David Byrne's American Utopia (2021)

I love Talking Heads. David Byrne has done an excellent job in bring the music of Talking Heads to the stage, adapting the tunes to theater form with the help of a superb supporting cast. But how this has got wonderful reviews from many film reviewers baffles me. This isn't a film, by any stretch of the word. Spike Lee directing the footage doesn't make it a film, it just makes it a stage production filmed by an Oscar winner. I didn't see Metallica's S&M 2, their live collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony getting reviewed by any film critics on its release a few months ago. Maybe if James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich had approached Spike Lee to direct the footage of the live show, presumably S&M 2 would then have got 5 stars from the Guardian, Telegraph et al. If you love Talking Heads, this is worth a watch as the songs are pretty untouchable. But it's not a film. 4.1/10