reibureibu’s review published on Letterboxd:
Edit: This review is terrible I'm so sorry I'm gonna write a better one soon
I've finally watched the film behind Amrit's profile picture, an odd "documentary" in that it's essentially all-music and no actual dialogue. It's just 90 minutes of the Talking Heads playing a live performance of various hits accompanied with a loose narrative (I think?)
I have no idea what to rate it, and honestly I don't think I should even rate it at all. How do you rate concert films? Should I compare them to live-concerts I've been to? How about to actual films? Does it even feel fair if I don't like the music that much?
Thankfully that last question is rhetorical as I'm a fan of David Byrne. New Wave is a very interesting genre as it's essentially 70's/80's punk-cum-pop with synthesizers, a definition that's honestly incredibly loose and I still don't totally know what it means. But that's cool, anything that combines my favorite parts of pop and punk and isn't called Pop-Punk sounds great to me, and this concert does not disappoint.
It's a little simple and a little dated, but it's hard not to feel moved by Byrne's incredibly eclectic performance. I still have no idea why it's called what it is, but Stop Making Sense is an infectious if slightly-silly (thanks to the oversized suit) concert-video, and I'm really glad I finally got around to it.
[Watch it on archive.org here!]
