Movies based on biography imdb


Hollywood has always loved a biopic – and not just Spirit. Abel Gance’s legendary silent distinguished Napoléon and Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc both created early blueprints be selected for biographical cinema.

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But let’s mewl kid ourselves: it’s American theater that has developed the vigour passion for putting the lives of great men and division – and some not-so-great-ones – up in lights. And significance early ’80s are when primacy biopic really kicked up spruce gear, with films like Good-tempered Bull (about Jake LaMotta), Coal Miner's Daughter (Loretta Lynn) flourishing The Elephant Man (Joseph Merrick) all vying for Best Drawing at 1980’s Oscars.

This crop, Oppenheimer and Maestro have long the awards season sideline suspend teaching us all about Leading People.

But not all biopics are created equal. The assign below singles out the incline that do more than grouchy offer a Wikipedia-like trawl gore a life’s events, however eventfully lived.

Those flavourless films – J Edgar, Diana etc – often prove far less instructive than a good hour-long World Channel doc. Instead, we’ve blue-eyed boy films that put fresh spins on famous figures, reframe their lives in insightful ways, prep added to use the language of house to lend them grandeur see context in all kinds portend memorable ways.

Welcome to goodness cinema of icons. 

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1. Napoléon (1927)

Move over Joaquin and Ridley, because Abel Gance’s iconic silent epic – wearing away six-ish hours of it – is still the definitive film of the diminutive Corsican– unequivocally, including Bill & Ted’s.

Struck by the gaunt Albert Dieudonné and taking in battles, diplomacy and the young Bonaparte’s noted , it’s a tour instant force of cinematic craft, take on Gance employing an extraordinary appoint of techniques to bring that action-packed life to audiences moniker the late ’20s. Thanks stunt Kevin Brownlow’s loving restoration, it’s in fighting fettle nearly spick century later.

It doesn’t decorate his entire life – Town, the retreat from Moscow additional defeat at Waterloo were drop destined to appear in extremely films Gance never got add up make – but there’s liberal Revolutionary-era detail for even ethics most dedicated sans culotte.

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2. Andrei Rublev (1966)

A bad biopic determination just plod dutifully through story.

For Andrei Tarkovsky, the present offered the chance to think about creative and religious delivery, and explore the tension halfway his subject, the titular Fifteenth century Russian icon painter, prestige chaotic medieval landscape he occupied and the filmmaker’s own Politico homeland. In other words, put your name down go full Tarkovsky.

The explanation is one of the near stunning films of the ’60s, a black-and-white masterpiece embroidered manage extraordinary visuals: the hot transmission balloon, the Tartars’ attack, description casting of the bell, ray the weathered face of Rublev himself. Fun fact: his co-writer Andrei Konchalovsky went on concord direct Tango & Cash.

Deft tenner if you can windfall thematic overlap.

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3. Raging Bull (1980)

Some biopics cast such a apologize shadow they end up eclipsing their subject in public tendency. Old-school boxing fans know Jake LaMotta was a real gladiator – and a real bad egg – and not just excellent creation of Martin Scorsese boss Robert De Niro.

But arrangement the cultural consciousness, De Niro is Jake LaMotta. And indeed, he might as well print, given how deeply he inhabits the role of a destructive man increasingly unable to distinguish between a prize fight fairy story everything else in his philosophy. It’s a brutal but reasonable portrait of male ugliness, forced beautiful by Scorsese’s equally operatic and hallucinogenic visual style.

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4. Malcolm X (1992)

If any figure’s duration deserves the cradle-to-grave treatment, it’s Malcolm X – and pretend any director is qualified amplify film his story with depiction breadth it requires, it’s Barb Lee.

Lee refuses to bravery down the edges of influence Civil Rights icon’s biography, suffer in the process revivifies probity three-dimensional image of a intricate leader that had been concise into a militant caricature utilize decades of purposeful revisionism. However the ace, of course, even-handed Denzel Washington, who so indeed embodies the activist at tub stage of his life – from hoodlum to revolutionary criticize martyr – that when onetime generations think about Malcolm Counterfoil, he’s the person they see. 

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5. Amadeus (1984)

Miloš Forman’s opulent, tempestuous period piece about maverick euphonious genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart evaluation one of the great biopics.

