at free-climbing Everest's "Second Step," just as Mallory and Irvine would have had to do in 1924.

Never for a second is there any doubt that the prime motivation of the film is to assess the probability that George Mallory and Sandy Irvine were indeed the first men to make it onto the peak of Mount Everest. The photo of Ruth that Mallory promised to deposit at the mountain's top was not with his corpse, while other possessions like letters, an altimeter, and a watch were still with him. George Mallory will likely best be remembered for his response to a New York journalist who asked him, "Why climb Everest?" Mallory's iconic reply, "Because it's there," is an enigmatic concept that the film eloquently embraces, and illuminates on a visceral and intellectual level.

It's a shame that Mount Everest has turned into an amusement park for rich poseurs with barely an idea of who George Mallory was or what he was about as a man. It would be fare if the filmmakers had chosen not to replace the Chinese ladder on the Second Step.

Rated PG. 93 mins. (B+) (Four Stars - out of five/no halves)

Oceans

Sea Creatures are People Too
Ocean Documentary Shows the Personalities of its Animals
By Cole Smithey

This year, "Earth Day" (a day to "inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment") is marked by the release of "Oceans," a lush documentary about the magnificent waters that cover more than 70 percent of the earth's surface, and the vast number of creatures that live there. Under Pierce Brosnan's commanding narration, filmmakers Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud explore immense regions of the ocean's depths to celebrate the wild and colorful herbivores, carnivores, and detritivores that live there. Although it sounds like the kind of documentary you've seen a thousand times before, "Oceans" takes full advantage of state-of-the-art equipment to show audiences a crystal clear vision of intriguing sea creatures like the Red Sea's Dugong Marsa Alam and the intricately cloaked Garden Eel, from Indonesia's Lembeh Strait. The filmmakers are careful to spend the majority of the film celebrating the dramatic and peaceful rituals of a wide variety of ocean animals, while punctuating the film eloquently and briefly with the enormous problem of plastics and pollution being dumped into the oceans. Most disturbing is satellite footage that shows the dark streams of pollution emanating from American rivers directly into the sea.

Modern audiences have such terrific access to wild life programs on television that it's easy to take for granted the work of filmmakers like Perrin and Cluzaud. But it would be a mistake to discount this film's inspiring, informative, and entertaining effect. On the Europa Island Mozambic Canal, tiny baby green turtles hatch from under plush white sand to make a mad dash for the shore line before being gobbled up by swarms of attacking birds that swoop down on their young helpless prey. In California's Coronado Canyon, a gigantic humpback whale gobbles up thousands of tiny orange krill in a single gulp. In the Arctic, blubbery Cobburg walruses wallow together on the ice in familial tenderness. And the list goes on. There's a profound thrill that comes as the camera glides along with a huge team of dolphins as they speed through the surface of the water, constantly jetting out to soar through the air for brief spins of pure joy.

In an effort at improving an essential part of the ocean floor Disneynature is donating a portion of the film's first week proceeds to save our coral reefs. Without Jacques Cousteau's lifelong contributions to oceanic exploration, a film like "Oceans" would not be possible. When asked what he saw as the biggest threat to our planet, Jacques Cousteau said, that by far it was our population explosion. America's population has more than doubled since Cousteau made that statement. If anything, "Oceans" makes us aware that sea creatures are people too.

Rated G. 84 mins. (B+) (Four Stars - out of five/no halves)  

The Filth and the Fury

Pistols Forever
Julien Temple Does the Sex Pistols Proud
By Cole Smithey

The Sex Pistols managed to offend more people and leave more destruction in their wake than any other punk group. They accomplished it with a tight collection of text-book rock ’n’ roll songs that directly assailed the people they were fed up with — the spoon-fed public in general, and militaristic governments in specific. Their incendiary success was as much a symptom of the ugly social and economic climate in London in the mid-seventies as it was their raw music. The Sex Pistols’ untimely demise signaled a weakness in punk music that record companies took as an excuse against signing and/or properly promoting such bands. Director Julien Temple ("The Great Rock’n’ Roll Swindle," "Earth Girls Are Easy") fleshes out, in traditional documentary style, a balanced view of the band’s 26 month life span in interviews with band members Johnny Rotten Lydon (Singer), Sid Vicious (Bass Guitar), Glen Matlock (Bass Guitar), Paul Cook (Drummer), and the band’s Svengali manager Malcolm McLaren.

