Watch Neil Young: Heart of Gold For Free

Good movie but grossly overrated

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Of course I have disappeared into the movies. The Neil Young concert film 'Heart of Gold.' There have been many great concert films through the years. The best being Martin Scorsese's 'The Last Waltz' which filmed the Band's last concert at Filmore West. A phenomenal concert and a phenomenal film, that is if you love rock and roll and felt as if you had been born into it and were part of the music, and could be in the band if you had a better guitar and someone would show you the chords and that with a few chords and a lyric or two you could change the world...as you can guess I felt all five to the bottom of my twenty four year old soul. Neil Young was in 'The Last Waltz.' They had to digitally, before digital actually, they had to manually scrape a big hanging cocaine rock that extruded from his nose so in the film there's a bright light that is not the star of Bethlehem dangling above his lip and below his nostril...it's a famous bit of rock and roll history. But 'The Last Waltz' was made when the Band and Neil and everyone else was in their thirties and 'Heart of Gold' was filmed last year when Neil is in his sixties and his band looks as if they are in their late nineties and the entire movie could visually be used by the Christian Right and the DEA in the same way that those Ohio State Patrol films of the perils of drunk driving were used when I was in high school showing dead teenagers hanging through front windows or dangling from trees or bloody in a ditch. Close your eyes and it is a terrific concert, open them and view Dorian Grey's hidden portrait. Case in point, the once ethereally beautiful Emmylou Harris literally coming out of the darkness to sing with Neil and from dark to light appearing to be a ring wraith leapt full borne out of the river in front of Rivendale. Ghastly, ghostlike, a nose that doesn't appear in nature and is not an advertisement for plastic surgery, eyes that make buttons on dolls look lifelike, and the ability to express any emotion, human or not, constrained by unrestrained over indulgence in Botox. My mind reeled...porcupine...Peru...Jack Daniels...living hard for decades...my god...sweet Emmylou Harris who I saw sing for free at Fred's in Boulder, a face a 2000 year dead Pharoah would not accept. But the voice, as pure as a thick lipped bottle of Boulder beer brewed from the waters of Boulder Creek and I closed my eyes and smelled ammmmmbbbererrrrrrrrrgerrrrrrrssss (an homage...one must use homage at least once in any film review...to Fred's hamburgers on Boulder Mall and the Steve Martin Pink Panther movie). It would have been a terrific concert sitting in the dark in Ryman Auditorium, maybe twenty rows back. But, close up, in close ups, it was a medieval morality play depicting the horrors of indulgence and the consequences of a sinful life. The concert theme, emblazoned on the scenery, A Prairie Wind...the last song, massed guitars (I counted eight) and I wondered if irony was at play. I don't think so. A Native American bass player, a lead guitarist who looked and dressed like Buffalo Bill, a piano player whose face looked like the screamer's face in Munch's The Scream, the chick singers (actually matronly singers, mostly reminding one of the lost youth of senior United flight attendants still plying the friendly skies) dressed in matching full length distressed denim dresses...no it was played straight. None of them had seen, I would bet, A Mighty Wind. It will be a great CD, and would be glad to tell tales of hippy dippy Boulder when Neil was a long haired Canadian crooner whose indecipherable lyrics seemed to mirror heartache and loss, feelings as universal then as now. But, only in a dark bar.

Rarely have I experienced the kind of karma brought to me last night by Neil and his mates. A true musical genius laid bare. From the soul-stripping lyrics of his near death music to the more traditional songs of the past, the movie exposes Young as nothing more than a thoroughly normal bloke with a rounded and admirable attitude to life and those he loves. Stunning sepia tinged photography mixed with crystal clear sound quality give Young's music the stage it deserves. A unique opportunity to catch a true legend still at the peak of his powers. Wonderful, happy, life-affirming, joyous. Go see. Wallow. Enjoy.

There are music videos, there are concert videos – and then there is Neil Young's "Heart of Gold".I have just finished watching this proverbial masterpiece in it's entirety, and I must say that I am left absolutely awestruck! It's been a very long time since I've seen a concert that was so "polished" and utilized a cast of the most talented and "seasoned" musicians, who all seem to work together in perfect synch, to put something like this together that will, I predict, garner more than a few accolades and awards for their efforts! If you've been a Neil Young fan (as I have) for a lot of years, this concert DVD is a MUST for your collection! I guarantee that it will bring back memories and evoke emotions that you may have thought were long lost or forgotten.I can't even attempt to score this one – so I won't. Suffice it to say, it's WAY off the charts! Check it out. You won't be disappointed!

As the first genre listed on IMDb for this "movie" was Documentary i watched it expecting a documentary. As it turns out that genre is probably only referring to the first 5 or so minutes of the movie. The rest of the runtime is just a concert registration, which was a shame for me. I'm not a fan of Neil Young or his music, i just watched the movie to watch a legend talk, the same way i watched Walk The Line to broaden my horizon, even though I'm no fan of Johnny Cash.The concert is well played and well recorded, but if you're not into Neil Young it's not very entertaining. There is hardly any show element, it only proves that he can play live just as well as in a studio.