Amazing Grace

Movies to See Right Now

by
Al Pacino and Joe Pesci in THE IRISHMAN

Happy Holidays! Here is my year-end Top Ten list: Best Movies of 2019.

OUT NOW

  • The masterpiece Parasite explores social inequity, first with hilarious comedy, then evolving into suspense and finally a shocking statement of the real societal stakes. This is one of the decade’s best films.
  • Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson are brilliant in Noah Baumbach’s career-topping Marriage Story. A superb screenplay, superbly acted, Marriage Story balances tragedy and comedy with uncommon success. Marriage Story is playing in just a couple Bay Area theaters and is now streaming on Netflix.
  • Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic The Irishman is tremendous, and features performances by Al Pacino and Joe Pesci that are epic, too. It’s both in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
  • Rian Johnson’s Knives Out turns a drawing room murder mystery into awickedly funny send-up of totally unjustified entitlement.
  • Filmmaker Taika Waititi takes on hatred in his often outrageous satire Jojo Rabbit. I saw Jojo Rabbit at the Mill Valley Film Festival, where the audience ROARED with laughter.
  • In his Pain and Glory, master filmmaker Pedro Almodovar invites us into the most personal aspects of his own life, illuminated by Antonio Banderas’ career-topping performance.

ON VIDEO

Tao Zhao in ASH IS PUREST WHITE

My Streams of the Week are the six Best Movies of 2019 – So Far that are already available to stream. This week, I’m featuring Amazing Grace : pure, sanctified Aretha.  Amazing Grace can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; the DVD can be rented from Redbox.

Plus I just wrote about Ash Is Purest White: a survivor’s journey. Actress Tao Zhao’s tour de force performance powers this portrait of an unforgettable woman surviving betrayal, the crime world and the tidal waves of change in modern China, all embedded in writer-director Zhangke Jia’s gangster neo-noir. It’s also on my Top Ten and can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

Once again, Turner Classic Movies is giving us a wonderful New Year’s Eve present – an all-day Thin Man marathon. William Powell and Myrna Loy are cinema’s favorite movie couple for a reason – just settle in and watch Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man and its sequels do what they do best – banter, canoodle, solve crimes and, of course, tipple.

Myrna Loy and William Powell as Nora and Nick Charles during the Holidays

Best Movies of 2019

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Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD

It’s time for my Top Ten list.

To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later. I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here’s last year’s list. This year, I’m still waiting to see Uncut Gems and Little Women.

It was difficult for me to rank the top three films, very different from each other as they are. Here goes:

  1. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: masterpiece.
  2. Parasite: social inequity – what’s really at stake.
  3. Marriage Story: the comedy helps us watch the tragedy.
  4. The Irishman: gangsters – an epic reflection.
  5. The Last Black Man in San Francisco:  the most stark reality, only dream-like. 
  6. Ash Is Purest White: a survivor’s journey.
  7. Jojo Rabbit: a joyous and hilarious movie about the inculcation of hatred.
  8. Long Day’s Journey into Night:  obsession and a vivid darkness.  
  9. They Shall Not Grow Old: a generation finally understood.
  10. 63 Up: a generation faces mortality.

The rest of the best are Amazing Grace, Knives Out, Booksmart and Midnight Family.

Three of my top eight are from Asia; two of my top four are from Netflix. You can read more about these films, including how to stream most of them at Best Movies of 2020.

Yeo-jeong Jo and Kang-ho Song in PARASITE

Movies to See Right Now

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Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn in WHERE’S MY ROY COHN?

The upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival is the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the Big Movies. Check out my list of Best Movies of 2019 – So Far – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, They Shall Not Grow Old, Amazing Grace and Booksmart are all available to be streamed.

OUT NOW

  • Downtown Abbey is a satisfying wrap-up for fans of the beloved PBS series.
  • Where’s My Roy Cohn? is Matt Tyrnauer’s superb biodoc of Roy Cohn – and is there a more despicable public figure in America’s 20th Century than Cohn?
  • Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a Must See – one of Quentin Tarantino’s very, very best.
  • The family dramedy The Farewell is an audience-pleaser.
  • Bay Area filmmaker John Maringouin’s inventive satire Ghostbox Cowboy, skewers white entitlement and sneaks a peek inside the shadiest corners of the Chinese boom economy. Ghostbox Cowboy earned a NY Times Critic’s Pick and can be streamed on Amazon (included with Prime).

