David Bowie: The Last Five Years

Jan 7, 2017

1h 30m

★ 7.1

Overview

In the last five years of his life, David Bowie ended nearly a decade of silence to engage in an extraordinary burst of activity, producing two groundbreaking albums and a musical. David Bowie: The Last Five Years explores this unexpected end to a remarkable career. Made with remarkable access, Francis Whately’s documentary is a revelatory follow-up to his acclaimed 2013 documentary David Bowie: Five Years, which chronicled Bowie’s golden ‘70s and early-‘80s period.

Genres

Music

Documentary

TV Movie

Production Companies

BBC Film

David Bowie: The Last Five Years Trailers

Cast

Self (archive footage)

David Bowie

Self

Michael C. Hall

Self

Toni Basil

Self

Tony Visconti

Self

Gail Ann Dorsey

Self

Donny McCaslin

Self

Geoff MacCormack

Self

Maria Schneider

Manchester, 1976. Tony Wilson is an ambitious but frustrated local TV news reporter looking for a way to make his mark. After witnessing a life-changing concert by a band known as the Sex Pistols, he persuades his station to televise one of their performances, and soon Manchester's punk groups are clamoring for him to manage them. Riding the wave of a musical revolution, Wilson and his friends create the legendary Factory Records label and The Hacienda club.

7.0

An American in Paris

Sep 26, 1951

Jerry Mulligan is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam is a struggling concert pianist who's a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel. A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts, takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.

7.6

Billy Elliot

Sep 28, 2000

County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.

6.4

Company

Dec 10, 1996

Set in modern upper-crust Manhattan, an exploration of love and commitment as seen through the eyes of a charming perpetual bachelor questioning his single state and his enthusiastically married, slightly envious friends.

5.0

Plains: Testimony of an Ethnocide

Jun 1, 1971

A documentary on the massacre of Planas in the Colombian east plains in 1970. An Indigenous community formed a cooperative to defend their rights from settlers and colonists, but the government organized a military operation to protect the latter and foreign companies.

7.1

High Fidelity

Mar 17, 2000

After his long-time girlfriend dumps him, a thirty-year-old record store owner seeks to understand why he is unlucky in love while recounting his "top five breakups of all time".

6.8

The Merry Widow

Nov 2, 1934

A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country.

5.9

Summer Holiday

Feb 18, 1963

1960s musical showcasing Cliff Richard. Four bus mechanics working for London Transport strike up a deal with the company: they do up a one of the company's legendary red double decker buses and take it to southern Europe as a mobile hotel. If it succeeds, they will be put in charge of a whole fleet. While on the road in France they pick up three young British ladies whose car breaks down and offer to take them to their next singing job in Athens. They also pick up a stowaway, who hides the fact that she's a famous American pop star on the run, chased by the media and her parents.

5.7

Bathing Beauty

Jun 27, 1944

After breaking up with her fiancé, a gym teacher returns to work at a women's college, but a legal loophole allows him to enroll as one of her students.

6.8

Dancing Lady

Nov 24, 1933

Janie lives to dance and will dance anywhere, even stripping in a burlesque house. Tod Newton, the rich playboy, discovers her there and helps her get a job in a real Broadway musical being directed by Patch. Tod thinks he can get what he wants from Janie, Patch thinks Janie is using her charms rather than talent to get to the top, and Janie thinks Patch is the greatest. Steve, the stage manager, has the Three Stooges helping him manage all the show girls. Fred Astaire and Nelson Eddy make appearances as famous Broadway personalities.

4.6

Cinderella

Dec 31, 2002

The king struggles to find a wife for his son, who is solely interested in science. An astrologer advises the king to host a grand royal ball. Cinderella, eager to attend, is forced by her stepmother and stepsisters to make dresses for them. Once the dresses are ready, they leave her behind with additional chores. However, her fairy godmother appears and helps her get to the ball, with one condition: she must return by midnight. At the ball, Cinderella meets the prince, who instantly falls in love with her. They dance and enjoy the evening until the clock strikes twelve, and Cinderella flees, leaving behind a glass slipper.

6.3

Orchestra Wives

Sep 4, 1942

Connie Ward is in seventh heaven when Gene Morrison's band rolls into town. She is swept off her feet by trumpeter Bill Abbot. After marrying him, she joins the band's tour and learns about life as an orchestra wife, weathering the catty attacks of the other band wives.

6.7

Springtime in the Rockies

Nov 6, 1942

Broadway partners Vicky Lane and Dan Christy have a tiff over Christy's womanizing. Jealous Vicky takes up with her old flame and former dance partner, Victor Price, and Dan's career takes a nosedive. In hopes of rekindling their romance and getting Vicky back on the boards with him, Dan follows her to a ritzy resort in the Canadian Rockies, where she and Victor are about to open their new act. But things get complicated when Dan wakes after a bender to find that he's hired an outlandish Latin secretary, Rosita Murphy, which makes Vicky think he's just up to his old tricks again.

6.5

Babes on Broadway

Dec 31, 1941

Penny Morris and Tommy Williams are both starstruck young teens but nobody seems to give them any chance to perform. Instead, they decide to put up their own show to collect money for a summer camp for the kids.

5.4

Lady Be Good

Sep 18, 1941

Married songwriters almost split up while putting on a big show.

6.1

Moon Over Miami

Jul 4, 1941

After losing nearly all of an inheritance to taxes, sisters Kay and Barbara Latimer, waitresses at a drive-in restaurant in Texas, scheme to find rich husbands. With the aid of their aunt Susan, the sisters take the last of their money and head to a well-known Miami resort where they soon meet two wealthy young men, Phil and Jeff, who begin a fierce rivalry for Kay, not realizing that Barbara has fallen in love with one of them.

7.0

Sun Valley Serenade

Aug 29, 1941

When Phil Corey's band arrives at the Idaho ski resort its pianist Ted Scott is smitten with a Norwegian refugee he has sponsored, Karen Benson. When soloist Vivian Dawn quits, Karen stages an ice show as a substitute.

6.1

Easy to Love

Nov 26, 1953

Two men vie for the heart of a Cypress Gardens swimming star.