Stardust

I came into this with no expectations. I like David Bowie but I'm not a huge fan who knows most let alone all his music. So I wasn't watching this knowing everything about him and his music. But I actually expected some of his music to be in this, similar to Bohemian Rhapsody. This movie was boring and I found myself playing on my phone just waiting for it to end. All in all, I feel like they did a disservice to David Bowie, making him look like an idiot obsessed with becoming famous. They tried to add something deep by adding him being afraid of becoming like his brother, but it actually fell flat. There's a concert scene at the end where he finally goes on stage and the actor had zero sparkle or pizzazz or showmanship where David Bowie on stage had all of this. He literally looked like he was just laying on the stage where he's supposed to be making fierce poses. And I usually like Jena Malone but she had the worst accent in this (and wig and eyebrows) that I just couldn't stand her character. I don't think anyone making this movie recalled that she was American. Curious if the real Angie Bowie had gotten a British accent, I looked her up and she doesn't have one. So why did Jena Malone do the worst British accent in history?

Marc Maron crushed this role, very happy for him. Too many faults however as the actor playing Bowie is definitely not a Bowie doppelgänger which detracted a bit, , no Bowie music, and meanders quite a bit.

Sure, there's none of Bowie's music here, so if that's why you may want to watch it, don't bother. Once you're past that, it's a pretty engaging little film - Flynn is great (and we all know he really can sing; the Brel stuff is fabulous) and Marc Maron turned in a great performance.

Like an artist constrained to not use black and white in a painting the film's director has not used the music of it's heroic subject and just as the use of black and white is not necessary to make a painting so has the director found a way to make a film about a moment in Bowie's life without his music. Certainly we can harbor fantasies of a film where verisimilitude overwhelms us and all our rocknroll memories explode on screen. This is not that sort of film. So sorry for your loss. Stardust is a story of an apotheosis and one that did not come easily. Bowie was ignored by many in the early 70's including his record label. Many familiar characters spill across the screen and while you might gripe at Bolan or groan at Angie, Johnny Flynn's David Jones/Bowie is at times eerie as he emulates the shapes and features we associate with the man who sold the world. Not a perfect movie but Bowie came alive here at a time when still miss him. When Bowie played John Merrick on Broadway he wore no makeup and made no attempt to look like the famous Elephant Man and yet still carried the part to great acclaim. Kudos to director Gabriel Range for his choice of musician, somewhat acclaimed, Johnny Flynn to lead this thoughtful semi fictional look at where a Jones became a Bowie.

How can you have a David Bowie Biopic, and not have any of his music in the film?