Control

The best thing I can say about Control is that it is my favorite musical biopic, tied with The Buddy Holly Story, but that it is also more about the life of Ian Curtis than anything else. It avoids at the pratfalls that usually besiege the genre. There is no great tragedy that forces Curtis to become a musician, he is just a writer and knows some people in a band that need a singer. Not every moment is his life is a reaction to something that happened earlier in the film, we just observe what happens.

Outside of being a great movie, it is also beautiful to look at. Filmed in black and white (technically filmed in color then transferred to black and white) I couldn't imagine the picture any other way. The lack of color seems to merge perfectly with the music of Joy Division.

To be honest, if you have any interest in music you owe it to yourself to see this movie. Sam Riley isn't simply doing an impression of Curtis, he instead creates a fully realized character. The scenes leading up to and following his suicide are staged in a way that are both stunning and heartbreaking. That we never actually see the act makes it ever more powerful, even if at that point it seems inevitable.

NOTE:

Special mention goes to the music being recorded live by the actors playing the band, then simply being mimed.It adds a huge level of authenticity and this case, actually makes the music better.

That isn't to say that the actors are better than Joy Division, just within the context of films it always works better to be able to tell that the actors actually know how to play their instruments and don't look out of place. I usually spend half the time watching these type of movies trying to figure out if the actors are lip syncing or not and it becomes distracting after a while.