---
title: "Music films"
canonical: "https://film.one/films/genre/music"
region: "US"
total: 151
shown: 60
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Music films

A music film has one job that is harder than it looks: to let a song play. The bad ones cut away after eight bars to a face in the crowd or a montage of headlines, as if the music were an interruption. The good ones trust it, and trust us to watch someone sing for four minutes without a plot arriving. We also want the scenes between the numbers to hold up, though we forgive a good deal if the songs do. The shelf leans towards the working musician, even when the subject is Mozart: rehearsal rooms, small clubs, tours nobody will remember.

Start with [Amadeus](/film/amadeus) (91), where F. Murray Abraham's Salieri makes envy of genius painfully understandable; [This Is Spinal Tap](/film/this-is-spinal-tap) (91), a mock documentary whose fools are played with complete seriousness; and [Distant Voices, Still Lives](/film/distant-voices-still-lives) (90), where a Liverpool family sings what it cannot say. After those, try Nashville or Once, one crowded and one sparse, both patient enough to let the songs finish.

For US. 151 titles; 60 listed here. Add `?region=XX` for another country.

- [*Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore?*](https://film.one/film/pulp-what-do-you-do-for-an-encore.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 65 · 1h 38m · Documentary/Music
  Garth Jennings’s film about Pulp is warm and funny whenever it looks backwards, and Jarvis Cocker is good company throughout. When it reaches the O2 stage, where it ought to come alive, the cameras stand too far back to catch what the band is doing.
- [*Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger*](https://film.one/film/oasis-dont-look-back-in-anger.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 74 · R · 2h 03m · Documentary/Music
  The concerts are stirring and the Gallagher humour survives the reverence. This is good company for those who love the songs, though the fan tributes run long and the reconciliation gets little examination.
- [*Nimrods*](https://film.one/film/nimrods.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 67 · R · 1h 47m · Comedy/Music
  Lee Kirk’s coming-of-age comedy earns affection through its young cast and musical enthusiasm. Thin characters and broad jokes limit the pleasure, but there is enough warmth here for those who like their teenage rebellion amiable.
- [*Don't Say Good Luck*](https://film.one/film/dont-say-good-luck.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 71 · PG-13 · 1h 36m · Comedy/Music · on Netflix
  Julia Hart’s small, sincere film about a girl rehearsing a school musical while her mother’s cancer returns is honestly acted and mostly unsentimental. Melanie Lynskey is the reason to watch it; the school half of the story is a good deal thinner than the home half.
- [*Power Ballad*](https://film.one/film/power-ballad.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 63 · R · 1h 39m · Comedy/Music
  John Carney’s comedy about a stolen song opens with the best scene he has shot in years and then keeps its two leads apart for most of what follows. Rudd is good company; the film around him is thinner than it thinks.
- [*Michael*](https://film.one/film/michael.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 47 · PG-13 · 2h 08m · Music/Drama · on Starz
  Jaafar Jackson moves like his uncle and the stage numbers are the real thing; around them, Antoine Fuqua has made an authorised biography that stops the moment the story gets difficult. Watch it for the dancing and expect to argue about the rest.
- [*Mother Mary*](https://film.one/film/mother-mary.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 58 · R · 1h 52m · Music/Drama · on HBO Max
  David Lowery’s pop psychodrama gives Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel plenty to do, but too little that makes their characters matter. The performances and visual craft hold our attention longer than the writing deserves.
- [*EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert*](https://film.one/film/epic-elvis-presley-in-concert.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 81 · PG-13 · 1h 38m · Music/Documentary · on Paramount+
  Baz Luhrmann’s concert documentary is absorbing whenever Elvis Presley is singing, and the restored footage gives us plenty to enjoy. The biographical passages are too protective, but the performances make a strong case for spending the evening here.
- [*The Choral*](https://film.one/film/the-choral.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 57 · R · 1h 53m · Comedy/Drama · on Netflix
  Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner send a choir master to a town emptied of its young men, and Ralph Fiennes gives him a quiet, exact grief. Around him the film tells too many small stories and finishes almost none of them.
