Category Archives: A Complete Unknown

A Complete Unknown (2024)

a complete unknown movie posterEntertaining, engrossing, and educational, it’s hard not to leave James Mangold’s (3:10 to YumaFord v FerrariA 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 LoveRocketman (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.

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