“How many people are in therapy?” Rebecca Zlotowski asked the audience, following the premiere of “A Private Life,” prompting hand raises and knowing laughter.
Not every music biopic needs to chronicle an entire life, and Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere doesn’t attempt to depict The Boss in such a way. Bruce Springsteen’s catapult to fame? Skipped over. Instead, the film trades Springsteen’s hits for the moodier tracks of his sixth studio album, Nebraska. With a focus on this particular chapter of his life, the film sidesteps some biopic clichés — only to trip over others.
To his credit, director-writer Scott Cooper’s decision to adapt Warren Zanes’ Deliver Me From Nowhere for the screen was a good one, to approach the musician’s biopic a bit differently. Instead of documenting Bruce Springsteen’s life and career, the film captures the vignette that is Zanes’ book: the making-of of Nebraska, the rock musician’s departure album, and the emotional low point in his life that prompted him to create something so drastically different from his typical sound. By nature, the movie skips over parts of Springsteen’s life that unknowing audiences went in to see, probably, but also breaking free from some of the typical biopic clichés.
Our first look at Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) is in 1981; he’s already famous, he’s already assembled Clarence Clemons and the rest of the E Street Band, and he has five albums behind him. The Bruce Springsteen we’re shown is one weighed down by depression, who holes himself away in the Colts Neck ranch he rented out at the time, and where he fashioned a makeshift recording studio to write and record Nebraska.
The film makes the choice, perhaps wisely, to flip the “artist vs. the machine“ trope; instead, this struggle simply feels like a footnote in the story. One can hardly blame Columbia record executive Al Teller (David Krumholtz) for his baffled response to Springsteen’s demands for Nebraska via his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) — no singles, no tour, no press, not even his face on the album cover — but a quick concession kills the trope before it becomes a formative part of the story.
Still, while trying to run from typical musical biopic clichés, the movie manages to run into them anyway — and, tragically, afflicts the audience with schmaltzy lines and moments throughout. During the Landau-Teller meeting, Strong’s character delivers the blow that wins Springsteen the artistic freedom he needs during his low point: “In my office, we believe in Bruce Springsteen.” Such is hardly the first groan-inducing moment of the movie.
A line so clichéd that it feels ripped from every music biopic ever, The Boss tells Landau it “feels good to be back out there,” through White’s brutal Jersey accent. He sees a mansion on a hill in a flashback…and writes “Mansion on a Hill.” And, of course, he’s a rocker, so that must mean he’s a heartbreaker. Cue Faye Romano (Odessa Young), a composite character representing Springsteen’s relationships with local women in his Stone Pony days. “I’m moving to L.A.,” he tells her, before she flees from his sight in tears.
And then there’s the king (Boss?) of all music biopic clichés: the childhood flashback. Black-and-white sequences reveal his boyhood trauma. One features the younger Springsteen (Matthew Anthony Pellicano) protecting his mother from his abusive alcoholic father, striking him from behind with a bat; in others, he’s on guard during obligatory father-son bonding time. The most redeeming thing about these flashbacks is the reference to The Night of the Hunter, which served its purpose well as a slick motif for his contentious relationship with dad.
This relationship eventually heals in the movie’s present time when Bruce Springsteen — yes, the adult Bruce — sits on his father’s lap and forgives him for the hard times of his youth. “You had your own battles to fight,” the younger Springsteen says. Those who might criticize Bruce Springsteen’s choice to offer forgiveness to his father —if this discourse comes about —don’t understand the nuances of growing up Italian or Irish. Catholic guilt is a strong force, which Springsteen even notes in his own autobiography when he writes, “The Italian part of me wanted to be successful and show off. The Irish part held guilt and depression. Together they made for a complicated combination.” Such had the potential to add complexity to the movie’s Springsteen, and perhaps salvage the screenplay, by offering a clue to the rocker’s depression; instead, this part of The Boss’s identity is omitted, an unfortunate missed opportunity.
Still, this part of the movie is redeemed by a portrayal of healthy masculinity that, hopefully, strikes a heartfelt chord with audiences. The elder Springsteen tells his son he’s proud of him, moving one of the manliest rockers of the eighties to tears. This mental health lens is an interesting one, as such was a taboo topic in the eighties, but it’s there to be embraced — and appreciated — by a modern audience. This theme of the story is certainly welcome, and connects well to his deep songwriting process for Nebraska. The audience, however, learns very little about Bruce Springsteen beyond his depression.
