Top 25 Biographical Dramas (Bio-Pics)
A list about fictionalised historical figures in dramatised documentary (docu-drama) cinema, based on a true story. These are all entertaining films, about internationally famous people, or interesting celebrities, presented in chronological order of release.
Bio-pics enjoy remarkable benefits from hindsight, knowing that seemingly random events, connections, and life changes, were really profound moments along a human timeline. Whether it’s a ‘eureka’ type brain-wave of discovery, or creative interpretations with fresh or specialist insight, or a timely repetition of traditional folksy wisdom, there’s a significant impact upon our politics, science, or culture. Inevitably, this apparent foresight grants invaluable structure and incalculable potency to socially-relevant docu-drama, when truth becomes stranger than any fiction.
I’m not keen on movies about sports, or villains (especially sanitised crime-stories), so picked only two westerns. Another favourite western, Walter Hill’s highly stylised actioner, The Long Riders (1980), was actually a greater novelty production, with its unique casting, of related actors playing the gang of outlaw brothers, than anything else, especially the ‘wild west’ genre.
Although many good, interesting subjects have been covered for classic small-screen productions, I decided to exclude any TV movies, such as exceptional feminist drama, Iron Jawed Angels (2004), by German director Katja von Garnier. That starred Hilary Swank, as suffragette Alice Paul, a leader of the ‘Silent Sentinels’.
John Hurt as John Merrick, in David Lynch’s THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980), was the very last time that anyone got away with shooting a modern feature in B&W. It’s been said this grotesque body-horror showcase might not have worked, even half as well, as sympathetic character-study, if Lynch had filmed it in engagingly glorious or unsubtly garish, colour. Though, quite obviously, its period setting helps to maintain a worthy sense of artistic quality.
“There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die!” Sam Shepard as test-pilot Chuck Yeager, in Philip Kaufman’s THE RIGHT STUFF (1983). What seems obvious now, certainly more than during the previous century, is how this was the very first grandly post-modern super-heroes movie. This truly awesome storyline about America’s pioneering astronauts boasts a superb cast, including the great Ed Harris as John Glenn.
Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness, and Robert De Niro as Al Capone, in Brian De Palma’s masterpiece, THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987). This is my all-time favourite ‘cops & robbers’ movie. It’s about the inspiring and legendary policemen, not the cold reality of gangsters. It’s about decency, and the moral struggle to maintain any honour, in a failing world that considers liberal democracy a weakness.
Jeff Bridges as businessman Preston Tucker, in TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM (1988), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. This story is about how genuine progress by entrepreneurial spirit, during the 1940s, was quite spitefully crushed by capitalist forces in the post-war marketplace. It’s one of the very best movies about cars and, certainly, the greatest screen drama that’s fully concerned with modernist automobile improvements.
Dwight Schultz as J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Paul Newman as General Leslie Groves, in SHADOW MAKERS (aka: Fat Man And Little Boy, 1989), directed by Roland Joffe. It’s about the top-secret ‘Manhattan Project’ to build a nuclear bomb. This delivers a ‘big science’ drama with impressive displays of character-acting. The original US title refers to nicknames for different weapon designs that were dropped on Japanese targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023) really wanted to be an epic remake, but was merely overlong at three hours.
Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison, in Oliver Stone’s endlessly fascinating movie, JFK (1991), a directorial masterwork showing the investigation by a New Orleans’ district attorney who suspects a secret government plot killed John F. Kennedy, in Dallas, Texas, 1963. Gary Oldman was perfectly cast as Lee Harvey Oswald. Pablo Larrain’s Jackie (2016), starring Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy, is a very worthwhile addition to this movie’s presidential assassination and conspiracy story.