"The Filth and the Fury" is the first punk rock documentary to lay out, in an editorial style, a thorough linear account of the last major musical movement of the twentieth century by way of that genre’s fiercest example. There are so many live versions of the band playing and recording that you’ll be humming "God Save the Queen" and "Liar" for days. Temple interviews the Pistols’ surviving members in dark silhouette against a living room window to maintain the film’s focus on the Sex Pistols’ mid-to-late ’70s timeframe. There are tons of treasured punk related film clips, such as Marc Bolan a.k.a. T-Rex speaking to the camera about his admiration of the Sex Pistols, and about their music as an expression of "violence of the mind, rather than violence of the body." There are obligatory clips of the New York Dolls in the height of their career, complete with a smacked-out Johnny Thunders playing guitar like a machete-wielding mercenary.

This is the movie that will inform any curious person as to which specific germs of societal and musical alienation provided such fertile soil for super cool bands like the Dead Boys, the Ramones, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, the Dead Kennedys, the Clash, and Blondie to alter the sound of pop music with an energy and attitude that has not been seen since. Lydon’s descriptions of various British vaudeville comedians that he aped in creating his stage persona are juxtaposed with the relentless marching of military soldiers and a British populace suffering under extreme poverty. The indelible images instantaneously support the ironic and sarcastic delivery of the Pistol's mind-crunching songs.

The Sex Pistols butted heads with EMI and A&M records before being taken on by Richard Branson’s Virgin record label to release the tabloid title inspired album "Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols." The band only released one album containing twelve songs that, as it turns out, stand up against every other twentieth century musical pioneer of limited output (i.e. Chuck Berry or Robert Johnson). Even the cherry-picked cover songs that the Sex Pistols chose spoke volumes about their knowing position as avatars of punk ethics. "Roadrunner," Jonathan Richman’s bleak version of American suburban male lust, is still the freshest two-chord love song to A.M. radio ever written. "Stepping Stone," by the television-manufactured band The Monkees, is an R&B-lifted paean to anti-materialism that comes across, in the hands of the Pistols, as a heartfelt destructive remedy to commonplace class superiority.

One surprisingly sobering outgrowth of "The Filth and the Fury" is the innocent picture that it paints of Sid Vicious as a harmless kid who, before joining the band, was Johnny Rotten’s best friend and the Sex Pistols’ biggest fan. Sid’s interview with Temple took place on a rare sunny day in Britain before he was addicted to heroin, and it reveals a mildly repressed kid, gleefully claiming a territory of individual space. Interviews with and about Sid’s troubled girlfriend Nancy Spungen expose her as a prostitute and junky seeking to leach onto the Sex Pistols’ fame. It's clear that she, as much as the band’s greedy manager, was pivotal in ruining a band born from ruin. By the time the Sex Pistols played Iggy Pop’s "No Fun" for their one song set at the Winterland club in San Francisco in February of ’79, McLaren had stolen the band’s money and Nancy had turned Sid into a heroin zombie. Punk had become less than a minimum wage job; Johnny called the last song and the band called it quits. The world will never forget.

