Film

One More Time with Feeling

Andrew Dominik's black-and-white document of Nick Cave making *Skeleton Tree* after unimaginable grief. Not a concert film or typical music doc—it's intimate, sometimes difficult, occasionally transcendent. Cave and Warren Ellis are at work creating beauty from devastation. For anyone moved by art made from real pain, and for people who want to understand how grief actually sounds.

TMDb rating3.9

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Searching for Sugar Man2012

A documentary about a forgotten musician that becomes a mystery, then a redemption story. Like *One More Time*, it treats its subject with genuine reverence and finds profound meaning in artistic obscurity and survival.

But It's a feel-good narrative arc, which means it sometimes smooths over the harder edges of its subject's real experience to reach a satisfying ending.

Searching for Sugar Man poster

The Defiant Ones2017

Four hours in the studio with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine making history. Same intimate, observational approach to creation; you watch the actual work happen, the decisions, the vulnerability behind genius.

But Heavy focus on music business logistics and ego can feel tangential if you're there purely for the emotional resonance of the creative act itself.

The Defiant Ones poster

Touching the Void2003

A man nearly dies on a mountain and has to survive alone. Like *One More Time*, it's about processing trauma and finding the will to move forward. Unflinching, quiet, utterly human.

But Physically grueling to watch and emotionally exhausting. The slow-motion suffering isn't morbid, but it doesn't make it easy viewing.

Touching the Void poster

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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford2007

Andrew Dominik's formal obsessions—beauty extracted from darkness, the long take as moral choice, film as mourning ritual—are fully formed here.

Dominik's earlier masterpiece. Slow, hypnotic, devastatingly sad. It's about the distance between public myth and private suffering. Same director; same philosophical approach to cinema and mortality.

But Nearly three hours of Nebraska plains and whispered dialogue. It moves like a funeral, not a thriller. Patience isn't optional.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford poster
More like this (7)

Amy2015

Asif Kapadia's portrait of Amy Winehouse is unflinching, sad, and absolutely captivating. It has the same documentary restraint and the same sense that you're witnessing something sacred and fragile.

But Knowing how it ends makes the whole film a descent. It's harder to watch a second time, which limits rewatchability.

Amy poster

Cobain: Montage of Heck2015

Brett Morgen's portrait of Cobain uses animation, archive footage, and interviews to build something genuinely strange and moving. Like *One More Time*, it's trying to understand an artist's interior life, not just their output.

But Morgen's stylistic choices—lots of animation, rapid editing—sometimes feel like they're in dialogue with the subject rather than letting him speak. It's more interpretation than documentation.

Cobain: Montage of Heck poster

Senna2010

Another Asif Kapadia film: a portrait of obsession, brilliance, and fragility. Uses archive footage and minimal narration. The accumulated small moments create profound emotional truth.

But If you know nothing about Formula 1 racing, the technical sequences won't grip you as much as they're meant to.

Senna poster

The Last Waltz1978

Martin Scorsese's film of The Band's final concert. It's about artists at a crossroads, the weight of making meaning through music, and what it costs. The formal beauty matches the emotional content.

But It's a concert film first, so if live music performance doesn't move you, the film's architecture won't carry you through.

The Last Waltz poster

20 Feet from Stardom2013

Morgan Neville's documentary about backup singers is warm and funny and deeply humanizing. It has the same spirit of honoring artists whose work matters even if the world doesn't always notice.

But The feel-good tone means it rarely sits with actual injustice the way *One More Time* sits with grief. It's uplifting in a way that can feel a bit easy.

20 Feet from Stardom poster

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II2013

Both films ask: how do you make art when your life has been broken? Both answer: you make it anyway, and the work becomes the container for what you cannot speak.

Lars von Trier's divisive epic about a woman's life told in chapters. Graphic and difficult, yes, but also about finding structure and narrative meaning in chaos and pain. The artistic ambition matches the darkness.

But It's explicitly sexual in ways that will alienate many viewers, and von Trier's style is intentionally provocative. This is not a film that wants you comfortable.

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II poster

The Elephant Man1980

Both are black-and-white films about human fragility; both refuse easy sentiment; both trust silence and the image itself to do the emotional work.

David Lynch's black-and-white meditation on beauty, suffering, and the desire to be seen and loved. Deeply compassionate without being sentimental. Quiet, strange, profoundly moving. The formal choice of black-and-white carries meaning.

But It's a film about deformity and exploitation. Watching it requires accepting some real ugliness and sadness without the comfort of a redemptive arc.

The Elephant Man poster

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