The 100 Greatest Music Movies Of All Time

2. True Stories (1986)

Second feature-length film featuring the music of America's greatest rock band, Talking Heads, this magnificent comedy starring, directed, and co-written by David Byrne is a about a fictional town in Texas called Vigil. Populated exclusively by eccentrics and scores of twins, Vigil epitomizes America in a state of flux, as Byrne guides us around the city by showing us its burgeoning industries, spiritual life, and recreation. An unforgettable film.

In music she found her dream, her love, herself...

3. Glitter

4. The Blues Brothers
No need for a long-winded explanation. This movie is all-around awesome.

It may be a bold statement, but I actually feel it's superior to Glitter.

5. This is Spinal Tap = Superior to Glitter.

6. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains

Diane Lane and Laura Dern endure the hardships of touring to dirtbag locales with their band, the Stains, while struggling to maintain their friendship and attain commercial and critical success. Essentially predicted everything from the proliferation of Hot Topic stores across the U.S. to the success of female-led hard rock bands in the 90's, this astonishing film has been suppressed by Paramount for over 25 years.

7. Privilege (1967)

Peter Watkins directed this pseudo-documentary about a ubitquitous rock star whose fame has been engineered by the government and the Catholic Church. Incendiary and uncompromising, like all of Watkins' other films. Also notable for having its signature song "Privilige (Set Me Free)" covered by the Patti Smith Group on the album "Easter".

8. Velvet Goldmine (1998)

Todd Haynes more honest than had it actually been a David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop bio-pic recreates the glam rock era through the perspective of the closeted homosexuals who were not only drawn to the music, but the suggestion of sexual freedoms that were later trampled on by Reagan and Thatcher's 80's.

Few rock and roll moments are as indelible as the introduction of Kurt Wilde, who sings Iggy Pop's TV Eye, gets shock therapy and whips out his cock. But the music (some period, others facsimiles), and the Citizen Kane structure makes it more than the sum of its pieces.

"Everyone's into this scene because it's supposedly the thing to do right now. But you can't just fake being gay. If they claim they're gay they're going to have to make love in gay style, and most of these kids...they just won't be able to make it. That line 'everyone's bisexual' that's a very popular thing to say right now. I think it's meaningless."

9. Gimme Shelter. The music is great but for the final half more in the background as the real focus shifts to the Hell's Angels' ornery antics. Harrowing stuff.

10. JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS. No shit. It's a perfect sugar-rush of a pop song.

There's a lot of other obvious choices, but for this post I'll pick

11. CROSSROADS. No ,not the britney spears movie, the Ralph Machio movie where he and an old harmonica player trace the roots of Robert Johnson, only to have a show stopping "Head Cutting" guitar duel with Jack Butler (played by the incomparable Mr. Steve Vai), organized by the devil himself. The movie is certainly dated, and cheesey, and the showdown may only appeal to guitar geeks like myself and my father, but I don't care, it still appeals to me. It's a shame that the spears crossroads is on DVD and this one isn't.

I was thinking about making 'The Commitments' my first pick, but I'm going to go with:

12. ALMOST FAMOUS/UNTITLED -- Sure, this is a flawed movie, like most of Cameron Crowe's stuff. (The thing that's always bugged me about it is that, despite Lester Bangs telling William Miller the truth for much of its running time, it suggests that you can indeed make friends with the rock stars.) But the movie is never better when it actually chooses to focus on the music itself -- like when Miller discovers his sister's records, or the characters talk about why they love rock and roll. The piece where Russell Hammond is talking about the one 'woo' in a Marvin Gaye song, and how that one 'woo' makes the song brilliant is a moment I think of a lot when listening to my favorite songs, and new ones as well. If Almost Famous does anything well, it suggests that rock music, great rock music, is about the sum of a band's parts rather than its individual members. I'm rambling, but there you go. (I'm not even getting into my favorite part in the movie, where Frances McDormand turns Crudup from a hell-raising rockstar into a scared sixteen-year-old kid.)

13. Mutual Appreciation.

I got to know about Andrew Bujalski and his films through Chud and while I enjoyed Funny Ha-Ha a lot, Mutual Appreciation was a big step forward.

