All Things Must Pass

A documentary that inspires long, gauzy gazes back to the carefree, youthful past of viewers of a certain age.

Solomon’s skills as a raconteur, the employees’ unabashed love for their work, and the constant stream of rock music playing in the background advance the film into something much more than a talking-heads documentary.

The documentary stays entirely within the corporate world of record sales, which may seem an airless atmosphere to someone who never haunted such joints. Yet the movie gradually expands to give us a somewhat larger picture of the music business.

Occasionally, “All Things” gets stuck in a groove of industry and business minutiae — a 10-minute trim would have made this film even better — but overall, this is an assured effort: informative, bittersweet and appealing for both the young and the not so young.

Supplementing the interviews with well-chosen archival material, Hanks assembles a capsule history of the music biz and youth culture.

The director's native warmth and sympathy are extended here to the store and the personalities that made it a billion-dollar, globe-bestriding colossus.

Musician Dave Grohl and music mogul David Geffen wax enthusiastic. But leave it to Bruce Springsteen to find the poetry of the place.