Rated R. 108 mins. (A+)

Religulous

Stop Believing
"Borat" Director Debunks Religion with Bill Maher
By Cole Smithey

Bill Maher takes a shooting-fish-in-a-barrel approach to questioning the validity of all religious beliefs and comes up with a cinematic breath of fresh air. "Borat" director Larry Charles follows Maher around the world to locations like Megiddo, Israel (where the "end of days" is due to ignite) and to the Vatican--where Maher got tossed out for filming inside while he tried to track down the Pope. Maher questions his own Jewish mother and Catholic sister (his father was Catholic), Christian parishioners in North Carolina, ex-Mormons, Hassidic Jews, Muslims, a Catholic priest, and other religiously-connected figures in a sincere attempt to discover how their beliefs were formed and more importantly how they are sustained. The movie contains plenty of well-researched points of its own, like the Christ myth’s existence in several different variations of Mediterranean mythology 600 years prior to the story made popular in the Bible. "Religulous" is a funny, debate-provoking movie that dares to question fundamental beliefs that have been foisted on societies in order to enable brutality and prejudice in the name of a higher power. It's a call for humanity to grow up. "There is no Easter Bunny."

Part of the film’s satirical genius is using Maher, as the polished stand-up comic voice of straight talk, to engage in would-be logical discussions about the veracity of religious truth. Maher comes off as a smart guy pleasantly challenging the roots of people’s religious beliefs. There are plenty of graphics, movie clips, and comic sidebars that inform on a secondary level of commentary and historic context to effectively debunk all religions. Without getting into a history lesson about how religion has been used to subjugate and manipulate the masses for thousands of years, the film expresses the situation through its environments and choice of interviewees that range from an Hasidic inventor of rule-bending contraptions to a self-professed descendent of Jesus.

"What do you believe?" "Why do you believe it?" and "Why do you need to believe it?" are some of the fundamental questions Maher poses with a humanitarian aspiration. There’s no question that the filmmakers didn’t choose an oddball smattering of religiously affiliated individuals to left-handedly chastise for their flaunted hypocrisies. It’s a litmus test approach that allows for some refreshing candidness from the film’s subjects. Is it an obvious set up to interview an actor playing Jesus Christ at a Biblical theme park in Orlando, Florida? Of course it is, but Maher is willing to listen, and so are we.

"Religulous" is a movie designed to stir social discussion. For me it had the effect of letting me hear something confirmed that I’ve rarely before heard so enjoyably pronounced; that not believing in organized religion is a highly responsible social position to take. Atheism, or at least agnosticism, might just save us all.

Rated R. 101 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

Bustin’ Down the Door

Surfing’s Revolution
Hawaii’s Role in Pro Surfing Comes to the Fore
By Cole Smithey

Hawaii’s role in the transformation of surfing from what many considered to be a pastime for drug-crazed counter-culture rebels to a multi-billion dollar sport is revealed in debut director Jeremy Gosch’s documentary about the group of Australian and South African surfers that "broke down the door" for pro surfing to take hold. Actor Ed Norton narrates the storyline that traces competitive surfing from the 1965 inception of the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational Surfing Classic that invited a crew of audacious surfers who, in the winter of 1975, would showcase a previously unseen approach to surfing as a serious sport. Their daredevil efforts would be the harbinger that announced surfing as an athletic event befitting several industries worth of monetary support.

Shaun and Michael Tomson came to Oahu’s North Shore from Durban, South Africa, at the same time that Australian Gold Coast natives Mark Richards, Wayne "Rabbit" Bartholomew, Peter Townend, and Ian Carins arrived at Sunset Beach to hone their skills in the months leading up to the 1975 Kahanamoku Invitational. Born in the ‘50s, the crew shared idealist and reactive personality types set on throwing their lives on the sword of Pipeline in a do-or-die stab at fame and fortune. Unknown to the established surf world, Rabbit and Shaun especially carried the weight of troubled family backgrounds that contributed to their risk-taking approach in developing new surfing techniques that amazed anyone who saw them.

Although local Maui surfing icon and instructor Buzzy Kerbox refutes the film’s claims that his former competitors created any new moves at Sunset, Off the Wall or Pipeline there is a distinctly expressive way that Rabbit, Mark Richards and the Tomsons surfed that is mesmerizing to this day. When I spoke briefly to Buzz by telephone, thanks to an assist from Maui Time friend Barry Rivers, he was quick to uphold the lasting effect that his Australian surfing friends and rivals had on the surfing industry as it contributes to Maui’s economy. The former 6^th placed world championship surfer Buzz said he enjoys wind surfing these days, but a visit to YouTube will give an idea of his tremendous affection and respect for surfing Peah'i.