14. The Happiness of the Katakuris.

Takashi Miike does musical film.
I'll admit the songs in it aren't actually any good, but it's a most inventive film, and manages to be among the most surreal I've run across.

15. Hustle and Flow - Powerful, entertaining, a career defining performance by Terrence Howard, and some of the most exciting scenes based on the creation of music around.

16. Hard-Core Logo - A film mostly about friendship filmed in a faux-documentary style. Great music, good casting and tons of attitude from Hugh Dillon. It's my favorite punk film.

Since it just came up in another thread:

17. Phantom of the Paradise. Criminally underappreciated.

18. "Stop Making Sense" (1984)

No interviews, no self-aggrandizing nonsense, and no other diversions from some of the greatest rock music ever created. The best concert film ever.

19. "Pump Up the Volume"

Christian Slater as a teenager with social anxiety issues that takes the guise of Hard Harry, an underground radio phenomenon, at night. Amazing soundtrack. Written and directed by Allan Moyle, who directed two other wonderful films about alienated teens that express themselves via music-"Times Square" (1980) and "Empire Records" (1995).

You guys are kidding right?

1. Woodstock
2. The Last Waltz
3. Dave Chapelle's Block Party

A few of the others that would be in the top ten were already mentioned. Others that come to mind - that Nirvana "One Night Only" thing that came out on DVD last year or something, THE YEAR PUNK BROKE, RUDEBOY, THE WALL...I don't know, I'll think of more soon.

20. All That Jazz.

21) Metallica - Some Kind of Monster.

The album (St. Anger) didn't turn out so great, but the road there is fascinating.

22. The Rutles -- All You Need Is Cash

If for no other reason than Neil Innes' brilliantly inspired faux Beatles songs.

23. Dancer In The Dark

Falls victim to Von Trier's sadistic need to martyr his protagonists, and the whole damn thing would fall apart if A: Bjork didn't throw herself on the emotional fire for this role, and B: the place where Selma goes to escape her reality wasn't a place of pure concentrated musical innocence and beauty.

Thankfully, neither of those things happened.

24- Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

By far my favorite musical.

25 - the Commitments

Rath (with whom I agree entirely on Almost Famous, although I think I find its flaws even less troublesome than he does) mentioned it, but didn't include it. Like Crowe's movie, it captures intra-band dynamics and the love of music in a way that few other movies or works of literature (Roddy Doyle's fantastic source material for the movie excepted) do. In some ways, it's important that this group of down-on-their-luck working class Irish people choose American soul music as their medium, but in otherways, it's not. We see in the epilogue that the characters' participation in a making music informed them for some time to come - pop music informs their lives in profound ways.

Does Immortal Beloved qualify? It's been awhile, so I'm not sure how much Beethoven's music featured throughtout actually fuels the story. But I'm thinking the Ode To Joy scene is one beautiful fusion of music and cinema.

24-Tommy

It's The Who, no explanation required.

If we're including Immortal Beloved, I would like to nominate Amadeus as #28. F. Murray Abraham delivers a superb performance as Salieri, perfectly juggling jealousy and admiration, and the scenes in which we see Mozart creating his music are great.

Why wouldn't Immortal Beloved and Amadeus be eligible? Maybe I didn't get what the Thread is about, but these seem to fit more than filmed concerts.

That would be, according to modern mathematics, number 27.

And Amadeus is great.

Since we're going back and forth from fiction to non-fiction, here's another in the non-fiction vein:

29. Bob Dylan: No Direction Home

Some might argue for Don't Look Back, but I get a lot more out of Scorsese's more recent documentary, which manages to blend a journalistic attention to detail and multiple viewpoints with a smooth narrative and sublime concert performances.

#30 - The Filth and The Fury

Done by the same guy who did the Great Rock and Roll Swindle and Earth Girls are Easy. This documentary takes a nice clear look at the life of a band that only was together for about 2-3 years, released one album and become icons of their own genre.

Plus were not for the Sex Pistols we would've never had Jonesy Jukebox either.

Quick question, which character was supposed to be Lou Reed? I thought Jack Fairy was supposed to be Brian Eno? The Bowie/Pop comparisons are plain as day but I don't remember there being a Lou Reed like character.