- [*Song Sung Blue*](https://film.one/film/song-sung-blue.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 68 · PG-13 · 2h 13m · Music/Romance · on Netflix
  Craig Brewer’s true story of a Milwaukee couple and their Neil Diamond tribute act is warmer and sadder than its wigs suggest. Jackman and Hudson sing it honestly; the script keeps piling on misfortune until we found we had stopped feeling each blow.
- [*The Testament of Ann Lee*](https://film.one/film/the-testament-of-ann-lee.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 73 · R · 2h 17m · History/Drama · on Hulu
  Fastvold’s musical life of the Shaker founder is at its best when the congregation is singing and stamping, and Amanda Seyfried is remarkable throughout. Between the hymns it explains itself, at length, through a narrator who does not trust the pictures.
- [*Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere*](https://film.one/film/springsteen-deliver-me-from-nowhere.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 61 · PG-13 · 2h 00m · Drama/Music
  Scott Cooper shrinks the Springsteen story to one year and one cassette recorder, which is the right idea. Jeremy Allen White is quietly good and the recording scenes are the best thing here; the rest is a biopic being careful with a living man.
- [*Blue Moon*](https://film.one/film/blue-moon.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 78 · R · 1h 41m · Music/History · on Netflix
  Richard Linklater’s chamber drama gives Ethan Hawke room to make Lorenz Hart witty, needy and painfully human. Some speeches run too long, but we recommend it for the performances, especially Andrew Scott’s.
- [*The History of Sound*](https://film.one/film/the-history-of-sound.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 62 · R · 2h 08m · Drama/Romance · on Hulu, MUBI
  Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor make the song-collecting scenes worth hearing and watching. Oliver Hermanus’s romance is less persuasive: carefully made, sometimes moving, and too restrained to sustain its length.
- [*KPop Demon Hunters*](https://film.one/film/kpop-demon-hunters.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 76 · PG · 1h 36m · Fantasy/Music · on Netflix
  A K-pop trio fights demons between encores, and the film is faster, funnier and better drawn than that sentence suggests. The songs are good, the faces are better, and the story underneath is the ordinary one. Worth your evening, especially with children.
- [*The Ballad of Wallis Island*](https://film.one/film/the-ballad-of-wallis-island.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 78 · PG-13 · 1h 40m · Comedy/Drama · on Peacock
  Tim Key and Tom Basden stretch their 2007 short into a small, funny, damp film about a folk duo reunited on a Welsh island for an audience of one. The chatter wears in places; the songs and Carey Mulligan hold it together.
- [*Becoming Led Zeppelin*](https://film.one/film/becoming-led-zeppelin.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 70 · PG-13 · 2h 02m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  The three surviving members tell the story of their first two years, and the concert footage, left to run whole, is the reason to go. It is an authorised account and it behaves like one: nothing said here would trouble a lawyer.
- [*Better Man*](https://film.one/film/better-man.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 74 · R · 2h 15m · Music/Drama · on Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+
  Michael Gracey’s Robbie Williams biopic casts a CGI chimpanzee as its star and stages its musical numbers with real nerve. The story around them is the one every pop biopic tells, and it is told at length.
- [*A Complete Unknown*](https://film.one/film/a-complete-unknown.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 68 · R · 2h 21m · Drama/Music
  James Mangold’s Dylan film is well made, well sung and well cast, and it has decided, honourably, that it cannot get inside its subject. The songs carry it; the drama between them mostly waits for the next one.
- [*Maria*](https://film.one/film/maria.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 57 · R · 2h 03m · History/Drama · on Netflix
  Pablo Larraín closes his run of films about famous women with the most handsome and the coldest. Angelina Jolie is composed and exact as Callas, Edward Lachman lights her like a painting, and the film keeps her behind glass for two hours.
- [*Kneecap*](https://film.one/film/kneecap.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 80 · R · 1h 45m · Music/Comedy · on Hulu
  Rich Peppiatt’s account of how a Belfast rap trio came to be is fast, rude and funnier than anything we have seen in a while, and the band play themselves better than actors would have. The father and the paramilitaries are the price of admission.
- [*Back to Black*](https://film.one/film/back-to-black.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 48 · R · 2h 02m · Music/History
  Marisa Abela is good enough to make you stop checking her against the real thing, and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s film is too fond of everyone in it to tell her story. A soft-lit romance where a hard life should be; watch it for her.
