I saw 
When I met my better half she had already seen David Bowie live a few times and we saw him a fair few more together. He was one of the great performers of the last half century and covered a lot of ground in that time. He wrote songs, was a style icon, he painted and made video art, he acted in movies and on stage. Most of us could only dream at being good at just one of those things. This is not a documentary in the normal sense, but more of a collage of sounds and images that cover his career. It also includes various things that may have influenced him. It was fun trying to spot all the references. The editing is just amazing as it is almost seamless. His music gets broken down and remixed along the way, but it is done respectfully with his producer Tony Visconti managing things.
It covers most of his life from his childhood in London up until the final album, but there is just too much to fit into even two hours. Sequences I would like to see more of pass in a few seconds. There was lots of footage I had not seen before, but then they had access to his archive.
It brought back some memories of the gigs I went to, but made me wish I could have seen some of the others as they were so varied. I did not even check my watch, but then it never dragged. There was one point when I thought it was going to stop, but then we got lots more and I had no idea of how long we had been watching. We stayed until the end of the credits as we were enjoying the music and then David leaves us a little message right at the end.
I think any Bowie fan has to see this and preferably on the largest screen you can find. We saw it at the local independent cinema on their big screen, but there were not very many people in there on a Sunday night. I would hope they have had more for other showings. The surround sound was very good. In a big IMAX it would be mind-blowing.
We saw the David Bowie Is exhibition a few years back and this makes a good companion to that in summing up what he was like.
If I had a criticism it would be that the sequence of him sightseeing in Asia goes on a bit too long and some parts are shown more than once. I am sure they could have fitted in other footage. I was also slightly irked that some live footage was obviously flipped as the guitarists were suddenly left-handed. I have no idea why that would be done deliberately.
This review sums it up well. Mark Kermode is obviously a massive fan. As he says, you could make a whole series of movies about different phases of Bowie's career. It makes me want to trawl Youtube for more.
Rock on!
