Mjeteconer Just perfect...

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

sergelamarche The tidbits about the Beatles are always interesting. Not just because the Beatles were so popular and ground breaking but also because it's unusual lives. Here, Scorsese assembled quite the cast to retell stories about George to fill two films. And still there are some blanks. Fun and enlightening.

Per Johnsen George Harrison's dearest love in life, Olivia, sums it up in a very fine and simple way in the end of this film, that isn't an ordinary documentary about a famous pop rock star. Neither was he an ordinary star, if there is any, but still he saw himself as an ordinary man, or he wanted to be just that. It's not in the film but Harrison once said that if he wasn't a Beatle, he'd probably just be a regular guy. As much as he never got to be that, this is what made much of his confidence and down to earth attitude, being straight forward and truthful, but still making the ones surrounding him feel relaxed. That really is what this film is about, not so much about the great and famous George Harrison, but what he tried to live, be and give. He had very much to give, of love, wisdom and perspective. And in the film it is presented in a very balanced way that he had this formidable energy that had been build up through the years with the Beatles, and that he spent the rest of his life searching how to use this energy for the better of himself and all those he loved. It is simple and there is no particular magic to it. I once in my very younger years was asked who I like most of John Lennon and Paul McCartney - and I replied George Harrison. The band could not have been the same without him. Living In A Material World tries to communicate what most concerned this man from Liverpool, who somehow in a special moment of history got to materialize the Great Energy, and make it personal, for the benefit of millions of people. I can't really see it being made any better.

edgamu I just saw this documentary in the Morelia Film Festival, where Olivia Harrison attended some screenings, and I came out disappointed. I loved No Direction Home so I had great expectations about Scorsese and this film. The first part (about 1 hour and a half) is just a remake of The Beatles Anthology, even with some footage from the interviews of that film. We get to see the same pictures and footage of the Beatles that we have seen for the last 50 years in long shots. We get to listen to "I Saw Her Standing There" and "And I Love Her" (not George's songs) at least three times each, and then never heard a single note of "Taxman"or "I Need You" or ""For You Blue" or that glorious B-side "Old Brown Shoe". After The Beatles split the fascinating story of post-Beatles Harrison is told, but in my view it lacks a lot of depth and material. For instance, the profound and meaningful relationship of George with Bob Dylan is not tackled but only on the surface and the friendship and collaboration with Jeff Lynne is only shown in the video of "Handle With Care". Lynne revamped Harrison's career by producing the great Cloud Nine album and then having a lot of collaborations. They were in a band call The Travelling Wilburies and also George invited Lynn to produce The Beatles songs for the Anthology sets. I was puzzled that this film has not even one interview with Jeff Lynne. Isn't it a pity?

Robert J. Maxwell It's a little hard to watch this if you've lived through the period when the Beatles were churning out one astonishingly well-done album after another because, after all, two of the four are dead now, and the remaining two are old. I expect it's difficult for younger fans of pop music to understand what a revolution the Beatles were part of. Only a few years after Lennon's death, I heard a youngster in a shop exclaim, "Oh, look, Paul McCartney was in a band BEFORE "Wings." Directed by Martin Scorsese, it's a four-hour long documentary with nothing more than talking heads (including McCartney and Star) and newsreel footage and video clips of the group itself. It's aimed at adults mainly, so there is no narration telling us in chronological detail of the rise and ultimate disintegration of the bad. Pete Best's name is mention, but only in passing, and only once, so you either know who he was or you skip it. The names of albums hardly crop up.The central figure, of course, is George Harrison, the third in line, in almost all respects. He was quiet rather than outrageous, and not a goofy clown like Ringo. He was hired because he was a good man on the guitar, the best of the three, and could write songs too. ("Because", for instance.) Someone slipped him LSD as a joke and it appears to have turned Harrison eastward. He became spiritual in the broadest since, learned to play a modest sitar under Pandit Ravi Shankar, and introduced a strain of mysticism into some of the albums ("Within You and Without You").It's not a gossipy fan-magazine story. You'll never find out here who was responsible for the jaw-dropping combing of the Beatles' long hair from backwards to forward. Instead, you'll get a feel for what it was like to perform for peanuts in the Kaiser Keller in Hamburg on the roughest street in town.I didn't think I'd be able to watch it because I try not to think about the Beatles too much these days. It reminds me of happier times, when there was splendor in their costumes and fun in their irreverent wisecracks. It's painful to put any effort into researching time lost. But I was caught up in this. The interviewees include just about everyone who has anything of importance to say, and what they say isn't just interesting but deserves to be part of the historical record, the chronicle of a moment in the evolution of vernacular culture that we're going to have to wait a while before we see again.