ON VIDEO

The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience. Amazing Grace can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; the DVD can be rented from Redbox.

ON TV

On September 25, Turner Classic Movies will present the groundbreaking French comedy La Cage Aux Folles – a daring film in 1978, when few were thinking about same-sex marriage. A gay guy runs a nightclub on the Riviera, and his partner is the star drag queen. The nightclub owner’s beloved son wants him to meet the parents of his intended.  But the bride-to-be’s father is a conservative politician who practices the most severe and judgmental version of Roman Catholicism, so father and son decide to conceal aspects of dad’s lifestyle. Mad cap comedy ensues, and La Cage proves that broad farce can be heartfelt. Michel Serrault is unforgettable as Albin/Zaza – one of the all-time great comic performances. (La Cage was tepidly remade in 1996 as The Birdcage with Robin Williams, but you want to see the French original.)

Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault in LA CAGE AUX FOLLES

Stream of the Week: AMAZING GRACE – pure, sanctified Aretha

by
Aretha Franklin in AMAZING GRACE

Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.

At the height of her popular success in 1972, Aretha Franklin recorded a live album of gospel music. She brought her producer Jerry Wexler and her band to New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, a large but modest church with a cheesy mural of Jesus emerging from the waters after his baptism by John the Baptist. Accompanied by James Cleveland and the Los Angeles Community Gospel Choir, she performed for two nights, and the recordings became Amazing Grace, the top-selling gospel album of all time.

The whole thing was filmed by director Sydney Pollack and his crew with five cameras. Having made his bones in live television, Pollack would seem to be a great choice, but he made a critical mistake – he neglected to use clappers, the equipment that allowed for synchronizing the filmed images with the recorded sound. Frustratingly worthless, the film sat in canisters until decades later when technology allowed the music to be synced to the 16mm film. Aretha, however, was notoriously prickly in business affairs, and the rights could not be secured until after her death. Alan Eliot is responsible for finding and assembling Pollack’s footage and turning it into a feature film that could be released for the rest of us to see; appropriately, Eliot’s credit is “Realized and produced by Alan Eliot”.

What brought Aretha get to this moment in 1972? Aretha had grown up in the Detroit church led by her formidable father, C.L. Franklin, immersed in gospel music until she launched a pop music career at age 18. When she was 25, she began working with Wexler, who “got” her, and she became a soul and crossover superstar with Respect, I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), Do Right Woman, Do Right Man, Baby I Love You, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, Chain of Fools, Ain’t No Way, Think, I Say a Little Prayer and Rock Steady.  At 30, Aretha commanded the field of R&B and looked to return to her gospel roots.

When Aretha enters the church, the atmosphere is electric, and Aretha is ready from her very first note of Wholy Holy. The church audience knows their gospel music, appreciates what they are witnessing and is, to a person, thrilled. The audience becomes more and more emotionally involved.

Aretha’s version of What a Friend We Have in Jesus is unrecognizable (in the very best way). On Precious Memories, Aretha’s humming is internally intense, and then her voice soars. Completely committed, Aretha produces a prodigious amount of sweat.

The high point of the film is Aretha’s closing song on the first night, Amazing Grace. It’s a very long version of the song, and the choir doesn’t sing until the very end. As Aretha’s instrument wrings every drop of emotion from that most familiar song, we watch the choir members’ reactions, which range from admiration to inspiration, many moved to tears. The moment is one of genius for Aretha and one of epiphany for the choir and for the film audience.

One of the great pleasures of Amazing Grace is watching the choir leader, Alexander Hamilton, lead his choir with an expressiveness that is both elegant and funky. If there is a co-star in Amazing Grace, it’s Alexander Hamilton.

There are pauses for technical issues, which bring out the authenticity of the moment and reinforce that this was a live event. It’s easy to spot Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts in the crowd on the second night.

Where does Amazing Grace fit in the concert film canon along with Monterey Pop, The Last Waltz, Stop Making Sense, Woodstock and The T.A.M.I. Show? It’s in the conversation.

Amazing Grace, which is on my list of Best Movies of 2019 – So Far, can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; the DVD can be rented from Redbox.