"Bustin’ Down the Door" uses a large number of exciting surfing sequences from famous ‘70s surf films "Free Ride" and "Tubular Swells," that feature the Aussie crew in action, to contextualize the energy and brilliant techniques the young men were showing off at the time. There are priceless examples that serve as an instructional clinic in surfing techniques.

In the same way that Skateboarder magazine would later help elevate skateboarding to the status of an accepted sport, Surfing and Surfer magazines committed a huge service toward pushing surfing ahead with exciting photos and profile pieces that captured the imagination of millions of fans and would-be surfers.

The magazines presented a readymade media vehicle that the self-titled "Bronzed Aussies" immediately identified and mastered in the same way that rock stars of the day promoted themselves with an outlaw swagger. Giving print, television, and press conference interviews became a chance for the athletes to put forth a philosophy and vision that was at once fresh and ambitious. Marketing became the means that the young underpaid surf masters predicted would pay off in big dividends sooner rather than later. Dubbed the Three Marketeers, Ian Cairns, Peter Townend, and Mark Warren pushed their advertising savvy to get international press. Dressed in matching jumpsuits or sweat jackets the trio represented surfing's first commercial ambassadors, and de facto surf team. It was a ploy that was looked down on by surfing purists, but also a stroke of genius that would help usher in an industry-endorsed appeal previously lacking in the sport.

Although the movie doesn’t mention it, Rabbit was deemed inappropriate to be in the Bronzed Aussie club, and his exclusion may have contributed to his writing of a balls-out article that nearly ended his surfing career, as well as that of his mates, but not without some help first.

The Bronzed Aussies’ marketing strategy could have passed as self-satire were it not at odds with the brutal candidness of Ian Cairns in a magazine interview where he boasted about his group’s success against Hawaiian surfers as coming, "because we seem to be able to push ourselves harder than the Hawaiians do. Our surfing, as a group, has improved outrageously; whereas theirs, as a group, has stagnated." Cairns’ opinion might have held a grain of truth, but it was also indicative of the grandstanding that was pressing surfing to a critical mass of cultural influence, for better and for worse.

At the height of surfing’s newfound popularity Wayne "Rabbit" Bartholomew (AKA "Bugs") was given the moniker "Muhammad Bugs" by a certain magazine that photographed him wearing an Everlast boxing robe. Inspired perhaps too much from Muhammad Ali's pervasive influence at the time, Rabbit took the identification to heart when he was asked by Surfer magazine to write an article on what it was like to break through in surfing. Rabbit took advantage of the editorial opportunity to shoot from the hip and compare himself to Ali in the same way that he and his peers had boasted about being "number one." Irony would come later when Rabbit would win the title of surfing’s World Champ in 1978. But before then, Rabbit’s cover feature article for Surfer, titled "Bustin’ Down the Door!," allowed the articulate young surfer to wax philosophical about the "material world" and expound the Zen aspects of his vigorous art. The article’s lead line explained that, "When you are a young emerging rookie from Australia or Africa, you not only have to come through the backdoor to get invitations to the Pro meets, but you have to bust down the door, before they hear ya knockin’." From a rock ‘n’ roll marketing perspective, it was an honest piece full of bravado and repeatable quotes, perhaps a little too repeatable for the wounds of occupation and colonization that Hawaii had suffered at the hands of the U.S military less than a hundred years before.

