Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
Netflix | Release Date: June 12, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 27 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
SlateSam AdamsJun 14, 2019
Despite its promise to find fact in fiction, the movie’s made-up characters offer little in the way of ecstatic truths, but there’s a moment when Stefan van Dorp says he realized that the way to keep Dylan from clamming up was to never ask him a direct question. Rolling Thunder Revue leaves it to us to ask the questions, or just sit back and enjoy the show. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisJun 12, 2019
Dylan was interested in how movies stop time, but he also told Ginsberg that he wanted “to be entertained,” adding, “If I see a movie that really moves me around I’m totally astounded.” To watch Rolling Thunder Revue is to understand what he meant. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleJoel SelvinJun 10, 2019
Scorsese has done nothing less than rescue this evanescent moment and brought it into the light, 45 years later, a glorious and slightly miraculous resurrection of a transcendent enterprise that would have otherwise passed into the mists of time. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterCaryn JamesJun 10, 2019
Full of eye-opening musical performances, the film also sparkles with tongue-in-cheek humor, and features contemporary interviews that are often far from what they seem. You have to go back to After Hours to find a Scorsese film with a similarly mischievous wit. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawJun 10, 2019
This is an immersive experience, like being plunged back into the 70s. There is passion there. No matter how chaotic or bleary things get, no one is in any doubt that the music counts. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyJun 14, 2019
The Rolling Thunder Revue was Dylan’s personal magical mystery tour — and in Scorsese’s hands, there’s no shortage of magic or mystery. Read full review
90
Film ThreatHunter LanierJun 19, 2019
Nearly all of the footage in the film is incredible, both in terms of content and restoration. The performances are like nothing else in Dylan’s career or anybody’s career. Read full review
90
Rolling StonePeter TraversJun 17, 2019
It’s part tour diary, part trickster handbook and totally mesmerizing. Rockumentary-wise, you’ve never seen or heard anything like it. Read full review
90
TimeStephanie ZacharekJun 12, 2019
It’s the most truthful movie you’ll see in 2019, because it swears on nothing but the Gospel of Bob, and in more than 50 years of singing, songwriting and much, much touring, he has never promised us anything beyond pleasure and illumination. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Craig JenkinsJun 12, 2019
Rolling Thunder Revue is a brilliant rock doc because it doesn’t take itself too seriously and because it recognizes that rock and roll is a kingdom built on borrowed threads and fudged facts. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleJun 12, 2019
If Scorsese’s 2005 Dylan documentary “No Direction Home” was the exhaustive origins portrait that reveals how a man and myth were launched, “Rolling Thunder Revue” is the home movie party that energizes and humanizes while still preserving a counterculture god’s mystique. Read full review
90
VarietyOwen GleibermanJun 10, 2019
Rolling Thunder Revue celebrates the let’s-try-it-on, let-it-all-hang-out spirit of the era, and as a time capsule the film is a gift that keeps on giving. Read full review
88
Movie NationRoger MooreJun 12, 2019
By turns glorious and thrilling, revealing and well — mythic and fictional — Martin Scorsese’s “Rolling Thunder Revue” joins the ranks of epic concert tour documentaries, capturing an epic moment in American roots music and the icon who conjured it. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJun 12, 2019
With Rolling Thunder Revue, Scorsese remains at the top of his game, and is the perfect filmmaker to tell the story of a unique chapter in the life and career of a fellow creative legend. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzJun 11, 2019
The entire production entertainingly coalesces into part concert doc, part cultural artifact, part “gotcha!” stunt, and part meditation on the fickle, fleeting nature of creativity. Read full review
86
TheWrapTodd GilchristJun 10, 2019
This particular “Bob Dylan Story” proves that at least in terms of the tour, and possibly Dylan himself, what’s on the surface is plenty fascinating no matter how much or little you get at anything underneath. Read full review
83
The PlaylistJoe BlessingJun 13, 2019
Containing some of his most open reflections and most electric performances, Rolling Thunder Revue is a terrific addition to the Dylan film canon and an absolute must for Dylanophiles. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJun 10, 2019
A rambling magic trick of a movie that reanimates a hazy chapter of American history by unmooring it from the facts of its time, and even perhaps from time itself. Read full review
83
ConsequenceMatt MelisJun 10, 2019
Both Dylan and Scorsese cast a spell in Rolling Thunder Revue, one that Dylan fans will gratefully fall under. Read full review
83
The Film StageMichael SnydelJun 10, 2019
Scorsese and his production team have created an incredible document of one of the 20th century’s most complicated personalities, and one that feels close to being a great film. Read full review
80
Time OutAlex GodfreyJun 12, 2019
Scorsese’s doc appears like one thing but sounds like another. It totally gets it. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineTim GriersonJun 12, 2019
At nearly two-and-a-half hours, Rolling Thunder Revue is overlong but also overpowering, inconclusive yet undeniably stirring. It left me exhausted, but I kinda want to see it again. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerJun 11, 2019
Scorsese is the Bob Dylan of cinema – poetic, truthful, idiosyncratic – and Rolling Thunder, despite some longueurs, is an important document of a major artist – by a major artist. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerJun 12, 2019
Where Rolling Thunder Revue works best is when it's clear in its ambiguity. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChuck BowenJun 14, 2019
Martin Scorsese culls various images together to offer a startlingly intense vision of America as place that, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, essentially believes in nothing, following one demoralizing crisis after another. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloJun 11, 2019
Ultimately, the copious, unmanipulated (one hopes!) footage of Dylan himself is what will endure. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzJun 12, 2019
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story is one of the most frustrating Martin Scorsese films as well as one of the most out-of-character. Read full review
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