By movie’s end, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere feels like a mixed bag. It avoids some of the usual biopic traps — with credit for that going to the source material — but crashes headfirst into others with cheesy sentimentality. Fans of The Boss will geek out over the story of this pivotal moment in Springsteen’s career, and moviegoers who turn out for music biopics will certainly appreciate it. But if Cooper’s film hoped to shake up the subgenre, it instead struck the wrong chord.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” will be released nationwide in theaters on October 24, 2025.
Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott, and Bobby Cannavale attended the premiere of Richard Linklater’s new drama “Blue Moon” at the 63rd New York Film Festival on Monday.
Netflix’s A House of Dynamite was a captivating film that questioned the power of the government.
“The first thing I thought was, it would be cool to make a film with Tom Waits as Adam Driver’s father.”
Naturally, the audience was cued to laugh, as Jim Jarmusch explained his writing process.
“I always have a kind of haphazard way of writing where I’m gathering small ideas that I don’t quite know the overall structure or picture yet,” he explained a moment earlier “And I write thinking of actors I would like to collaborate with on these characters.”
After winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the film was screened at the New York Film Festival as the centerpiece film of the festival. The film, directed by Jim Jarmusch features a triptych focusing on the relationships between adult children reconnecting or coming to terms with aging or lost parents.
So when Jim called, Adam Driver answered the phone immediately.
“Anytime he calls about anything,” Driver said, “Regardless of what it is, if it’s, you know, therapy, wallpaper, I’d be interested in doing that. He’s one of my favorite directors of all time.”
When it was their turn to praise Jarmusch, Indya Moore described their experience working with the director in poetic terms.
“I got to do my best work on James’ film,” they shared, “It was my best work because all of the years of experience that I’ve had, I came up to that moment in the discipline. I got to really fill out my space on set to really embody this character. But when it comes to my instrument as an artist, what I find is that I’m able to provide the most sincere reflection of whatever human experience I’m reflecting as an actor when the environment supports that.”
”I felt respected, there was food,” they added, after noting that Jim curated a safe space on set.
Luka Sabbat echoed similar sentiments. “Jim creates such like a great work environment,” he said, “And he’s particular without like being like arrogant or mean in any sort of way, and he really knows how to communicate his ideas and I feel like as an actor it’s so helpful to be with somebody who really knows what they want and knows how to communicate their ideas, you know.”
Expanding on this, he shares, “I’ve always wanted to be an actor and I grew up watching his films and actually moved to, I grew up in Paris and I had moved to New York to become an actor and then, like, my first big time movie, I got to shoot it back in Paris with one of my favorite directors, so I was like, wow, this is really awesome.”
While all of these actors expressed gratitude to work with Jim Jarmusch, the director himself expressed no desire to see Father Mother Sister Brother following its release in December.
“We presented the film in Venice at the Film Festival, and we presented here,” he said, “And after that, I will see it one time more with a paying audience that doesn’t know I’m there. And then I will never see it again.”
“You can’t change them later,” he added, ‘And I always follow the French poet Paul Belair. He said, ‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned. And you could edit forever and ever.’”
“Father Mother Sister Brother” is now playing at the New York Film Festival, and will be seeing a limited release on December 24, 2025.
Director Shane Black has returned to the big screen with Play Dirty: a sharp-edged thriller that marks an evolution of the Parker crime saga, with Mark Wahlberg taking the lead. He steps into the role of a coldly efficient professional thief whose latest job goes wrong at nearly every turn.
The 2025 Teen Vogue summit was filled with fashion and conversation, with exciting events and booths.
Biting cynicism is a hallmark of a Noah Baumbach movie. In the case of Jay Kelly, Baumbach tackles the cynicism of the film industry, or, more specifically, he puts a harsh spotlight on the nature of an A-list acting career that voraciously demands decades of one’s life and self.
San Sebastián Film Festival is the feisty younger sibling on the European film festival docket.
“Apparently, I’ve been accused of retiring twice now,” Daniel Day-Lewis tells the audience, cueing laughter from the crowd.