In the trailer for Scott Coopers upcoming film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere1, Jeremy Strong, who is playing Jon Landau is having a conversation with Al Teller, who is played by David Krumholtz2, and in that conversation, Landau talks about Bruce Springsteen growing up with a hole in his floor and how making the 1982 acoustic album Nebraska, Springsteen will fill that hole that he grew up with. It’s tacky. It’s cheesy. It’s a cheap attempt to pull at the viewers heart strings.
Well, the point I’m about to make isn’t really going to make a whole lot of sense because, apparently, that line has been completely axed from the movie. The fans do not get a hole-in-Bruces-floor monologue from Jeremy Strong and I think this is a good thing as a whole, but one that I’m disappointed about because that was my first impression of the movie. I feel robbed.
Regardless, the point I’m attempting to make is that, in light of the masses begging for music biopics to stop being made, I would feel like there’s a hole in my film consumption. Sure, a lot of music biopics don’t work and are overstuffed Oscar bait ploys, but I rarely leave a theater after watching a music biopic and feel like I was bored. I hope that music biopics are made up until the day I take my final breathe. Whether they’re good, bad, or down right offensive, keep churning them out.
In preparation of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, I wanted to rank my three favorite and my three least favorite music biopics of all time.
Top 3
3. Amadeus (1984) dir. Milos Forman
Sure, it’s disgusting that a mini series adaptation of Amadeus is being made3, but don’t let that distract you from the fact that the film it’s an adaptation of is one of the best of the entire 20th century. Milos Forman directs this imagined rivalry between Mozart and Salieri in grand fashion, and while it serves as a blooming display of Mozart’s talent and flaunt sprawling sets of 1700s Europe, but most importantly, it’s a great movie about a hater. Down to its core, this film presents Salieri as one of films greatest haters. Not a villain per say, but a man who is jealous of a counterparts talent and attitude and that hates consumes every waking moment of his life.
It’s easy to ogle over how great this movie looks or to appreciate the performances from Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham, but when I watch Amadeus, I love the hate it exudes. Not many films are able to convey this sort of pettiness the way Forman does and in music history, there are bitter rivalries that don’t get talked about enough and would make for great films. I just don’t think any would be able to hold a candle to the hate that Amadeus emits.
2. Kneecap (2024) dir. Rich Peppiatt
A lot of music biopics either focus on a past period of a musicians life or they try to tell the story of an entire musicians life in two hours. What sets Kneecap apart from other music biopics is that it doesn’t feel like it falls in either one of those categories. The way that Rich Peppiatt makes the inception of Kneecap feel present gave it a fresh feeling. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with Kneecap gaining prominence over the past few years, but Peppiatt opting to cast the three members of Kneecap in the movie as the leads was brilliant.
What makes Kneecaps story so compelling and in turn translates so well into the film is that their career started as an attempt to preserve their culture by keeping their native language alive. Their antics and music gave them local success and it only kept expounding, but at its core, Kneecaps objective of advocating for their roots and other nations in peril is what makes them special. Peppiatt’s feature debut tells that story in a concise, funny, and energetic manner and that’s why I love it so much.
1. I’m Not There (2007) dir. Todd Haynes
There are two Bob Dylan biopics that released in the 21st century. One, which is James Mangolds4 A Complete Unknown, takes a paint-by-numbers approach to a four year span of Dylans life and career and culminates in him going electric at Newport. Despite me slapping it with a paint-by-numbers moniker, it works and brings great energy from start to finish.
The other, and lesser known, Dylan biopic came out in 2007 and was directed by Todd Haynes. I’m Not There uses six actors (Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw) to display separate personas of Dylans life and activism. And while it sounds like pie in the sky thinking to think this could work as a concept, it proved to be, what I believe is the best music biopic ever. Wall-to-wall, the performances are fantastic, the best two coming from Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn and Marcus Carl Franklin as Woody Guthrie.
In addition to the performances, Haynes’ choice to shoot a lot of this film in black and white adds an elegance to Dylans life and career that played as a tasteful artistic choice. It was a choice that made me gravitate more and more into this exaggerated portrayal and because of its unorthodox style, I find it to be an essential watch for anyone who is a Bob Dylan fan, or for fans of political activism through songs, or even people who are fans of Cate Blanchett. Hell, everybody and their mothers should watch I’m Not There because it’s a great movie.
Bottom 3
3. Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) dir. Bryan Singer
From the director being a sex pest with a predilection for children to Rami Malek doing a hammed up, uninspired performance as Freddy Mercury, the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, is an offensive portrayal of one of the most influential (even if I do find them overrated) rock groups. The discourse around this movie since its release seven years ago has seen so many negative takes that I have nothing original to say about the movie.
