Rating: 
Summary: Watch a Murder
Review: It is spooky watching the guy in the lime green suit the whole movie knowing that he is going to get stabbed in the end. Also notable is watching the guy on stage having a bad acid trip and then get thrown off the stage by a Hells Angel
Rating:
Summary: Altamont and all that.
Review: A classic of our times, or before them for some people. See Tina before she became a grandmother, airplane before they became Starship, the Burrito Brothers before Gram died and Mick before he became a characature of himself. The scariest night in rock history retold and a testament to the decade that gave us so many bands. Watch it over and over again as it gets better every time. Mick is skinny, Keith is majestic and Charlie is Charlie.
Rating: 
Summary: A nightmare on film
Review: I saw this when it first came out in 1970(?), but barely remembered it. With all the rave reviews, when I found a DVD copy for $9 at the local used bookstore, I grabbed it. I can't add anything to the other reviewers who have praised this film. The restoration is exceptional (and the DVD extra that shows/explains the restoration process is very good). Watching the fear and apprehension envelop Mick Jagger on the Altamont stage is chilling. If Woodstock was the dream come true, this is the nightmare. Mick says (when things get rowdy while singing "Sympathy For The Devil") something to the effect that "Something always happens when we do this song." Quite an ominous or even prophetic word.
Rating:
Summary: Stare into the face of madness and never be the same...
Review: This film set out to capture "The Woodstock of the West Coast" and ended up documenting, in frightening detail, the end of the sixties. Watch as drugged-out, disillusioned hippies grow restless and violent during an out-door concert on the Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco. This is one of the best sociological documents of all time, depicting the descent of a mob into chaos and disorder. A horrifying and macabre view of the end of an era. Essential to any collection.
Rating:
Summary: We're just gonna let it happen...for experimental purposes..
Review: As a fan of the early Stones, I first saw this in 1990 on video a few times, but it wasn't until I bought this Criterion edition last year and watched it many times that I realised how powerful and well put together this film really is.While the film ostensibly deals with the Stone's 1969 American tour, for me it really represents a descent into some kind of hell, that is not only enivitable, but fascinating to watch at the same time. You know things are going wind up badly virtually from the beginning of the film as Jagger and Watts are replayed radio bites detailing the aftermath of the Altamont concert (deaths, births, OD's & scuffles) as the camera records their reactions. This knowledge casts a deathly air over all the footage to follow, especially the concert preparations themselves, as the chaos and egocentric personalities concerned with them are all the more transparent and the results of which all the more enivitable. The Stones (in my opinion) are at their peak here, sounding really cohesive as a group (even though Mick Taylor was new) and really rocking as a result. Other musicians such as Ike and Tina Turner (who apparently Mick was jealous of because her stage costume looked better under lights than his), Jefferson Airplane and The Flying Burrito Brothers also make short appearances, and provide some historical background, however for me the music takes a back seat to what is going on around it. As the Stones play Madison Square Gardens and record in the studio (including a nice version of "Brown Horses"), preparations are underway for the Stones to do a free concert somewhere in San Fransisco as a nice gesture (and partly in response to negative feedback about high concert prices) for the people of San Fran. The amount of problems, technicalities, and greedy sensationalists you see in these scenes helps set the stage (literally) for what is to come when the big day arrives. The first view of Altamont you get is an awesome helicopter view of thousands upon thousands of cars and people walking towards the site itself. The helicopter lands, Mick gets punched in the face and it's all downhill from there. All the big and little details that helped turn Altamont into the end of an era are laid to bare, and judging by what is shown it is little wonder it did turn out as bad as it did...although it is hard to say how it could have been worse. As I said earlier, I liken it to a descent into hell, and by the time The Stones are on stage there is so much chaos and confusion it's a nightmare. It's the little details that stick with me : the guy in the audience trying to tell Jagger how bad things are and Mick misinterpreting him and dancing harder, the crowd surging everytime an Angel jumps in to beat someone up, the fat naked woman climbing over everybody with one of the scariest pairs of eyes I've ever seen, an alsatian dog calmly crossing the stage, one of the Angels giving Mick a prolonged condescending/nasty stare and my favourite where a psycho-Joe Cocker lookalike stands about a metre away from Mick while grimacing and grinding his teeth to the world's worst trip before being noticed by a Hell's Angel and pulled off the stage. These details are only a small snippet of the madness within the second half on the film and certainly by the end I was stunned and in awe of not only the events themselves, but the competency of the Maysles Brothers in recording and displaying them. It is also of little wonder that the next Stones tour (1972) of the United States was far better organised, with better security, bigger and taller stages and seemingly slicker and more souless. Although Robert Frank's "----sucker Blues" shows quite a bit of interesting behind the scenes activity (which I won't go into here), certainly there is very little on stage and the both the music and the film itself cannot hold a candle to this combined effort of music, cinema and history. The DVD of "Gimme Shelter" comes with a very good array of extras. Two large galleries worth of photos taken at Altamont, A rather large booklet, The whole of the radio broadcast that is used as snippets within the film (Sam Cutler and Sonny Barger are absolute highlights!!), excerpts from another radio broadcast the Stones did during the tour and an informative commentry from one of the Maysles brothers & Charlottle Zerwin.
