My 15 Favorite Rock Movies of All-Time

My wife and I just watched “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” this weekend. Good movie. Reminded me a lot of a sort of modern-day “American Graffiti”. In it’s honor I’d like to present my top 15 favorite “ROCK” movies of all time. Essentially, the criteria is that the film has to revolve somehow around rock and had to be theatrically released (which means DVD concerts don’t count). And also, this of course represents my “FAVORITE” rock movies in order. They are not particularly what I think are the best overall from an influential and scholarly point-of-view. Just the ones that affected me the most. So without further ado, I present to you the list:

15. Stop Making Sense: In a way, this is the culmination of the genius of the Talking Heads. There was a band that was destined to marry rock and film and they certainly did not disappoint. David Byrne’s oversized suit is now a rock ‘n roll icon.

14. U2: Rattle and Hum: By far, not the greatest film ever made and I know that most people consider it no more than a love letter the band wrote to themselves, but it is often overlooked that this is an incredible documentary on the tour that made U2 international superstars. Coming off of one of the greatest albums of all time, U2 proceeded to tour in 1986 and brought along a film crew. The result is a movie that, as a huge U2 fan, I never tire of. I’m sorry, but you can’t beat the chills you get when the band practices “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” with a Harlem Gospel Choir or when they record “Angel of Harlem” in the revered holy temple that is Sun Records.

13. The Last Waltz: Perhaps the greatest concert film ever made. Scorsese not only understands the power of music and film, but nobody has yet to match his skill of filming a concert. “The Last Waltz” is the brilliant standard for which all other concert films fall short of.

12. Kurt & Courtney: Not a good movie to watch if you’re a teenager in love with the music of Nirvana and desperately pissed that your musical idol is dead.

11. Jailhouse Rock: Elvis in his prime. Recently watched this in HD in it’s original cinemascope aspect ratio. Incredible. No self-respecting Elvis fan can mention rock movies without also mentioning the influence of this film. The jail dance scene is not only iconic, but still duplicated subconsciously by myriads of dance-based music videos. In fact, according to wiki, many musical historians credit it as being the first prototype for the modern music video.

10. Pink Floyd’s The Wall: No self-respecting Pink Floyd fan can mention rock movies without mentioning the pure brilliance and incredible mind-altering significance of “The Wall”. A movie so insanely confusing and creepy that it essentially stops being a film, and is essentially nothing more than a visual companion to the album. Which, in itself, qualifies it as one of the greatest rock movies ever.

09. American Graffiti: One of the things that amazes me when I watch the pure sh*t that is the “Star Wars” prequels, is that this is the same man (George Lucas) who directed “American Graffiti”, a brilliant movie that pretty much effortlessly defines what it was like to be a teenager in the fifties. A movie that has nothing to do with special effects. A movie that was essentially what we would consider an “indie” and more than anything, a movie that utilizes the soundtrack of the early days of Rock ‘n Roll to monumental perfection. I remember my dad had owned the soundtrack on vinyl when he was a kid and I found it at my Grandma’s house when I was obsessed with oldies. One of the greatest soundtracks of all time. Essentially, a blueprint.

08. The Doors: One of Oliver Stone’s crowning achievements. Not sure if there is a single person who loved this movie who didn’t either go out and buy every Doors album they could or at least listen to the ones they owned obsessively for months straight afterwords. And let’s just mention here that Val Kilmer is pretty much divinely-inspired casting as Jim Morrison. Enough said.

07. Moulin Rouge: Often, when I see a movie that is so amazing that it’s almost impossible to watch any other one, I fondly refer to it as “Moulin Rouge Disease”. This was a movie that did that more than any other I’d seen. I’m not sure what it is about this it that is so insanely addicting, but it is like a blast of candy. I love it dearly, and the way in which Baz Lurhman and Craig Armstrong took some of the greatest rock songs and somehow turned them into perfect musical fodder, i will never understand. I also don’t know what it is about Elton John songs that somehow come across amazingly in film. What “Almost Famous” did for “Tiny Dancer”, “Moulin Rouge” did for “Your Song”.

06. High Fidelity: My wife and I’s relationship is essentially built around rock. It’s amazing to think about. We met because she heard me singing a Johnny Cash song during a high school music contest. She introduced me to world’s of amazing new music and on our first date, the movie we went and saw (after going to Best Buy and purchasing a “Dave Matthews Band” concert DVD) was “High Fidelity”. So besides this movie being a brilliant film that somehow easily describes a life dictated by your music, it is also significant in that it was a defining moment in my musically-dictated life.

05. Once: “Once” to me, is the first movie to utilize the raw romance and heartbreak of rock music. Something that surprises me that it hadn’t been done before, but when it was with a movie like this, it was done to perfection. Glen Hansard (of Irish rock band “The Frames”) is so magnificent in this film, and his music paints the picture of raw “rock” beauty in it’s most bare form. Seeing this film alongside the other great rock films is like “watching” a series of great Zeppelin records and throwing in an early Dylan record for good measure.

