Items23The creator’s order
  1. 1The Commitments (1991)The Commitments (1991) 7.6/10 on IMDbReleased Aug 14, 1991The gold standard for the whole genre. Jimmy Rabbitte decides working-class north Dublin needs a soul band, and the rough-edged auditions, rehearsals in odd corners and first shaky gig feel like every band that ever started with more nerve than gear. Alan Parker recorded the vocals live on set, so…0
  2. 2That Thing You Do! (1996)That Thing You Do! (1996) 7.0/10 on IMDbReleased Oct 4, 1996A band movie that lives or dies on one song, and the song delivers. Adam Schlesinger wrote the title track for the fictional Wonders, and it was catchy enough that the real single reached No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100. Tom Hanks's debut as a director follows a small-town Pennsylvania band from a…0
  3. 3Sing Street (2016)Sing Street (2016) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased Mar 11, 2016The best case for starting a band to impress someone. John Carney grew up in 1980s Dublin and went to the Synge Street school that gives the film its name, and his teenage hero forms a band of misfits mostly to win over a glamorous older girl. What lifts it is the music: the originals by Carney…0
  4. 4The School of Rock (2003)The School of Rock (2003) 7.2/10 on IMDbReleased Oct 3, 2003The movie that has sent more kids to a guitar shop than any other. Jack Black's broke, freshly fired rocker talks his way into a substitute teaching job and turns a fifth-grade class at a strict private school into a band, complete with roadies, a lighting crew and a manager. The detail that makes…0
  5. 5This Is Spinal Tap (1984)This Is Spinal Tap (1984) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased Mar 2, 1984Every working musician has lived at least one scene from this mockumentary: the gig billed below a puppet show, the stage prop built to the wrong size, the drummer nobody can keep. Rob Reiner's film follows a fading British metal band on a disastrous American tour, and it is still the funniest…0
  6. 6We Are the Best! (2013)We Are the Best! (2013) 7.1/10 on IMDbReleased Mar 28, 2013The truest movie here about a first band, because it admits a first band is mostly noise, attitude and friendship. In Stockholm in 1982, two 13-year-olds, Bobo and Klara, start a punk band with no real instruments and no idea how to play them, then talk a shy, devout Christian classmate who happens…0
  7. 7Linda Linda Linda (2005)Linda Linda Linda (2005) 7.5/10 on IMDbReleased Jul 23, 2005A Japanese high school girls' band loses members just before the school festival and has three days to learn a new set, built around covers of the Blue Hearts, the 1980s Japanese punk band whose song gives the film its title. Their new singer is Son, a Korean exchange student who has never sung in…0
  8. 8Blue Giant (2023)Blue Giant (2023) 7.8/10 on IMDbReleased Feb 17, 2023A jazz trio built from scratch, and the best animated band movie going. Dai arrives in Tokyo from a small town after only four years on the saxophone, talks a classically trained piano prodigy into starting a band with him, and recruits a friend from home as a complete novice on drums, so the film…0
  9. 9The Blues Brothers (1980)The Blues Brothers (1980) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased Jun 16, 1980The ultimate getting-the-band-back-together movie. Fresh out of prison, Jake Blues and his brother Elwood go round up their old bandmates, now scattered into day jobs and supper-club gigs, to raise money for the Catholic home where they grew up, and each reunion is its own small comic set…0
  10. 10Almost Famous (2000)Almost Famous (2000) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased Sep 15, 2000The tour-bus movie. In 1973, a 15-year-old aspiring rock writer lands an assignment from Rolling Stone to go on the road with Stillwater, a rising fictional band fronted by Billy Crudup's guitarist and Jason Lee's insecure singer, and he watches the band strain over who is the star. Cameron…0