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The Anti-Biopic: On Refusing the Cradle-to-Grave Shape

The biopic is a genre with a default structure, and the default is almost always the problem. An argument for the biographical films that refuse the shape.

Lena Ashworth·18 Jan·5 min

An old microphone in close-up against a deep red stage curtain, light hitting the capsule

Film

A Complete Unknown: Why the Dylan Biopic Works When Most Don't

A year after James Mangold's Dylan biopic arrived in the middle of a tired genre, the film's decisions keep looking smarter. An argument for the underrated music biopic of the decade.

Jules Okonkwo·30 Dec·6 min

A bronze bust in a glass case, with a single crack running down its face.

Essays

The Biopic Is Laundering Its Subjects

The contemporary biopic has adopted a specific form that functions as reputation management. An essay on the mechanism by which the biopic launders its subjects, and what the occasional exception does differently.

Lena Ashworth·16 Dec·8 min

A theatre stage in late afternoon light, empty save for a single microphone stand downstage right.

Film

Maria and Pablo Larraín's Closing Argument

Pablo Larraín's third and probably final entry in his trilogy of distressed-woman biopics is the most formally certain of the three, and the one least willing to flatter its subject.

Lena Ashworth·22 Sep·7 min

A lone figure in a stage spotlight rendered as a motion-capture outline, the crowd fading into black.

Film

Better Man and the CGI Monkey Problem

Michael Gracey's Robbie Williams biopic cast its subject as a CGI chimpanzee and posted one of the worst wide-opening results of the year. The film is still better than its box office.

Marcus Vell·2 May·7 min

A stylised LEGO minifigure in a yellow jacket stands in the centre of a black recording studio.

Film

Piece by Piece: Morgan Neville, Pharrell, and the Biopic in Plastic

Morgan Neville's LEGO-animated Pharrell Williams biography arrived in October 2024 as a formal provocation: a documentary rendered in plastic bricks. The film solves a specific genre problem, and creates a different one.

Lena Ashworth·8 Jan·7 min