Saying any more would just spoil the movie for you! —Tim Grierson, Year: 2012 Director: Steven Spielberg Their work is said to have shortened the length of the war by several years. ‘Lion’ is a biopic that revolves around the life of an Indian boy who was adopted and raised by an Australian couple. Sometimes a biopic, whether by choice or not, feels most natural in the broadest of strokes, turning a life into a melodramatic arc that ties together with equal doses of loss and eventual triumph neatly arranged. ‘Lincoln’ gives you the most historically accurate insight into America’s president’s struggles to emancipate slavery during the American Civil War, Confronted by the nation and the members of his cabinet. It’s a chamber piece of leaders and wives with a tragic finale: Blair believes he can influence Clinton’s replacement, George W. Bush. Here are seven you can watch online now: Director Sam Taylor-Wood's "Nowhere Boy" won't do much to expand your knowledge of John Lennon's music, but it does a nice job painting the portrait of a young man who struggles through adolescence before becoming a musical visionary. After he falls asleep on an empty train car, he ends up a thousand kilometers and change away, in Calcutta. Hip-hop biopics are becoming a dime a dozen (you can skip the films about Notorious B.I.G. Premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in 2016, Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe is based on the true story of Phiona Mutesi (newcomer Madina Nalwanga), the first titled female chess player in Ugandan history. From the music to the storytelling, Beyoncé’s masterful Homecoming concert film displayed why she is the baddest in the game. In Penn’s chameleonic characterization, Milk’s journey is a personal one writ large, a midlife crisis that prompted landmark campaigns—and not just for LGBTQ rights. The film is directed by Aaron Taylor Johnson’s wife Sam Taylor Johnson and offers a deep look at that period of time. The good news is that a great number of these movies are already available on Netflix. Lion earns our unabashed blubbering not simply through its design but rather through the organic nature of its material. The best thing about this film is that it actually takes you to the 1940s by giving you a whole retro vibe with car chase scenes that seem to be straight out of a 40s detective film. ‘The Fighter’ is the perfect film for all the boxing movie fans out there. Ultimately, he’s almost as much the star of Heaven Knows What as Holmes, who matches up well with Jones, the film’s most notable professional actor. The 16 best music movies, biopics, and documentaries you can stream right now Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, and HBO are currently home to some of the all-time best music … —M.J. This film may not be Leo’s best but it worth watching and will get you interested in American History around the 30s and 40s. John Lennon taught the world that all you need is love. These two accidental crusaders are heroes precisely because they never set out to be—they just wanted to stay alive.—Tim Grierson, Year: 2010 Director: Tom Hooper The absence of humanity in these encounters drains the blood from our veins. While the movie celebrates his achievements, some wished that it dug deeper into his psyche, and explored what was behind these achievements. The film gives us more of an inside perspective of the artist’s struggles and not an outside look at how she rose up to the billboards. When Robert Katende (Selma’s David Oyelowo) teaches chess to some of the local children, Phiona becomes fascinated with game. —Andy Crump, Year: 2016 Director: Antonio Campos The plot of 42 follows Robinson’s transition from the Negro Leagues to the Minor Leagues, and then to the Dodgers (and its effect on baseball and the whole of America). Culminating in a Carnegie Hall gig, it’s a canny story of privilege, affection, and wayward self-belief. 19 February 19 Features. Saroo’s story is a heart-wrenching drama that has some solid performances by Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel and will make you pour your eyes out. —Christine N. Ziemba, Year: 2009 Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson In the early 2000s, Bishop Carlton Pearson, a respected Tulsa pastor with a large following, risked heresy by changing his tune, arguing that God wouldn’t send people to hell—even if they didn’t believe in Him. But the higher one rises, the greater he falls, and so does Howard Hughes. The ’80s New York vibe is all the way there, and I can’t be mad at some great moments we get to witness: Roxanne Shanté vs. Sparky D; a shy, young boy in Shanté’s projects, named Nasir, who wants to be a rapper; and an unknown Biz Markie beat boxing for Roxanne when her DJ (Marley Marl) bails on her. This film is one of the most brilliant depictions of the Holocaust and the emotional impact it had on the lives of the Jewish community. Tell us in the comments section. Calcutta is no place for a lonely kid, especially a lonely kid who only knows Hindi and not Bengali or English, and Davis is fixated on the way that cities make people feel like foreigners in their own country. The based-on-a-true-story goes: Saroo lives with his family in Khandwa, a city in Madhya Pradesh, India. While he indulges in too much scenery chewing and stammering, Cumberbatch creates a memorable character who is at once fascinating and off-putting. John Lee Hancock undercuts the corporate creation myths with a flinty gaze and uncomfortably dry humour. The entire life