Is the Literary Biopic the Worst Kind of Movie? / J.W. McCormack

Very, very few things imperil my marriage quite as much as my inexplicable fondness for author biopics. It is to the stated, even irate bafflement of my counterpart-by-matrimony that I insist on indulging in the hopeless, brain-bangingly sub-mental, always-disappointing glut of movies like Trumbo, Kill Your Darlings, Shakespeare in Love, Sylvia, and perhaps the apex of the formula’s rank self-regard, the John Keats biopic Bright Star, a movie that would be infinitely better were its subject a talentless nobody lost to history rather than the larky and short-lived author of “Ode to Melancholy.” 2015’s In the Heart of the Sea, about young Herman Melville learning the story of the real Moby-Dick, is in another category altogether, both in terms of its preciousness and the violence it does its source material. ... [mehr] http://lithub.com/is-the-literary-biopic-the-worst-kind-of-movie/