The only silver lining that you get from Bohemian Rhapsody is you get to hear Queen songs in a nostalgic way and when you’re hearing those songs, it’s the only time I didn’t roll my eyes in annoyance. At just south of two hours and twenty minutes for its runtime, the brutish slog offers one slight victory and it’s when the end credits finally roll.
2. The Doors (1991) dir. Oliver Stone
There are surely music biopics out there that are worse than The Doors and, as a base level fan of The Doors, I might not be the best judge of the story Oliver Stone tells, but, at nearly two and a half hours, this is a monotonous slog of Val Kilmer doing a good performance with not nearly enough music from the legendary rock band. When I watched this for the first time, I was in the midst of an Oliver Stone kick and by and large, I love Stone’s work. Platoon is my second favorite war film ever. Natural Born Killers is a masterpiece of media examination. And Savages makes for a great watch when you’re shit housed on the couch on a Saturday night. However, there are many aspects of The Doors that turns me off.
It’s a film that meanders in an obnoxious, pompous fashion, and I think that’s the best representation of what The Doors, especially Jim Morrison, were. So does that make it a good biopic because it captured the essence of what they were or does Stone get too much up his own ass trying to harness that essence? I’d side with the latter.
1. Back to Black (2024) dir. Sam Taylor-Johnson
What word should I use to describe Sam Taylor-Johnsons portrayal of Amy Winehouse in Back to Black? Distasteful? Disgusting? Abhorrent? Any synonym to those words works because Sam Taylor-Johnson boils down the career of my favorite musician ever into her being a drunk, ditsy whore and never hones in on her real talent. Marisa Abela is a fine actress and she does nail Winehouse’s ticks, but the script written by Matt Greenhalgh and the direction from Taylor-Johnson simply does nothing with Abela’s acting chops.
Back to Black doesn’t serve as a remembrance or celebration of the great, yet short, career Winehouse had. In reality, it taps into the trauma and addiction in Winehouse’s life and doesn’t address it in a thoughtful way. Instead, it just makes you soak in the fact Winehouse didn’t have a good support system and was exploited and it almost feels like that’s celebrated. It’s sort of the same way a teenager could see a rock star strung out on heroin, banging chicks and thinking that it’s badass because they haven’t seen the real world.
Unfortunately, I won’t be catching Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere in theaters this weekend. Under any other circumstances I’d be at the West Springfield Cinemark shoveling popcorn in my mouth on Friday night, but this is a movie both my girl friend and parents want to see. To my disappointment, my girl friend is working this weekend and my parents are “busy”, so I’ll be watching Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere next weekend and will be way behind the review cycle of a movie that’s already receiving rough reviews.
My biggest concern going into Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is not really the source material, even though it doesn’t seem too interesting, it’s the fact that Scott Cooper, a relatively bland director is behind the camera. His past ventures, Crazy Heart, which won Jeff Bridges an Oscar, was middling. Out of the Furnace and Black Mass serve as a good double feature if you want to be put to sleep. In reality, there are two films in his whole filmography that I’ve been able to tolerate and that’s Hostiles and A Pale Blue Eye, both of which are period piece thrillers led by Christian Bale.
Seeing that those are the two I like from Cooper and the fact that Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere isn’t a thriller with Christian Bale as the star, I’m a bit worried. I don’t think Cooper’s a poor or incompetent director, but I do think his biggest weakness is that he’s safe in his approach. Never taking big swings is going to lead to a filmography that looks like what Coopers is and it’s upsetting because he’s worked with super talented performers over his career like Bale, Jesse Plemons, Rosamund Pike, Timothee Chalamet, Johnny Depp, Kevin Bacon, Wes Studi, and Zoe Saldana. I think the reason these projects from him haven’t hit is because he does not take big swings.
Nevertheless, no matter how many bad reviews roll in over the next week, I know I will feel twinges of excitement when I finally get a shot at seeing Jeremy Allen White shake his ass around in a white tee and jeans while he sings Born To Run.
- Stupid title. I kind of dig Delivery From Nowhere a bit, but tacking on the Springsteen part is tacky. We know this movie is about Bruce Springsteen. I didn’t need James Mangold to slap Dylan in front of A Complete Unknown to know that the movie was about Bob Dylan. ↩︎
- Checkout Lousy Carter on Hulu if you haven’t yet. Extremely funny and Krumholtz’s dry humor plays so well with Bob Byington’s writing. ↩︎
- It hurts my heart immensely that Paul Bettany is attached to star in this series. I LOVE Paul Bettany, but his career choices post 2012 are disappointing. ↩︎
- There’s two things that James Mangold just gets and it’s Wolverine and music biopics. ↩︎
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