Neil Young Trunk Show

In Trunk Show, 62-year-old folk-rock icon Neil Young nearly explodes onstage, playing his heart and soul out at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, during performances recorded over two nights in December 2007. Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, who previously made Neil Young: Heart of Gold, an intimate behind-the-scenes look at Young and friends gathering for a special concert a mere four months after the Godfather of Grunge underwent brain surgery for an aneurysm, goes guerrilla for Trunk Show, using eight mostly handheld cameras to capture Young's fiery performance on the Chrome Dreams II tour, featuring new songs that served as a sequel to an unreleased 1970s album. Demme gets right up in Young's face with extended, extreme close-ups that display the deep emotions in the veteran singer-songwriter's eyes and the well-earned wrinkles on his face as he plays powerful solo versions of "Harvest," "Ambulance Blues," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" while absolutely cutting loose with wild abandon on blazing trips through "Spirit Road," "Like a Hurricane," and 20+ gloriously ragged minutes of "No Hidden Path." Brain aneurysm? What brain aneurysm? Demme keeps backstage glimpses to a minimum, instead focusing on the intense music as Young looks both forward and backward in this hard-rocking doc that deserves to be longer than its way-too-brief 82 minutes.