Joe Coscarelli

I was curious about a music biopic that was about a rock star watching Terrence Malick's Badlands.

Yes.

And being inspired.

Great taste.

Yeah, very, very solitary movie.

And it's trying to do this thing where it's a zoom in instead of a cradle to grave movie.

I think this one seems to be trying to potentially have it both ways in that it is a very narrow story about a critically beloved Springsteen album, but not the best.

biggest Springsteen album, and yet it has these black and white flashbacks over and over again to his semi-traumatic childhood.

Not that traumatic, at least in this film, which is an interesting wrinkle.

And then it has big hits both from before he started recording Nebraska and the songs, like Born in the USA, that he started writing while recording Nebraska.

So you get a little bit of both where it is

a little bit more quiet and direct and specific, but you still have all these Springsteen trappings and Easter eggs for the real fans.

Which not a lot of people on earth can say, I think.

Yeah, that's a guy who did some singing that sounds like Bruce Springsteen.

You know, I think there is a real authenticity play with these movies in general, but specifically in something like this, which, again, with the choice of focusing on Nebraska, is sort of saying, we're doing a little bit of an arthouse thing with this.

And I think Jeremy Allen White, a professional brooder...

Whether he's cooking or wearing Calvin Klein's on the top of a skyscraper, what he does is brood.

And I think that allows...

him to inhabit Bruce.

I think the Jeremy Strong character has a little bit more potential because unless you're like Lindsay and I and have spent a lot of time writing and reporting on music and focus on the lore of the background figures, like John Landau doesn't have this sort of mythic omnipresence that Bruce Springsteen does.