Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Steve Pulaski God Bless Ozzy Osbourne is an extensive piece of work that sheds light on the Prince of Darkness himself. Ozzy Osbourne is a cultural and musical icon, pioneering heavy metal with Black Sabbath in the late sixties, introducing an explosive solo career, along with a reality show and raucous tours that fans say will never be matched. The documentary puts Ozzy's success in the background, while his personal troubles, demons, and hardships are placed in the foreground.John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne was born in 1948 in the working class neighborhood of Aston, Birmingham, England. As a teen, he had very few options; go to work in a factory, go to the army, or go to prison. The choice was his. He could never hold down a job and cringed at the thought of working decades in a factory. Like many teens, Ozzy formed a band with his friends, who would later get a small record deal with Warner Bros. to form the band Black Sabbath.Like mentioned in the documentary, listening to Black Sabbath now, it sounds rather ordinary because all the tricks have been copied over and over again, but in the seventies, it was some of the hardest, roughest, and most engaging rock music ever heard. Ozzy married young and had two kids, Jessica and Louis, both who agree that he was a bad father, distant, unkind, and very, very deranged.After his divorce, he finally married Sharon Arden, and had three children, Aimee, Jack, and Kelly who would later become the stars of the MTV reality show The Osbournes. Sharon states that living with Ozzy is a roller-coaster. He never seemed to be a fully functional father, always being away on tours, binging on alcohol and drugs (things he has had untold troubles with), not to mention just putting his musical work in front of his family.Once he was released from Sabbath, Ozzy pursued a solo-career, one of unmatchable talent. He became the "Prince of Darkness," hosting tours that were dark, eerie, and unpredictable, and began releasing heavy metal records that were unique and stylistic.One thing that is frequently brought up in the documentary is how insecure Ozzy truly is. He was the clown character of Black Sabbath, and Sharon states he acted that way to try and cover up his insecurities. It too seems that his erratic drug use is a response to all his regrets and missed opportunities in life. The series The Osbournes may have been funny to watch, due to it being rather all over the place, but as said by Jack Osbourne, it truly tore the family apart. Everyone began using drugs.As of today, Ozzy is stone cold sober. He has himself together, he is working on resurrecting his solo career (his latest album Scream is a definite winner), and he is trying desperately to be the real father to his children, all of which, even Jessica and Louis, he maintains a healthy relationship with. God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, which was produced by his son Jack, is a nicely composed documentary, but I have a feeling that this is nothing eye-opening to a lot of Ozzy fans. For me, someone who thought they knew more about the man than they did, it colored things in and even took me outside the lines, but hardcore fans of the prince may find it to be obvious, repetitive, and unnecessary.Starring: Ozzy Osbourne, Sharon Osbourne, Jack Osbourne, Kelly Osbourne, Aimee Osbourne, Jessica Osbourne, and Louis Osbourne. Directed by: Mike Fleiss and Mike Piscitelli.