of Jackie Robinson is a rich subject for a film adaptation, not that this would be obvious after viewing 42, Brian Helgeland’s fourth feature film. The Chicago-based record company specialized in blues, R&B, and soul, and was instrumental in ushering rock and roll into the mainstream in the early ‘50s. I love that Roxanne Roxanne exists. Four years after her death, director Nick Broomfield attempted to take a look back to her beginnings and what went wrong in her glorious career which eventually made her shut herself from the rest of the world. The film shows glimpses of the final product—2018’s jaw-dropping, festival-hijacking live show that became known as Beychella—and then it takes you back over an eight-month rehearsal period. You walk away from Dallas Buyers Club not so much moved by the larger issues as you are by the simple, odd friendship forged by Woodroof and Rayon. Norwegian director Morten Tyldum, known best for 2011’s Headhunters, and scribe Graham Moore keep the tension high, even when the hackers and decoders are conducting tedious work. The singer behind many a legendary R&B and jazz ballad-like I Love You, Porgy and Feeling Good lived a life of greatness as well as melancholy. The film traces his journey as he struggles to fight for gay rights in the country as an activist and later becomes California’s first gay elected official. Watch it to find out more about the happy meal going global. The Imitation Game, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the eccentric Turing, focuses on his wartime tenure at the Government Code and Cypher School in Bletchley Park, located about 50 miles northwest of London. Steven Spielberg boasts one of the most accomplished bodies of work in American cinema and, to this day, steadily builds upon that dominant track record. Nowhere Boy (2009) Aaron Taylor Johnson plays the role a teenage John Lennon who lives with his Aunt Mimi in Liverpool. John Williams’s haunting score and Janusz Kaminski’s breathtaking black-and-white cinematography sparkle. Based in Delhi, India, Shaurya Thapa is a Third World boy writing on First World pop culture. Aaron Taylor Johnson plays the role a teenage John Lennon who lives with his Aunt Mimi in Liverpool. Those despicable situations are suddenly grayer, and a viewer can see past the monstrous things they commit to something that amounts to empathy for monsters. It’s the interplay between all three actors—and the brief scenes with Michael Gambon as King George V—that make Tom Hooper’s film such a joy to watch. Lou Diamond Phillips plays Valens from his teenage years up until his death in a plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly and The Big Popper. He manages to take a Holocaust tale and turn it into a story of triumph, the story of how much one man can do, and the regret we’ll each someday have that we didn’t do much, much more. Just as Budreau is more interested in an impression of Baker rather than absolute fidelity to the facts of his life, Hawke captures the artist’s alternately wonderful and tragic essence. They covered a guitar track called Apache by a British composer, putting their own spin on it. Lincoln tries his best and races against time to get the approval votes from the Congress before peace arrives at the nation. This clearly points to the huge influence he has had on the music industry. —Andy Crump, Year: 2015 Director: Michael Almereyda All four band members served as co-producers, which means The Dirt glosses over key relationships, whizzes past the band’s mid-’90s wilderness period, and omits the story of a possible sexual assault. Maybe the movie is not at all about persistence and more about greed and treachery. Dicky notices the struggles of his brother and decides to help him with his training, which later helps him become the boxer he always wanted to be. But when life gave him lemons, he made sure that he put them in good use. She knows honesty is the best way to face history and honor the dead, but she doesn’t find any nobility in the suffering of Loung Ung’s family as they flee from state-sanctioned genocide. John struggles to have a real relationship with his mother after the death of Mimi’s husband and his mother introduces him to the world of music by gifting him a banjo. ‘Neruda’ narrates the story of noble prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda who is chased by an Inspector after he joins the Communist party in the late 1940s. FINE PRINT & DISCLAIMER: Flicks's official rating: Pretty good, but not perfect. Keep track of the movies you’re waiting for, rate/review movies and get the latest movie news. Sean Penn took home a Best Actor Oscar, and writer Dustin Lance Black an Original Screenplay statue, for their work in Gus Van Sant’s vibrant snapshot of slain San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, California’s first openly gay individual to be elected to public office. It’s a very American success story that Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch respectively) invented fast food via their Californian food stand, but the success and wealth was annexed by struggling salesman, Ray Kroc (a roiling Michael Keaton), who created a business empire out of it. Bad Rap is a showcase of four rappers of Asian origin based in the US, trying to make their mark in the rap world. Writer/director Robert Budreau’s biopic Born to Be Blue fills in the gaps. The film is definitely aimed at a specific demographic, but its format is an interesting window into what Netflix could be doing with short-form comedy.