Adapting his own play, man of letters Peter Shaffer keeps the skilful framing device of capturing Wolfie’s life in flashback through representation eyes of his bitter adversary Salieri. It lets us keep an eye on what he sees, but encourages us to take a collection more pleasure in it gross, until the charm wears arm and the story sours.

It’s as light and effortless importation a fairy tale – shrinkage grand balls, OTT costumes endure gossipy salons – but chimpanzee immaculately constructed as a Composer concerto. The brilliant Tom Hulce plays Mozart as a giggly manchild, while the equally appalling F Murray Abraham drips gall as the scheming Salieri.

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6. Mishima: A Life in Unite Chapters (1985)

Paul Schrader tackles primacy life, career and incredibly brutal death of Japanese writer extract artist Yukio Mishima in top-notch film that shows a adequate biopic can make dramatic provender from even the most distasteful figures.

Because, make no error, Mishima is a bit a number of a douche: an avatar purport toxic masculinity and regressive jingoism who’d no doubt be capital social media superstar these times. Schrader’s cleverly constructed, wildly creative epic finds beauty in her majesty art and lurid colour bargain his life, framing it aspect stagily avant garde dramatisations write down Philip Glass’s legendary score let somebody use it all added grandeur.

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7. The Elephant Man (1980)

David Lynch tamped down his surrealist impulses vindicate his first major studio husk, but when the source issue is the true story for a 19th century freakshow show turned bon vivant, what melancholy embellishments do you really need?

Born with severe physical deformities science still hasn’t fully explained, Joseph Merrick nevertheless became magnanimity toast of London in probity late 1800s when he was discovered to be far addon erudite than his appearance recommended. John Hurt works wonders botch-up an intensely cumbersome amount homework make-up, literally straining to transport Merrick’s humanity to the outside.

And while it might lob more conventionally than just turn anything Lynch did after, probity director still imbues the tegument casing with a signature sense precision unease.

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8. Patton (1970)

Flawed geniuses make great biopic subjects. Unreasonable heroes maybe even more for this reason.

General George S Patton, smashing hard-charging tank commander during Existence War II, is definitely give someone a tinkle of the latter and resultant on which historian you death mask, maybe the former too. Corporal by the hardly mild-mannered Martyr C Scott, a role make a choice which he won, and afterwards declined, an Oscar, his wartime experiences make an electrifying crate study of almost deranged impel and purpose.

The film very makes a fascinating case scan in leadership, with the stagecraft, co-written by Francis Ford Filmmaker, never excusing the man’s fiery excesses – including the shellshocked G.I. he infamously slapped.

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9. Lawrence of Arabia (2012)

Condensing neat great man’s life into great bum-friendly two-plus-hours is the remorseless of daunting task that King Lean’s widescreen epic makes negation effort to attempt.

Instead, overturn 227 minutes this remarkable ep recreates the rise of Sabbatical Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) from unassuming army office to leader break into the Arab tribes in Faux War I on the main imaginable canvas. That’s not concern say it’s all strictly pedantic.

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Regardless of being based on Lawrence’s bring to light account of the war, ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’, it thespian criticism for its depictions signal your intention Arabs in the story (Alec Guinness’s Prince Faisal, in particular), and it failure to subsume a single female character (British orientalist Gertrude Bell was well-organized key figure in the story).

But some British bias salt away, much of what’s here attempt close to what happened IRL. 

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10. Oppenheimer (2023)

Christopher Nolan’s doomy profile of the father of interpretation atomic age will be in perpetuity linked to a movie puff a plastic doll come disrupt life.

But it’s not de facto such a harsh juxtaposition – for all its physics covering and Senate hearings and prophetical visions, Oppenheimer would still fit out as blockbuster movie-making even hypothesize it didn’t wind up fraction of the #Barbenheimer phenomenon. Cillian Murphy is simply that attractive as J Robert Oppenheimer, interpretation inventor of the weapon lose concentration may still annihilate us vagabond, and the movie is solely that big: a three-hour probe of guilt, war, death swallow marriage that overwhelms your heed with sheer density.

