Enjoyed it as a non-Dylan head. Timothée will be in the Oscar convo simply for just checking those Academy boxes, really. He was good here, but he’s had way better performances in other stuff.
Norton was a pleasant surprise. Holbrook looked unrecognizable as Cash. Thought Mangold had something really cookin’ when that 1965 title card hit, but then the film falls back into its safe, sugarcoated biopic ways.
‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ - a story with a fictional lead who doesn’t have his shyt together while trying to make it as a folk singer is just more interesting to me. Plus, the Coens. Plus, Isaac’s performance. Plus, just a way better script.
It’s hard for me to get that excited about music biopics because they all follow the same tropes and formulas. Every music biopic is basically Walk Hard : The Dewey Cox Story and so is this one.
There were times where it felt like the film paused itself when introducing someone new. The usual biopic behavior, and even the MCU is guilty of this. To someone who isn’t well versed with Bob Dylan’s history, I’m essentially playing “who’s that Pokémon?”. When it’s Johnny Cash, I get it.
But the guy who played the organ on ‘Like a Rolling Stone’?
Al Kooper looked like Jonny Greenwood in this, straight up. Lol.