Rating:
Summary: The Storm Is Threatening
Review: The curse upon the Rolling Stones appears to be that the pinnacle of their musical creativity, from 1968-1974, is overshadowed by Altamont. The irony, of course, is that while the Stones and some others are to blame for shoddy planning, based more on naivite' than anything else, it was the Hell's Angels who took it upon themselves to beat, intimidate and, finally, murder concert-goers. As GIMME SHELTER documents, the Angels were asked to sit on the stage, to form a human wall between the crowd and the performers, in exchange for all the beer they could drink. They took this to mean they were to keep the crowd at bay, using fists, hobnail boots, pool cues, and knives. In the end it was the Hell's Angels, a group of thugs who had never bought into flower-power and the entire hippy trip, who brought the 60's tumbling to a frightening and embarassing finale'. Jagger, like the Dead and Jefferson Airplane before him, seems meak and confused at Altamont, while good ol' Keith Richards attempts to take control of the situation. JAGGER: "People! People! People, people, people, people, people. People. People! Awright. Awright...people!" RICHARDS: "If those cats, right there, don't stop beating everybody, we're not playing anymore. Those cats, right THERE." Almost forgotten in all the pop-sociological writings about this film is the great, great music. The Mick Taylor version of the Stones was as powerful as it gets, and they flex some muscle here. My only question is, why weren't Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor allowed to speak on camera? Jagger and Watts speak frequently, Richards speaks occasionally (mostly on stage at Altamont), Taylor is shown only occasionally, and Wyman is seen on screen, I think, one time, in the background on stage.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant companion piece (and antidote) to "Woodstock" doc
Review: I don't have much new to add here, but I will say this documentary is a very important historical document of its time and scene. I would suggest watching the "Woodstock" documentary first. After that makes you feel high, lovable, and loved, put this one in; it will bring you back down to earth. "Gimme Shelter" left me thinking that the hippie bliss realization of Woodstock was confined to just that one single weekend. Although the music and performances at Woodstock were some of the absolute best ever captured on film, the hippie ideals that filled that festival were nothing but ideals. And what we saw in Altamont, however, left me thinking that the disaster of Woodstock '99 didn't seem so bad compared to Altamont '69. "Gimme Shelter" is not at all a concert film, which is okay because that's not even its purpose. The Stones sounded pretty bad live throughout the film. They were experimenting with drugs and new equipment (not a good combination). I wouldn't have minded, however, if the filmmakers had included more footage of a knockout Tina Turner. And couldn't they have put the camera on Gram Parsons (with The Flying Burrito Brothers) for at least a few seconds!!. Little did they know how valuable that footage would have been! But those are just questions, not quibbles. So as a concert film don't expect much. But as a document of the end of an era (and its ideals), I can't imagine a better one. This is a must-see documentary. Easily one of the best ever.
Rating: 
Summary: Not enough satisfaction
Review: This highly celebrated film is at times a fascinating history of The Rolling Stones during arguably their finest hour and at other times a dull lumbering film whose documentary style only contributes to the boredom by giving us home movie style coverage of meetings, phone conversations, and other wastes of time. If this would've been the concert film it set out to be instead of some "serious" look at the Altamont tragedy, it would be invaluable. Imagine an entire film recording of the Stones live on their landmark 1969 tour! Sadly, we get the infuriating pacing of concert footage followed by Melvin Belli talking on a speaker phone and back, etc. The Muscle Shoals studio sessions are equally priceless as we get to see Keith enjoying his latest creation, but alas, back we go to a lawyer's office and you're left wondering what else hit the cutting room floor. Granted, seeing Mick Jagger reduced to a simpering phony as he tries to calm the audience with pathetic sixties platitudes or Keith trying his best to take charge of the growing chaos or even the bizarre facial expressions of the audience are rubbernecking classics, but there were other shows on that tour besides Altamont. Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to downplay the foolish undertaking, but why ignore the equal historical value of the other shows and the recording sessions in favor of meetings and logistical monotony when we could be watching The Rolling Stones do their thing. That is the reason we watched, isn't it?
Rating:
Summary: Gimme Shelter
Review: Gimme Shelter has a very dark ora that surrounds the film. It has a creepy feeling to the film. Mick Jagger is punched in the face in the beginning as he makes his entrance. During the Jefferson Airplane's performance, Marty Balin is knocked out by one of the Hell's Angels. And a spectator is beaten to death by bikers with pool sticks. A black spectator is stabbed to death and it is caught on camera. The Rolling Stones have to stop their performance numerous times to try to stop the violence. Besides the violence and death, this is the best concert film ever made Hands Down! This masterpiece deserves to be seen by everyone. It also serves as a reminder of the greatest concert tragedies in the history of rock n' roll.
Rating:
Summary: Great - but different
Review: Criterion had the right idea in cleaning up the audio, but the end result is a better *environmental* mix - there is a lot more crowd noise and a lot less bass and drums in the mix - I don't want to knock it too much, because it's a great DVD - but I was surprised watching the expose about how they 'improved' the audio, when the end result, while probably 'correct', lacks much of the warmth and vocal presence of the previous version -
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