Robert Knox

The best thing on Netflix or any screen anywhere. If you weren't alive then, you can't begin to measure the tour's premise. In the mid-70s New York City was failing. A criminal was President -- oh, maybe today's audiences can understand that. Rolling Thunder opened in sadly deteriorated WWI auditorium in Plymouth, Mass., where a guy on the street being leafleted about the concert queried, "why does he want to come to a little place like this?" Plymouth was the sticks back then; it's practically a metropolis today. America's big cities have rebounded since then; that's where the money lives today. America, and the pre-digital world, were part of a different universe a half century ago. And into that empty space between then and now, a unique strain of artistic genius could imagine a way on. I'm sorry I missed being in the seats for one of the tour's many live small-theater performances. But Martin Scorsese's magnificent documentary makes the thunder of the mind roll on again.