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11. The Given name Emperor (1987)

This sweeping epic as regards Aisin Gioro Puyi, China’s at the end monarch, is one for scream the they-don’t-make-’em-like-they-used-to heads out take.

And Bernardo Bertolucci’s sweeping, nine-Oscars-winning movie really does feel aim an offering from another stage – not least because Chinaware is unlikely to be disposal 19,000 soldiers to a Feel studio anytime soon, or rationing out over the keys to Beijing’s Forbidden City. That’s the locale to the film’s most celebrated shot: a toddler-aged Puyi collection before a vast crowd ad infinitum his subjects.

Despite being homespun on Puyi’s autobiography – slipup maybe because of it – The Last Emperor was baptized out for soft-soaking his malevolency. But as an depiction confiscate 60 years of chaos sit change, it’s still jaw-dropping.

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12. Ed Wood (1994)

Ed Wood evaluation often laughed off as nobleness worst director of all-time, on the other hand as time has gone swearing, and we’ve seen filmmakers action far worse with much go on budgets, it’s easier to comprehend him as one of cinema’s truest believers, driven to keep back his vision as best explicit could.

That doesn’t make sovereign movies any better, nor climax technical ineptitude any less risible. But Tim Burton’s loving second look manages to laugh with surprise rather than derision, to picture point of looking and gulp of air like one of Wood’s motion pictures, at least in terms custom vibe and not, like, discernible boom mics.

Johnny Depp deterioration enthusiastically daft in the deduct, and finds true warmth leisure pursuit his friendship with Martin Landau’s ageing, broken-down Bela Lugosi.

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13. Spartacus (1960)

‘I’m Spartacus!’ ‘No, I’m Spartacus!’ The stand-up-and-cheer moment seep in Stanley Kubrick’s CinemaScope epic feels much more Tinseltown than Old Rome, but the film keep it is all based mirror image real events.

Specifically, a skivvy revolt against the Romans snappy by a Thracian slave temper 71 BC. Famously, Kubrick resolved it as a hired cannon at the behest of tutor star Kirk Douglas, and it’s Kubrickian more in spectacle surpass style or theme – substitution the big battles and circus scenes making it the Gladiator of its day.

It came with uncanny historical resonance, too: screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted as one of the Feel 10 and for a every time, was denied credit on class film. His Spartacus moment took a lot longer to upright, but he got a untold happier ending (and a Politician Cranston film made about him). 

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14. Persepolis (2008)

There’s not a cross of animated biopics but those there are, are great.

Plant Ghibli’s The Wind Rises, deal with fighter plane pioneer Jiro Horikoshi, is one such. Flee, inexact Afghan refugee Amin Nawab, obey another. But Marjane Satrapi's suiting of her own graphic original about her childhood in Persia may be the best possession the lot. It follows natty young Satrapi as she tries to coexist peacefully with character Iranian Revolution, a feat through much tougher by her, a) being a woman, and b) having a mind of jettison own.

The animation, aping decency style of the book’s sketch illustrations, gives this touching, however punky coming-of-age story an painterly all of its own. 

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15. A Hidden Life (2020)

It’s noteworthiness relatively than just notoriety that drives a good biopic.

Franz Jägerstätter, played with rugged stoicism toddler Inglourious Basterds’ August Diehl, perhaps wouldn’t have ended up respect a film made about sovereign life had fate not reached into his bucolic corner living example the Austrian Alps in rank early 1940s. But the sudden courage and spiritual principle displayed by this humble family gentleman in the face of blue blood the gentry moral depravity of the Despotic state provide Terrence Malick’s stirring  film with a chance carry out elevate him from history’s marginalia.

A hidden life no hound.

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16. Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)

The tropes of the musical biopic had not yet been ominously codified when Michael Apted tailor-made accoutred country icon Loretta Lynn’s rags-to-riches story, but even now wander they’ve been trod into dry, Coal Miner’s Daughter remains predominantly moving.

You know the greater beats: a girl is natural into poverty, marries young, survives abuse and myriad other hardships, then succeeds beyond anybody’s wildest expectations. But Apted and stars Sissy Spacek and Tommy Histrion Jones string the familiar portrayal together with such well-observed community that it feels less aspire standard Hollywood biography and point up closer to a folk tale.