The Grammy Awards are notorious for getting it wrong most of the time. But one long-standing category, Best Musical Film, has been quietly but often overhauled.
In 1984, when the category began, it was named Best Longform Video, created for collections of both MTV-ready clips—as the first winner, Duran Durana collection of the band’s first eleven videos—and documentaries like the Hal Ashby-directed Rolling Stones concert film Let’s Spend the Night Togetherand nominated in ’84. The growth in the production of music documentaries, especially with the advent of DVD, has distorted the category to that since the turn of the millennium—and a large number of those films are also shown in theaters, thanks to all the music film festivals like. Invisible Sound Minneapolis and Austin. Likewise, in 2014, the Grammys changed the name of Best Long-Term Video to Best Music Film. (Please note—the years indicated refer to when the Grammys were awarded, not the year of release of the film, or recording.)
The added gravitas of that word makes sense. Over the past twenty years, this Grammy has gone to films by great directors such as Martin Scorsese (Bob Dylan’s. No Home Area2006), Peter Bogdanovich (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ Runnin’ Down a Dream2009), and Ron Howard (The Beatles: Eight Days a Week2017). A number of Best Music Film winners for theatrical release were also awarded the Best Documentary Oscar, including 20 feet from Stardom (2015), Amy (2016), and Summer of the Soul (2022), while broadcasting similar projects They are rude (about Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, 2018) and Coming Home: The Beyoncé Movie (2020) were both nominated for several Emmys each.
That’s a remarkable group of films, period, and it got us curious about the Grammy nominees in the category. What do these Best Musical Film contenders have to teach us? Do they really work as filmmaking, or just as inspiration? Or like, you know, both, since one by one includes production credit for its artists and/or their families. They are reviewed alphabetically by topic.
The American Symphony (dir. Matthew Heineman)
The film is obviously amazing—at one point, we see jazz musician Jon Batiste lying in bed, placing his bible on his chest and folding his hands over it as he drifts off to sleep. Maybe you do that every night, but really, really neatly? Actually, in hindsight—Batiste, a New Orleans native who fronted a band on Stephen Colbert’s show for seven years, seems like a permanent fixture. to. He also appears to be a realist—a born actor who knows how to model for a setting. He may have been going to Julliard for seven years, but Batiste is a man of the people. So, you’re Grammy-bait. The film begins when he received eleven nominations in 2022; he ended up winning five, including album of the year We can. The film mainly concerns Batiste putting together a symphony while also helping his longtime partner, writer Suleuja Joauad (they actually got married on screen) through intense chemotherapy sessions, after her cancer returned after ten years in remission—and, in a cruel twist, again he woke up. for the third time in the night he won his Grammys. Those scenes are painful; some others, less. Batiste exudes confidence even when he tells us otherwise; as he describes an early career full of “pushing, pushing, pushing back,” we see him hugging a big building security guard—not usually the chummy kind, mind you—which is about as far from “pushing back” as it gets. Everything is captured in close-up with a seemingly floating camera; sometimes, very little love. The very real problems the couple faces here don’t stop this film from being, at times, simply hilarious. But Batiste has delivered impressive Grammy wins before. He might do it again—with a documentary where he wins five more, which would be some sort of Grammy ouroboros. (Netflix)
Big Night in Pop (Bao Nguyen)
This, too, could be the Grammy’s own—awarding a film about a previous major winner. But really, Grammy Rule No. 1: Whoever hires the most players in a session, wins. Think about it Frank Sinatrathink Christopher Crossthink Daft Punk. And most of all, think of Quincy Jones. Once, if asked if he ever thought about his 28th lifetime Grammy win, Jones paused for half a second and said, with a cat-and-canary smile, “I think about the 52 I’ve lost!” Jones was not involved in the making of this documentary about the USA African show “We Are the World”—Grammys Record of the Year in 1986, which Jones produced. But his spirit and his memory will rise even more at the 2025 event — perhaps even at the polls. Superintendent in Big Night in Pop by Lionel Richie, film producer and talking head. He tells the stories of Michael Jackson’s terrifying and brilliant management. (Jackson and Richie co-wrote the song.) Anyone who remembers “We Are the World” knows that it was all over the place, and widely covered, in its time. But this forty-year look back is really interesting, even if you didn’t know more details of the project to enter. It is one thing to read about these musicians who have the power of nature and each other taking their turn to mock each other; it’s another thing to watch it in real time, to see and hear this meeting of a proper conference. The documentary is far, far better and richer than the record ever was. And anyone who remembers Stevie Wonder’s turning of the hall of fame like Saturday Night Live The host of the event in 1983 will relish his role as the main comedian, from finally being ready to put together a song when the demo was cut, to coaching Bob Dylan on his lines—by mocking Bob Dylan. (Netflix)