04. This Is Spinal Tap: In my mind, this may honestly be the greatest Rock Movie ever made. It is not my “FAVORITE” rock movie of course, which is what this list represents, but in terms of influence, “This Is Spinal Tap” is perhaps the most quoted, loved and influential “rock” movie ever made. The movie is a comedy (perhaps also one of the greatest of all time), but when bands like KISS and Led Zeppelin both admit to getting lost on the way to the stage, you have to stop to consider the authenticity of the commentary being made. When bands like “Supergrass” are actually homaging lyrics from Spinal Tap songs (such as the song “Evening in the Day” where they use a line from the Spinal Tap song “All The Way Home”), you know you’re not just dealing with a fictional band anymore. And when several metal bands of the 80’s remarked that they hated the movie because it was “Too Real” you know you’re dealing with something special here. For crying out loud, scenes from the movie were actually used in the documentary series “The History of Rock ‘N Roll”. “This Is Spinal Tap” is a masterpiece of rock film. It is THE rock film and if you haven’t seen it, you simply haven’t yet lived. Or, as Nigel Tufnel would remark, you’re not “turned up to 11″.

03. A Hard Day’s Night: Growing up, I didn’t listen to much secular music. It wasn’t necessarily that my parents strictly forbid it per se, but we were a very religious family and my mom always had Christian radio on and it was just what we listened to. Although, in my early teens I discovered Oldies. I spent years listening to nothing but Christian music alongside mountains of Elvis, The Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival and a multitude of others. But I never gave the Beatles a chance. Then the “Beatles Anthology” aired on TV, and the majority of my classmates, who usually only listened to Top 40 or Country, all became obsessed with the Beatles. “The Beatles Anthology” created a Beatles revolution again, as far as my town went. Thus, I hated them. I didn’t like things that were popular. I tried to find value in more critically acclaimed art. BUT….I didn’t watch the “Anthology” and I never listened to the Beatles. I just didn’t like them because everybody else liked them. Then I met my wife when I was a Junior in High School. The “Anthology” (in addition to other things) had turned her into a mega-Beatles freak as well (her Top Rock movies includes this one at Number ONE). I had fought off the Beatles as long as I could, but then I started listening to them, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was “A Hard Day’s Night”. I knew rationally that I couldn’t consider myself a connoisseur of classic film and classic rock without being deeply and madly in love with the Beatles, but when I did finally come around it was for certain a religious experience. Listening to Beatles records for the first time, and devouring them, was like reading the Bible and hearing the word of God. And watching “A Hard Day’s Night” was like being baptised by the glory of the Fab Four. I know I’ve been mostly talking about my Beatles conversion as opposed to the movie itself, but it’s hard to talk about this film without thinking as a whole about my “musical salvation” if you will. That’s what this movie brings to mind to me. That’s why it is so important. That, and the fact that it just freaking rocks!!!!!!

02. That Thing You Do: One of my biggest guilty pleasures. I realize that this is not particularly a hated film at all, but it’s also not exactly the kind of movie you find at the top of any lists (or on them at all), but everybody has those movies or albums in their life that, for some reason, hit them in all the right spots. This movie did that for me. It was one of those movies I would watch over and over and over again when I was younger. And even today, it is nothing but pure bliss. Though the bands and music are fictional, Tom Hanks’ story of a One Hit Wonder in the post-Beatles American sixties is so incredibly well crafted and extremely accurate that, very much like “Almost Famous”, it’s almost like an extremely fun history lesson. Where “Almost Famous” delves into the soul of the Glory age of Rock, “That Thing You Do” explores the whimsical intensity of the Golden Age. Of course, anybody is going to bring up the infectious main title song and, trust me, it is still, almost a dozen years later, fantastically catchy and sounds like it is STRAIGHT out of the sixties (it was in fact written by Adam Schlesinger of “Fountains of Wayne” fame). But the thing that I think makes “That Thing You Do” such a wonderful film, besides it’s brilliant historicity, is the casting. The wonders are never boring and never off-key. They carry the movie. And everybody plays an amazing role, even down to Guy Patterson’s father, the owner of Patterson’s Appliances, who brilliantly plays the blue-collar store owner to a delightful T.

01. Almost Famous: Admittedly, I half decided to do a “Favorite Rock Movies” list just so that I could give “Almost Famous” a number one slot for something. I just desperately love this movie with all my heart and soul. Not many movies give you the same feeling over and over again no matter how many times you’ve seen it. This movie does that for me. It is the story of the glory days of rock (not to be confused with the “Golden Age” of Rock). And it is told with undebatable accuracy and immovable clarity, mostly because the writer/director lived it. Cameron Crowe, for those who don’t know, was a child prodigy, having written rock journalism for Rolling Stone when we was still 16 years old. He traveled with bands like Fleetwood Mac, Black Sabbath and more when he was still at the age that they would have affected him the most. The story of William Miller is essentially the story of Cameron Crowe and, in my opinion, it makes for his most honest and interesting film. There’s not a character in this film that you don’t absorb and the situations demand your undivided attention. But more than anything, “Almost Famous” is the greatest love letter to classic rock and roll that there has ever been. It is simply nothing more than the sum of the incredible influential effect that this music had on one individual, and it speaks for a generation that was effected the same. But more than that, I see it teach a new generation what made that music, and that time, so special to begin with.