The 10 Best Concert Movies Ever

“Heima”

Undoubtedly the most straightforwardly beautiful film on this list, “Heima” covers ethereal, poetic post-rockers Sigur Ros as they return home to their native Iceland in 2006. The symbiosis between the band, the island and the islanders is extraordinary and lovely, as a series of free concerts and studio sessions unfolds against the Middle Earth-like landscape: the visit to a man who makes xylophones out of slabs of local volcanic rock really takes it over the top. The fact that the band sings partly in Icelandic and partly in a made-up language—so that the English viewer will be doubly uncomprehending—adds to the beauty too, and though Sigur Ros’ delicate, complex, sculpted sounds are the kind of thing that seem like they’d only work in a studio, they lose nothing live, and gain hugely when joined by local string bands, choirs and adorable Icelandic toddlers. The landscape photography is just as lush and alien as the music, empty vistas balanced beautifully by warm, grainy newsreel footage of Icelandic fisheries swarming with people in the 40s and 50s. The band, too, turn out not to be art-rock cloud-cuckoolanders but warm, nerdy, personable types who are constantly humble in the face of their countrymen’s obvious adoration. For the film’s main concert, the climactic night in Reykjavik, the aesthetic switches back from lo-fi gigs in fields to a complex light and sound spectacular, but by this point it feels earned, arising organically out of the island itself. “Heima” is a startlingly good piece of recent concert movie-making.

From the Playlist to your playlist: “Gitardjamm,” with the footage of the abandoned fisheries; “Staralfur.”

Like we said, many are the no-budget concert docs lazily put out to cash in on one tour or another, but that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of other worthwhile concert films that didn’t make the cut here. D.A. Pennebaker’s “Monterey Pop,” as noted, is a document of 60s hippie revelry almost up there with “Woodstock,” and his two Bob Dylan tour films—“Dont Look Back” and “Eat The Document”—are straight-up masterpieces that don’t quite qualify as concert movies, since most of what they cover is not the gigs but the stuff that happened in between them. “The Song Remains The Same,” though overblown, is an impressive relic of Led Zeppelin at the height of their powers; and The Who’s “Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970” is another over-the-top but enjoyable dad-rock document. Jonathan Demme and Martin Scorsese have come back to the format at times, too: Demme‘s “Heart of Gold” and Scorsese‘s “Shine A Light,” both from the last 10 years, depict Neil Young and the Rolling Stones, respectively, artists who themselves appear in their youth on this list, older and wiser, but still altogether cool. Younger artists are still putting out good concert films too, as can be seen in the White Stripes’ “Under Great White Northern Lights,” LCD Soundsystem’s (brilliantly named) “Shut Up and Play The Hits” and Nine Inch Nails’ “Beside You In Time.” Finally, mention also should go to Jay-Z’s 2004 “Fade to Black,” mostly because it badly makes you wish he’d do another film covering more than the first few years of his career.

Now go start a band.