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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Shine a Light
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 36 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 23 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Documentary | Musical
Written by:
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 4, 2008
DVD: July 29, 2008
Running Time: 122 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / UK
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for brief strong language, drug references and smoking
Starring Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Bill Clinton, Ron Wood, and Charlie Watts
Martin Scorsese's concert documentary Shine a Light will show the world the Rolling Stones as they've never been seen before. Filming at the famed Beacon Theatre in New York City in fall 2006, Scorsese assembled a legendary team of cinematographers to capture the raw energy of the legendary band. (Paramount)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
May be the most intimate documentary ever made about a live rock 'n' roll concert. Certainly it has the best coverage of the performances onstage.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Shine a Light has two maestros, Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger, and once they begin to mesh, around the third or fourth song, they put on a display of showmanship that erases the line between art and entertainment.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
An altogether astounding testimony to the band's longevity, vitality and verve.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
As the director of the documentary Shine a Light, Martin Scorsese is a besotted rock ’n’ roll fan who wholeheartedly embraces its mythology.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Shine a Light may not be the last Rolling Stones movie, but it's likely to be the last one with a touch of the poet about it.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Raoul Hernandez
Dedicated to Atlantic Records fountainhead Ahmet Ertegun, whose complications from injuries sustained in a tumble backstage at the Beacon resulted in his death, let the record show that a lifetime of musical innovation concluded with dying not at but FROM a Rolling Stones concert.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
This you-are-there spellbinder is a master director shining his light on the best rock band on the planet.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Shine a Light is one of those lions-in-winter affairs, and Jagger, who has a body fat count of negative 67, can still dance like a maniacal popinjay, and Richards still looks like a satyr who has stayed up all night every night of his adult life.
Read Full Review >USA Today Elysa Gardner
The genius of Scorsese's film, which is being shown in IMAX in 93 theaters, is that it reveals the Stones' mortality while celebrating all that makes them more than mere mortals.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Shine a Light did something I didn't think was possible. It got me caring about the Rolling Stones again.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Shine a Light provides the clearest and most intimate viewing experience of the band to date. It is also a happy circumstance that the group, now in their mid-60s, have rarely sounded tighter.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Shine A Light is essentially just an expertly made concert film. But what a concert! (And what a camera team.)
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Shine A Light pays tribute to the band's essential agelessness.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
In Shine a Light, a crackling concert movie directed by Martin Scorsese, the Rolling Stones are now so old that they seem new again.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
This movie is about giving us a privileged glimpse of the Stones in action. It's a record of an astonishing musical chemistry that has been evolving, with no signs of calcification, for nearly five decades. As a bonus, there are delicious guest appearances by Buddy Guy and Jack White.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Shine a Light isn't the record of a unique event, so it's not on the exalted level of "The Last Waltz." But it has its own fascination. The film is less about the music than about the dedication of show-biz troupers--about doing your job, year after year, as if it's your joy.
Read Full Review >Empire Will Lawrence
A triumph for Scorsese and a document for the band, Shine A Light is a five-star experience for Stones fans. For those less enamoured with the ageing rockers, it goes a long way to explaining their longevity.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Jagger is often shot straight-on, veiny arms outstretched, white-hot lights illuminating his skinny form (and, um, bared belly). Suddenly, Scorsese turns what seemed familiar into genuinely iconic. From then on, the movie is on fire.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
It's kind of amusing to see slinky Christina Aguilera sing the "Live With Me" line about a score of harebrained children, as she clearly hasn't got the faintest idea of what that means.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones "documentary" (i.e. concert film) is a first: the only Scorsese film that does not feature the Stones' "Gimme Shelter." Really. I think the Dalai Lama even hummed the guitar solo in "Kundun."
