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89Music has rarely appeared more essential to the human drama.
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80A precious scrap of American history.
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Oct 6, 201180Though it sometimes overplays the sentimentality, Thunder Soul gets not just the music but also the sense of possibility for this post-civil-rights generation.
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80Warm memories of one school under a groove and a moving ending that no screenwriter could improve upon.
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75One serious omission in the film - identifying what these seemingly prosperous alumni of the band do for a living and did with their lives.
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63Forcefully traditional and sentimental, Thunder Soul benefits most from the cinematic turn of the actual events it documents, which allowed the beloved teacher's life to end on a perfectly bittersweet note.
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83Everything here is pitched relentlessly toward uplift, but at least that uplift is genuine, the product of one visionary's indomitable will and a musical universe he brought into existence through vision, dedication, and plenty of stubborn hard work.
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80A greater argument for music education in our secondary school curriculum can't be made than Mark Landsman's doc about a Texas high school funk band that tore up the music scene from 1968 to 1977.
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100By introducing funky licks, fancy footwork and many of his own compositions to the band's stodgy set list of jazz standards, this indomitable leader (whose declining health adds a poignant twang to the film's final scenes) instilled racial pride alongside musical competency.
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60Amid its celebrations of black power, ambitious Afros and fly female trombonists, the film serves as a rousing testament to the singular blessings of music education, since there's nothing inherent or automatic about kids learning how to groove.
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80Mark Landsman's spirited Thunder Soul offers a heaping helping of uplift while documenting the past triumphs and recent reunion of a predominantly black Houston high school's singularly accomplished jazz stage band.
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70Sometimes you just can't fight the funk; as much as you might resist the film's more maudlin scenes, not succumbing to the band's signature tune, "Head Wiggle," is impossible.