Movies to See Right Now

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LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

OUT NOW

  • The brilliantly original Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey into Night is a Must See.
  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
  • Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen are pleasantly entertaining in the improbable Beauty-and-the-Beast romantic comedy Long Shot.
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.
  • The bio-documentary An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy is available from PBS.

ON VIDEO

This Memorial Day weekend, I’m recommending that you binge OJ: Made in America., the  eight-hour ESPN documentary series.  It made my list of Best Movies of 2016.  The trailer is on the film’s homepage. You can watch the entire movie on ESPNWatch and on some other streaming platforms such as iTunes and Hulu.

Elisabeth Moss’ powerhouse performance as a monstrously narcissistic and drug-deranged rock star Her Smell is the acting tour de force of 2019. The movie could have been a great one if shorter, but Moss makes it worthwhile watch nonetheless. Her Smell is out of theaters, but it’s already streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play, an available on DVD from Redbox. 

And I just caught up to the hypnotically compelling Burning.  This 2 hour, 28 minute slow burn begins as a character study, evolves into a romance and then a mystery, and finally packs a powerful punch with a thriller climax. It’s a superb achievement for director and co-writer Chang-dong Lee. You can stream Burning from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

ON TV

On May 27, Turner Classic Movies brings us two particularly authentic war films, both set in the Korean War. In Men in War (1957), an infantry lieutenant (Robert Ryan) must lead his platoon out of a desperate situation. He encounters a cynical and insubordinate sergeant (Aldo Ray) loyally driving a jeep with his PTSD-addled colonel (Robert Keith). In conflict with each other, they must navigate through enemy units to safety. Director Anthony Mann is known for exploring the psychology of edgy characters, and that’s the case with Men in War.

The Steel Helmet (1951) is a gritty classic by the great writer-director Sam Fuller, a WWII combat vet who brooked no sentimentality about war. Gene Evans, a favorite of the two Sams (Fuller and Peckinpah), is especially good as the sergeant. American war movies of the period tended toward to idealize the war effort, but Fuller relished making war movies with no “recruitment flavor”. Although the Korean War had only been going on for a few months when Fuller wrote the screenplay, he was able to capture the feelings of futility that later pervaded American attitudes about the Korean War.

For something completely different, there’s Slap Shot (1977) on TCM on May 29. Paul Newman plays the dissolute player-coach of a failing minor league hockey team in a failing Rust Belt mill town. Things look hopeless until the Hanson brothers show up – three kids who look like nerds and play like goons. Very funny and a great performance by Newman.

Paul Newman (center) in SLAP SHOT

 

SLAP SHOT

Movies to See Right Now

by
LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

Don’t miss the documentary An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy on PBS in May 20.

OUT NOW

  • Elisabeth Moss’ powerhouse performance as a monstrously narcissistic and drug-deranged rock star Her Smell is the acting tour de force of 2019.
  • The brilliantly original Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey into Night is a Must See.
  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
  • Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen are pleasantly entertaining in the improbable Beauty-and-the-Beast romantic comedy Long Shot.
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.

ON VIDEO

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Love & Mercy, the emotionally powerful biopic of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. Love & Mercy is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes and Vudu.

ON TV

On May 18, Turner Classic Movies will show The Last Hurrah (1958): The master director John Ford is famous for westerns, but this portrait of an embattled incumbent is a classic of political cinema. Spencer Tracy plays the leader of an urban political machine. He’s got years of accomplishments and a machine in his favor, but his newspaper-owning antagonist is running an empty suit against him in a campaign that is increasingly fought on the newfangled medium of television. He’s been so successful for so long that his ward heelers have become complacent, and he’s smelling the campaign getting away from him…

Spencer Tracy (center) in THE LAST HURRAH

Movies to See Right Now

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Hong-Chi Lee in a scene from Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Photo by Liu Hongyu, courtesy Kino Lorber.

The Must See for cinephiles is Long Day’s Journey into Night.

7’3″ tall actor Peter Mayhew died last week. His screen career centered around one unforgettable role, under a mask and bushel of fur as Chewbacca in the Stars Wars franchise.

OUT NOW

  • Elisabeth Moss’ powerhouse performance as a monstrously narcissistic and drug-deranged rock star Her Smell is the acting tour de force of 2019.
  • The brilliantly original Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey into Night is a Must See.
  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.