Two things. First, when I called Almost Famous flawed, I didn't mean to make it appear I was ragging on that movie. I love it enough to forgive it of those flaws, but I know they're there. Second, the Jimmy Rabbite monologue about soul music on the bus is my favorite thing in the movie and definitely one of the best monologues about music out there, I think.

Despite the obvious Bowie influences on Slade and the Iggy influences on Wilde, I always assumed there was a little Lou in Wilde, as well. If nothing else, I can't conceive of Iggy ever getting it on with a guy. Reed in the early 70s, on the other hand... you never know. Bowie just might have tapped that (hypothetically, if not in fact).

In Please Kill by Legs McNeil, there's a quote by Angie Bowie saying she was disgusted By Bowie and Iggy's antics in Berlin. They were in a contest to see who could get the most drag-queens. So it's quite possible Bowie and Iggy had some fun together.

Yeah, it's clear you're fond of it despite the flaws. I think it's more that I don't see some of the flaws many cite in that movie as flaws at all. William doesn't follow Bangs' advice, but that's because it's advice that works better in theory than in practice. Bangs, himself, was buddies with rock stars in real life (as is Crowe, obviously - he married one). I think the fact that these contradictory impulses (fandom/friendship vs. objectivity) in entertainment journalism aren't reconciled in the movie makes it a more honest work.

Some level of subjectivity is unavoidable in all journalism, and this is even more difficult when writing about the arts. Unlike writing about the war in Iraq or social security, writing about artists involves some degree of taste, which implies an admiration for the subject. Notions of objectivity are a little skewed from the start.

I think it's notable that the band does have some big problems with William's story when relayed through RS's fact-checker. It shows that, despite William's friendship with them, he was able to maintain some journalistic distance, if not personal distance. It shows that he overcame friendship to deliver a truthful story, and Russell's visit to his house shows that their friendship, in turn, overcame the potentially hurtful truths he exposed in the article.

I was going partially by that book's portrait of Iggy in my assumption that he ran exclusively hetero, but I didn't recall Angela Bowie's quote.

But I also know Wilde was meant to be something of a hybrid. McGregor said he used Robbie Robertson and Kurt Cobain to get the speech patterns. Obviously, these guys don't figure at all into the glam rock world Haynes is constructing, but I think it shows that they didn't want to pin Wilde down as exclusively Iggy.

I believe the shock therapy is lifted straight from Lou Reed's bio. Yeah, it leans more on Iggy, but there's definitely some Lou in there. As Dave said. And said well.

31. Singles

Great movie? Uh, no. Good movie? No, not really. It is, however, armed to the teeth with great songs and, at least musically, a fine little piece of history, what with all the flannel and angst. Plus, an adorable Bridget Fonda.

32. Townes Van Zandt - Be Here To Love Me

A documentary of the life and times of arguably america's finest songwriter. A testament to long reach of his influence the the wide swath he cut through country, folk, rock and blues.

I can't believe Singles made the list before motherfuckin':

33. NASHVILLE. Needs no explanation. If you haven't seen it, you need to. Now.

I put it somewhere between good and great, actually. Plus, despite the setting and the flannel, I don't really find it all that angst-ridden. It's pretty upbeat considering that the plot's driven by codependency, loneliness, and a miscarriage-by-car-accident(!). One of the better romantic comedies of the 90s for sure.

Unlike some of these other movies, though, the music is certainly more incidental - the only musician among the main characters is a kind of lame stereotype redeemed by Matt Dillon's performance. I agree that it has a great soundtrack, though.

"Singles" and "Vanilla Sky" are the two Cameron Crowe flicks I have yet to see.

34. O Lucky Man! (1973)

Astonishing, three hour-long sequel to "If...", again featuring Malcolm McDowell as the irascible Mick Travis, who embarks on an epic trek that illustrates that pratfalls of modern English life. Interspersed with numerous songs by Alan Price, who appears performing them in a studio with his band.

Little note on Singles. The scene where young Steve tells his friends that spam come out of your dick was filmed where I went to elementary school. The car accident was filmed in front of the coffee shop where I'd go when I cut class. Oh and I currently live around the corner from the apartment building. Not for nothing, just sayin is all.