June: The Money Story of June Carter (Dir. Kirsten Vaurio)
June Carter Cash was the child of a family act—the Carter family, country royalty—who went out on her own for a while to study acting in New York. But she eventually returned to Nashville and married Johnny Cash, also a country man, and put her solo career on hold—though she still played with him regularly—into adulthood, recording two critically acclaimed and Grammy-winning albums shortly before her breakthrough. death in 2003. This love story, produced by her children Carlene Carter and John Carter Cash, has a lot of eye candy—live and TV performances, private video, hidden photos, works—and most impressive to all, young and old, is June’s haunting presence—her wit restless and his piercing blue eyes. But there’s not enough here to convince the newcomer that he belongs on his own terms—one featured song, “Back in My Rock ‘n’ Roll Years,” is terrifying—and ending the film with a rainbow shot from the sky really pushes it. Not even The American Symphony he did that. (Paramount Plus)
Kings from Queens: The RUN DMC Story (Mr. Kirk Fraser)
RUN DMC, as it is now stylized, is the epitome of hip-hop. As RUN (Joseph Simmons) and DMC (Darryl McDaniels) and, in the archived footage, Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell), repeatedly stated, the group participated because they were like their fans – wearing street style (Adidas not included rope. , black, gold chains) that everyone can desire. The first celebrities of this genre, they were also the first to attract widespread fame (thanks to gang violence, not related to the gang, at a 1986 show in Long Beach, California) and achieve chart dominance (their cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” hit the top five in -1986). RUN DMC modeled the staples of hip-hop—a DJ rocking two turntables while two MCs traded first-rate rhymes—after four years of recording that yearned for R&B rather than revealing what made the genre unique, so it opened up. In three parts in two and a half hours, Kings of Queens does an excellent job of opening up the group’s story—the personal camcorder video this time is very welcome, especially the family video of Mizell’s proud father and his wife and sons. It also fills their context, as big dogs of the scene together with the founders and producers of Def Jam Records Russell Simmons (the older brother of RUN) and Rick Rubin: “He had a drum machine full of hits,” the former says. about meeting and saving. The killing of Jam Master Jay in 2002 is the epitome of fate, treated with tenderness and poignancy. And seeing RUN and DMC perform during the Hip-Hop 50 show at Yankee Stadium, meeting their younger selves, is enough to make a fan go verklempt. As DMC puts it at the beginning of the series: “We’ve changed the world that doesn’t like it.” (Peacock)
Stevie Van Zandt: Student (Mr. Bill Teck)
Steven Van Zandt, a man of many nicknames (Miami Steve, Little Steven), made great music (especially with Bruce Springsteen) and performed well (especially in The Sopranos), but his Rock & Roll True Believer schtick has long been background noise. With a subtitle that says Student— and wait, there you are Stevie now?—and with a running time of two and a half hours (as long as the three-part RUN DMC documentary is above), this reviewer fears the worst. Here’s a wonderful surprise—this is a direct account of a rich, well-lived life. The film opens, boldly, with a none-pop-metal ’80s video of Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul doing sweatbands and jazzercises. Big Night in Pop he looks shy and reserved. This applies to almost everything Van Zandt is shown wearing in the film—a proud peacock. Other A Very Good Night Synopsis: Van Zandt was the musical mind behind Apartheid United Against Apartheid’s “Sun City,” a sharp transition from the bromide of “We Are the World” to hard-hitting politics, the direction Van Zandt’s career took after sailing from E. A street band in the mid-’80s. He left, as Springsteen put it in his testimony, “left no politics to everything politics.” (Bruce, incidentally, also uploaded his own documentary this year to Hulu, Road DiaryVan Zandt deviated again after the end of the 1980s: “I realized that I didn’t want to be a politician,” he says. Instead, as he puts it, “I walked with my dog for seven years.” He also got himself a piece by piece—a publishing deal, some Hollywood commissions—before The Sopranos he came and opened a series of new routes, leading to his satellite radio stations, Underground Garage and World and Outlaw Country; a renewed tourism program; and reuniting with Bruce. The doctor calls in the big guns—Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Bono, Eddie Vedder—and they make a convincing case against Van Zandt. (Size)
67th Annual Grammy Awards airs on CBSSunday, February 2. A complete list of nominees is available here.
