Spike Island
Teenage musicians travel to England's Spike Island in the hope of attending an outdoor performance by their favorite band, the Stone Roses. and at the same time, hatch a plan to hand-deliver their demo tape to their idols.
1970, Wigan, Lancashire, England, UK
23 September 1976, Stockport, Greater Manchester, England, UK
1977, England, UK
26 January 1991, Manchester, Lancashire, England, UK
1986, Warwickshire, England, UK
3 June 1977, Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, UK
23 October 1986, London, England, UK
18 June 1948, Retford, Nottinghamshire, England, UK
1979, Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire, England, UK
22 November 1979, Salford, Greater Manchester, England, UK
13 March 1992, Holloway, London, England, UK
1 March 1998, Crewe, Cheshire, England, UK
1967, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, UK
14 December 1982, Manchester, England, UK
May 04, 2015
[Director Whitecross has an] uncanny visual ability with music sequences as the film joyously skips through a pitch-perfect Madchester soundtrack.
May 04, 2015
The film has an engagingly zippy and colorful visual style, evoking the splashy Summer of Love motifs around the Roses, with allusions to their music videos and paint-splattered, Jackson Pollock-esque sleeve artwork.
May 04, 2015
Good gags, great performances and a spectacular soundtrack rescue an otherwise average coming-of-age drama.
June 27, 2013
The filmmakers botch the story with a fragmented script and harshly edited scenes that prevent us from properly engaging with anything that happens.
May 04, 2015
Spike Island has plenty of feckless, disorganised charm.
May 07, 2015
Though the story is drawn in broad strokes and overloaded with melodrama, director Mat Whitecross' exuberant feature understands the communal joy and personal necessity of rock 'n' roll.
May 04, 2015
[The Stone Roses'] debut long player is one of the few rock albums that might justly be assessed all killer, no filler; Whitecross and Coghill's sincerely intended love letter to the era, not so much.
May 04, 2015
The heady whirl of the Roses' first album played loud is a treat -- the only one.
June 22, 2013
Whitecross clearly has both an eye and ear for the rarefied nuances of pop culture ...
May 30, 2015
Taking its cue from the sort of pandering nostalgia that usually gets peddled to Baby Boomers, Mat Whitecross' irritating Spike Island follows a teenage gang of the Stone Roses' superfans in 1990 Manchester.
June 22, 2013
The piece as a whole gets bogged down in rites-of-passage cliches and, ultimately, seems out of time.
June 18, 2013
None of this ever feels remotely honest or real.