In 1893 the United States military arrested Queen Liliuokalani and jailed her inside her palace under her fierce yet restrained protest, which she eloquently expressed in a note to the Hawaiian people that ended with "Aloha, aloha, aloha." In effect, the Queen tramped down the effect of the malicious takeover with an elegant message of hope that rose above the atrocity being committed against her and her people. It was a history lesson that might have served the brash young Aussie surf crew well to know, and might have spared them the steady stream of violent attacks and threats that would force them into an uncomfortable exile in Kuilima. It wasn’t until lifeguard and surfer Eddie Aikau came forward to act as a peacemaker in calling a Ho-O-pono-pono that tensions would be relieved at more than a cost of bruised egos.

The story of the cultural zeitgeist that enabled surfing to break open the floodgates of commercial viability came at a huge personal cost to the men who dared to think outside the box and act on a stage whose size was unfathomable to most. It marks a bittersweet transition that cannot be reduced to World Title trophies or corporate revenue streams. When I asked him, Buzzy Kerbox wouldn’t comment on the rift between the Aussies and the Black Shorts that was settled in a conference room at the Kuilima Hotel under the guidance and goodwill of Eddie Aikau. I understood why. I also understand that it marks a significant moment in surfing and in modern Hawaiian history that is worth talking about. Surfing is important, and it’s important how we relate to one another and how we act when we’re not surfing, or performing whatever act of routine passion we commit as a vocation or pastime. Is "Bustin’ Down The Door" as meaningful or entertaining as "Riding Giants" or "Step Into Liquid"? I’d say it’s a little bit more so.

Standard Operating Procedure

Getting to Know Our Captors
Errol Morris Connects the Pictures to Their Takers
By Cole Smithey

Documentarian Errol Morris effectively takes the viewer inside the atmosphere of psychological and physical abuse doled out by American military personnel at Abu Ghraib by connecting the hundreds of damning photos taken by soldiers to their context. And he doesn't stop there, but rather shows the judicially perceived differences between which abuses were considered criminal acts and which were determined to be merely acts of "standard operating procedure." With his trademark use of slow-motion microscopic images and direct-to-camera interviews, Errol Morris spells out in no uncertain terms the extent of one of the biggest cover-ups in modern U.S. history. Morris correctly calls his investigative documentary a "nonfiction horror movie," but it is also an essential window into the depths of depravity that the Bush administration instilled in its lower ranks. You could very easily walk away from this film convinced that the fall of Western civilization is already upon us. Once again, Errol Morris confirms his status as the greatest documentarian working today.

Audiences familiar with the documentaries of Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line" and "The Fog of War" being his most famous) know how he methodically dissects subjects with a formulaic approach that benefits from his self-devised "Interrotron" camera that enables interviewees to speak directly to a video image of Morris instead of a camera lens. Because some of the people he interviews are soldiers dubbed by the Bush Administration as "a few bad apples," there’s an immediate preconception that melts away as the accused describe their experiences. Where the media portrayed Lynndie England as a mentally challenged MP of limited education, we discover an articulate individual seething at circumstances carefully orchestrated by White House officials. Of the seven MPs implicated in the scandal (Sabrina Harman, Megan Ambuhl, Lynndie England, Charles Graner, Ivan Frederick, Jeremy Sivitz, and Jamal Davis), Morris interviews all except Graner and Frederick, who were in prison when the film was made.

Especially telling are letters that Sabrina Harman wrote home to her domestic partner Kelly, describing the prison’s bizarre atmosphere that led her to photographing the corpse of taxi driver al-Jamadi; an act of documentation that the Bush administration believed was more objectionable than al-Jamadi’s murder and subsequent attempted cover-up. Morris and his production team of consultants and designers went to great lengths to build a sound stage replica of Abu Ghraib’s puke green hallways and claustrophobic cells in order to create re-enacted scenes staged with actors. The sequences resonate with verite electricity that underscores Morris’ clinical treatment of facts.

