Hazel Motes

I can’t think of many.

Amadeus is what comes to mind first.

Bird by Clint Eastwood was very good.

Love & Mercy was good.

Just about every music biopic I can think of is pretty bad.

Some good ones, but GREAT. What comes to mind?

Decker

There aren't many.

I think Walk The Line is pretty close to great.
Lady Sings the Blues was very good.
The Rose doesn't really count but was a great film that started as a biopic.

BTW I never considered Amadeus a music biopic, though I love it.

The fact of the matter is that Walk Hard : The Dewey Cox Story is so good at nailing every trope that it kind of makes it hard to watch a music biopic without thinking of it, so you can't really take them seriously. Kind of like how every Rock band documentary feels at least a little like This Is Spinal Tap.

dex14

Control.

orangerunner

Most rock bio-pics make the mistake with too much information and try too hard to keep everything factual. Although it's fictional, the film Payday with Rip Torn is a good example of small-scale 72-hours-in-the-life-of story of a country musician whose life is unravelling.

Nesbit

In addition to a few that have been mentioned The Doors and Straight out of Compton are pretty good.

morriscroy

Rockstar

Decker

Not a biopic.
And not great.

Perkinsun Dzees

OldBoy

What's Love Got to Do with It

davidh777

I love tick…tick…Boom. But I have a real weakness for music movies when I love the music, so I enjoy stuff like Bohemian Rhapsody and Jersey Boys even if they aren’t “great” films.

DJariya

Sweet Dreams with Jessica Lange

La Bamba with Lou Diamond Phillips

Mondo Kane

A few that I love that are largely unknown:

Hazel Motes

Can’t believe I forgot Coal Miners Daughter.

GoldenJCJ

It feels like for a while there, EVERY music biopic was exactly the same. Said musician grew up poor and neglected & abused in the south during the depression and/or 1930s. Said musician was self-taught and worked his way up from playing small gigs to larger venues. In that time he/she became addicted to drugs (obviously with the caveat that it wasn’t their fault. Their scummy manager/band mate/ producer got them into it!) then finishes with them as a success story at the height of their fame.

For female musicians add in a few abusive relationships along the way and you have pretty much every music biopic made between 1990 and 2010.

d2cheer

Looooooooosly based on Tim "Ripper" Owens.

I thought it was pretty good...can't quite say great.

Ash Ketchum

I tend to prefer the ones that have great musical sequences and less biographical info.

THE GREAT CARUSO (1951) with Mario Lanza as Enrico Caruso has tons of great opera sequences, all given the lavish MGM treatment.
RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945) stars Robert Alda as George Gershwin and also has great music sequences, care of Warner Bros.
A SONG TO REMEMBER (1945) is a Technicolor fictionalization of Chopin, again with superb concert sequences, with assists from Stephen Bekassy as Franz Liszt and Merle Oberon as George Sand. From Columbia Pictures.




Cornel Wilde as Frederic Chopin in A SONG TO REMEMBER:

Count Dooku

HeIsTheZissou

The Buddy Holly skit from The Kids in the Hall.

Meathead

The Doors was the first one that I thought of.

Nesbit

I think it’s a great picture in that it captures the energy of the doors very well that just only leads to a good time for me.

orangerunner

I agree. Another pitfall is just because the details or stories are factual don't necessarily make them dramatically interesting. I always felt Walk Hard or Spinal Tap had more interesting insight into the music industry than any of the fact-based musical biopics.

Decker

Hey, if facts are irrelevant, let's add Weird : Tha Al Yankovic Story.

Nesbit

I'd say it captures who Weird Al is as much as any of these other films do their subjects and it's a really fun watch.

Decker

BTW : This is a good recent article from The Ringer, relevant to the discussion.

The ‘Walk Hard’ School of Music Biopic Filmmaking

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Pink Floyd: The Wall