Gimme Shelter (1970)

Lack of good storyline.

Excellent, smart action film.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Gimme Shelter (1970)**** (out of 4) The Maysles' landmark documentary covering The Rolling Stones 1969 tour of the United States, which was to end with a free concert in San Fransisco at the Altamont Speedway. While the band and everyone else had great hopes for the free show, it turned into a disaster as concert goers went up against the Hell's Angels who were working as security.A lot of films get the reputation as being the "greatest" of something. Most people consider CITIZEN KANE to be the greatest movie ever made and many consider GIMME SHELTER to be the greatest documentary ever made. I'm certainly not going to debate that because it's amazing how terrific this movie is on so many different levels. On on level it's amazing because the Stones really are incredibly strong with the music as we get clips from a New York show as well as Altamont. Another reason the movie is so powerful is that it has footage of the band in the studio as they were making their Sticky Fingers album. Finally, the film works brilliantly as a thriller.Yes, GIMME SHELTER works perfectly as a thriller because most people are going to come into the movie knowing what happened at that free concert. The events that night ended up turning deadly and like a great Hitchcock thriller, this one plants in your mind that things are going to turn out bad. At the very start of the picture we're given bits of information of the deadly encounter at the end so that there was pretty much the directors starting the time bomb and the intensity just keeps building up in the viewer's mind because you know it's eventually going to go off.As I said, the film simply works on so many terrific levels that it's almost sad that the movies ends on such a down notes. The musical performances throughout the picture are quite wonderful and there's no question that the band was full of energy and it really does show throughout the numbers and especially with the early stuff in New York. Satisfaction, Honky Tonk Woman, Street Fighting Man and Jumpin' Jack Flash are just a few of the tunes that sound terrific and just leap off the screen. Then there's the stuff in Altamont including Sympathy for the Devil and Under My Thumb. The performance from the band is great but what's so remarkable is seeing them struggle to try and keep the crowd under control as the mounting danger just continues to build.GIMME SHELTER really is 90 minutes of pure entertainment. Some of it, like the music, is of a very high entertainment. Seeing the hundreds of thousands of people showing up to jam is a perfect image of these type of music festivals back in the day. The other entertainment, the ugly side, is the disaster that is playing out in front of your eyes as more and more fights begin to happen and of course it eventually leads to a death. This film will certainly appeal to fans of The Rolling Stones but it's going to be even more appealing to those who don't even know the band because of how great the film itself is.

Without its unfortunate events and outcome, this would had been an extremely mediocre documentary to watch, in all honesty.I wouldn't even necessarily call this a documentary. It's more like a registration of events but without any background- and insight information given. No interviews, no voice over and no explanations or whatsoever given. You might like this kind of approach but to me the first half came across as a very mediocre registration of some The Rolling Stones concerts.But don't worry, things start to turn more interesting after a while. First of all, it all starts to become more interesting the moment things are starting to come together for the 'Altamont Free Concert', which was supposed to be a sort of response to 'Woodstock' but things are starting to become even more interesting when things are starting to hit the fan, during the concert.I think that everybody is already very familiar with all of the events that went down but this documentary actually shows you how it all happened and things started to go from bad to worse. It even shows you the fatal stabbing and some of the other brutalities, committed by the Hell Angel's, who were brought in by by the management of The Rolling Stones, as security during the concert. Granted that they got aggravated by a stoned crowd but things should not never gotten as far as they did.If this documentary is also one other thing, it's a great anti-drugs film! Loads of people attending the concert obviously were high off of something and no, I'm not even talking about Keith Richards. This documentary is such a huge contrast with another documentary "Woodstock", which was a registration of the Woodstock concert, held in the same year, with the same sort of crowd attending. While Woodstock was peaceful, Altamont Free Concert had a totally different atmosphere to it. Violence and a constant sense of treat and danger, was very much present and gets made sensible in this documentary, mostly due to the drug use, which made some of the people do some very crazy and scary stuff. In all of those regards, this documentary is also a great and intriguing one to watch.Otherwise, no this is not a great documentary by any means. It's not that well shot and isn't being an insightful one in any way. Also please don't watch this expecting to hear lots of great Stones music. There is music present of course but it's really not being the thing that this documentary is all about. Besides, the Stones aren't exactly sounding at their best in this, to be very honest. And yes, I like Stones music! This documentary just simply isn't really about them at all, which is all due to it that there were simply bigger things happening.It's like a registration of music history, that shows one of the most shocking and dreadful events to ever happen during a large concert. In that regard this is perhaps also being somewhat of an essential viewing!8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

While I had previously seen this film on tape that I recorded off AMC, that cassette didn't record the whole thing so it wasn't until I just watched it on YouTube that I saw the murder that pretty much ended the picture. If I didn't already read about it on various internet articles, I wouldn't have known about the gun that murdered man had that he presumably intended to use on that Hell's Angel that stabbed him. This film, Gimme Shelter, is both enjoyable for the performances of The Rolling Stones and others like Ike and Tina Turner, Jefferson Airplane, and The Flying Burrito Brothers, and upsetting for all those scenes of those Hell's Angels constantly beating up on several audience members not to mention some of the musicians like Airplane's Marty Balin. And seeing Mick Jagger's face after seeing the whole thing on the view finder makes one wonder how he could have continued the way he did after that. Still, at least during those Madison Square Garden performances of The Stones and The Turners, you could marvel at the way they put themselves out there. I especially loved the way Tina stroked that microphone and its handle! And while the camera is mostly on the audience and their scuffles when the other acts are playing at Altamont Speedway, at least you can hear what they're singing when that happens. So on that note, Gimme Shelter is one of the most compelling of concert documentaries from this most interesting era in Rock music. Kudos to David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin.

Certainly not a filmed concert, this important documentary describes, in a very sensitive and powerful way, the incredible human bestiary that rushed towards the 1969 free Rolling Stones show located on Altamont speedway, California.Complete disorganization, brutal security staff, drug abuse will turn this rock party to an awful black celebration that will lead to more than a human sacrifice : the destruction of a new kind of innocence.Often shocking and disturbing, sometimes dreadful, "Gimme shelter" brings to us not only the pictures of a riot. It makes us think about the difficulty for men to live as social animals when they're unable to repress their predator instincts. Let's finally mention the great musical first part of the film, and the quality of the direction.