From Netflix and the director of The Silence of the Lambs and Ricki and the Flash comes Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids. This concert film directed by Jonathan Damme, and starring Timberlake. On the final nights of a world tour, Demme captures what makes the show soar: gifted musicians, deft dancers and a magnetic star.
Demme and Timberlake first met when the director wanted to work with him after watching his work in The Social Network (2010); in the meeting they discussed Talking Heads' concert film Stop Making Sense (1984), directed by Demme and an influence for the singer in his live performances. Filming took place on the final night of the 20/20 Experience World Tour at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. For the film, Demme used 14 operated cameras that Declan Quinn, the director of photography, and he deployed over many pre-filming engagements, two other free-floating cameras in the audience and one cameraman onstage with Timberlake. Several songs from the concert do not appear in the movie, including TKO, Summer Love, Cry Me a River, Señorita, Heartbreak Hotel, That Girl, Tunnel Vision, and Murder.
The special nicely showcases Timberlake's artistry and deconstructs his self-created mythology even as it ultimately doesn't reveal as much about the man's own flaws and fears as it appears to in the moment. However, it is Timberlake the showman - in a more rueful and reflective mode than his usual brand of stage banter - that is the principal focus of this Netflix concert special. At one and-a-half-hours, it ought to drag; instead it builds with poetic flourishes and self-examination. Not for the supremely self-aware and exacting Timberlake the routine fare of the jukebox musical or the gaudy biopic. The special distills everything that makes Timberlake one of America's greatest modern singer-songwriter star such a formidable, genial, and inviting personalities into a single, visual volume. Like many of the all-time great concert films, this is no substitute for being in the room, but it's power transcends any perceived limitations. Timberlake's attempts to conjure up an experience, while they probably worked on the stage, are constantly shattered by Demme's cuts and disengaged zooms. Nonetheless, Timberlake has mastered the dynamics needed to keep a mostly singing show riveting for a running time that's epic by monologists' standards, if not his own. Not only does it work on its own as a Netflix special, it gives you all the same feels seeing the show live at the Walter Kerr Theater brought out. It is as much a self-made monument to its artist's vision and hurricane-force ambition as it is to his life and career, and it bears the mark of a self-made man who’ll write his own history. A master class in pacing, dynamics, modulation of volume and tone, and the film brings you right up onstage with Timberlake, giving you a more intimate view of his technique - understated, seemingly casual but absolutely controlled. Timberlake turns a massive venue into a private pop fest, delivering new songs and old favorites to a singing, dancing, screaming audience that obviously adores him.
Simon says Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids receives:
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