20 Music Biopics That Critics Actually Liked

Subject: Singer Nico

This Italian-Belgian English-language indie film is as sophisticated and enigmatic as its subject, the German singer, model, and artist Nico, known for her work with the Velvet Underground and as a solo artist. The film follows the woman born Christa Päffgen (Trine Dyrholm) in the last year of her life as she faces the decline of her career, a worsening heroin addiction, and problems with her son, Ari (Sandor Funtek).

Critics were mesmerized by Dyrholm's powerful performance (like many other actors on this list, she did her own singing) and Nicchiarelli's outside-the-box filmmaking. The film is shot in a square format to capture the feeling of the late '80s, when TV was square. 

"The star of Susanna Nicchiarelli's freely fictionalized biopic, Trine Dyrholm, finds fierce beauty in the woman Nico has become. I've never seen a performance quite like it — unsparingly harsh, but also graceful, droll and tender, a portrait of soul-weariness laced with a yearning for salvation." —Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

Subject: Country musician Blaze Foley

Blaze tells the tale of eccentric outlaw country hellraiser Blaze Foley, who decorated his clothes with duct tape and lived a wild life that ended violently at age 39. Director Ethan Hawke's frequent collaborator Ben Dickey plays Foley, and the cast also includes Alia Shawkat, Charlie Sexton, and Kris Kristofferson (in his final role).

Dickey was lauded by critics for his performance, and won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance for Achievement in Acting. Hawke was similarly praised for his energy and passion for his subject and the slice-of-life style he brings to the story. 

"What separates Blaze from its peers, however, is the obvious affection the filmmakers have for their assortment of damaged characters. In Ben Dickey, Hawke and company have found a remarkable physical and musical double for Foley." —Matthew Monagle, Austin Chronicle

Subject: Singer-songwriter Tina Turner

The story of how legendary singer Tina Turner (Angela Bassett) got trapped in and then overcame her abusive marriage to bandleader Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne) is this 1993 biopic's arc. Though the film is based on her autobiography, Tina Turner was unhappy with the result, which fictionalized some parts of her story and depicted her as more of a victim than how she said she felt.

But both Bassett and Fishburne were nominated for Academy Awards, and Bassett won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a musical. Critics praised their performances, as well as the film's uptempo energy and its unflinching portrayal of an abusive relationship.

"For a movie full of hair-raising depictions of wife beating, What's Love Got To Do With It is a rousingly entertaining musical biopic. And that's what a movie about the unstoppable Tina Turner should be: sassy, playful, soulful and triumphant, like Tina herself." —David Ansen, Newsweek

Subject: Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious

Gary Oldman's career breakout came when he played Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious in this grungy biopic about the punk rocker's tragic, drug-fueled relationship with his girlfriend Nancy Spungen (played by Chloe Webb), which ended with Nancy stabbed to death in the Chelsea Hotel and Sid charged with her murder.

Critics appreciated Cox's unsparing point of view, which is very clear about his opinion that what happened to Sid and Nancy was senseless waste. But even more than that, they admired Oldman and Webb's intense, tortured performances. 

"Though dark and harrowing, explicit and unsparing, the movie proves a riveting biography of these burnt-out icons and their iconoclastic half-decade. Symbolism aside, Sid & Nancy is an indelible drama of undying love and meaningless decline." —Rita Kempley, Washington Post

Subject: Composer Leonard Bernstein

Bradley Cooper co-wrote, directed, produced, and starred in this film about composer Leonard Bernstein's passionate but turbulent marriage to actress and activist Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). The film follows their relationship over the course of several decades as Bernstein's affairs with men put a strain on their marriage. 

Critics said "maestro!" to Cooper's confident direction, the film's themes of creative genius and the complexity of marriage, and Cooper and Mulligan's big, emotional performances. 

