SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

ninecurses As more of a casual X fan, I'd never heard of this (thank you Amazon Prime). I thought I was gonna get a flabby, pretentious, or just poorly-made film around some vintage concert footage. Oh, how pleased I am to have been proved wrong. I loved this movie.The director and editors create a rhythm that evokes the feel of early 80's LA, and of post punk in general. We also get to hear from each of the band's four members; loved the backstories on all of these talented musicians. They speak well, they perform, they entertain. And all with a sincere joy and respect for the music they play.Most importantly, the concert footage is Kick Ass! X in their prime (1982/3 I think)...really great rock n roll!If you like X at all, or 80's-era Los Angeles, or this style of music in general, you need to see this.

bradlewis98 I have seen an unholy amount of punk documentary and biopics; maybe even more than that. For whatever reason every band that half filled a bar has a film about their career/supposed influence. Once Arab On Radar got their own film you knew things had gone too far. Those quickie fan films can be exciting, and occasionally interesting...and sometimes you even find yourself half drunk and screaming in the background. But they rarely achieve the status as film, really just home videos for the die hards.The Unheard Music is the exception that proves the rule. Maybe due to being produced when the market/distribution plan would have been nebulous at best, this comes across as an independent and brilliant piece of art, which just happens to feature one of the first wave LA's best punk bands. Unheard Music is constructed like a collage, like one of those bootleg video mixtapes that were floating around the underground back in the day. Your basic interview, performance, rehearsal sequences are intercut with found footage and various Exene based weirdness.The true greatness of the film is the illustration of how X could never possibly find themselves in any subsection of the mainstream. For a band that is so informed by the classic sounds of American rock and roll, for a band that would have had dance hits in 1957, it is disheartening to listen to sleazy label suits babble about how the entire country would not "get" X. It's obnoxious at best to think those weasels are making value judgments about my taste based on geography. But then maybe that does explain Nickelback.This is a fresh an exciting film about not just X, but what a statement it once was to say you were into punk. It took a certain amount of effort since the powers that be actively kept you from hearing this music. Wasn't on the radio, TV, or in suburban record stores. Makes you really understand how much of an uphill battle artist-musicians have.

trollkillah I just saw a recent screening of a new 35mm print of this film, at the Museum Of The Moving Image, in New York. It was, in my humble opinion, a transcending experience, in other words, it was freaking awesome! The director, W.T. Morgan, was there afterwards, for a question and answer session, and that made it even more compelling.As someone who's been into Punk since 1977, and has seen X live many times over the years, lastly in 2006, I couldn't believe how much new found respect and admiration for the band I came away with. The band members are so talented yet humble, they give sincere props to those at the musics roots, probably not what many would expect. This movie was the embodiment of the punk DIY spirit, (do it yourself); W.T. Morgan saw them play live and was so blown away, he decided to make a film about them. This film was a labor of love, that took about five years to put together, always tottering on the edge of the abyss; from financial ruin, to technical issues, to personal reasons, as explained afterwards by the director. As so well and humorously put forth in the film, mainstream record companies wouldn't touch X with a ten foot pole, then Ray Manzarek,(The Doors and former UCLA film student), stumbled across, fell in love with, and opened a few doors for the band, (pun intended). This is the best band documentary I have ever seen, and the soundtrack is simply amazing; most songs are played in their entirety and if I'm not mistaken, there's one or two that are film exclusive, (not on vinyl). At the start of the film, on screen it says, "Play Really Loud". That they did! As mentioned in the screening, this film has been added to the Sundance Collection for eternal preservation, a great honor, given that films selected are the embodiment of the indie landscape. Due to ownership issues just recently resolved, a new, special edition DVD is going to be put out in the very near future, (there's one currently available, but it's bare bones; wait for the new one). This film was WAY ahead of it's time and has aged well. It needs to be widely re-released for viewing on the big screen, but shy of that, the new DVD should do. As an added bonus for us old-timers that were there, there's some unbelievable archival footage and montage, that begs to be seen using the pause button of the remote. Just remember: "Play Really Loud"!!

Wendell Walker I love X, I love seeing them live, but this movie added very little to the music. The band seems kind of halfhearted about doing the film, their stories are not that interesting. When they go out on tour trying to get their music heard, there's not a single foot of film from the tour; instead, there's a cutesy montage of postcards.As for the live footage, a good portion of it is from a shoot made expressly for the film, and to judge by the credits, at least half the songs are either videos or lip- synched.On the whole, the live X in Decline of Western Civilization is far more compelling than the whole of The Unheard Music.