Steineded How sad is this?

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

dougdoepke Woodstock was likely the biggest cultural event of the counter-culture period. The thousands that packed the New York state farmland spread out like an ocean of youthful humanity. Viewers get a pretty good sense of what interested and animated the movement from the film. However, it should be noted that very little of counter-cultural politics comes through. That was mainly the purview of what's termed the New Left, and though the two overlapped in many respects— anti-Vietnam war, critical view of capitalism—they were by no means identical. Rather Woodstock appears a celebration of certain broad values the youths or "hippies" found in short supply in daily life. Those values centered around peace, love, and sharing, certainly positive values in the abstract. The gathering was thus a magnet not only for followers of the performing bands but for those wanting to affirm among themselves, at least, that another world is possible. And though the movement may have fizzled in many ways, reverberations are still with us, mainly in the form of loosened sexual and social norms. Now, I'm in no position to comment on the performing bands, but I was transfixed by an angelic Joan Baez's rendition of Joe Hill.Overall, the documentary amounts to a unique visual experience even for those uninterested in upheavals from the 1960's. What lingers in memory are the sea of smiling faces, the quagmire of sticky mud, the pockets of nudity, the inspired stage musicians, and finally, the littered vacant ground. All in all, it's quite a permanent record of a bygone period.

gilligan1965 The reason I chose this title for my review is so that others don't make the same mistake I did years ago and miss-out on about 2 hours of this movie. "American Movie Classics"...not quite! Any self-proclaimed "classic" channel that censors an American Classic is hypocritical. Kinda-like the Nazis burning books - 'you can read and see this...but, not this!?!?'Back in the summer of 2000, I was so excited that "Woodstock" was going to be shown on the American Movie Classics (AMC) channel that afternoon.I hadn't seen this movie for many years before that and planned on making a VHS recording of it.Anyhow...I watched that recording many times over the next fifteen years until I saw "Woodstock" on the IndiePlex channel this month (September 2015).I'll never watch the 'edited' version of this movie again! I never even realized that I'd recorded a watered-down version of this since I hadn't seen the unedited version in decades (around 1976, I believe!?!?).To say the very least...the unedited version is excellent! This movie (Rockumentary) isn't just about the music or the musicians, it's about an entire generational subculture of people who were, for the most part, on their way out in many ways...some good, some bad. For many of them, it was their last hoorah before the 1960s ended...and, what a hoorah it was!I've always loved concerts. I've been to many in my youth, and, have many on VHS and DVD. However, to me, "Woodstock" (1969) is by far the best because it's not 'only' a concert...it's a major event that defined much of the 1960s!In retrospect...imagine if 'everyone' invited to perform at "Woodstock" actually showed up (The Beatles; The Rolling Stones; The Doors; Led Zeppelin; Jethro Tull; Iron Butterfly; The Moody Blues; Chicago; and, so many more)!?!? They could have made it into a mini-series! :)