- [*The Idea of You*](https://film.one/film/the-idea-of-you.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 73 · R · 1h 56m · Music/Comedy · on Amazon Prime Video
  Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine make this uneven romance worth the evening. Their attraction is convincing, though a thinly written pop star and some laboured obstacles leave the actors doing more than their share.
- [*Bob Marley: One Love*](https://film.one/film/bob-marley-one-love.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 48 · PG-13 · 1h 44m · Music/History · on Paramount+
  Kingsley Ben-Adir gets the walk, the voice and the stage, and Lashana Lynch gives the marriage what fire it has. Around them, four screenwriters and the Marley family have built a biopic that lists the achievements and hides the man.
- [*Soul*](https://film.one/film/soul.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 80 · PG · 1h 41m · Animation/Family · on Disney+
  Pete Docter makes a funny, moving animation about the pressure to find a purpose. The rules of its soul world need pruning, but Jamie Foxx and the jazz give *Soul* enough life to earn a warm recommendation.
- [*American Symphony*](https://film.one/film/american-symphony.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 73 · PG-13 · 1h 44m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  Matthew Heineman finds warmth and feeling in Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad’s shared life. The music-making gets less attention than it deserves, but their company makes this uneven documentary worth an evening.
- [*Maestro*](https://film.one/film/maestro.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 72 · R · 2h 09m · Drama/Romance · on Netflix
  Bradley Cooper’s film about Leonard Bernstein is a good film about a marriage and a thin one about music. Carey Mulligan’s Felicia is the reason to watch; the man at the centre is accurately imitated and only occasionally alive.
- [*Trolls Band Together*](https://film.one/film/trolls-band-together.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 58 · PG · 1h 31m · Animation/Family · on Amazon Prime Video
  The third Trolls film is 91 minutes of boy band jokes for the parents and colour for the children, made with real care in the textures and much less in the story. Small children will be happy; nobody else will remember it by Tuesday.
- [*WHAM!*](https://film.one/film/wham.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 75 · NR · 1h 32m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  Chris Smith’s documentary is an affectionate, enjoyable account of Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael’s friendship. Its archive brings them close, though the fondness too often discourages the questions that would make this more revealing.
- [*Weird: The Al Yankovic Story*](https://film.one/film/weird-the-al-yankovic-story.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 77 · PG-13 · 1h 48m · Music/Comedy · on The Roku Channel
  Daniel Radcliffe’s solemn commitment makes this cheerfully fabricated music biography worth an evening. Eric Appel sustains the silliness longer than expected, though the repeated genius jokes could have used a firmer cut.
- [*TÁR*](https://film.one/film/tar.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 84 · R · 2h 38m · Music/Drama · on Netflix
  Todd Field’s first film in sixteen years is a long, cold, exact portrait of a conductor whose power is running out, and Cate Blanchett fills every frame of it. It runs twenty minutes too long and refuses to say what it thinks. We recommend it warmly.
- [*Moonage Daydream*](https://film.one/film/moonage-daydream.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 78 · PG-13 · 2h 15m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  Brett Morgen’s archive portrait of David Bowie is worth seeing for the concert footage and the force of its sound. The restless editing can be exhilarating, though the reverence and 135-minute running time require some patience.
- [*Elvis*](https://film.one/film/elvis.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 66 · PG-13 · 2h 39m · Music/History
  Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis film is at its best when Austin Butler is on a stage, which is not often enough in 159 minutes. The concerts are electric; the rest is Tom Hanks’s Colonel Parker narrating, and the narration keeps Presley at arm’s length.
- [*Sing 2*](https://film.one/film/sing-2.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 63 · PG · 1h 50m · Animation/Comedy · on Amazon Prime Video
  Garth Jennings’s animated musical makes decent family entertainment out of engaging voices and elaborate musical numbers. Its crowded story and relentless song snippets are harder to enjoy, particularly when the performers stop to deliver another lesson.
- [*tick, tick... BOOM!*](https://film.one/film/tick-tick-boom.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 72 · PG-13 · 2h 00m · Drama/Music · on Netflix
  Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first film as director is a thank-you note to Jonathan Larson, and it is best when it stops being grateful and lets Andrew Garfield fret at a piano. Hurried and uneven, and more moving than it has any right to be.
