Best and worst music films and why

Almost Famous wasn't bad. The director's cut is a great improvement. My first reaction to Kate Hudson's character was that she was over-acting (ala the last scene, where she leaves her sunglasses on the airline counter), but then I realized that the 16-year old groupie would be overly dramatic too.

I really want to see Cocksucker Blues. Robert Frank is a god to me, but no one in Texas ever screens his films (the one time a year he's allowed to screen Cocksucker Blues).

I weep.

velvet goldmine was my introduction to the stooges and brian eno so it gets my vote.

Now I weep....

i'm just glad i'm not still buying superchunk cds.

The Talking Heads movie...

Worst: sorry, but Ziggy Stardust. Nice outfits, I guess, but fairly ineptly directed and kind of a snooze. I guess it's the only way to see Bowie live in 1973 nowadays, but... no thanks.

And that Wilco movie.

even though it's not exactly a music film I'd also like to give a shout out to Dogtown & Z-Boys for how well the music synchs up with the visuals and reminds you of how great KICK ASS ROCK N ROLL is!

Hedwig and the Angry Inch - because of the above and because it's simultaneously hysterical and incredibly sad. I don't know if it's the best because I have a nagging feeling that I'm forgetting something.

Worst:
Rad, the BMX movie from the eighties. Title song: John Farnham: Breaking The Ice. Uuuuuuuuuurgh ...

You are a wise, wise man.

I cannot overstate how much I hated that bullshit fuckin' movie

It wasn't a documentary = it can do whatever the fuck it liked.

I have a soft spot for all three films in Bruce McDonald's rock and roll roadtrip trilogy. Roadkill is pretty shaky but ultimately kinda cool; Highway 61 is a fantastic trip backwards through the history of rock, all along a single highway (and great cameos from Jello B, Art B and Tav F along the way, too!). Hard Core Logo has been called the punk rock Spinal Tap and that's quite possibly true...it's way nastier, funny but in a very real kind of way, and it shows a band imploding in a way that doesn't seem overly cartoonish. The hataz say "IT'S NOT REALLY PUNK WAHH WAHHH" but it definitely does have that Canadian left-coast early 80s slightly-metal punk thing DOWN. Great!

I got to see Rude Boy, the Clash film, recently, and it is quite representative of when a band agrees to have a film made about them without seemingly having any input into what the film will be about, and the director justs makes the film in line with his own very particular vision of what the group "means", cf. It Couldn't Happen Here, the PSB film. There are lots of other examples but I can't think of them now. Rude Boy is certainly entertaining, but also strangely pointless.

Another vote for Fear of a Black Hat btw.

Has anyone ever seen Speed Racer, the doc. on Vic Chesnutt? I want to see it, but don't know where to get it.

More votes for best:
Stop Making Sense
Decline of Western Civilization Part 1, but especially part 2! I can't believe neither of these has been mentioned yet.
Space is the Place (Sun Ra's 70s blaxploitation sci-fi film)
The Isle of Wight documentary - great anarchic hippies vs. ego-bloated rich rockstar drama!

Storefront Hitchcock is also good, in a Jonathan Demme kinda way

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And I was a bit unimpressed with 24 hour party people (gasp!)

I loved Velvet Goldmine, though you'd never catch the teenage me jerking off to the inner sleeve of Alladin Sane. Gross! Actually, my friend Jim, the guy who wrote it with Todd Haynes, said his mother really did walk in on him doing just that! I was amazed, it's like the least sexy photo ever. Anyway, the part at the beginning with all the kids running to the concert to the tune of "Needles in the Camel's Eye" is the most thrilling scene in a rock movie ever. And it reminds me of the final Sleaze Sisters show in Times Square.

There are no murders in Citizen Kane. And even if there were, I disagree. I don't think that worked at all. It was as confused as it was confusing.

Ahh semantics, the true love of all ILMers. I used Citizen Kane to denote the post-mortem investigative aspect of the plot. I didn't mean to imply there was literally a murder in Citizen Kane. There isn't actually a murder in Velvet Goldmine either, in case you were paying attention.

otherwise agree with majority comments on spinal tap and rude boy...

But this is what makes it great!

I liked Backbeat and The Filth and the Fury also.

It was called "simultaneously the best and worst movie ever made" by Film Threat, so it fits both categories in the thread title.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - the greatest pop music film EVER?

...and what about Beatstreet?

Also, Bird. Amazingly great.

PJ Soles! Paul Bartel! Mary Woronov!

oh, and the Ramones.

Oh, and Fear of a Black Hat is great too. That Thing You Do really pisses me off cos that kid who plays the male lead looks exactly like Tom Hanks, I was half expecting the "Luke, I AM your father" scene between the two of them.

The Filth and the Fury is entertaining, as Behind the Music-style documentaries go, but it's also a lame cleaned-up version of a really interesting story. (I think the only people I trust to talk about the Sex Pistols and not make me hiss and spit "THAT'S NOT RIGHT, GODDAMMIT!" at the screen or page are Jon Savage, Gr*il M*rc*s and mark s) (you'll notice I don't include any of the Pistols themselves in that list)

I thought Velvet Goldmine was one of the most irritating things I'd ever watched, but I know a lot more about glam more now so I might like it now.

Yeah! will Lydon ever discuss that period without being an unamusing dickwad.

Considering when it came out--before hair band saturation--the topic could hardly be considered passe.

