The festival circuit offers a glimpse into what may be on the minds of filmmakers and the executives at studios and streamers with the authority to either greenlight projects or to acquire films seeking distribution. This year, seemingly more so that in quite some time, there’s a focus on documentaries about the lives of contemporary musicians; the real winner appears to be audiences, since no genre and style of music is being left out of the mix.
One of the programmers for the Over-the-Rhine International Film Festival who traveled to Toronto with me for their signature film festival in September marveled at how gob-smacked he was walking out of Paul Anka: His Way. The Canadian singer-songwriter had a six decade-long career with hit songs that trafficked in jazz, pop, rock and country. And then there was another TIFF standout, The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, a four-part docu-series that explored the impact of another Canadian act, a band of musical brothers from Kingston, Ontario, who represented and defined the country to the world.
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Personally, I have been thoroughly disappointed in the news about the nine-hour stalled Prince documentary from Ezra Edelman and Netflix that will likely never see the light of day due to concerns from the Prince estate. As a lifelong fan, I spent much of April 21, 2016, watching the YouTube clip of Prince alongside an all-star band at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as they performed George Harrison’s "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." Prince and Harrison (my favorite Beatle) were inductees and the Prince guitar solo toward the end was an epic and majestic reminder that he was an underrated hero/god on the instrument.
Every music lover has their favorite artist and memories ready for endless looped playback, but this current focus on the performers and the behind-the-scenes examinations of their work feels different. There has been a movement dedicated to making sure that we give our heroes their flowers before they leave this mortal coil, and so we should join in the celebration whenever possible and fill the aisles and streets with dancing, starting with these precious visual tracks.
Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
This account allows Springsteen to re-team with Thom Zimny, who directed Western Stars back in 2019, but here they zero in on the enduring legacy of a musician and a core band that have performed together for six decades. Six decades. Springsteen anchors the story — as he does with the music — serving as the narrator who takes audiences behind the music as the band prepares to hit the road once again.
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Elton John: Never Too Late
One of two performers capable of living up to the Piano Man moniker (along with sometimes tour mate Billy Joel) Elton John gets the full feature doc treatment here — following the narrative biopic Rocketman from director Dexter Fletcher with Taron Egerton as John — thanks to RJ Cutler and John’s husband David Furnish. This feels like a truly fitting goodbye to the most enchanted yellow bricked road for one of music’s iconic figures, so no one should mind if it comes adorned with the biggest glitziest pair of rose-colored glasses anyone has ever seen.
Better Man
If you want an entertaining doc with the feel of a staged pop extravaganza, then look no further than Michael Gracey’s take on UK mega-star Robbie Williams, which dares to explore the constraints of pop stardom with an ingenious conceit, making Williams appear as a singing and dancing monkey — played by motion-capture actor Jonno Davies. Just the mere idea alone feels like an unexplored idea from U2’s "Zoo TV" or "PopMart" tour glory days. There is no one better to tackle such a production than Gracey, who burst on the scene with The Greatest Showman. With Williams at the center of things, the show continues to go on.
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The Greatest Night in Pop
It feels strange to include a film about the making of a song in a feature on musical documentaries, but "We Are the World" is no mere song, which this Netflix release perfectly captures, especially for a generation that probably has no idea what the song meant at the time of its creation and debut on the radio. Granted, much of the fun of watching the film comes from the grand sense of nostalgia and the gradual reveal of each and every musical star on hand at a time when they were at the height of their popular prowess. The resulting film is a time capsule which, once opened, floods our imaginations with reclaimed memories of a moment when we believed that music could matter on a global scale.
Piece By Piece
Who would have dreamed of partnering with celebrated documentarian Morgan Neville (2014 Best Documentary feature 20 Feet From Stardom) to use LEGOs to craft a visually alternative and compelling encapsulation of an artistic journey that is far from over? The answer, unsurprisingly, is Pharrell Williams, a dynamic musical multi-hyphenate (singer-songwriter-producer) and eternally youthful presence who has yet to encounter a sphere of creative influence that hasn’t sparked his passion. The real genius of Piece By Piece lies in Pharrell’s eclectic mix of collaborators — from Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake and Daft Punk to Busta Rhymes, Pusha T and Jay-Z — who submitted to be rendered as LEGO characters as they share their experiences of working with Pharrell. It is a one-of-a-kind movie that can’t help making even the hardest-to-please audiences just a little "Happy."
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Luther: Never Too Much
For me, the most heartbreaking of the slate, Dawn Porter’s examination into the life and music of Luther Vandross, captures all of the beats and grooves of a most successful career, but that story ends with Vandross missing out on the final piece of his own puzzle — the personal satisfaction of finding the love that might have sustained him. A shrewd singer and songwriter with the voice of an angel, Vandross worked to accomplish each and every professional goal like Tom Cruise in a Mission: Impossible movie, sprinting from background work to writing and singing commercial jingles to crafting pop and soul hits for himself and others that did so much more than stick in our ears. His songs caressed our hearts, even when the aim was nothing more than to get us up on the dance floor. And yet, I dare anyone to watch this film without a box of tissues as Porter finishes off with the story behind "Any Love," one of his final hits.
