All Things Must Pass (2015)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Purely Joyful Movie!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Growing up in the sixties and seventies for me, as with most young people then, records were a part of our daily life. Possibly more so than ever before music shaped us and molded us. It was a part of our daily lives as transistor radios made it easy for us to have access to music. That paved the path for us to seek out the music we loved and in so doing directed us to the record store, that glorious haven of vinyl that drained us of money earned mowing lawns.While record stores were mostly mom and pop joints at the same time chains began to pop up. Locally there was Karma Records and Peaches. But perhaps the most famous well known record store was Tower Records. Tower Records was the store in LA that was featured in numerous movies I saw in the 70s. The building with the huge replicas of album covers posted on the outside of the building, where rock stars showed for release parties and where they could also be found picking up the latest hits was well known no matter where you lived.When I saw this documentary was coming out I was excited to hear about their story. Vinyl had disappeared from the music scene by compact discs but that didn't destroy the music store business. Then along came digital downloads. No longer did you have to go to the store to purchase your music. You could just get online and there it was. That brought about, to me at least, the end of the music store business. But watching this documentary I learned that wasn't exactly the case with Tower Records.The movie starts at the beginning of the business, how it was small like all businesses are and then grew over time. It shows the gradual progression of the small business into the conglomerate that it was, an influence in the world of music it was so big. There was a time when Tower Records boasted that it made $1 billion dollars in a single year. But then things begin to change and the fortunes once thought to be never ending slowly changed.This movie is incredibly well made. Some documentaries have that boring tone to them, a slow meandering pace that makes you anxious for it to get to the point. This film draws you in from the start with smooth storytelling and great visuals that take you back to the time when record stores ruled the world of music.While watching the movie I found myself recalling all those hours spent in record stores looking at album art, many of those albums which I have retained for that very reason. I thought of looking at the new releases up front and the cut out albums I could purchase for less if funds were tight. I realized how many songs bring back certain memories to this day. I can't hear "Band on the Run" without thinking back to walking in a parking lot as I left a free outdoor concert and it blared from the sound system between acts. All of these thing tie in to visits to the record store.And this movie brought back memories of that desire to see the mecca of all record stores, Tower Records. It was there in Rolling Stone magazine. It was featured in movies like FM. It was always there and now like many things from the past it is gone. Talk to young people today and they have no idea what Tower Records was and less about what a record store is.The movie is well crafted and holds your interest from start to final credits. It includes some memorable music as well as commentary from various music royalty. It tells the story not only of the store but the history of records and the music business as well. Best of all it never gets boring. So watch this with someone young so they can see what it was all about. Show them what going to the record store was like. And relive some of those great memories you still have. Dream of what it would have been like to visit that best of all record stores, Tower Records while watching.

Unlikeable men fall into a CANNOT LOSE business (baby boomer, rock buying generation) and milk the customer dry for decades. Despite making millions, and eventually billions, this is not enough for these offensive parasites. These supposed "businessmen" (actually simple-minded drunkards and coke heads), fail to see digital coming and greedily refuse to offer their goods at reasonable prices. Now that these people are exposed for the lowlife scum that they are, they can only weep at the loss of their jobs (and at the loss of a fellow drunk, a gentleman who hilariously, literally wears a lampshade on his head. What a cutup! This, and the David Crosby / walrus-mustachioed Cletus are these people's idea of interesting people. Despite each working for decades, adding up to centuries worth of experience, in a music-related field, it is notable that music - remember music? - is never a discussion point for these selfish greed heads, only the good times they enjoyed and the incredible profit they were making, both at the customer's expense. Tower Records was a good store in spite of these people. Everyone loves music, all you needed to do was sell it to them at a reasonable price. See the Beatles' Apple Records for a similar example of what happens when you put burnt-out hippies in charge of your business. It's a shame alright, shameful actions.

In what's a documentary that's likely to appeal to music tragic, collectors and those longing for the bygone era of in store shopping that moonlighted as an excuse to go and hang out with real people in a real environment, son of Tom Colin Hanks's documentary examination of the rise and fall of Tower Records may not achieve anything of a true noteworthy nature but it's certainly a thorough and insightful examination of the one-time retail juggernaut and a reminder that with our attention now on online retail and social media interaction, we are losing and missing out on a wonderful experience that used to be readily available to all shapes and sizes.All Things Must Pass (inspired from a sign posted on a closing Tower Records store and no doubt the famous song) utilises extensive archival photos of the expanding businesses stores, over locations from the USA, Japan (where the name continues to do decent business) and England and Hanks finds a winning formula with a range of talking heads that were involved for many a year with Tower Records.We get to spend a large portion of the docos runtime with founder and colourful character Russ Solomon who with nothing more than ambition and drive created a world spanning retail empire that's focus was on music for music lovers that extended from staff through to everyday customers or the not so every day like frequent store visitors such as Elton John and Eric Clapton. It seems like such a foreign thing in today's climate that employees started as packing room clerks to high end management and the focus Tower had on encouraging each store to have its own flavour and as long as the job gets done, who cares what happens before, after or in-between is something that is highly unlikely to be a practice of retail chains of the modern era.All Things Must Pass will be a lovely walk down memory lane for those that use to count their visits to Tower Record stores as a weekly or monthly highlight and for those of us like me that never got to experience the wandering up and down of their aisles it's a pleasant and workmanlike examination of what made the name such a power in its early days and also a sad reminder of what today's consumers are missing out on 3 purchase happy Elton John's out of 5

1. Entertaining, as it seems we do everything either for our entertainment or we do something to get something we can trade for entertainment, Like money or free time. 2. Informative, so we can come away thinking about something. 3. Well crafted, so the flow is not broken by subtext's material that may apply to a character, but not relevant to the subject.This documentary is very entertaining, and is a wonderful window into history, albeit a small one. It is human, and very honest. During the time of Tower, the world had space for crazy, human, amazing stuff. The documentary illustrates this very well. Right time, right place, right guy, right idea. It was about freedom then, doing your own thing, being and loving what you do, and the film displays this very well. RUSS SOLOMAN VS. STEVE JOBS...now there is food for thought, although the food might come in a paper sack. We want entertainment, and we are getting it in spades. Was tower depicted as a phenomenon of the times it flourished? Sure, and what evolved from that, and all those young people who had the power of Tower? Whoops.