10 Essential Beatles Movies to Watch Before The Upcoming Biopics
If musical biopics have overtaken superhero movies as Hollywood’s most reliable earners, then we are currently in the peak IP era.
Since the enormous success of Bohemian Rhapsody, we’ve seen biopics on everyone from Elton John to Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston, and now, with movies like A Complete Unknown and Deliver Me From Nowhere, they’re starting to attract some of the finest acting talent in the business. This is all poised to go to another level next year with the release of a Michael Jackson movie (starring the pop star’s nephew) and a whopping four (yes, four) Beatles movies.
This unprecedented approach (which sounds a bit like The Avengers meets Rashomon) will allow the Fab Four (Paul Mescal as Paul, Harris Dickinson as John, Barry Keoghan as Ringo and Joseph Quinn as George) to each have their own movie, presumably with overlapping timelines, and all directed by Sam Mendes. As we wait for this tantalising project (at the time of writing, we’re yet to see a trailer) to materialise, there are already a wide variety of excellent Beatles movies to dig into. Read on to discover more and use the guide below to find them on services like Apple TV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
A Hard Day’s Night might be the oldest movie on this list, but it’s still the best and most authentic. Filmed using newly available handheld cameras, director Richard Lester not only captured the band’s youthful energy but also captured the very real, ground-level phenomenon of Beatlemania itself—screaming girls and all.
A Hard Day's Night is now regarded as a bit of a classic and a landmark for mockumentary filmmaking and the cinema vérité style—so if you’re someone with an interest in film history (especially movies like Don’t Look Back or Gimme Shelter), this might be the one for you!
In 2021, while most of us were still in lockdown (psychologically at the very least), Disney+ released Get Back, a movie (or miniseries, if you prefer) that felt like a gift and a time machine. Working with state-of-the-art equipment, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson remastered a treasure trove of footage from the recording of Let It Be, releasing it as a movie that felt like an immersive, behind-the-scenes documentary – similar to movies like The Wrecking Crew and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which gave fans the experience of being in the room.
For Beatles fans, this one is a must-watch—an opportunity to see what it might have been like to hang out with these guys and a rare chance to see artists creating iconic music in real time. The full doc is over eight hours long, but it’s more than worth diving into!
Help! is one of the silliest movies on this list, but it’s a pretty good hang, and it shows the Fab Four in their bubbly, early pomp. Reuniting with Richard Lester a year after Hard Day’s Night, it’s a musical made to coincide with the release of the album of the same name. Naturally, if you like that record in particular, this might be one for you.
The madcap plot, which features a sacrificial ring and mad scientists, follows the Beatles as they try to protect Ringo from an Eastern cult. That might not sound anything like what they sing about on the album, but if you love that ‘60s Beatles energy (or are partial to movies like Tommy or The Wall), you’ll probably have a blast.
Despite having only rewatched this movie earlier this year, I can’t actually recall if The Beatles are mentioned in it. Regardless, That Thing You Do! is so steeped in and enamoured by the Beatlemania era (it follows the rise of a young American band), it’s impossible to think of the movie as anything but an homage.
That Thing You Do! is the directorial debut of Tom Hanks, so if you like the actor’s heartfelt ‘90s output (especially movies like Forrest Gump and Apollo 13), you’re probably gonna love it. Steve Zahn and Liv Tyler both feature, and the tune, frankly, is a bop.
The most recent doc on our list was released earlier this year after an acclaimed debut at the Venice Film Festival last Autumn. One to One: John and Yoko is the kind of documentary that looks to give an impression of the artist by zooming in—in this case by focusing on the 18 months that John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived together in Greenwich Village, leading up to the One to One benefit concert in Madison Square Garden in 1972.
The movie is directed by the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Kevin Macdonald, so if you liked his previous work on Marley (a doc on Bob) and Whitney (about Houston), this might be up your street.
George Harrison was always the most idiosyncratic member of the Beatles—the one you say is your favourite if you’re in the mood for sounding a little different. This remarkable documentary, directed by none other than Martin Scorsese, stands as a towering portrait of the artist: his early days growing up in Liverpool, his time with The Beatles, his spirituality, and his untimely death in 2001 at just 58 years old.
Stretching out over three-and-a-half hours, Living in the Material World is a meaty piece of work, but like anything made by the great director (notably his other movie docs Shine a Light and The Last Waltz), it’s a pleasure to settle into.
Given how protective The Beatles (and their various estates) are of their work and history, it’s probably no surprise that we’ve yet to see a modern biopic about them. The closest thing so far was Sam Taylor-Johnson’s 2009 movie Nowhere Boy, which starred a then-18-year-old Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the young John Lennon.
This is an interesting one to watch if you like the kind of movies that take an unusual approach to show an artist’s origin story—think stuff like Control, or I’m Not There. Just be warned, though: apart from the Ono-sanctioned use of Lennon’s song Mother, there aren’t any Beatles tunes in this one.
If you’re looking for a movie that takes the opposite approach to Nowhere Boy (i.e., it has many of the Beatles' hits but basically none of them in it), Yesterday might be the one for you. The movie uses a premise that wouldn’t feel out of place in an episode of The Twilight Zone: what if, by some weird anomaly, you woke up one day as the last person on earth who remembered The Beatles’ music.
Written by Richard Curtis, Yesterday is an admittedly shmaltzy movie, but thanks to some nice performances and the typically deft directorial hand of Danny Boyle (more Millions, less 28 Days Later), it’s a pleasant enough viewing experience.
Of course, we were always going to include Yellow Submarine on this list. This iconic animation has been entertaining lightly inebriated college students for almost 60 years now with its surrealist visions, kaleidoscopic colours, and popular tunes.
The animation recalls the strangeness of the Monty Python inserts, so if you’re into that kind of stuff (or other surrealist animations like Fantastic Planet), you should check it out—there’s a reason why it’s still considered a landmark in animation cinema.
No list of music movies would be complete without a reference to the great Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. This is one of those spoof-type movies (think This is Spinal Tap and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) that ends up being so influential that both critics and filmmakers now use it as a reference point for what musical biopics should avoid.
The star (played by the great John C. Reilly) is more of a Johnny Cash type, but his journey through music history does allow for a meeting with the Fab Four, who are played hilariously by Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman.
