Top 10 Movie Biographies

I finally saw Milk, and loved it, so I figured I'd list my Top 10 Movie Biographies (not based on accuracy - just on how good the movie was).

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. Raging Bull
3. Goodfellas
4. Schindler's List
5. Bonnie and Clyde
6. Milk
7. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
8. Reds
9. A Man For All Seasons
10. Malcolm X

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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx

Yes, pretty good list! Glad to see LoA on top...might wanna add Gandhi (1982) though, which is also a great biography movie
I didn't know that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was one...

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"Like the fella says...in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!"
- Harry Lime, Vienna, 1948

MY PICKS FOR THE TOP TEN BIOPICS


1. Lawrence of Arabia
1962, David Lean


2. Raging Bull
1980, Martin Scorsese


3. GoodFellas
1990, Martin Scorsese


4. Amadeus
1984, Milos Forman


5. A Man for All Seasons
1966, Fred Zinneman


6. BIRD
1988, Clint Eastwood


7. The Elephant Man
1980, David Lynch


8. Bound for Glory
1976, Hal Ashby


9. Vincent & Theo
1990, Robert Altman


10. Serpico
1973, Sidney Lumet

*ALSO-RANS Reds, Becket, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, The Killing Fields, The Miracle Worker, Malcolm X, Gandhi, Camille Claudel, Andrei Rublev, Ed Wood, Anne of a Thousand Days, Gorillas in the Mist, Missing, Hotel Rwanda, The Life of Émile Zola, MILK, Frances, In the Name of the Father, Moulin Rouge, Patton, Capote, Silkwood...

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Although I'm a huge fan of classic films and Warner Bros. and M-G-M's creation of dozens of solid biographical films, I'm more interested in what's going on in some more recent "biographical films".



The Sea Inside - Spanish sailor Ramón Sampedro (Javier Bardem) becomes a quadriplegic and spends the next 28 years fighting to be allowed to just die rather than live a humiliating life as a vegetable. Perhaps not amazingly surprising, his quest attracts "life" and cause. Although this film does echo many of the themes which Whose Life is it Anyway? touched on 24 years earlier, many viewers will prefer this less-theatrical, more-naturalistic take on it.



The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - Tragic but uplifting saga of Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) who suffers a stroke, becomes paralyzed (except for his left eye), and magically comes back from the "dead" by communicating his sardonic view of his situation with the aid of several women (see a theme here?) who work with him and give him support to develop a painstaking, yet triumphant way to eventually keep his razor-sharp mind from going insane. Director Julian Schnabel invents some new filmmaking/storytelling techniques which all seem to pay off for the audience.



As far as the super old school bios go, Queen Christina with Greta Garbo is hard to touch. It's got a fascinating subject, a luminous star, wit and sex all over the place, and the superbly-enigmatic ending.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Some of my favourites

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100 Favourites From The Future: REWIRED