- [*Keyboard Fantasies*](https://film.one/film/keyboard-fantasies.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 80 · 1h 11m · Documentary/Music · on The Roku Channel, Tubi
  Posy Dixon’s affectionate documentary makes Beverly Glenn-Copeland excellent company and gives his music room to persuade us. Its admiration could use more questioning, but the warmth between him and his younger bandmates makes this an easy recommendation.
- [*Mogul Mowgli*](https://film.one/film/mogul-mowgli.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 79 · 1h 29m · Music/Drama
  Riz Ahmed gives this feverish drama about a rapper and serious illness its force. The family scenes are warmer and sharper than some of the cultural symbolism, which occasionally explains what his performance has already made clear.
- [*CODA*](https://film.one/film/coda.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 72 · PG-13 · 1h 52m · Drama/Music · on Apple TV
  Siân Héder’s remake of a French crowd-pleaser is warm, well acted and almost entirely predictable. The Rossi family, played by deaf actors and led by a superb Troy Kotsur, is worth your evening; the story built around them could have been ordered from a catalogue.
- [*Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)*](https://film.one/film/summer-of-soul-or-when-the-revolution-could-not-be-televised.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 87 · PG-13 · 1h 57m · Music/Documentary · on Disney+, Hulu
  Questlove’s first film as director takes the tapes of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, unseen for fifty years, and puts Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone and Mahalia Jackson back in front of a crowd. The music is extraordinary. We only wish he had let more of it finish.
- [*Ma Rainey's Black Bottom*](https://film.one/film/ma-raineys-black-bottom.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 69 · R · 1h 33m · Drama/Music · on Netflix
  George C. Wolfe has filmed August Wilson’s play with such care that it never stops being a play. It is worth 93 minutes of your evening for Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis, who do two different kinds of great work in the same small room.
- [*Sound of Metal*](https://film.one/film/sound-of-metal.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 84 · R · 2h 01m · Drama/Music · on Amazon Prime Video
  Riz Ahmed makes a drummer’s hearing loss frighteningly immediate, while Darius Marder gives the surrounding Deaf community space to live. The sound is exceptional; the script sometimes pushes its lesson harder than the performances need.
- [*The Forty-Year-Old Version*](https://film.one/film/the-forty-year-old-version.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 80 · R · 2h 03m · Comedy/Drama · on Netflix
  Radha Blank’s comedy about a Black artist finding her voice is funny, pointed and generous towards its lead. The rap lyrics and New York setting reward the attention, though the loose storytelling asks for more of it than necessary.
- [*Judy*](https://film.one/film/judy.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 65 · PG-13 · 1h 58m · Drama/History · on HBO Max
  Renée Zellweger’s Judy Garland, hoarse, brittle and still able to hold a room, is the whole reason to watch. Rupert Goold’s film is tidy and well-mannered around her, and its flashbacks to the MGM years keep explaining what she has already shown us.
- [*Yesterday*](https://film.one/film/yesterday.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 60 · PG-13 · 1h 56m · Comedy/Fantasy
  Himesh Patel’s singing keeps this amiable fantasy afloat. Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis do too little with the forgotten Beatles, and the thin romance makes it one for listeners with modest expectations of the story.
- [*Anima*](https://film.one/film/anima.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 76 · 15m · Music · on Netflix
  Paul Thomas Anderson sets three Thom Yorke songs to fifteen minutes of dance, and the opening carriage of twitching commuters is worth the quarter of an hour on its own. The middle leans too long on one idea; the ending earns its calm.
- [*Wild Rose*](https://film.one/film/wild-rose.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 82 · R · 1h 41m · Music/Comedy · on Tubi
  Jessie Buckley makes *Wild Rose* a moving, funny account of musical ambition and the work of being a mother. The plotting is familiar and the middle drifts, but we recommend it for the singing and the women.
- [*Rocketman*](https://film.one/film/rocketman.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 78 · R · 2h 01m · Music/Drama · on Paramount+
  Dexter Fletcher’s *Rocketman* is an enjoyable musical biography, carried by Taron Egerton’s singing and a willingness to let fantasy take over. The drama between the songs is much more ordinary.