ShootingShark A documentary charting the life of rock star Ozzy Osbourne; his early days with seminal heavy metal band Black Sabbath, his solo career, his notorious party lifestyle and his life-long battles with drink and drug addiction.John Osbourne, aka Ozzy, is that rare breed - a rock-and-roll survivor who has somehow managed to outlive the most outrageous excesses of showbiz, maintain a very successful career in music for forty years and produce an incredible body of work. As he admits in this film, he should be dead many times over, but somehow he's not only very much alive but still a great musician and songwriter. This is a fairly conventional documentary; it starts at the beginning, with Ozzy's working-class childhood in Aston, moves through the Sabbath years, talks to his friends and family. There are the expected lurid anecdotes of drug-fuelled craziness and some sharp moments of honesty (at one point, he's unable to remember what year his daughter Jessica was born), but unfortunately for me there's very little discussion of his music. This is a man who's made (at the time of writing) eighteen outstanding albums, who has a unique voice, and is a truly gifted lyricist. I want to ask him things like how did you work out the melody for Crazy Train, or what inspired you to write the beautiful words to Spiral Architect ? But no, it's always about why did you bite a bat on stage or how much coke did you snort in '85. There's a long section towards the end dealing with his battles with booze, but it isn't nearly as informative or eloquent as when he sings (in the song Demon Alcohol), "I'll wash away your lies / And have you hypnotised / There'll be no compromise today / I'll share your life of shame / I think you know my name ... ". The movie deals with the (many) low points of his life, such as the heartbreaking death of the brilliant young guitarist Randy Rhoads in 1982, but is oddly uplifting towards the end, showing Ozzy's sideline in painting and his determination to pass his driving test. For someone who has led such a screwed-up life, he's philosophical, articulate and non-judgemental. I didn't like (or watch) the MTV show The Osbournes, which, while it may have been a canny promotion tool on his wife's part, embarrassed me in its peepshow depiction of one of my rock heroes as a bewildered clown. This film goes some way to redressing that image, but not far enough. It's informative and balanced but to get to know the real Ozzy, buy any of his records (I'd suggest starting with Master Of Reality or Diary Of A Madman), turn your TV, phone and all the lights off, and crank up the volume - that's really what he's all about.

jc-osms A heavy metal fan I'm not, the only Ozzy song I know is Sabbath's "Paranoid" and I didn't see a single episode of "The Osbournes" and yet somehow you feel you know this massive personality very well. Broken into two lots pre- and post- his days with Black Sabbath, this bio-documentary covers a lot of ground and does so entertainingly. Even though it's co-produced by his son Jack, it pulls no punches in its true telling of Osbourne's long journey of near self-destruction before he at long last kicked his various habits in his 60's.Yes, he seems somewhat shambling, even ridiculous at times as he warms up his voice before a gig, but elsewhere, as you'd expect, the man himself is brutally honest in his self-assessment, as indeed are almost all his coterie of family and friends. Of course much of the early scene-setting material comprises celebrity endorsements from members of Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Metallica and even Sir Paul McCartney, before the story goes back to his post -war Birmingam roots and takes us chronologically through his larger-than-life and times. As you can probably tell there isn't much originality in the techniques used to bring Ozzy's story to life, even the act of taking him back to his childhood haunts, which recalls nothing so much as the well-known re-election Party Political Broadcast by the then Tory Prime Minister, John Major. Yes some of the over-the-top segments seem apocryphal, even by Osbourne standards and sure, the relentless loud HM music blasted way over my head much of the time. All his well-documented vices, particularly drink and drugs, are aired without much shame or regret and yet you do believe he's turned the corner himself.Looking at him today, rather like the other best-known "dead man walking" Keith Richards, you wonder just how he is, to paraphrase Elton John, still standing, but, sanctimonious title apart, this was an intriguing and watchable insight into the life of an old warrior who may just have found peace in his own time, in the nick of time.

frivolousfate The only other review (at the time I'm writing this) sums this movie up quite well, but I'll try to add just a little in the form of a different perspective. To start off with, I'm not an avid Ozzy fan, I have and do still enjoy several of the classics like paranoid and crazy train on occasion; so yeah I think people who aren't big fans may enjoy this movie, I sure did.The movie has a nice balance of the musical background and home/family/party/everyday life. There is a lot about the struggles Ozzy dealt with throughout his life. The drug and alcohol abuse is confronted head on, and really gives the viewer a unique insight. Ozzy truly seems to be one of a kind. I found the part about The Osborne's show particularly interesting. It made me think of the show differently. ...Trying not to give away any spoilers. I'm sure many people already knew what I didn't. The part I found interesting is the comments made about how the outside viewer may say or think that Ozzy's actions and behaviour on the show was 'cute' or 'funny', but really it was quite 'sad'.I have much more respect and empathy for Ozzy and his family after watching this. Though I admit it's not going to make me more of a fan of the music.