ON VIDEO

My Stream of the Week is the slow burn thriller Hunting Lands, an indie from the 2018 Cinequest. Now everyone can stream Hunting Lands from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On May 13, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1964 serial killer movie The Strangler, with its brilliant and eccentric performance by Victor Buono.
And on May 14, TCM presents Orson Welles’ Shakespearean masterpiece Chimes at Midnight. Welles’ genius was in braiding together parts of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, some Richard III, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor into a cohesive story of what he called “betrayal of friendship”.
Orson Welles and Keith Baxter in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

Movies to See Right Now

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Elisabeth Moss in HER SMELL

I am aware that the new Avengers movie is taking up about forty percent of Bay Area movie screens. Be on the lookout for Her Smell, which is playing hardly anywhere, and the brilliant new release Long Day’s Journey into Night, along with Aretha Frankin’s gospel concert film Amazing Grace. 

Writer-director John Singleton, who died this week, was the first African-American nominated for the Best Director Oscar (for Boyz in the Hood) and remains the youngest person ever nominated for that award.

OUT NOW

  • Elisabeth Moss’ powerhouse performance as a monstrously narcissistic and drug-deranged rock star in Her Smell is the acting tour de force of 2019.
  • The brilliantly original Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey into Night is a Must See.
  • Werner Herzog’s admiring biodoc Meeting Gorbachev is uncritical but insightful, especially as we meet the unfiltered Gorbachev himself in 2018 interviews.
  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • In Teen Spirit, Elle Fanning plays an underdog teenager who has the chance to win a talent contest and become an instant pop star – yes, it’s a genre movie, but it’s a pretty fair one.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.
 

ON VIDEO

The ingeniously original Prospect is a frontier coming-of-age movie. It’s just set in space, not in the Old West.  A consistently unpredictable plot and superb performances by Pedro Pascal and young Sophie Thatcher make Prospect well worth streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube or Google Play.

 

ON TV

On May 7, Turner Classic Movies brings us a fantastic comedy, My Man Godfrey (1936). An assembly of eccentric, oblivious, venal and utterly spoiled characters make up a rich Park Avenue family and their hangers-on during the Depression. The kooky daughter (Carole Lombard) brings home a homeless guy (William Powell) to serve as their butler. The contrast between the dignified butler and his wacky employers results in a brilliant screwball comedy that masks searing social criticism that is sharply relevant today. The wonderful character actor Eugene Pallette (who looked and sounded like a bullfrog in a tuxedo) plays the family’s patriarch, who is keenly aware that his wife and kids are completely nuts.

William Powell and Carole Lombard in MY MAN GODFREY William Powell and Carole Lombard in MY MAN GODFREY

Movies to See Right Now

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Aretha Franklin in AMAZING GRACE

OUT NOW

  • The Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.
  • In The Chaperone, Downton Abbey’s writer Julian Fellowes and star Elizabeth McGovern reunite for a pleasing character study of self-discovery in 1921 America – it’s deeper than it first appears to be.
  • The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: after 25 years of misfortune and missteps, Terry Gilliam has succeeded in making a Don Quixote movie – and it’s good.
  • In Teen Spirit, Elle Fanning plays an underdog teenager who has the chance to win a talent contest and become an instant pop star – yes, it’s a genre movie, but it’s a pretty fair one.
  • The Brink is documentarian Alison Klayman’s up-close-and-personal portrait of Steve Bannon, the outsized personality who coached Donald Trump’s race-baiting right into the White House. As Bannon unintentionally reveals himself to be pathetically craving relevance, I found The Brink to be irresistible, and I watched with fascination.
  • For the first hour-and-a-half of Sunset, I was convinced that I was watching the best movie of the year. Then the coherence unraveled, but I still recommend Sunset, even with its flaws, for its uncommon artistry.
  • The puzzling thriller Transit, with all its originality, just isn’t director Christian Petzold’s best.
  • Ramen Shop is a lightly-rooted dramedy about a Singaporean-Japanese family’s reconciliation. There’s also a metaphorical foodie angle.
  • Skip The Hummingbird Project – two good scenes just isn’t enough.

