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The Top 11 Music Biopics

Get on Up, the music biopic about the late, great James Brown, does not live up to its subject. Sure, Chadwick Boseman (42) embodies the Godfather of Soul with enough super-bad splendor that he’ll likely nab that Oscar nod Hollywood loves to bestow upon actors who portray musicians. But the truth is that, in these 138 minutes of highly selective, highly redundant flashbacks, papa’s got a brand-new mixed bag.

The problem with music biopics is we’re dealing with rockstars – people who became famous because no one in the world was like them. Their life trajectory may be monotonously consistent – the humble beginnings, the how-they-got-discovered fable, the fact that the exact over-the-top outrageousness that made them a success became their undoing – but what’s unique is their charisma. So trying to emulate these one-of-a-kind musicians is like putting a backup singer at the lead singer’s mic and expecting no one to mind. All too often, the best we can say about a music biopic is what we say about films like Ray, The Buddy Holly Story, and now Get on Up: The actor did a good impression. Talk about damning with faint praise.

Worse, filmmakers tend to take a very conventional, even soapy approach to these extremely unconventional people’s lives. As Grantland’s Steven Hyden points out, most music biopics “insert the idea of a famous icon into a classic melodrama story line. It’s like making Terms of Endearment about ‘Batman.'” To be fair, films about musicians face the same challenges as all biopics do: Stick too closely to the real arc of a person’s life and get bogged down; take too many liberties and disappoint the literalists.

But the real trick to a successful music biopic may be to get as un-literal as possible. After all, some of the best ones ever made are not even technically biopics. Purple Rain and 8 Mile, for example, are fictional features based on the rock stars (Prince and Eminem, respectively) who star in them, and everyone’s secret favorite, Eddie and the Cruisers, is about a beloved rock and roller who never even existed. These films work because music is about a moment as much as it’s about a person. More than anything else, music is a cultural zeitgeist, and we shouldn’t invoke such zeitgeists without the same level of innovation as that which created them in the first place.

Without further fanfare, then, here’s a completely biased, totally subjective list of the top 11 music biopics. (Consider that number an homage to the best music biopic never made, Rob Reiner’s classic mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap.) Continue Reading →

The Bold, Biblical Agenda of ‘Calvary’

Calvary begins with a close-up of a priest in a confession booth. “I was seven years old when I first tasted semen,” an off-screen voice announces. “Certainly a startling opening line,” the priest (Brendan Gleeson), who is known as Father James, responds. We could say the same of this film, which boldly lays out its agenda – witness its name, after all – not to convert us so much as to incite us to ponder our own agendas instead.

The unnamed voice goes on to say that, in a week, he will kill Father James because he is not a malfeasant like the priest who sexually abused him for years: The death of a “good priest” will make a statement. Cards thus on the table, James is left to sort out his affairs as well as the identity of his would-be killer. Consider this as a pre-crime procedural, then (the press notes describe it as a “who’s-gunna-do-it”)–one that is so formally constructed that we may surrender to James’ soul-searching in both senses of that term.

If all this sounds awfully literary – a sort of Swedish mystery set afire with ancient Irish angst – that’s not a coincidence. At a recent Q&A at The Museum of the Moving Image, writer/director John Michael McDonagh described himself as a “failed novelist.” But while many films of such portent might benefit from being a book instead, Calvary is ideal in its current medium. Its claustrophobic interiors, contrasted with the surf and sky of the Irish sea town where it is set, wordlessly remind us of the harsh beauty and isolation that is the human condition. And that world beyond words, the one that exists beneath the nattering of daily life, better evokes the divine experience, which is precisely what this film invites us to ponder during its 100 minutes. Continue Reading →

5 Reasons Stars Play Superheroes

Here’s a surprise: Guardians of the Galaxy, the latest movie dispatch from the Marvel Universe, is great fun. Unlike such steroidal fare as “The Avengers” films, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, perhaps because it is directed by James Gunn, who is best known for micro-budget indies that send up genre flicks (Super, Slither). Certainly these Guardians are a ragtag group of mercenaries who don’t take anything too seriously: a wily human-raccoon hybrid voiced by Bradley Cooper; a tree-man voiced by Vin Diesel; a green-skinned female assassin (Zoe Saldana) who, unlike most comic book-pic women characters, actually has something to do; and a jacked-up Chris Pratt as a fortune-hunter with a predilection for “awesome music” mix tapes. Overall, despite its maelstrom of intra-extraterrestrial beefs and terminology, this is an unusually witty, even endearing, comic book movie, with serious visual wizardry and, yep, an awesome music soundtrack to sweeten the deal.

But we’ve got to ask: Why do actors of such caliber keep taking these roles? Pratt is an as-yet underrated Hollywood presence but rounding out the Guardians cast is a bevy of Oscar winners and nominees: Cooper, Glenn Close, John C. Reilly, Benicio del Toro, Djimon Hounsou. Sure, the paychecks from these gigs might be good enough to finance these actors’ great-great-great grandchildren’s college educations. But is money the only reason to take these gigs? Believe it or not, industry insiders say no. Here are some other factors for our consideration: Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy