The first reviews for A Complete Unknown are in, and critics are mostly raving about the Bob Dylan biopic. 

Directed by James Mangold, the film follows Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan from January 1961 to his 1965 concert at the Newport Folk Festival. The singer-songwriter has just arrived in New York City from Minnesota and is ready to explore the city’s folk music scene and find chart-topping success. Along the way, Dylan stirs up controversy over his use of electronic instruments. 

Based on Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, A Complete Unknown is already receiving awards buzz. The biopic was nominated for three Golden Globes, including best motion picture – drama and best performance by a male actor in a motion picture – drama.

As of Tuesday afternoon, A Complete Unknown had a Rotten Tomatoes score of 74 percent from 58 reviews, and a 70 percent rating on Metacritic from 27 reviews. Chalamet is a producer on the film, which is set to hit theaters on Dec. 25 and also stars Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook and Scoot McNairy in supporting roles.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief film critic David Rooney calls Chalamet’s performance “electrifying — in every sense” and applauds the actor’s voice, which he says is “raw, nasal, scratchy but full of passion, anger and wry wisdom” and “near enough to the original to be unmistakable and yet colored by the actor’s persona to a degree that suggests something closer to symbiosis than impersonation.”

“Any Dylan fan or indeed anyone with a fondness for the music coming out of New York City in the first half of that tumultuous decade will find ample pleasures in Mangold’s expertly crafted film,” Rooney writes. “The period recreation is impeccable, and the many music performance sequences could not be more transporting, benefiting enormously from lead actors doing their own singing with estimable polish.”

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw writes that “Timothée Chalamet’s hilarious and seductive portrayal of Bob Dylan makes him the smirking, scowling and unwilling leader of his generation, whose refusal to submit to the crucifixion of folk-acoustic purity is his own crucifixion. Chalamet gives us a semi-serious ordeal of someone who is part Steinbeck hero, part boyband star, part sacrificial deity.”

The BBC’s Caryn James gushes about Norton, who is nominated for a Golden Globe for best supporting actor. 

“Edward Norton delivers a sly turn as Pete Seeger, who happens to be visiting at that moment and takes Dylan under his wing,” James writes. “As the film goes on, Norton is especially good at capturing the respect tinged with jealousy Dylan evokes in Seeger, benevolence turning to rigid disapproval when Dylan’s music begins to change. Like all the other supporting actors, Norton does his own singing, impressively.”

USA Today’s Brian Truitt compares A Complete Unknown to Mangold’s 2005 music biopic Walk the Line: “Mangold’s outing is an entertaining and magnetic watch, just as much as his standout Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line. The movie doesn’t bother with a backstory — only a photo album and mail addressed to ‘Robert Zimmerman’ nod to his past — and is much better for it. And while Chalamet nicely matches Dylan’s nasal delivery on all-timers like ‘Girl from the North Country’ and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ his performances feel wholly authentic rather than annoyingly imitative.”

Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com writes that A Complete Unknown “is about all the variables that shape and warp creativity.” 

“Eschewing the often-shallow approach of the cradle-to-the-grave biopic to tell a formative chapter in music and world history, Mangold’s film fluidly captures the intersection of art and fame with solid performances, unshowy direction and organic editing,” Tallerico says. “As someone who generally loathes the ‘greatest hits’ storytelling of films about famous figures and how they often rely on the printed legend instead of doing anything, and someone who has a strong love for the music of the purposefully enigmatic Bob Dylan, I have to admit to expecting A Complete Unknown to be predictably out of tune. Like its subject has done so many times in his six-decade career, this one exceeds expectations.”

IndieWire’s David Ehrlich gave the music biopic a harsher review, writing that the film is “admirable yet deeply frustrating.” 

“Eager to defy the kind of beat-by-beat explainer that Walk the Line might have led people to expect from him, but also fundamentally not the sort of filmmaker who shares Dylan’s instinct for coloring outside the lines (or his contrarianism), Mangold struggles to portray Dylan as an enigma without reducing him to an empty shell — a hollow vessel for his own genius,” Ehrlich writes. “The musician spends most of the movie fumbling his way from one moment of divine inspiration to the next, seemingly as unsure as we are about what his songs mean or where they might come from.”

3.5/5 stars

A widow in her sixties with a pair of estranged daughters is confronted with a difficult decision following a family tragedy in Huang Xi’s thoughtful drama Daughter’s Daughter.

Winner of the 2024 Golden Horse Awards prize for best screenplay at a ceremony in Taiwan in November, the film explores the strained relationships between parents and their children in a society that is losing sight of traditional filial duties.

The couple were trying for a baby via IVF treatment and a viable embryo survives them, with Jin now the legal guardian. While wrestling with the grief of losing her child, Jin is burdened with the impossible task of deciding the fate of her as-yet unborn grandchild.

I’ve seen good films and I’ve seen bad films. This is, indeed, not a good film by any stretch of the imagination. 

Evidently, a new drug that is adjacent to vampire blood is being bought and sold on the black market for profit and pleasure, which already sounds like something from a Bram Stoker rip-off novel. Sean is a young drug dealer who gets his cousin Eric “into some deep shit,” as the characters would put it. Sean’s dad destroys the drugs in a fit of rage and owes money to the people who loaned it to him. 

Let’s just get this out of the way. This movie is bad and for all the reasons that you might think. For starters, the dialogue is horrendous and sounds like something from a Grand Theft Auto game, where every other word is profanity. It seems like the writer was writing the script for a film project while in college and forgot to add character development (or characters that we cared about). 

Moreover, the plot has already been played so many times. How many times do we have to see a virus ravage the people of a town (or the entire world) and watch it slowly destroy the people in the film little by little? I’m no stranger to a virus movie and I’m certainly on board with a good one. I’ve even made a few virus-related films. It would have been nice to see the filmmakers do something différent with the material.

Finally, the acting is laughably terrible. There is way too much overacting, with screaming and shouting in every other scene. It’s like watching an episode of a Vikings series, with all of the characters are yelling at each other. 

All in all, this movie was something that had no purpose and was bereft of character development, which makes me wonder how the film managed to get made.