Elle Fanning in TEEN SPIRIT

ON VIDEO

My video choice, the psychological suspense movie Una, revolves around two twisted people who make for two unreliable narrators  (Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn).  I originally saw Una at the 2017 Cinequest.  You can stream it from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On April 27, Turner Classic Movies will air the 1950 version of M, directed by Joseph Losey. This is a remake of Fritz Lang’s great 1931 M with Peter Lorre. The Losey version is not a masterpiece like the original, and I find it pretty odd. However, Los Angeles’ storied Bradbury Building, which has been in many a movie, was never been as gloriously revealed from basement to roof as in M. The Bradbury Building and the film as a whole benefit from the cinematography of Ernest Laszlo; Laszlo also shot D.O.A., The Well, The Steel Trap, Stalag 17, The Naked Jungle, Kiss Me Deadly and While the City Sleeps, before being Oscar-nominated eight times for more respectable, but lesser films. The cast is filled with film noir faves – Raymond Burr, Norman Lloyd, Howard Da Silva, Steve Brodie and Luther Adler. M is playing on TCM’s Noir Alley series, and I look forward to Eddie Muller’s intro and outro.

On May 1, TCM airs The Rack (1956): A returning US army captain (Paul Newman) is court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy while a POW. He was tortured, and The Rack explores what can be realistically expected of a prisoner under duress. It’s a pretty good movie, and Wendell Corey and Walter Pidgeon co-star.

Joseph Losey’s M

AMAZING GRACE: pure, sanctified Aretha

by

Aretha Franklin in AMAZING GRACE

Amazing Grace is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience.

At the height of her popular success in 1972, Aretha Franklin recorded a live album of gospel music. She brought her producer Jerry Wexler and her band to New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, a large but modest church with a cheesy mural of Jesus emerging from the waters after his baptism by John the Baptist. Accompanied by James Cleveland and the Los Angeles Community Gospel Choir, she performed for two nights, and the recordings became Amazing Grace, the top-selling gospel album of all time.

The whole thing was filmed by director Sydney Pollack and his crew with five cameras. Having made his bones in live television, Pollack would seem to be a great choice, but he made a critical mistake – he neglected to use clappers, the equipment that allowed for synchronizing the filmed images with the recorded sound. Frustratingly worthless, the film sat in canisters until decades later when technology allowed the music to be synced to the 16mm film. Aretha, however, was notoriously prickly in business affairs, and the rights could not be secured until after her death. Alan Eliot is responsible for finding and assembling Pollack’s footage and turning it into a feature film that could be released for the rest of us to see; appropriately, Eliot’s credit is “Realized and produced by Alan Eliot”.

What brought Aretha get to this moment in 1972? Aretha had grown up in the Detroit church led by her formidable father, C.L. Franklin, immersed in gospel music until she launched a pop music career at age 18. When she was 25, she began working with Wexler, who “got” her, and she became a soul and crossover superstar with Respect, I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You), Do Right Woman, Do Right Man, Baby I Love You, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, Chain of Fools, Ain’t No Way, Think, I Say a Little Prayer and Rock Steady.  At 30, Aretha commanded the field of R&B and looked to return to her gospel roots.

When Aretha enters the church, the atmosphere is electric, and Aretha is ready from her very first note of Wholy Holy. The church audience knows their gospel music, appreciates what they are witnessing and is, to a person, thrilled. The audience becomes more and more emotionally involved.

Aretha’s version of What a Friend We Have in Jesus is unrecognizable (in the very best way). On Precious Memories, Aretha’s humming is internally intense, and then her voice soars. Completely committed, Aretha produces a prodigious amount of sweat.

The high point of the film is Aretha’s closing song on the first night, Amazing Grace. It’s a very long version of the song, and the choir doesn’t sing until the very end. As Aretha’s instrument wrings every drop of emotion from that most familiar song, we watch the choir members’ reactions, which range from admiration to inspiration, many moved to tears. The moment is one of genius for Aretha and one of epiphany for the choir and for the film audience.

One of the great pleasures of Amazing Grace is watching the choir leader, Alexander Hamilton, lead his choir with an expressiveness that is both elegant and funky. If there is a co-star in Amazing Grace, it’s Alexander Hamilton.

There are pauses for technical issues, which bring out the authenticity of the moment and reinforce that this was a live event. It’s easy to spot Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts in the crowd on the second night.

Where does Amazing Grace fit in the concert film canon along with Monterey Pop, The Last Waltz, Stop Making Sense, Woodstock and The T.A.M.I. Show? It’s in the conversation.