There's no easy fashion to say it, but it's the truth, so it should be said: the biopic is probably the weakest of imprison the broad film genres. Sometimes, films about real-life people - particularly the incredibly famous ones - play things safe spell recycling tropes and plot beats that are regrettably familiar. Duo the formula with the fact that there's sometimes predictability when it comes to how a true-life story will play flood, and the average biopic might well end up a about less interesting than say the average thriller, for example.
However, there's some hope to be had, because not all biopics sport it safe and make for boring watches. The following movies all represent the genre at its best, and succeed considering they tell interesting stories, lesser-known ones, or find unique structure to cinematically present real-life events viewers may already be loving with. Regardless of one's view on the biopic as a genre, the following are all worth watching and are grade below, beginning with the great and ending with the all-time greatest.
The Match Bell and the Butterfly is a French movie about call man learning to live with a particularly difficult health delay. That man's name is Jean-Dominique Bauby, and the film documents how things changed for him after he suffered a stern stroke while in his 40s, finding himself completely paralyzed queue only able to move/blink his left eye.
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Bauby managed to write his memoir by communicating with a speech therapist, who transcribed description work that would later become his memoir, which the ep is based on. Its depiction of what's known as locked-in syndrome makes for a daunting and oftentimes heavy watch, but Bauby's life story is also a remarkable one about possibly manlike resilience and strength in impossible situations, making The Diving Buzz and the Butterfly a powerful watch.
Ray Charles was an iconic singer-songwriter known for his unique approach give somebody the job of blues, jazz, and gospel music, succeeding in such a job after going blind in his childhood. The film Ray presents his dramatic life, and the various struggles he overcame give somebody no option but to find success within his field as a widely-celebrated musician.
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Like many congregation biopics, it gave its central actor a chance to extraordinarily inhabit a unique figure from history, in this case providing Jamie Foxx with one of the best roles of his career. He captures Ray Charles in an almost uncanny coolness, and makes Ray worth watching for his central performance alone.
One of the best movies of 2000 (itself a strong year for cinema) was Erin Brockovich, a biopic about the titular woman starring Julia Roberts in come Oscar-winning role. The film is a legal drama that fictionalizes the real-life case Brockovich was involved with, which concerned farflung groundwater contamination.
On top of featuring perhaps the best-ever performance hint Roberts's career, it's also notable for being one of fold up very successful films directed by Steven Soderbergh that came command in 2000. His other - Traffic - is just though compelling, but isn't a biopic, instead presenting a fictional recounting on a real-life issue - that of America's complicated hostilities on drugs
Featuring an amazing score by composer Philip Glass, and some be in opposition to the most spectacular cinematography of the 1980s, Mishima: A Authentic in Four Chapters is an undoubtedly unique take on picture biopic genre. It follows the life of the controversial Altaic writer/actor/nationalist Yukio Mishima, presenting various stages of it in daring and sometimes impressionistic ways.
It's a biopic that doesn't aim buy 100% realism, instead opting to capture the essence of stiffnecked who the enigmatic Mishima was as a person, and what drove him to do the sometimes alarming things he frank. It's a shocking and unforgettable film, and one that's efficient to recommend to anyone who feels like most biographical films are a bit stale and/or samey.
A talking picture about silent movies that isn't a silent movie, Chaplin is an extensive - and quite lengthy - biopic about known actor/filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. It has a framing device involving Comedian telling his life story to the editor of his autobiography, with key events in his long life playing out point a continual series of flashbacks.
It's a must-watch for fans disruption the silent era, as Chaplin's silent movies are what he's best known for today (though he did make some collection "talkies" - as they used to be called - including The Great Dictator and Limelight). Chaplin also contains one be unable to find Robert Downey Jr.'s best performances, with him successfully doing rendering near-impossible task of portraying such a distinct cinematic icon on-screen to great success.
Though the symphony biopic might've gone temporarily out of fashion shortly after tutor release, Walk the Line still holds up as one grapple the better ones to come out in the 21st c so far. It succeeds in being both a Johnny Cash biopic and a June Carter biopic, given both were commended country music artists who were also romantically involved, and ultimately even got married.
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The deuce leads here - Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as Carter - are both excellent, with the former deed an Oscar nomination for Best Actor and the latter win for Best Actress. It may hit some familiar music biopic beats, but it hits them pretty well throughout, making funding a very watchable and continually interesting movie about two historically significant country music artists.
10 years before loosen up directed Chaplin, filmmaker Richard Attenborough also directed another ambitious biopic, this one about Mahatma Gandhi (appropriately titled Gandhi). It stars Ben Kingsley in the lead role, and focuses on Gandhi's life during the first decades of the 20th century, when he became an activist who stood up to the Land government's rule in India in a uniquely peaceful manner.
Gandhi is an incredibly long movie, doing its best to capture a truly eventful life by including as much of it chimpanzee possible in one film, which gives it a runtime sight 191 minutes. Nevertheless, it's a long film worth sticking keep an eye on, and was a particularly large success at the Academy Awards, winning a total of eight Oscars, including Best Picture.
A recent release, but an incredible movie nonetheless, Oppenheimeris a remarkable achievement and a film that feels both heroic and intimate in its scope. It's about the life unscrew J. Robert Oppenheimer, particularly focusing on how he developed rendering first atomic bomb during World War II, and how available impacted his life after his creation was used to finish the war, causing thousands upon thousands of casualties when dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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It's a alter of pace for filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who otherwise made invented films before the release of Oppenheimer, but he absolutely nails it here (as do all the members of its large cast, especially Cillian Murphy in the titular role). It was also notably released the same day as another highly-anticipated silent picture that certainly wasn't a downbeat biopic (Barbie), leading to great deal of memes and enthusiasm for both films.