Wuchak I was too young for Woodstock, but I heard of it spoken in reverent tones over the years. I also heard great things about Michael Wadleigh's 1970 documentary-concert. Despite this, I put off seeing the film. Maybe because I thought it was going to be some roll-your-eyes groovy experience, man. I don't know, but I didn't get around to viewing it until the late 90s and I was blown away. I've seen it three or four more times since then and it always has the same awe-inspiring effect.The concert took place over 3.5 days in mid-August, 1969, at the height of the Vietnam fiasco and the counterculture movement. Twice as many people attended than expected and it was the biggest gathering of people in one place in history, about 400,000, only beat by the infamous Isle of Wight concert in England a year later.The film shows the good and bad of the hippie culture. Generally speaking, the movement was a reaction against the Vietnam war and the sterile legalism that America and similar countries had devolved into by the early-mid 60s. The youth wanted freedom, peace and love and you can see this in the movie. It was a good thing. Yet you can also see the bad -- like the bad acid situation ("Hey, it's your trip, man..."). Both Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix appear at Woodstock, and they're great, but they'll be dead in a little over a year, both only 27 years-old. Jim Morrison and the Doors didn't play because they declined at the last moment and later regretted it. Jim died shortly after the other two, also only 27. Interestingly, Jethro Tull declined because Ian Anderson didn't like hippies and was concerned about things like inappropriate nudity (?!).But I don't mean to put a downer on Woodstock because it was an amazing event, never to be repeated. They tried to repeat it at Altamont Speedway in California, less than four months after Woodstock, and also at Isle of Wight, but both festivals turned out badly and put the the kibosh on the movement's noble ideals, even though it was pretty much inevitable since freedom without wise parameters naturally devolves into chaos and self-destruction.Regardless, as a snapshot in time, "Woodstock" is fascinating and supremely entertaining. Half of the appeal is the incredible magnitude of the event itself and the footage of the people -- the hippies who came and the adults who lived there and tried to help or, in a couple cases, complained. This includes the fun and sometimes outrageous escapades of the festival. A good example would be the skinny dipping or, in many cases, semi-skinny dipping. Although this may have been a cool experiment at the event it never caught-on in the culture at large. Why? Probably because few people want to see someone else's Captain Winky and, unless a female has the body of a starlet, who wants to see it? (lol).But what can explain the mass appeal of Woodstock? What made the hippies come out en masse? Was it just the music? The filmmakers ask this very question of a guy at the festival who looks about 16-17 years old. He says it wasn't just the music, at least not for him. The hippies crawled out of the woodwork, so to speak, like zombies seeking some kind of solace, a sense of community, a reason to... live. And Woodstock met that need. The other half of the appeal is, of course, the performances and music. What's amazing is how diversified the styles of music were and how non-heavy. Don't get me wrong, many of the performances are seriously energetic, but they're light compared to what rock/metal evolved into in the 70s to the present. There was acoustic folk, Caribbean, blues, rock, gospel, pop, 50s, Latin rock, jazz fusion and psychedelic rock. Some of it I like and some of it I don't much care for, but they're all entertaining in one way or another. Since I'm into metal, my favorites are Santana, The Who and Jimi Hendrix, but I also enjoy a lot of the lighter stuff, like Joan Baez ("Swing Low Sweet Chariot") and Arlo Guthrie ("Coming into Los Angeles"). And then there are the acts that come out of left field, like Sly and the Family Stone and Sha Na Na, even Ritchie Havens.What's amazing is how brief the classic hippie era was. It started around '65 and its apex was Woodstock in August '69, a mere four years later. From there it was all downhill with Altamont, Isle of Wight and the deaths of the movement's principal musical icons. As such, it only lasted some eight years.Thankfully, we have this film to see the good aspects of the period -- some bad, some eye-rolling -- but mostly good, and definitely entertaining.The film was shot in White Lake, New York, and runs 184 minutes while the 1994 Director's Cut runs 225 minutes. I've only seen the latter.GRADE: A

hitherto75 When "Woodstock" occurred, I was a 15 y.o French teenager. Watching the film again, yesterday, I've been stunned by its quality, its objectivity and its strength. It's much more than a "concert movie" (especially compared to the current ones, with their feverish cranes and cameramen moves). Michael Wadleigh and his crew really captured the spirit of the event, as it became obvious it was creating itself. They seem to be everywhere and give the spectator an incredible range of focuses and points of view. I've never been truly excited by the musical performances during the festival, but there are some great acts and the multi-screen editing set them perfectly off (funny to watch the contrast between the blues-country-rock white bands and the glitter-dance-sexy background singer bound "Sly and the family Stone"!). Glad that Janis Joplin's wonderful and sincere performance has been added in the director's cut... As someone else wrote here, one of the main revelation in this movie is how the attendees are young. It's really about American young people at a peculiar period in western history, when the "baby boom" brought a new, numerous generation "on stage". When western countries were really young, with lot of innocence. One (swimming) girl in the film stresses that. She says "we are gathering in many cities in the world" "we come over". And that's true : 3 days long, young people made Woodstock a unique event. They overcome global media hostility, long walk, crowded and muddy field, food shortage, etc (well, that's what youth is for!). Thanks to Wadleigh to have capture it (and thanks to the perfect re-mastering). PS : I'm sure that no full-of-money-movie-maker filming a musical festival these present days would make an interview of the-man-who-is-in-charge-of-the chemical-toilets (who has a son here and another one piloting a chopper in Vietnam)! A true mark of the 60's-70's era...Thierry Follain