WHAT IT'S ABOUT: In the fall of 1975, post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, Bob Dylan launched a rambling, ramshackle concert tour called the Rolling Thunder Revue. Essentially a traveling festival, the revue aimed to uplift and nourish a dispirited America with an all-star lineup that included Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Roger McGuinn and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, plus beat poet Allen Ginsberg. The tour stopped at mostly small venues so Dylan could connect with audiences in a way he and they both needed.
Cameras documented the tour, though much of the footage went unseen. Director Martin Scorsese, a longtime Dylan fan (1978's "The Last Waltz," 2005's "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), has restored and reassembled the material to tell the story of both a pivotal moment in the singer's career and an overlooked cultural event.
MY SAY: Poet, prophet, enigma _ Dylan is many things, but Soother of the American Soul seems an unlikely one. His songs are ominous, his personality prickly; he's the quintessential temperamental artiste. Few were surprised when the guy who went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival barely bothered to collect his 2016 Nobel Prize for literature.
