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Bird

Bird

1988
Drama, Music
2h 41m
Saxophone player Charlie Parker comes to New York in 1940. He is quickly noticed for his remarkable way of playing. He becomes a drug addict but his loving wife Chan tries to help him. (imdb)
Your probable score
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Bird

1988
Drama, Music
2h 41m
Your probable score
Avg Percentile 55.71% from 291 total ratings

Ratings & Reviews

(291)
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Rated 21 Jun 2011
69
46th
, but the music and the beautiful cars.
Rated 01 May 2017
65
54th
by-the-book labour-o'-love-biopic that has a nice rainy VHS vibe to it but despite some emotional harpooning never gets under the skin of charlie parker. a distant movie because it's basically just stating facts with some cinematographic panache - but in Clint Eastwood's hands still oddly solemn and without swing.
Rated 01 Mar 2007
70
82nd
Very good.
Rated 03 Apr 2007
80
68th
Well-crafted, handsome movie about a tragic figure. Everyone knew it wasn't going to make any money, but it stands up sturdily as a piece of art. Lots of fine jazz, too
Rated 28 Jan 2010
74
24th
Bird never comes to life here. The film doesn't capture his impulsiveness, his insatiability or his humor. Whitaker might have been up to it, but Eastwood wasnt.
Rated 22 Dec 2011
69
27th
Forest Whitaker gives a great performance and the music is outstanding. However I didn't find the story all that interesting and the movie did seem to drag on too long.
Rated 19 Apr 2012
77
59th
76.750
Rated 20 Jun 2012
60
54th
Eastwood at his most artistic. The film's fragmented narrative really soothes the biopic genre and I wish more filmmakers would opt for this kind of approach to the genre. Withtaker is fantastic, the thing really missing is a deeper insight on the music and not the drugs, the alcohol and the women - like all other biopics.
Rated 05 Oct 2013
79
61st
78.500
Rated 11 Aug 2014
90
81st
A shadow-filled paste-up of passages from the life of a creative man as a conflicting and mythicized figure whose torch burned short but bright and whose self-destruction is practically a foregone conclusion. Not only does Eastwood featherbed his love for jazz, it also marks a crossroad in his critical repute as a director, and lays the groundwork for a mosaic editing style that he would surmount with his much later biopic J. Edgar.
Rated 26 Aug 2015
85
67th
Just like Parker himself, it seems this brooding, soulful biopic has become unfortunately forgotten. Eastwood had already directed some great films before Bird but here he really hit a sweet spot in balancing dramatic storytelling and his elegant, stylistic flair that would define his future masterpieces Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby. Although unnecessarily long, Parker is a perfect subject for Eastwood to apply his typical loner protagonist to, and he does it here with honesty and love.
Rated 21 Apr 2016
84
90th
Of the many Eastwood attempts to depict historical figures through lonesome individuals, this feels like one of the most beautiful both in form and surface. It starts as this loosely, Abel Ferrara-like portrait of a loner, and slowly and smoothly, as any Eastwood film, it becomes the character itself: warm, vivid and self-destructive story of one of the most adored and influential artists of all time. Ignored in US, beloved in Paris -- where he ate a rose -- and dead after a couple of laughs.
Rated 27 Aug 2016
60
60th
Technically superb with a wonderful and inspired performance by Forest Whitaker. This is certainly toward the top of Eastwood's best directorial endeavors - he clearly has a soft spot for music (bio)pics and has achieved a solid tone here. Lower score for subjective reasons - I am not a fan of the genre, of the music and I don't find the tone terribly appealing (although very solid and spot-on, as stated above), thus the overly-long film felt very tedious. Some great scenes nevertheless.
Rated 21 Dec 2017
60
10th
Viewed December 20, 2017. This movie seems to be completely lacking in danger - not the danger of the hedonistic lifestyle Bird lived (The movie depicts him solely as a tortured soul, which strikes me as both inaccurate and a bizarre misreading of what made him such an interesting figure), nor the danger inherent in bebop, the radical style he pioneered. Occasionally beautiful, but often just morose and aimless.
Rated 29 Jul 2018
85
67th
Eastwood's decision to portray the life of Charlie Parker through flashbacks within flashbacks may not have been the most cohesive one to make, but I'll be damned if it wasn't the right one. Starting toward the end of Parker's life and working its way back, through, and around it, "Bird" is mesmerising, beautifully chaotic in the way that only the best jazz is, and haunting, a depiction of a life, a legend, and a dizzying road to self-destruction. What do I think about Yardbird? Only the best.
Rated 25 Jun 2019
5
22nd
Clint's heart is in it, and he's close to his style appex, but this is dead boring biopic stuff, less you're into Bird.
Rated 15 Jan 2022
80
80th
Far from the familiar biopic formular, this is not so much a film 'about' jazz great Charlie Parker, as it is a film that 'is' jazz.

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