Robert Downey Jr. plays Charlie Chaplin, in Richard Attenborough’s CHAPLIN (1992), a classic style of rags to riches story, from London to Hollywood. Iconic persona of the ‘Little Tramp’ emerged from poverty, for social climbing, while he switched from silent to sound pictures. Fantasy and improv episodes are most amusing when ‘off-screen’ scenes play for knockabout laughs. A coolly eccentric genius, from cockney to ‘corrupt’ celebrity, later reformed, to be acclaimed as a cultural icon.
Jason Scott Lee (no relation) stars in Rob Cohen’s DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY (1993), a romanticised version of an already legendary screen-hero, with a parade of hallucinatory nightmare sequences that explore, but never quite explain, a seemingly hereditary curse placed upon the martial artist’s family. Bruce died, at age 32, in 1973. His son Brandon died, age 28, in 1993, just five weeks before this movie was released, adding tragic poignancy to this enduring mystery.
Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp, and Val Kilmer as John Henry ‘Doc’ Holliday, in TOMBSTONE (1993), directed by George P. Cosmatos. This western is superior to previous movie versions about 1881’s famous ‘gunfight at the O.K. Corral’, and it’s a better actioner than Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp (1994), starring Kevin Costner.
Tom Hanks as Commander Jim Lovell, in Ron Howard’s visually stunning APOLLO 13 (1995), tells the story of a long-distance ‘rescue’ mission for a crippled Moon-shot, in April 1970. With a Lunar landing aborted, after an explosion aboard the spacecraft, the crew of three face claustrophobic doom, like never before seen on Earth. Except for... John Sturges’ almost sci-fi space-drama, Marooned (1969), based on a 1964 novel by Martin Caidin, vaguely predicted such troubles for astronauts.
Jeff Bridges as James Butler Hickok, and Ellen Barkin as Martha Jane Canary, in Walter Hill’s briskly-paced gunslinger movie, WILD BILL (1995). Bridges portrays Bill Hickok as a walking nightmare, a serial killer and yet a folk hero that sometimes wears a badge. As ‘Calamity Jane’, Barkin’s performance really seems quite definitive.
Liam Neeson stars in ROB ROY (1995), directed by Michael Caton-Jones. Despite its Irish actor playing an Scotsman (remember the oddly more offbeat casting for Russell Mulcahy’s Highlander?) this movie about a Jacobite rebel and folk hero, is not unlike a version of Robin Hood. In the 1700s, just £1K debt pits honour against justice, after violent offence prompts a MacGregor clan’s revenge plot. As Rob’s wife, Mary, Jessica Lange plays the most emotionally powerful scenes, and so practically steals the show. Even without her, Rob Roy benefits from having John Hurt and Tim Roth, as its chief villains, so it’s a superior drama, compared to Mel Gibson’s war epic Braveheart (also 1995), about knight William Wallace and king Robert the Bruce.
Russell Crowe plays mathematician, Professor John Nash, in Ron Howard’s spooky A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001). A graduate student, ‘recruited’ for US ‘espionage’, later discovers that primary influencers don’t exist beyond his own selfish imagination. We are drawn into a sympathetic or sinister fantasy with schizoid hallucinations based on conspiracy and paranoia. Only a few melodramatic scenes shatter a haunted scenario, but A Beautiful Mind never loses sight of its serious intent. Nash appears to solve his own psych problems with rationality. Jennifer Connelly plays Nash’s wife, Alicia.
Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, and Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, in Martin Scorsese’s best ever bio-pic THE AVIATOR (2004). I disliked DiCaprio until I saw this. After, though, the actor never made anything quite this good, again. Was it just a Hollywood fluke? The movie recreates many spectacular and historical scenes, with attention to particulars, but without losing track of Hughes’ pioneering achievements in various fields. The Aviator explores his eccentricity and obsessive career changes, from cinema to aerospace, until a bizarrely tragic decline.
Keira Knightley plays bounty hunter Domino Harvey, in Tony Scott’s DOMINO (2005). An instant cult-movie favourite, this crime actioner appears, at first, like a far-fetched modern-myth about Los Angeles, but its anti-heroine is just so whimsically rebellious that... it must be a ‘true story’, right? Sadly, the real Domino died (age 35), before the movie was released.
