Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious in Alex Cox’s “Sid and Nancy”
Control? Anyone?
Fred Ward as Henry Miller and Maria de Medeiros as Anaïs Nin in “Henry and June”
I just watched The Notorious Bettie Page and it made me very happy. You get a feeling that Page didn’t quite understand the contribution she made to culture, but that’s okay — I liked that she was sort of a blank slate. And always with that gung-ho smile. Lili Taylor, always a wonder. And Mary Harron appreciates the look of color films from 1953 – 1964 as much as I do. I’ve always thought it was something about the quality of film stock from that decade but she gets exactly the same blue tones and autumnal tones in the color sequences here.
Bound for Glory still gets my vote as the straight telling of the story. Raging Bull is wonderful, but kerns toward artistry of cinema more than pure biography.
I thought:
Val Kilmer as Jim Morrisson- THE DOORS
Sam Riley as Ian Curtis- CONTROL
Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles- RAY
Edvard Munch
Wittgenstein
Love is the Devil
The Music Lovers
Savage Messiah
Raging Bull
Stavisky. . .
Lawrence of Arabia
Raging Bull, Walk the Line, Gods & Monsters, Shadow of the Vampire, Chaplin, Ghandi, Patton , Ed Wood, A Beautiful Mind, & The Aviator.
Raging Bull, Malcolm X, Che (Soderbergh), The Last Emperor, and of course (drumroll) Andrey Rublev.
Up. Spencer Tracy is much nicer when he’s teetotaling.
OK, but where are the women?
Personally I loved Milk. It alone rejuvenated my faith in the biopic.
I’m Not There is the best biopic. Period. Closely followed by Ed Wood.
Penguin
Amadeus, Der Untergang (Downfall), Gandhi, The Queen, This Is England, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Hours, The Last King of Scotland, Lawrence of Arabia, Capote, Infamous, Monster