Excellent!

Rating: 9/10 (8 January 2015)

Astonishingly well acted film, so much so that it seems unfair to single out any of the performances. Mr. Lawrence's camera sense is as sure and unobtrusive as his feel for acting. The movie just seems to happen, to grow out of the ground like a thorny plant, revealing the intricate intelligence of its design only in hindsight. As a JD fan, I thought it was done in a way that even non-JD fans could enjoy it. All of the actors playing the JD band members actually played their instruments and performed those songs... it wasn't just Reilly overdubbing vocals over original JD recordings! That is something that really impresses me about the skills of the actors chosen for the band. True, Curtis was a genius, but he was also human... I felt this film was grounded in reality without trying to evangelize/make a martyr out of Curtis.