"With Maestro, Bradley Cooper makes a metaphor of Bernstein through the lens of his tumultuous marriage. It's less a portrait of a life than a depiction of the fulcrum creators pivot on, presented by a talented artist whose ambitions lie along similarly oppositional extremes." —Joshua Rivera, Polygon

Subject: Singer Robbie Williams, but monkey

Michael Gracey's biopic of British pop star Robbie Williams breaks from the genre's cliches in a truly bold way: Williams is depicted not as a man, but as an anthropomorphic CGI ape (with motion capture performed by Jonno Davies). All the other characters in the film are people, but Williams is a self-proclaimed "performing monkey." Beyond that gimmick, the film more conventionally follows the ups and downs of Williams' life and career, which features the usual drug addiction and fraught relationships.

Better Man earned positive reviews from critics impressed by Gracey and Williams' innovative rejection of music biopic orthodoxy. It's genuinely different from other films in the genre. And it's all in service of a well-told and emotionally resonant story. 

"Gracey may film Better Man through a thick veneer of showbiz glitz but — thanks in large part to the fact that, again, the star is a CGI chimpanzee — the film's heaviest scenes sneak up on you and pack a wallop." —William Bibbiani, TheWrap

Subject: Rapper Eminem (but fictionalized)

This one isn't technically a music biopic, because rapper Jimmy "B-Rabbit" Smith is a fictional character. But it still counts, because it's based on the life of Eminem, who plays Jimmy/himself in the film as he comes up through Detroit's underground battle rap scene and deals with grinding poverty and family problems.

Eminem was one of the biggest, most controversial stars in music when 8 Mile came out, but critics were won over by his acting ability—or at least his charismatic screen presence. Overall, the film was praised for its grittily uplifting story and Rocky -like energy. Eminem's song from the film, "Lose Yourself," became the first hip-hop song to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

"There is some exhilarating wordplay in 8 Mile, and you don't have to be a fan of rap to appreciate its quicksilver energy and mischievous wit. For all its grit, 8 Mile ends up radiating a joyful, hopeful vibe. It's an old-school charmer." —Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald

Subject: Rock star Buddy Holly

Gary Busey plays rock and roll pioneer Buddy Holly in one of Hollywood's earliest musical biopics. The film follows Holly through his meteoric rise in the early days of rock music—a story that was cut short by Holly's tragic death in a plane crash at age 22 in 1959. 

Critics highly rated Busey's exhilarating performance. He did his own singing, which added to the film's verisimilitude. For his efforts, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. 

"If you're a fan of Holly and his music, you'll be quietly amazed at how completely Busey gets into the character. His performance isn't an imitation, a series of 'impressions.' It's a distillation of how Holly seemed, and how he sounded." —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Subject: Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis

The brief and tragic life of Ian Curtis, frontman of the influential Manchester post-punk band Joy Division, is depicted in this indie drama. The film follows Curtis (Sam Riley) and his wife Deborah (Samantha Morton) as love—and his isolation, infidelity, and uncontrolled epilepsy—tears them apart. 

Even critics who were unfamiliar with Joy Division's music appreciated the film's empathetic but unromantic depiction of Curtis' pain, Riley and Morton's performances, and the beautiful way Corbijn—an acclaimed photographer and music video director making his feature debut—lensed it. 

"Control goes past the clichés of punk rock-god gloom to offer a snapshot of alienation that's shockingly humane." —Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Subject: Pianist Glenn Gould

This unusual project is exactly what it promises: a collection of shorts about pianist Glenn Gould, who was one of the world's foremost interpreters of J.S. Bach's music and a fascinatingly peculiar person. The film is structured the way it is in an effort to try to capture the many dimensions of who Gould was. Colm Feore plays the musician, who died in 1982. 

Critics found the unusual structure to be illuminating and distinctive. Most reviews positively remarked upon how refreshingly different it is from the typical musical biopic. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould won Best Picture at the Genie Awards—Canada's equivalent of the Academy Awards from 1980 to 2012—in 1993. And without this film we may never have had steamed hams.

