The folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Thunder Soul for me to cover for you today, and if you can’t get enough of those good old fashioned music movies, you’re going to get just what you’re after right here. It’s a very niche title, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to have any appeal outside of its primary market.

Thunder Soul follows Conrad “Prof” Johnson, a high school band teacher who manage to take a jazz band from the bottom of the heap to the top of the hill as the titular Thunder Soul, also known as the Kashmere Stage Band. And with the band getting back together, decades after their heyday, they come together to pay tribute to the man who got them there in the first place. And though it wasn’t always easy, and wasn’t always pleasant, the story Thunder Soul brings to light will be unlike anything you’ve seen before. There will be all sorts of different backgrounds and personalities going into Thunder Soul, but what came out of it was nothing but pure impressive funk music.

If you were thinking that this is going to be a rehashed version of Mr. Holland’s Opus or the like, you’re going to be in for a big surprise. This is actually going to be an intermingling of current video, old movies, interviews, and everything in between. You’ll get shots of history–especially music history–but also the history of the world at the time, including the clothes and everything else. And of course, you can’t get a movie like this without a healthy dose of black history as well, which is going to be a nice counterpoint to everything else that’s going on.

Basically, if you want to see a high school band get back together and do some truly amazing things after having already done a number of truly amazing things in their lifetimes, then you’ll definitely want to check out Thunder Soul, a thoroughly impressive piece of work about a high school band that went much, much farther than anyone thought they would.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Thunder Soul a seven out of ten for being a terrific look at history from several different perspectives all at the same time, and packing in plenty of great music to boot. Sure, it’s not going to be for everyone, but if you love music, if you love history, and you want to see them interminging nicely, this is going to be just the movie for you.