- [*Cold War*](https://film.one/film/cold-war.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 85 · R · 1h 28m · Romance/Music · on Amazon Prime Video
  Paweł Pawlikowski’s compact romance earns its sorrow through Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot and the music. We recommend it, with one reservation: the gaps between scenes sometimes leave the lovers’ feelings harder to follow than they should be.
- [*Climax*](https://film.one/film/climax.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 73 · R · 1h 37m · Drama/Horror · on The Roku Channel, Tubi
  Gaspar Noé makes dance exhilarating and collective panic hard to escape. *Climax* is worth the ordeal for its choreography and camerawork, though the people remain frustratingly thin beneath the distress.
- [*Bohemian Rhapsody*](https://film.one/film/bohemian-rhapsody.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 55 · PG-13 · 2h 15m · Music/Drama
  Rami Malek has the teeth, the walk and the fist, and the Live Aid finale is as good as everyone says. Around it, Anthony McCarten’s script turns one of the loudest lives in British pop into a well-behaved one.
- [*A Star Is Born*](https://film.one/film/a-star-is-born.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 82 · R · 2h 16m · Music/Drama
  Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga make *A Star Is Born* an affecting musical romance, carried by convincing attraction and forceful singing. Her rise to fame deserved more room in the second half.
- [*Quincy*](https://film.one/film/quincy.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 63 · 2h 04m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  *Quincy* is an engaging introduction to Quincy Jones, with archive material that makes the history feel close. Alan Hicks and Rashida Jones are less persuasive when admiration needs to give way to a difficult question.
- [*Coco*](https://film.one/film/coco.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 84 · PG · 1h 45m · Family/Animation · on Disney+
  Lee Unkrich’s *Coco* is a warm, funny family musical that takes the fear of being forgotten seriously. Its busy, familiar plotting gets in the way, but the voices and the detailed Land of the Dead earn our recommendation.
- [*Sing*](https://film.one/film/sing.md) — 2016 · Fi1m 70 · PG · 1h 48m · Animation/Comedy · on Netflix, Peacock
  Garth Jennings’s singing-animal contest is warm, tuneful and too busy for its own good. The songs and performers earn an enjoyable evening, though the separate stories need more time than the film gives them.
- [*The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years*](https://film.one/film/the-beatles-eight-days-a-week-the-touring-years.md) — 2016 · Fi1m 71 · NR · 1h 46m · Documentary/Music
  Ron Howard’s account of the Beatles on the road is familiar in shape and tidy in temperament, and none of that matters once the restored concert footage starts. See it for the performances; forgive the celebrities who keep interrupting them.
- [*Straight Outta Compton*](https://film.one/film/straight-outta-compton.md) — 2015 · Fi1m 76 · R · 2h 27m · Drama/Music · on Netflix
  This N.W.A. biopic is worth seeing for its young cast, studio humour and forceful music. The business disputes drag, and the men receive a more forgiving hearing than the women.
- [*Amy*](https://film.one/film/amy.md) — 2015 · Fi1m 81 · R · 2h 08m · Documentary/Music · on HBO Max
  Asif Kapadia gives Amy Winehouse room to be funny and absorbed in music. His documentary is deeply moving, although we wanted more about her work and less about the people watching her.
- [*Northern Soul*](https://film.one/film/northern-soul.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 72 · PG-13 · 1h 42m · Music/Drama
  Elaine Constantine’s *Northern Soul* gets the pleasure of finding music and finding friends right. Its characters need more attention, but the dancing, soundtrack and central performances make this uneven drama worth an evening.
- [*Whiplash*](https://film.one/film/whiplash.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 84 · R · 1h 47m · Drama/Music
  Damien Chazelle makes jazz practice frightening, helped by Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons and editing that keeps every performance under pressure. We recommend this gripping thriller, though its interest in musical ambition sometimes stops at how much pain a student can take.
- [*20,000 Days on Earth*](https://film.one/film/20-000-days-on-earth.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 80 · NR · 1h 37m · Documentary/Drama · on The Roku Channel, Tubi
  Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard make an absorbing, often funny portrait of Nick Cave at work. Its carefully managed candour can be frustrating, but the songs and conversations make it rewarding even without prior devotion.

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/films/genre/music