"The whole enterprise is designed to skirt the traditional traps of the music movie; instead of a laborious bio-pic, we get a sly, quick-witted meditation on a character always likely to elude our grasp." —Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

Subject: Jazz saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker

Charlie Parker—nicknamed "Bird"—was an alto saxophone player who pioneered a fast-paced and complex new form of jazz called bebop in the 1940s. Noted jazz lover Clint Eastwood's film charts Bird's rise and fall, from having a New York City club named after him to dying from addiction and despair at age 34 in 1955. 

The role of Charlie Parker was Forest Whitaker's breakout role, and critics piled praise upon the future Oscar winner for his heartbreaking, fully alive performance. They also liked that Eastwood managed to avoid what could have easily been a cliched story by painting a nuanced portrait of Parker.

"There is not a cheap note or a careless image, not an easy judgment or a forced emotion, in the 2 hr. 43 min. of Bird. It permits a man's life its complexity. It invites us to experience the redeeming grace of his music. And with its passionate craft, it proclaims that Eastwood is a major American director." —Richard Schickel, Time

Subject: Classical musicians Jacqueline and Hilary du Pré

Classical musicians have lives just as dramatic as the rockers. This biopic is about sisters Jacqueline (cello) and Hilary du Pré (flute), played by Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths, respectively. Jackie is the troubled virtuoso, who has an affair with Hilary's husband with Hilary's consent and later suffers from multiple sclerosis.

Critics appreciated Anand Tucker's impressionistic directing and Watson and Griffiths' powerful performances. Both women were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances, Watson for Best Actress and Griffiths for Best Supporting Actress. 

"First-time feature director Tucker displays an astonishingly assured touch, allowing his phenomenal cast to creep into their characters' skins and surrounding them with images of shimmering and slightly threatening beauty." —Maitland McDonough, TV Guide Magazine

Subject: Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson

This film about Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson takes a different approach than most other music biopics. It focuses on two eras in Wilson's life, first in the 1960s as he becomes regarded as a genius for his musical ability while his mental health deteriorates, and then in the 1980s as his future wife Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks) helps him escape from having his life and money controlled by his sinister therapist, Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). Paul Dano plays young Brian and John Cusack plays older Brian.

Critics praised the performances (Dano's a little more than Cusack's) and the way that the dual casting communicates Wilson's alienation—he literally turns into a different person. (Of course, there's another music biopic that takes that trick several steps further.) Dano was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance. 

"Don't worry, baby: Pohlad's biopic is reverent, duly, but also rich, clever, warm and sensitive. Banks and Giamatti provide anchor, Cusack impresses and Dano surfs to glory." —Kevin Harley, Total Film

Subject: Pianist Liberace

Director Steven Soderbergh turns his restless, iconoclastic style to the music biopic genre for this HBO television movie about pianist and showman Liberace (Michael Douglas) and his secret lover, Scott Thorson (Matt Damon). They had a volatile relationship, with Liberace's complicated relationship to his own sexuality a major contributing factor.

The film received critical praise for many aspects, from Douglas and Damon's intelligent performances and Soderbergh's counterintuitively restrained direction to the opulence of the production design.

"Buffed to a typical HBO high gloss, Candelabra is a visual feast. But it shines brightest in those moments where it captures the rhythms of a relationship in its first blush of affection and its seemingly inevitable collapse." —Robert Bianco, USA Today

Subject: Country music star Loretta Lynn

The life of "First Lady of Country Music" Loretta Lynn is profiled in this popular film. Sissy Spacek plays Lynn, who was born in poverty in Kentucky, married at 15, and mother of four by 19, and overcame her difficult beginnings to become one of country music's defining stars but always remained true to where she came from.

Critics described the film as a conventional, straightforward biopic elevated by the strength of the performances from Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones as Lynn's husband Doo, and Beverly D'Angelo as Patsy Cline. Spacek won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the film was nominated for Best Picture. 

