Entertaining, engrossing, and educational, it’s hard not to leave James Mangold’s (3:10 to Yuma, Ford v Ferrari) A Complete Unknown disappointed. While many will call it a paint-by-numbers musical biopic (which is completely justified), it does three things that recent films, such as Bob Marley: One Love, Rocketman (Elton John), Back to Black (Amy Winehouse), Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody, and Elvis couldn’t do. It held my interest throughout its 140-minute runtime. It implored me to read Bob Dylan’s Wikipedia page. It led to an interest in looking up the songs performed in the film that I had not heard before. The musical biopic genre has been bad for nearly 20 years (Bohemian Rhapsody and Straight Outta Compton are outliers). A Complete Unknown feels like a companion piece to two fabulous turn-of-the-century musical biopics with terrific lead performances in 2004’s Ray (Jaime Foxx as Ray Charles) and Walk the Line (Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash). Each film landed the lead performer an Oscar nomination, including a win for Foxx.
Category Archives: Monica Barbaro
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
There is a moment between the previews and the opening credits of Top Gun: Maverick where Tom Cruise appears as himself, seated in a director’s chair, and welcomes the audience to the film. This is not the first time a film’s lead actor has welcomed an audience and thanked them for coming since the Coronavirus Pandemic began in March 2020. John Krasinski famously did this in the spring of 2021 before the much-delayed A Quiet Place Part II, arguably the biggest and most anticipated movie (with all due respect to Tenet) that made its return to a wide-release audience.