Rachel Weisz as scientist/ philosopher/ atheist Hypatia (of
ancient Egyptian library,
Kristen Stewart as rock star Joan Jett, in THE RUNAWAYS (2010), written and directed by Floria Sigismondi. With Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie, and Michael Shannon as producer Kim Fowley, this delves into a now legendary mid-1970s’ music scene, when any level of commercial or artistic success, for an all-female band, finally became possible, thanks, in part, to Japanese fans.
Ben Affleck directed himself, as Tony Mendez, in ARGO (2012). This true story of the ‘Canadian caper’ of 1980 that rescued six American diplomats, of a US embassy, from Iran, is an extraordinary, daring farce. Despite an enjoyably intense plot about secret CIA plans (finally declassified in 1997) to make a sci-fi movie - partly inspired by the genre novel Lord Of Light (1967) by Roger Zelazny - on locations in the Middle-East, as a ‘smoke-screen’ cover for saving the hostages, Argo spins off into many hilarious yet exciting twists when this audacious mission begins to go wrong.
“Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” Benedict Cumberbatch as British mathematician Alan Turing, in THE IMITATION GAME (2014), directed by Morten Tyldum. This concerns an intriguing WW2 story about Bletchley Park, where a team of experts worked to break the code of Germany’s ‘Enigma’ machine. Despite its drift away from historical facts, this slickly produced Hollywood bio-pic does fully honour the deeply tragic life, and great accomplishments, of such a rare genius.
Eddie Redmayne portrays theoretical physicist, Professor Stephen Hawking, in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (2014), directed by James Marsh. Slowly affected by crippling motor neurone disease (MND), meant that academic life for Hawking became an extraordinary story of determination and endurance, overcoming tragedy with advanced insights about cosmology, space-time, and black holes. Felicity Jones plays the scientist’s first wife, Jane. Hawking provided his own unique computerised voice, for this movie’s dialogue soundtrack. He died four years later. A documentary, A Brief History Of Time (1991), directed by Errol Morris, and based upon a Hawking book (1988), is a fine companion-piece to this film.
Felicity Jones as American lawyer and, eventually, Supreme Court judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in Mimi Leder’s ON THE BASIS OF SEX (2018), about defeating sexist attitudes of her peers, and some blatant discrimination, while building her career as a women’s rights attorney. Documentary RGB directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, was released in the same year, and it’s a fine companion movie to this legal drama.
Rosamund Pike as Nobel-prize winning scientist Marie Curie, in RADIOACTIVE (2019), directed by Marjane Satrapi. Can artistic licence go too far? There’s muddled science, a few historical flaws, and seemingly needless weirdness for surrealist visuals about spiritualism... but Radioactive is saved from all potential faults by a marvellous performance from Pike.
Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, in SPENCER (2021), directed by Pablo Larrain. Daringly insightful, and imaginatively staged, this portrayal is better than previous efforts, including Serena Scott Thomas (the actress was born in the same year as Diana), in Andrew Morton’s TV-movie, Diana: Her True Story (1993), and Naomi Watts, in Diana (2013), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.
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A-Z of Top 25 Bio-pic
Movies:
AGORA (2009)
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976)
APOLLO 13 (1995)
ARGO (2012)
THE AVIATOR (2004)
A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001)
CHAPLIN (1992)
CRY FREEDOM (1987)
DOMINO (2005)
DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY (1993)
THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980)
THE IMITATION GAME (2014)
JFK (1991)
ON THE BASIS OF SEX (2018)
RADIOACTIVE (2019)
THE RIGHT STUFF (1983)
ROB ROY (1995)
THE RUNAWAYS (2010)
SHADOW MAKERS (aka: Fat Man And Little Boy, 1989)
SPENCER (2021)
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (2014)
TOMBSTONE (1993)
TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM (1988)
THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987)
WILD BILL (1995)
