Review of Ian Curtis biopic

((The review claims "Control" is better and less of an inside joke than "24 Hour Party People." I positively heart Joy Division.))))

"Control"

This picture about Joy Division's Ian Curtis is one of the most beautiful movies ever made about rock 'n' roll.

By Stephanie Zacharek Salon, October 10

Link to whole review

"If you're over 30 -- or even if you're not -- you know what happens next: You can't hang onto youth, but you can hang onto music, and so, at least in some small way, most of us do. The trick is to guard against blind nostalgia, to open yourself to the possibility that the music you loved when you were 20 can still mean something when you're 45. Perhaps it can mean even more.

Anton Corbijn's "Control" tells the story of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of the revered Manchester post-punk band Joy Division. Joy Division -- its other members were Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris -- made only two albums before Curtis killed himself in 1980, on the eve of the band's first U.S. tour. Before Curtis' death, Joy Division was virtually unknown in the United States, even though their following in the U.K. had been growing steadily. By the time most people stateside started paying attention to them, Curtis was gone. But both his story and the band's music -- darkly glittering songs that sounded majestic rather than self-indulgently world-weary -- were compelling enough to earn Joy Division a passionate following. The fact that the band's surviving members had regrouped as a very different band, New Order, made the saga even more magnetic."