If you've seen REM's early music videos, you understand what happens in Tourfilm. The eighties were bursting at the seams with pop rock bands sporting linear visuals, so REM's was a departure aesthetic that gets better instead of worse with time. Yes, the visuals in Tourfilm are jerky, often in black and white, and couched in artsy effects ranging from the "static shock" look to artificial grain. Yes, the band is usually hard to see. But when you do see them, Berry, Buck, Mills, and Stipe give you brief glimpses of themselves crowning the eighties and ushering in the nineties with the final performance on their Green tour, and some of the strangest, catchiest tunes ever penned.Art majors appreciate REM for their contributions to post modernism. Tourfilm is a fitting precursor to the '91 release of "Out of Time" which had gallery-worthy cover art (hey, I had to pay a ticket to see the original piece, okay?)and the song "Low" is partially played somewhere in Tourfilm's middle. Stipe becomes an eighties front man for the first and only time in his career - previous performances lack the charisma seen here, with the strongest first. "Stand" is the opening song in the movie, and the famous organza suit makes an appearance, with a nod to the Talking Heads. While the visuals may sway, the music matches them: crunchy to jangly guitars, Berry's premeditated beat, and Buck doing backwards hops and spins as he pretends to be the greatest guitar player ever. No one will ever accuse him of this, but in Tourfilm he makes an impression.The nineties were the last great decade for REM, but Tourfilm takes us back to a better time - a time when an American alternative rock band could define cool with over-sized sunglasses, stone-washed jeans, and bridge-less, pricelessly sonic anthems. Don't over think it. Listen, move your eyes rapidly, and you'll feel fine.

Tourfilm is perhaps Declan Quinn's best piece of work, capturing a band at their artistic peak and loaning his vision to a film that preserves them there. The techniques used here would transfer into his latter work in "Leaving Las Vegas."

This tourfilm is terrible! I'm afraid that docu/concerts don't get much worse than this. I thought Led Zep's 'The Song Remains The Same' was bad enuff, but this is absolutely gruelling! From the start of the concert to the end, this is tripe! I was a longterm REM fan, but after I watched this I nearly topped myself! The sound is terrible throughout all the songs and the direction doesn't get any worse than this. TRADGEDY!

I'm surprised that no one else has commented on this concert film. I saw R.E.M. on the Green Tour in Minneapolis in '89 and this video always brings back great memories from those college days. What's cool about this doc is that the impressionistic video montages projected behind the band are interspersed before and after each song played. There are no interviews with the band members here, but as was always the case with early R.E.M. songs, the music speaks for itself. Recommended for any R.E.M. fan.