Watch David Bowie: Five Years For Free

Better Late Then Never

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

A lot of well deserved praise has been heaped on the work and life of David Bowie since his very sad death in January this year. One of his great gifts was spotting trends and seeing the way the wind was blowing before anyone else, a facility he retained right up till he passed on. This great documentary uses personal quotes from the legend, as well as his songs.. It was released just three years before he died, and there are some unexpected highlights, like a sequence of Bowie filmed at Andy Warhol's Factory, which suggested that Bowie's talent for mime wasn't all it's cracked up to be. The structure of Five Years makes it a lot more interesting than your usual pop documentary. Rather than try to talk about 50 years of pop super-stardom in two hours, the movie gives us five year-long snapshots. Things are brought up to speed at the end with a snippet of what we could call The Next Year. The follow up "David Bowie "The Last Five Years" is out next year

First of all I wanted to mention one thing -- during one scene, a sort of a cappella version of "Starman" is part of the soundtrack. If somebody knows where I can find a copy of that beautiful remix, I would be most grateful! Still I almost doubt it was ever done to completion.... I hope I'm wrong because it is truly sublime.I enjoyed watching this mainly for the clips of David Bowie himself, as tends to be the case. I wasn't thrilled by the omission of certain eras, but the media tends to focus most heavily on the Ziggy Stardust stuff anyway. I thought the production quality was really fine, and I enjoyed the relatively quick summary of his career. Really a great thing for an introduction to him as an artist, but not a whole lot of new information for anyone who has seen video clips online, read about him, and pieced together the personal history from their own "research."

Correcting just a bit of a misnomer with the documentary's title - it's not so much five years as five periods covering the late rocker's life. Like many fans, I was saddened by the news of his passing on January 10th of this year and have tried to catch some of these films as they've been hitting the cable channels in tribute.For anyone who might not have seen this one yet, I'll briefly outline the five musical periods under consideration. The first, 1971/1972 consisted of the Ziggy Stardust phase, with on screen interviews featuring Rick Wakeman, Mick Ronson and Trevor Bolder offering their insights on creating music with the legendary rock star. 1974/1975 brought Bowie to America where he investigated the roots of soul music with Carlos Alomar and Luther Vandross, a sort of British 'soul man' who's creativity at the time resulted in "Young Americans".In 1976/1977, Bowie spent time in Paris before moving on to Berlin in the summer of 1977, collaborating with Brian Eno and Robert Fripp and producing during this period what is probably my favorite Bowie tune, "Heroes". 1979/1980 was a period revisiting his Major Tom character and delivering 'Scary Monsters'. And finally, 1982/1983 found Bowie back in London with an avowed purpose of going more mainstream with his music, collaborating with Nile Rodgers to produce the 'Serious Moonlight' hits 'Let's Dance' and 'China Girl'.Probably the best thing about this documentary, at least for me, is that all the footage is nothing I've ever seen before. It was made as recently as 2013, and all the material and interview sessions offer fresh, new insight into the musical legend. At each stage of Bowie's career it seems, one can evaluate his own words in describing himself - "I'm sort of inventing me at the moment'.

Great movie, but it never mentioned the fact that Stevie Ray Vaughn (all time Texas blues great)contributed to the writing and played lead guitar on the biggest hits, "Lets Dance" and "China Girl" amongst other songs. Why? In the movie Carlos Alomar seems to take credit for writing the key riff for Lets Dance. Bowie plays the guitar solos in the videos. Any one who knows Vaughn's music can clearly hear it's a S. R. Vaughn opening he learned from one of the "Kings" (Albert, Freddie, or B. B.) Bowie fell in love with Stevie R. Vaughn's playing when he heard him at the Montreux Jazz festival. He convinced him to play on his current album and tour with him to support the album. He also agreed to let Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble open some of the shows. Bowie didn't Honor his agreement and Vaugh walked soon after the tour started.Wasted opportunity for both artist.