The Commitments

No other director has had more impact on my musical appreciation than Alan Parker. This huge influence was accomplished with only two films. The first first was Pink Floyd's The Wall. This is the single feature film that I have watched more than any other film. (I've watched Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1999) more than 500 times...but that's another story). There was a period in eleventh and twelfth grade were I watched The Wall almost every day for, like, more than 100 days in a row. The Commitments is another movie that had a HUGE influence on the music of my life. I love the movie itself. It's the story of an group of underdogs who are driven by a love of soul music and performing. The acting is good, the story is great. It's so great, I went back and read the original source material from author Roddy Doyle--a novel also called The Commitments. The book is good, but this is an example of the film elevating the original material and making it better. The original book actually was written like a script; very heavy on dialogue lacking in narrative description. I own (or owned, gone now due to Spotify) all four CDs that came from this film and still listen to the music more than 25 years after I watched this film. I still watch the movie a least every other year. And I still absolutely love it.