For a wide-ranging exploration of a major festival...this rambling document offers a wealth of riches, including--or in spite of-all the acid-addled hippies, lager-filled punk rockers, and ecstasy-fueled ravers.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 16, 2024

While a tad long at 138 minutes, it lacks the sustained performances demanded by concert-film fans. But Temple gives us a wonderful reinvention of the rock film.

| May 21, 2020

When a voice-off narration burbles something about a "convergence of the powerlines of the mind", you know you are in the presence of a film that has purchased at the refreshment kiosk of life more than it can consume.

| Oct 7, 2018

Too long, with too many shots of hands-in-the-air ravers and too much Damien Hirst, Glastonbury is still hugely evocative...

| Sep 26, 2017

It's hard to pin down the intent and even the honesty of the filmmaker.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 12, 2007

Combining images of 30 years of politics, music, self-expression and alternative living, it's a vibrant, if inevitably scattered, film that manages to tread the fine line between chronicling the festival and exploiting it.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jun 8, 2007

An alternately rousing and repetitive 138-minute documentary spanning four decades of the Glastonbury Festival.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 31, 2007

The sense of total immersion is breathlessly complete.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 13, 2007

... captures the open-air rock festival experience more completely than any previous film of its kind.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 9, 2007

... as muddy as Yasgur's farm back in the day.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 7, 2007

For all the posers with light sticks and piercings, there are moments of Dada-esque beauty, not to mention some great music from Tinariwen, Bjork, David Bowie and the late, great Joe Strummer.

| Apr 5, 2007

What [Temple] does...is immerse his audience in the spirit of the festival with ingenious editing that shows the Glastonbury Festival as nothing short of a geographically bound society that just happens to exist for a few days a year.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 25, 2007

While the movie will clarify whether or not the fest is for you, you never feel like you're actually there.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 8, 2007

The movie's 135 minutes [feels] long. But the length is a product of [director] Temple's desire to cram in as much as he can. Despite the festival's drawbacks, it's obvious Temple loves everything about it. Even Coldplay.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 8, 2007

The portrait is spectacular and inclusive, if sometimes a bit overwhelming and confusing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 8, 2007

Overlong, unfocused, and shallow, it is less a film than a test of endurance.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 3, 2007

A warm and witty, detailed look at this parallel universe.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 2, 2007

Temple is able to convey a perceptive and substantive mood pertaining to the staying power of this weirdly nuanced outdoor finger-snapping function.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 25, 2007

The film is clearly an act of boosterism, and it makes a pretty good case for the Glastonbury cause.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 24, 2007

Julien Temple's formless documentary Glastonbury aims to capture the festival's chaos and free-wheeling freakiness and accomplishes this goal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 23, 2007