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Scorsese's canny use of archival footage makes it more than a mere concert film.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Ultimately, Shine a Light is illuminating indeed, even fascinating, but not in the way Scorsese intended. What he has created, inadvertently, is an invaluable documentation of semi-fossilized Stones – musicologists may like it, sociologists should love it and, some distant day, anthropologists will treasure it.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Martin Scorsese’s energetic account of a Stones concert at Gotham’s Beacon Theater in fall 2006 takes full advantage of heavy camera coverage and top-notch sound to create an invigorating musical trip down memory lane, as well as to provoke gentle musings on the wages of aging and the passage of time.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
My favorite rock-concert movies, Jonathan Demme’s "Stop Making Sense" and "Neil Young: Heart of Gold," are organic: They chart a miraculous path from sound to soul. Scorsese stays on the outside, as befits his temperament and his subject. Yet there is, amid the whirligig spectacle, a spark of connection.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
To call Shine a Light a documentary doesn’t quite nail it; it’s more of a macro-mentary, shot in such tight close-up that you can see the fillings in Mick’s teeth and the sweat stains in the armpits of his sequined magenta top.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Despite Scorsese's efforts to pump up some drama - the director, with his signature glasses and Groucho brows, gets huffy about not receiving a set list - drama is sorely lacking. This is just a concert film.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Camille Dodero
Shine a Light's only point seems to be: You try this at 60. One would hope that, after "The Last Waltz" and "No Direction Home," Scorsese might venture beyond making a glossy episode of "Ripley's Believe It or Not." Nope, and we're not supposed to question it: Like the Stones, Marty's earned the right to coast, especially in his senior years.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
At times, the cutting shifts from the hasty to the impatient to the borderline epileptic, and, while never doubting Scorsese’s ardor for the Stones, I got the distinct impression of a style in search of a subject.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
It's a late-night infomercial masquerading as a concert movie, more an advertisement for vitality than a picture of vitality itself. There's something self-congratulatory, preening, about both the performance and the filmmaking.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
The film does not stand up to the current crop of music/concert films like "U2 3D," which brilliantly uses 3-D to show the Irish band in concert so as to encapsulate its relationship to its fans, each other and their own music, and "CSNY: Deja Vu," which hones in on the political connection Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young have to their music.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Naturally, age and infirmity are a major subtext of Shine a Light (and, really, any movie featuring Keith Richards). No matter how cadaverous the Stones appear, they keep climbing onstage, and I’ll miss them when they’re finally gone.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 23 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Maya B gave it a2:
Shine a Light. Boring and totally overrated, just because of the pedigree involved. Scorsese filming a Rolling Stone´s concert, sounds ass kicking, right? Some dope forgot to tell us the show was a benefit hosted by the Clintons, and the Stones have to greet them and please them and their guests, including Hillary´s mom. Instead of a mosh pit you get yuppies and middleages. The raunchiest member of the audience is holding up a vanity plate, and Scorsese shows him repeatedly like he is a sight to behold. The movie is so boring he probably is. Meanwhile, Jagger, Richards, Watts and Wood do their thing with all the enthusiasm they can muster in their emasculated situation, politely giving out handshakes and guitar picks to the people in the first row. Keith even apologizes when he runs out of picks. All the songs sound somehow watered down to fit all tastes, and the movie, visually, can´t be described as visually stunning. It´s not like I want every Rolling Stone´s movie to be like Give me Shelter, or think a gang member should die every once in a while in a concert. It´s not that I believe every show should be a blow your head experience like it is in NIN´s case, or that every member of the audience should be crowd surfing and smoking pot, but watching the Stones and Scorsese acting their age is does nothing for no one.
Charlie S gave it a3:
Interesting begining and snapshots of early Stones life in the 60s, but really the the songs they played were awful.
BJ H gave it a10:
From a guitarist point of view, I loved this documentary. Keith has a very unique style, especially when he plays in open tuning and goes back and forth between rhythm and filling in with licks and leads. Ronnie Wood is no longer as sloppy as he was, probably because is not as strung out as he used to be when he played live. Same goes for Keith. Artiscally this band gave up a long time ago. But as far as a live band, they have never been better than they have the last 10-15 years. Much more sober which makes them a much tighter band. The cinematography is excellent. They cut to Keith's riffs at exactly the right time for example. They know where to focus the camera depending on where the band is at during the song. It really makes you understand the arrangements of the songs, and what made the Stones such terrific songwriters and arrangers back in the day and what makes them such great live performers today.
Brian D. gave it a4:
What a boring and sterile concert! Clean cut millionaires masquerading as rebel renegades. The sound was crystal clear and the photography's brilliant, but far too polished. Best part was "Champagne and Reefer".
Jay H. gave it a6:
Scorsese does a good job piecing the film together, and the older clips are excellent and give a great insite into who the Rolling Stones are. The concert footage is well done. My main gripe is it's too long.
Jp gave it a0:
Boring beyond belief. The Stones are about as much of a Rock N' Roll band as George Bush is presidential. In other words: They're a fraud. Too bad when a once great artist lose their creativity and just regurgitate a few once great songs. An utter disappointment.
Bill P. gave it a9:
Superb! My 1st IMAX experience--well worth the extra cost; better than I expected.