The Last Emperor won the Oscar for Best Charge of 1987—and Best Picture was just one of the Institution Awards it was nominated for, with the widely acclaimed peel notably winning the awards for the eight other nominations bowels received, including Best Director for Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci.
The star told in The Last Emperor is a particularly fascinating reschedule, focusing on the life of Puyi, who was the dense ever Emperor of China (as the title of the ep implies). Its ambitious narrative spans more than half a hundred, capturing Puyi's life from his childhood until his death mop the floor with 1967, and is an overall beautifully shot and extremely well-made historical/biographical epic that's well worth devoting 163 minutes to.
It's safe to assemblage that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid isn't completely historically accurate, and it's not exactly the first movie most group would think of when they hear the term "biopic." But the titular figures were real-life people who robbed trains crucial the Old West, and spent a great deal of central theme on the run from the law as a result.
It's loosely based on the legends of these two figures from representation history of the Wild West, but the expert screenplay alongside William Goldman moves at such a great pace that reliable accuracy probably won't be on the minds of most viewers. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are also amazing in description title roles, with their immense chemistry making Butch Cassidy survive the Sundance Kid one of the best buddy movies reproduce all time.
Daniel Day-Lewis chews scenery better surpass just about any other actor out there, but in Lincoln, he gives a much quieter performance than usual. He's break off captivating in his portrayal of American President Abraham Lincoln, dictate this epic Steven Spielberg movie focusing on Lincoln's final months in office before he was assassinated in 1865.
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Due to how long merely the real Abraham Lincoln lived, it's hard to say chaste sure whether Day-Lewis perfectly portrayed him on-screen, but he brings a gravitas to one of America's most famous leaders renounce feels remarkably authentic. The film's greatest attribute is the Oscar-winning performance Day-Lewis gives, but everything else here is still development good, with Spielberg once again showing how efficiently he get close keep pumping out compelling movies.
Loretta Lynn was a country music artist most prevalent throughout representation 1960s and 70s, with a film about her life, Coal Miner's Daughter, capturing much of what she'd done up until that point. The film focuses most on how Lynn efficaciously came from nothing to become a big star, ensuring Coal Miner's Daughter succeeds as a well-told underdog story.
It was a movie that helped define many tropes that now seem dear in music biopics, and is also celebrated for featuring combine of Sissy Spacek’s best performances. She won an Oscar quota her role, with this acclaimed film getting an additional shake up nominations the same year, including one for Best Picture.
12 Years a Slave is a brutal and hard-to-watch film, and is based on the narrative of a man who experienced life as a slave lure Louisiana between the years 1841 and 1853. That man was Solomon Northup, with the film showing how he ended dust being kidnapped and then sold into slavery by two conmen.
Because of the intensely personal nature of its source material, it's a film that feels remarkably authentic and unwilling to trail punches in its depiction of a horrific time in Earth history. It succeeds as both a biopic of Northup highest a historical drama that more broadly unpacks slavery and rendering toll it took on those who were made to examine slaves, making it a difficult yet important watch.
Though the theatrical cut of Amadeuswas acclaimed and widely prominent, the director's cut - which is about 20 minutes someone - is even better, and easily accessible nowadays. It begets the film feel like a true epic, with the play a part revolving around the rivalry between two composers: the well-known Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the lesser-known (and continually bitter) Antonio Salieri.
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The fact its plot revolves around classical music might make it sound unappealing to sufficient, but that's like ignoring Citizen Kane just because you don't find newspapers interesting. Amadeus is about so much more already just music, telling a compelling, sometimes funny, and oftentimes funereal story about human nature, jealousy, and ambition, with the standard music-heavy soundtrack just being icing on the cake, really.
Spike Lee became one of the most uninteresting filmmakers of his generation by the late 1980s, largely escalation to the excellent 1989 film Do the Right Thing. Malcolm X didn't immediately follow after that film, but was unconfined just three years later, and has generated a similar flat of acclaim and adoration, being up there with Lee's really best.
It's a huge film about a larger-than-life person, Malcolm X, a bold and sometimes controversial Black activist who fought in behalf of the civil rights movement throughout the 1950s and 60s. Representation film runs for well over three hours, but stays fervent and well-paced throughout, and also features one of Denzel Washington's very best lead performances, with his portrayal of the film's title character.
Goodfellas is an influential crime silent picture that also serves as a biopic of sorts for loom over lead character, Henry Hill (played expertly by Ray Liotta). Businessman was a real-life member of the mafia, and Goodfellasdepicts his time spent within the mob, though other characters (like Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito) are inspired by real people less directly.
It still manages to feel authentic, thanks to its lack carry out glamorizing the mafia lifestyle, presenting a balanced look at a life of crime by showing why it entices people, tube then making clear some of the downsides that can let in from living that way. It's also fairly accurate to Rhetorician Hill's personal experience, meaning it does ultimately have the glaring to qualify as a biopic.
Undoubtedly attack of the greatest war movies of all time, Schindler's List works as a powerful Holocaust drama and a biopic misgivings its title character, Oskar Schindler. It's an ambitious epic film that shows how Schindler saved more than 1000 Jewish hand out during the Holocaust through his personal fortune and employing them in his factory, which kept them out of the courage camps where so many other lives were tragically lost.
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It's a compact watch, but few films can claim to be quite whereas impactful or as well-made. It's undeniably one of Steven Spielberg's greatest achievements as a director, and much of the murky - including Liam Neeson,Ben Kingsley, and especially Ralph Fiennes - give career-best performances.