Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

“Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me” is ostensibly a documentary about ’70s cult band Big Star, and it’s good at being that, but its stealth subjects are the state of rock ‘n’ roll in the ’70s and the cultural milieu of Memphis, Tennessee, and I think they’re what make it such a full experience. The movie feels grounded and lived in. Like David Chase’s fitful but touching “Not Fade Away,” it’s great at capturing the ragged, all-too-human experiences that, though they serve as the raw stuff of pop music, tend to become secondary as they’re outpaced by ambition, stardom, and mythology. (Lacking stardom and notably short on mythology, the Big Star story is almost all ragged experience.) Filmmakers Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori manage to provide a compelling context for Alex Chilton, one of those music figures who is damnably hard to get a bead on. Here he comes across as a too-late-for-the-party rocker who ended up scraping his fingernails against the chalkboard of NYC art rock, perhaps because he couldn’t come up with a better way of making rock music feel alive. (Chilton was notoriously prickly: I saw him perform in 1993, and when someone in the crowd urged him to play a Big Star tune, he bit the guy’s head off.) Towards the end it becomes a heart-on-sleeve fan tribute, and the showboating reverence of the band’s famous acolytes weighs the movie down. But to fans that probably won’t make a difference. It’s on Netflix Instant.

Related

• Sax on “Not Fade Away.”