There is no shortage of graphics and skillfully interwoven camera angles to divulge unique visual details that lend a organic understanding of the experience of both inmates and their captors. But it’s in its final moments that the film achieves a macro-micro significance as the sheer number of damning pictures receives a court-approved rating. An inmate handcuffed in a stress position with underwear pulled over his head is given an acceptable rating under the military’s "standard operating procedure," which also condones smearing prisoners with their own feces, or forcing them to masturbate. It is as Hollywood’s torture porn films consciously acknowledge. Killing an enemy isn’t enough. The West demands that in the modern age victims must be sexually molested and humiliated into complete psychological submission before being exterminated. It’s hard to imagine what form of invulnerability such a decadent abuse of power will eventually incite. The Clash sang, "Know your rights." In this day and age, it seems more important to know your country’s wrongs.

Rated R. 117 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

Shine a Light

Empathy for the Stones

Scorsese Shines a Light on the Rolling Stones
By Cole Smithey

Martin Scorsese returns to the rock 'n' roll concert documentary genre that he helped develop in 1978 with "The Last Waltz." The revered filmmaker captures an energized live performance by The Rolling Stones at New York's Beacon Theater in the fall of 2006. Sparsely augmented with brief interview and performance segments, "Shine a Light" (the film’s title was taken from the Stones’ "Exile on Main Street" album) provides an incredibly intimate look at rock 'n' roll's greatest living band performing a slew of timeless favorites and a few lesser known songs. Buddy Guy, Jack Black, and Christina Aguilera make memorable duet guest appearances on several songs, but it's Mick Jagger's famous athleticism that captures your imagination. Even in his '60s, Jagger never stops moving like a juiced-up Iggy Pop as he drives the band to the far reaches of sonic space. The level of musical sophistication on display is divine. Scorsese seals the enchanting event with a closing bit of camera virtuosity that puts it all in context.

We get a taste of the boisterous working dynamic between Mick and Marty in a phone message clip from Jagger about confusion regarding the stage set that’s already being built before being entirely approved. There’s plenty of tension and personality in Mick’s concerned voice. Marty’s good-humored ability to make carefully tilled snap decisions enables his crew to carry out his will.

Where Scorsese’s focus for the "The Last Waltz" was on capturing a cultural zeitgeist that supported a generational shift of musical ideas, here he goes after the incredibly honed inner-workings of the Rolling Stones’ performance style and musical delivery. A horn section, a pair of back-up singers, and a mobile percussionist add rhythmic and harmonic textures to Mick’s precise yet spontaneous phrasing. The communication that goes on between the musicians is always on display. The happy convergence of rock orchestration shows the Rolling Stones as a musically refined group running on pure instinct.

That might sound odd considering the unimaginable amount of songwriting, rehearsal, and performance experience the band has accumulated over its 46-years, but the Stones are so marinated in the joy of making music together that the story their songs tell can’t help but be refreshed.

More than a DNA sampling of the band’s endurance gene, the film is a wide open celebration of the Blues music that the Stones have expounded on with as much invention as any Jazz artist dead or alive. When Jack White joins Mick on "Loving Cup," the two singers harmonize from different registers. Both men strum away on acoustic guitars. The effect is an eerie and whiny country-inflected sound that digs under swamp tree roots to extract a rough and rugged pearl. Keith Richards gets some well-deserved centerstage time with "You Got the Silver" and "Connection"— his tobacco-bruised voice stretching even at moderate interval leaps.

There’s just enough use of interview footage from the ‘60s and ‘70s to give an informal sense of Jagger’s ironic honesty that engulfs the audience on songs like "Sympathy for the Devil" and the rare Muddy Waters’ classic "Champagne and Reefer," for which Blues icon Buddy Guy trades choruses. In one hilarious clip, Jagger gets out of a helicopter, after just being released from jail on drug charges, to walk across an English estate lawn for a group discussion with a clergyman and other community pillars. Like a schoolhouse rebel being brought before a British PTA meeting, Jagger revels in the negative attention. After all, he knows something that they never will--utter liberation through rock ‘n’ roll music. One look at "Shine a Light" and you can see how the Rolling Stones eclipse every other rock act around. This could just be the most intimate concert experience you could have, even if you were at the show.

Rated PG-13. 122 mins. (A+) (Stars - out of five/no halves)