Says who?

all very, very bad.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005RYL7.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

What, it's not a music movie?

"Leathermen NEVER get nervous! Leathermen NEVER get nervous!"

"New York is the city with gusto..."

http://www.horror-wood.com/paradi13.jpg

the best music BUSINESS movie of all time, certainly.

The Book of Days, the Meredith Monk film from the early 90s - any IlMer or ILMeress actually seen it?

Not sure if We Are the Best! has officially opened over here or not--I don't think so. A little precious in spots, but quite good. My main complaint would be of a rock-critic nature: the soundtrack (not what the three girls play, but the stuff they listen to that's supposed to stand in for punk rock) is not very good. It's basically a generic imitation--maybe the filmmaker was afraid that using LiLiPUT would overwhelm everything else. (The song over the end credits is pretty good.) Everything else, especially the three girls--Hedvig was my favourite--is fine. Actually deals in a subtle way with a punk-rock dilemma, at least one that was lurking there in '77 and '78: at what point does good musicianship become a necessity rather than some kind of betrayal? When the band plays some out-the-way community hall at the end, I swear it's an inspired recreation of the Sex Pistols in Texas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfPytPjV1xc

"The Apple" is both best and worst.

Probably a better thread than this, dormant for a decade...Been ages since I watched American Hot Wax, Floyd Mutrux's film about Alan Freed. I liked it then--think it was Greil Marcus's rock-films essay in the Illustrated History that led me there--but don't think I fully appreciated how good it is; easily on the short list of greatest pop-music films ever. (By which I mean specifically about the subject, not something like Mean Streets. I don't think I've ever seen more convincingly fictionalized versions of real artists: the Chesterfields as Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, the Planatones for Danny & the Juniors, the Delights standing in for both the Bobettes and the Chantels. I'd quibble about billing for the big Paramount show--Jerry Lee Lewis headlines over Chuck Berry--but Berry's "Reelin' and Rockin'" is incredible (and will probably be, in the light of all that is known now, unbearably salacious for some), and Lewis's casual last-second arrival is perfect. Laraine Newman is touching as the Carole King stand-in (again mixing-and-matching seamlessly: she didn't write for Frankie Lymon, but who cares?). Cameron Crowe turns up in the credits ("delivery boy"), but I missed him. Watched a slightly faded but clean print on YouTube.

Found somewhere to watch Mutrux's Dusty and Sweets McGee; will see what that's like, but added to American Hot Wax and Aloha, Bobby and Rose, wondering if Mutrux is the decade's great lost director.

I need to also mention how good Tim McIntire (also in Aloha, Bobby and Rose) is as Freed. McIntire died in 1986; Mutrux is still alive.

I’ll take advantage of this thread revive to do my perennial flogging of Step Across The Border, the “improvised film” about Fred Frith and friends. My vote for the greatest “music film” of all time and it’s not even close

Pretty sure I saw that at Toronto's Cinematheque once, before they moved; I saw a film about Frith, so that must be it.

If you’re talking sometime around 2006 or so then I was at the same screening :)

I own it on DVD and purchased copies as gifts for friends, it’s unbelievable how something so improbable could turn out so well

2006 sounds about right. I remember it being black and white (checked--yes), with lots of sombre landscapes, and that it was where I first found out that Fred and Simon were brothers.

It has this wonderful episodic quality— preparations for a performance are documented, moments of monologue, and then footage of the performance itself— Fred playing to the birds on a cliff, Fred preparing a guitar in Japan, improvs with Zorn and Bittova, there’s a miracle in its pacing and structure and it’s the closest I’ve seen cinema to itself becoming musical

Strangely enough I watched American Hot Wax just last week, probably the same YouTube print as clemenza. Seemed to be lacking much of a plot but maybe that isn't the point, if they'd focused on the payola scandal it would have taken over the entire narrative. Probably the film I've seen that best encapsulates the sheer joy of music, how all the bullshit and greed can be swept away by hearing the next promising thing. I can even tolerate Jay Leno's obnoxious character. Just. Kind of a dry run here too for Fran Drescher's Bobbi Fleckman persona I guess.

They don't dwell on the payola much, almost taking it for granted that you know all about that. Which is odd: by 1978, how many would? (And would it have even registered at a time when Top 40 radio was as corrupt as ever? That's the Frederick Dannen Hit Men era, isn't it?) And they probably clean up Freed's story in general; taking an occasional drink while doing his show is about the worst of it. But yeah, it's a movie about the artists and the music, and I was just amazed by how good they were. Forgot about the Dion & the Belmonts and Dee Clark (did he play guitar? it's almost like they merged him with Bo Diddley) and Fleetwoods comps, all of whom were great. I thought Leno was actually pretty good; his obnoxiousness seemed very much of its time. I was moved when him and Dreschler danced to "Mr. Blue." The record producer in the great "Come Go with Me" studio scene is played by Richard Perry. Also discovered something eye-opening in Charles Taylor's Mutrux chapter: Tim McIntire was, because of the strong resemblance, long rumored to be Orson Welles' son.

"When Him and She Danced," my next hit record for the gramatically challenged.

Anyone know if this site is trustworthy? (Fred Frith film)

https://americas.dafilms.com/film/7204-step-across-the-border

Step Across the Border on Youtube

Excellent, thanks. I did find something on YouTube that looked like the movie but it was just a still.