3) Almost Famous
Movies that don’t only feature music but are actually about music, and art, and criticism, and identity, these are movies that are hard to mess up, but they’re also hard to make into real lasting and effective pieces of filmmaking. Almost Famous is a bit of a wonder. It takes you to the heights of magic that befit a kid who is catapulted into the middle of the waning days of the pinnacle of the 70s rock scene, which makes his disillusionment our disillusionment. It captures the allure of stardom and drugs and then shows their weighty downsides.
Cameron Crowe is clearly at his best when dealing with the topic of music, which he showed again (for the first time really since Almost Famous) in his recent documentary Pearl Jam Twenty. He seems most suited for understanding and reproducing the narcissism and eccentricity that comes with the madness seemingly necessary for real artistry. This movie creates a world that you want to be a part of, and our surrogate William Miller gets to enjoy it the way we would hope we would. And if that’s not enough there’s lots of great little poetic moments that are beautifully handled, and a cast that surely propelled a great many careers.