Film Review - The Beatles 8 Days a Week the Touring Years (2016)

The Beatles 8 Days a Week the Touring Years is a new documentary directed by Ron Howard and tells the tale of the touring years of the Beatles from their beginnings in 1962 to the end of those years in 1966 which can only be one part of the large Beatles story.

This Beatles doco is simply terrific for these reasons:

- Firstly the archive footage presented here is just remarkable, the many concert shows the band did look great for their age and they feel totally in sync with the mayhem of the crowds going on around them not to mention the songs making you want to tap your toe along to them whenever they play on screen.

- Secondly the interviews presented here are a nice mix of the talking heads and the voices over the archival footage and some of the people present here were a very nice surprise one of those being Howard Goodall who did the music for Red Dwarf which did come to mind for me when I saw him in this doco and very nicely interviews with George Harrison and John Lennon are present as well which I had been skeptical about prior to seeing this film.

- And lastly the film also manages to portray the changing world that was going on during the 1960s when the young began to crave real change to the world around them and through this enormous rebirth of the Arts particularly in England (this was also when the first batch of James Bond films were released and that also came to mind for me when watching this.) the conservative order if you like began to slowly break down and a new way of thinking began to emerge and perhaps in some way we have come back around to this now in our modern times.

I also wanted to watch the Simpsons spoof after seeing this documentary which was about the Be Sharps which is very very funny.

And so that was the Beatles 8 Days a Week the Touring Years which is a very strong contender for my movie of the year though there is another very strong contender for that title as well but this year is still not over, 4 and a half out of 5.