"It's warm, entertaining, funny, and centered around that great Sissy Spacek performance, but it's essentially pretty familiar material (not that Loretta Lynn can be blamed that Horatio Alger wrote her life before she lived it). The movie isn't great art, but it has been made with great taste and style; it's more intelligent and observant than movie biographies of singing stars used to be. That makes it a treasure to watch, even if we sometimes have the feeling we've seen it before." —Roger Ebert, Chicago-Sun Times

Subject: Jazz musicians Bud Powell and Lester Young (but fictionalized)

Though the film is adapted from a nonfiction book, the protagonist of this biopic is actually a fictionalized composite of two real jazz musicians, saxophonist Bud Powell and pianist Lester Young, played by a different actual jazz musician, saxophonist Dexter Gordon. Set in New York and Paris in the 1950s, the film follows Dale Turner, a brilliant musician struggling with addiction, and his relationship with his friend Francis (François Cluzet), who's trying to help him get sober.

At the time of its release, many critics called it the best film about jazz ever made, and it is the highest-rated jazz film on this list. Gordon, who had never acted professionally before, earned plaudits for his naturalistic performance (including an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor), and critics enjoyed director Bertrand Tavernier's general use of jazz musicians in the cast; Herbie Hancock acted in the film and won an Academy Award for composing its score. 

"Gordon's remarkable as the emotionally disarranged, psychologically disintegrating jazzman, and when the little Frenchman calls him a genius, you suddenly realize what that overused term implies: not moral worthiness or superior personhood but a giftedness beyond accounting that hardly belongs to character at all." —Pat Graham, Chicago Reader

Subject: Factory Records co-founder Tony Wilson, plus bands including New Order and Happy Mondays

24 Hour Party People is a music biopic, but it's not a musician biopic. Instead, it's about Tony Wilson (played by Steve Coogan), owner of the Factory Records label and the Hacienda nightclub, which were crucially important pieces of Manchester's legendary music scene of the late '70s through the early '90s. Its title comes from a Happy Mondays song.

Critics raved about the way director Michael Winterbottom subverts music biopic expectations, embracing Wilson as an unreliable narrator and cranking up the manic energy to match the hard-partying atmosphere of the era. 

"This wonderful party of a movie, as totally original as its hero, stamps on a smiley face that will linger for hours." —Megan Lehmann, New York Post

Subject: Pianist/composer Władysław Szpilman

Adrien Brody broke out in a big way for his performance as Polish Jewish classical pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman. The film tells the story of Szpilman's time in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he survived the Holocaust due to a combination of his skill and notoriety as a musician, which made Jews and non-Jews alike want to help him, and his own will to endure.

Reviews of the film praised its simultaneous unsentimentality and compassion, as well as its theme of the lifesaving power of art. Brody won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance; at age 29, he still holds the record for youngest Best Actor winner. 

"Polanski, wisely, doesn't interpret or explain. He seems to have decided that in the face of such meticulously planned horror, the best one can do is get the details right." —Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly

Subject: Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The one-sided rivalry between genius composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce) and his decidedly less genius contemporary Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) is the subject of this lively drama. Salieri is jealous of and awed by Mozart's talent, and decides to ruin him.

Critics adored Hulce and Abraham's performances, Milos Forman's bold direction, Peter Shaffer's intelligent script, and the film's sumptuous craft. Amadeus won Academy Awards for all those things—eight in total, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Abraham (Hulce was also nominated).

"Mr. Shaffer's ability to celebrate genius - in this case, that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...is simultaneously illuminating, moving and just. It's a major achievement, especially in films where genius is usually represented and dramatized as some kind of ill- humored, social eccentricity." —Vincent Canby, The New York Times

Subject: Pianist David Helfgott

This Australian drama tells the story of David Helfgott, a gifted concert pianist suffering from mental illness. He has a strained relationship with his tyrannical father, Peter (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who at first pushes him toward musical greatness but turns on him when he wants to leave home to study in London. Once David is in London, his mental health deteriorates, but he eventually gets the help he needs and makes a comeback. 

Critics were won over by the film's recovery arc, which was well-executed by director Scott Hicks and passionately brought to life by Rush, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance. 

"If this weren't a true story, who would believe it? Well, a good many of us, probably. First, it's the kind of exceptional circumstance we like to dwell on as proof that pessimists are wrong; second, Shine is markedly well made, therefore persuasive." —Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic