"Black Sabbath: The End of The End" (2017 release; running time: 105 min.) is a documentary that focuses on the band's very last show ever, in February of 2017 in their home town of Birmingham, England. I recently stumbled onto this on Showtime while I was channel surfing. At that time the movie was about 15 minutes in, and I didn't think I was going to watch the whole thing, but somehow I did. I hadn't listened to their music in, literally, decades, and hence I was surprised how many of the songs I actually recognized.
Couple of comments: the music is for sure top notch, and it is amazing to see the three original members, each of them approaching 70 years now, perform at this high level, in particular Tony Iommi (who just recovered from blood cancer in 2016) is impressive, to say the least. Sadly, the movie is pretty much ruined by the incessant "chopping" edits. There are songs where, literally, every second if not more frequently than that, we jump to a different angle. Just sickening, and it it weren't for the strength of the music, I would've never finished watching this. Another annoyance is that oftentimes when Iommi goes into a guitar solo, we cut away from the concert footage (but the songs is still heard in the background) and jump to interviews with the original 3 members. A final note as to this film's running time: it is listed in IMDb as being 124 min. but the version I saw on SHO is nowhere near that, and ran just 1 hr. 45 min.
While I understand that die-hard Sabbath fans are gung-ho about this documentary, to rate this as being a 10 star movie (as in: the BEST EVER, of all times) is just plain silly. The shortcomings of this film are plenty and jump out at you. A missed opportunity, sadly.
