Film

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

A 43-minute biographical film about Karen Carpenter's final 17 years, performed almost entirely by Barbie dolls. It's a visually stunning, deeply felt portrait of artistry, perfectionism, and the eating disorder that killed her at 32. Weird to watch, impossible to forget, and genuinely moving—it works precisely because the artificiality of the medium makes the emotion feel more, not less, real.

TMDb rating3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to bold formal experiments in biography, where a cheap-looking artifice becomes a way of getting at something raw about fame, control and the body.

Skip it if you find the subject of eating disorders hard to sit with, or you want a conventional performance and emotional build; this is a stylized, clipped piece that keeps its distance.

What it asks of you: Under an hour, it is brisk and deliberately airless, with a flat, stilted rhythm and little relief; give it full attention, since every cut and pause carries the point.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Grey Gardens1976

A fascinating psychological portrait of two women isolated in decaying wealth, built from intimate documentary footage. It's mannered and strange, yet deeply compassionate about its subjects' fractured lives.

But It's deliberately unglamorous and can feel like an invasion of privacy. Some find the running time (94 minutes) and pacing deliberately slow.

Grey Gardens poster

Pennies from Heaven1981

Steve Martin in a serious, heartbreaking role, blending Depression-era hardship with fantasy and desire. It's ambitious in mixing genre and style to explore inner lives, much like Superstar does.

But The tonal shifts between grim reality and elaborate musical numbers alienate many viewers. It's not quite anything audiences expected.

Pennies from Heaven poster

The Hours2002

Three women's interior lives unfold across time, connected by Virginia Woolf's influence. A meditation on perfectionism, identity, and the cost of creative ambition presented with elegant formal precision.

But It's introspective and deliberately paced. The parallel structure requires attention, and the emotional payoff is quiet rather than cathartic.

The Hours poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Eating Raoul1982

Both use artifice and formal constraint to explore how bodies become sites of discipline, shame, and social control. Both ask: what happens when we can't accept ourselves as we are?

A surreal comedy-thriller about a prudish couple who murder swingers to fund their dream. It's formally inventive, nasty, and darkly funny—a completely different register for similar material about control and bodies.

But The comedy comes from gore and transgression. If you're expecting reverence toward the subject matter, this is the opposite—it's exploitation played for laughs.

Eating Raoul poster
More like this (8)

Sid and Nancy1986

Raw, chaotic, and urgent—a love story told inside the wreckage of addiction and fame. It captures how public mythology collides with private devastation, shot with visceral energy.

But It's brutally explicit about drug use and self-destruction. The aesthetic is deliberately ugly, and the violence is not depicted from a distance.

Sid and Nancy poster

Touching the Void2003

A mountain-climbing disaster recounted through interview and restaging. It finds dramatic intensity in survival and examines how we process trauma through the act of telling the story.

But The survival ordeal is genuinely hard to watch. If you dislike heights or accounts of physical suffering, it's genuinely difficult.

Touching the Void poster

Thin2005

A documentary inside an eating disorder clinic that avoids sentimentality. It presents the illness with clinical precision and captures the psychological complexity that documentary rarely achieves.

But It's harrowing and uncomfortable. The specificity of the eating disorder portrayal may be triggering for some viewers.

Thin poster

My Own Private Idaho1991

Gus Van Sant's portrait of young male hustlers in Seattle is formally inventive and emotionally raw, blending documentary realism with dreamlike fantasy and literary adaptation.

But It's diffuse and digressive. The narrative refuses to explain itself, and the subject matter (prostitution, homelessness) is presented without judgment or redemption.

My Own Private Idaho poster

Amadeus1984

A grand film about genius, jealousy, and the mechanics of creation. It captures the public success and private anguish of a brilliant artist navigating patronage and expectations.

But At 180 minutes, it's a commitment. Some find its operatic tone overwrought and its historical liberties grating.

Amadeus poster

Mask1985

Based on a true story, it charts a teenager with facial disfigurement as he discovers music, love, and identity. It's sentimental but genuine, and Cher's performance has real depth.

But The sentimentality can feel calculated. The film sometimes reaches for easy emotional beats rather than sitting with harder truths.

Mask poster

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both use artificiality—dolls, constructed sets—to explore the gap between inner life and outer presentation. Both ask whether the fake version of ourselves might be the truest thing we have.

Charlie Kaufman's chamber piece about a theatre director whose life and art collapse into each other. It's complex, formally audacious, and genuinely about the cost of perfectionism and the impossibility of authenticity.

But It's oblique and frustratingly abstract. The narrative resists interpretation, and many viewers find it pretentious or emotionally distant.

Synecdoche, New York poster

Madame X1966

Both use heightened artifice—Sirk's color and composition, the film's Barbie dolls—to suggest that trauma and suffering don't require realism to be emotionally true. Both trust their form to carry feeling that naturalism cannot.

Lana Turner in Douglas Sirk's Technicolor melodrama about a woman defined by secrets and sacrifice. It's outrageously artificial, emotionally heightened, and formally perfect—camp that means everything it says.

But It's aggressively earnest in a style that can read as unintentionally funny. The emotional beats are obvious, and the Technicolor artificiality distances some viewers from the story.

Madame X poster

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