{"id":4594,"date":"2026-02-24T15:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T22:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=4594"},"modified":"2025-12-31T20:47:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T03:47:24","slug":"movie-a-complete-unknown-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/movie-a-complete-unknown-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: A Complete Unknown (2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/d\/d5\/A_Complete_Unknown_poster.jpg\/250px-A_Complete_Unknown_poster.jpg\" alt=\"A Complete Unknown\" width=\"250\" height=\"375\" \/>A Complete Unknown<br \/><\/u><\/strong>Year: 2024<br \/>Rating: R<br \/>Length: 141 minutes \/ 2.35 hours<\/p>\n<p>While there have been plenty of biopics about Bob Dylan, <em>A Complete Unknown<\/em> (2024) had the benefit of James Mangold directing it. As a director, he\u2019s had a good string of iconic and critically acclaimed movies, including the Johnny Cash biopic, <em>Walk the Line<\/em> (2005). Since Mangold clearly knew how to make a movie about a famous musician, the same held true here. Unfortunately, the problem with musician biopics is that these individuals tend to have a major flaw that makes them completely insufferable.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time, drugs are the weak spot of musicians like Ray Charles in <em>Ray<\/em> (2004) or the aforementioned Johnny Cash. In <em>A Complete Unknown<\/em>, success is Dylan\u2019s kryptonite. I appreciated the background and development of the folk music culture in the first half of this movie, but because Dylan\u2019s talent as a musician and songwriter gave him enough success to do what he wanted, he let the success go to his head. Of course, I understand why Dylan would emphasize his interest in being an artist and experimenting over aligning with a certain musical genre\u2019s political baggage.<\/p>\n<p>The casting for this movie seemed weird at first, but Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet definitely gives the right vibe to both pre- and post-success Bob Dylan. Edward Norton\u2019s performance as Pete Seeger was also notable. These actors worked hard at making it look like they were actually playing and singing, which is a nice added detail that isn\u2019t always possible in these kinds of films. Considering Dylan\u2019s distinctive voice (both talking and singing), I think Chalamet nailed those moments where he was performing. So, while it\u2019s not great that Dylan basically turned on those who gave him the chance to make it big, I think Mangold made a great movie about it.<\/p>\n<p>A great James Mangold musician biopic about a semi-annoying Bob Dylan, I give <em>A Complete Unknown<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/bmw-the-critic\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"820\" height=\"312\" src=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4100\" srcset=\"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3.png 820w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3-300x114.png 300w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3-768x292.png 768w, https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/BMW-the-Critic-v3-640x244.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Complete UnknownYear: 2024Rating: RLength: 141 minutes \/ 2.35 hours While there have been plenty of biopics about Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown (2024) had the benefit of James Mangold directing it. As a director, he\u2019s had a good string of iconic and critically acclaimed movies, including the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line (2005). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2,370,369],"tags":[3845,4404,1618,4405,4406,3698,13,8,2198],"class_list":["post-4594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-movie","category-nominee","category-oscar","tag-3845","tag-a-complete-unknown","tag-biopic","tag-bob-dylan","tag-ed-norton","tag-james-mangold","tag-movie","tag-review","tag-timothee-chalamet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4611,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4594\/revisions\/4611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}