Continued

5. "Elvis" (1979)

There are loads of TV movies about one or another phase of Elvis Presley's life and career, including the 2005 chronicle "Elvis," starring Dublin-born Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the King of rock 'n' roll. But no one has beat John Carpenter's slightly spooky, 1979 "Elvis," with Kurt Russell in a phenomenal and knowing performance that has a certain poignancy considering Russell's film debut was opposite Presley in 1963's "It Happened at the World's Fair."

While the story traces Presley's familiar ascent from obscurity to stardom, from Sun Records and Colonel Parker to the Vegas years, it also portrays him as an increasingly haunted man who regularly "talks" to an alter ego -- Elvis' twin brother, who died at birth. Major personal markers in Presley's life -- his marriage to and separation from Priscilla, his spiritual hunger -- are more than just biographical fodder in Carpenter's hands. Produced not long after Presley's death, the film seems to be tracking a ghost, aware that every step in the King's truncated life carries with it the sound of death chains rattling.

4. "Sid and Nancy" (1986)

Gary Oldman is amazing as the Sex Pistols' tortured bassist, Sid Vicious, who joined the band in time for its rise to international notoriety in the late 1970s and died at 21 from complications related to heroin addiction. Attempting a solo career following the Pistols' breakup, Vicious slides into the maw of smack-induced despair and is arrested when his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb), is found stabbed to death. Alex Cox co-wrote and directed the film, which follows Vicious on every step of his personal decline and through every phase of his sometimes-tender, sometimes-pitiful relationship with Spungen. One of the film's highlights is Cox's recreation of Vicious' bizarre video for his cover of "My Way."

Vicious also appears in archival footage in various documentaries about the Pistols, the best of which is Julien Temple's 2000 "The Filth and the Fury," which recounts his story, among others, from the remaining band members' perspective.

3. "Stoned" (2005)

Anyone who has seen Brian Jones stoned to the gills in the 1968 concert film "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" witnessed a startling indicator of what the last, self-destructive months of his life were probably like. One of the most gifted musicians of his generation, Jones, the maverick co-founder and defining spirit of the early Stones, can be seen in such a stupor in "Circus" that his senseless expression is almost laughable. Except it's not: Jones' problems with drugs and alcohol got him kicked out of the band in June 1969. A month later, he drowned in a swimming pool at Cotchford Farm, his estate.

Jones' final days are the subject of "Stoned," more a musing on rock myths than a biopic. "Stoned" brushes aside a coroner's finding that Jones died accidentally, taking at face value an alleged, 1993 deathbed statement by one Frank Thorogood, a builder on Cotchford Farm, that there was more to Jones' death. Director Stephen Woolley envisions Jones (Leo Gregory) as sweet and helpless, difficult and insensitive, adrift at Cotchford and alienated from his bandmates. Yet Woolley fails to convey what mattered about Jones artistically, what the lost Stone contributed to music, why we should feel more than pity. Disorienting, psychedelicized editing, an anachronistic bore, further distances the film from one's compassion. But for fans of the Stones, watching any number of scenes recalling familiar history (such as Keith Richards -- played by Ben Whishaw -- stealing away with Jones' lover, Anita Pallenberg, played by Monet Mazur) is fascinating.

2. "Backbeat" (1994)

Films about John Lennon are plentiful, and Martin Scorsese has just signed on to make a biopic about the late George Harrison. But the first Beatle to die, Stuart Sutcliffe, was remembered in this moving feature by director Iain Softley. Essentially the story of Sutcliffe's relationships with fellow art student Lennon (Ian Hart) and German photographer (and lover) Astrid Kirchherr (Sheryl Lee), "Backbeat" covers part of the Beatles' history in Hamburg, where the band became tight playing eight hours a night for drunken sailors and bohemians. An ambivalent and unskilled musician (he played bass for the Liverpool group), the film depicts (as do most histories) Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff) as a reluctant Beatle who stuck with the band out of loyalty to an insistent Lennon. But his talent and heart were in the visual arts, and Kirchherr's love and encouragement gave Sutcliffe the boost he needed to get on with his (short) life as an individual. (Sutcliffe died of a brain hemorrage at age 21.) Dorff is superb as a somewhat tougher version of the Sutcliffe described by biographers; Lee is luminous as the woman every Beatles fan reveres; and Hart is searing in his second portrayal of Lennon (following his work in Christopher Münch's extraordinary 1991 drama "The Hours and Times," about Lennon's relationship with Beatles manager Brian Epstein).

A truly good film about Lennon has yet to be made, but there are some things to like about the 1988 documentary "Imagine: John Lennon" and the 1985 TV movie "John and Yoko: A Love Story." Both take viewers all the way to the end of the complex Beatle's life, and the latter film has a bizarre factoid that is timely once again. Originally cast as Lennon in "John and Yoko" was a little-known actor named (gulp) Mark Lindsay Chapman, a name unnervingly close to that of Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman. Chapman the thespian didn't get the gig because of his name, but he was cast as Lennon in the upcoming "Chapter 27," alongside Jared Leto as the other, infamous Chapman.

1. "That'll Be the Day" (1973) and "Stardust" (1974)

Though entirely fictional, this pair of irresistible features about the rise and trials of a British pop star named Jim MacLaine (played very well by real-life Brit singer David Essex) feels very much like a missing chapter from the history of rock's mid-'60s evolution. Written by Ray Connolly, the two-part story sees the young, distracted, working-class MacLaine reject his university-entrance exams and take a dead-end job at a carnival. There, he develops a taste for meaningless sex and meets Mike (Ringo Starr), destined to become an important figure in his future. "That'll Be the Day" ends with an epiphany for Jim: He's meant to play rock 'n' roll.

"Stardust" picks up with Jim's success fronting the Stray Cats and now managed by Mike (played this time by Adam Faith), establishing him as a major artist and allowing him the freedom to stretch, like the Who and the Beatles, the boundaries of pop. Egos, clashing temperaments, drugs and other indulgences result in sundry professional and emotional losses, culminating in a tragic end all-too-observed by a ghoulish media. Larry Hagman has a memorable part as an American trying to buy his way, crassly, into Jim's artistic future.

What are your favorite doomed musical biopics? Write us at heymsn@microsoftcom.

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Tom Keogh reviews films for the Seattle Times. He lives in Edmonds, Wash.