Year of the Horse

Jim Jarmusch (Broken Flowers, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) directed this documentary (his only one) of Neil Young and Crazy Horse's 1996 concert tour.

Jarmusch's grainy, home-movie style make this a very interesting film as we look into the background of the band.

Ten songs including "F*ckin' up", "Slips Away", and "Tonight's the Night". The only complaint I had about the music was Neil Young's guitar solos. They seemed to go on forever.

This movie is really for Neil Young fans. 20+ years of music history in a couple of hours.

If you're a Neil Young fan, you will love this movie. The music is outstanding, almost mind-altering in it's depth and beauty. Yes, I call it beautiful even though it's raw and riotous, even though it's crude and vulgar, even though it sometimes feels like the harrowing of hell, it's beautiful music. Young's music is incomparable and his live performance shows you what an artist looks like when he's under the influence of his muse. He gives a succinct insight into his vision of true rock music: it never gets comfortable, it never gets tame, it never gets easy. Neil Young is in a class with Bob Dylan and Keith Jarrett: artists completely dedicated to their work. I highly recommend this movie. Jarmusch does an incredible job of combining 3 decades worth of footage into this 1996 tour. The interview with Jim Jarmusch and Young is very interesting: two artists talking about what they do.

Year of the Horse (1997)

** (out of 4)

I can respect what Jim Jarmusch was going for. I mean, it's clear that the ugliness of this film was done on purpose but just because you respect someone for trying something different doesn't mean you have to be entertained by it. This documentary, the director's only to date, takes a look at Neil Young and Crazy Horse's 1996 tour with interviews with those involved as they discuss the history of the group. This includes a rather rocky road in the 1970s and various re-gatherings leading up to the '96 tour. Right from the start in big bold letters we're told about the 8mm, 16mm and various other formats used to create this film but whatever they were going for must have gotten lost in the mix because the end result is a pretty ugly film to look at and listen to. I understand the visuals of the film were probably meant to capture the mood and spirit of the music but by filming this way they've also delivered some rather ugly audio. I've heard a lot of people get upset over the selection of songs but as I've grown as a Young fan I've realized that he does what he wants and that includes releasing something with not too many hits. I didn't mind the song selection as the performances were quite good but sadly I thought the actual audio quality didn't do them justice. There was an interesting take on "Tonight's the Night" and a clever mix between an old and new performance of "Like a Hurricane" that was very good. With that said, the ugliness of the film also has some pretty boring interviews where Young and the band just keep talking and talking and quite often it's about a rather uninteresting subject. There's no question that Young die hards will want to check this out but others should probably avoid it.

I DO like Neil Young and Crazy Horse, yet I felt Neil's simplistic guitar solos took up more screen-time than I would have liked. That is my only reservation. Jarmusch' good-natured approach and sympathetic questions makes this watchable and revealing. Neil's father obviously has great respect for his son. And Frank Sampedro's cynical retorts were very funny! More to the point - "Like a hurricane" still sounds like a rock classic.

This film is a great documentary, i was not a fan of Neil young but was won over by this kooky depiction of Young's band crazy horse, Great music interesting people, the real life subjects of this movie resemble Jarmusch's loveable offbeat fictional charicters. A good Friday night film watch it