Not Fade Away (2013)

I really enjoyed this movie, but it may be one of those things that you had to have been there to really like the message.

It is a musical history piece more than a story told from start to finish.  It features a band that had some talent and some troubles and they never made it--but it also seems that if just a couple of things had gone better for them rather than worse, they would have stood a chance of making it.  The strength of the movie is the way it captures the mood of the era in which it is set.  The pervasive disregard for authority, the lack of ambition to attain education and power, the desire to make music and be famous, the wide use of recreational drugs, the open sexual freedom to the extent that what would shock people now would not have shocked these people, it all is very atmospherically wrapped into this movie.  The second strength of the movie is a terrific musical score--Steve Van Zandt, who was part of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.  There is definitely story imbedded in this movie, and it is a nice period romance that doesn't detract from the rest of the movie.  Enjoy this one!