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Country music’s deep roots in hard luck and heartbreak translate well into cinematic drama. Here are CULTURE’s Top 5 picks for the best country music-themed flicks:

 

NASHVILLE (1975)

Who better to make a film about the ins-and-outs of country music than Robert Altman? If you like your movies bitingly funny and almost three rewarding hours long, then Nashville will not cease to amaze you. Ned Beatty and Lily Tomlin alone are worth the ren

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Country music’s deep roots in hard luck and heartbreak translate well into cinematic drama. Here are CULTURE’s Top 5 picks for the best country music-themed flicks:

 

NASHVILLE (1975)

Who better to make a film about the ins-and-outs of country music than Robert Altman? If you like your movies bitingly funny and almost three rewarding hours long, then Nashville will not cease to amaze you. Ned Beatty and Lily Tomlin alone are worth the rental price.

COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER (1980)

This classic follows the life and times of Loretta Lynn, one of country’s most treasured voices. This film is also notable for being the only film Sissy Spacek has appeared in where she is not covered in pig’s blood at a high school dance.

TENDER MERCIES (1983)

Robert Duvall, in the role that won him an Oscar, plays a washed-up alcoholic country singer trying to run from his past and start a new life with a new wife running a motel. As often happens to people with a troubled past and nothing left to lose, Duvall finds his ex-wife, daughter, and music career hard to leave behind.

WALK THE LINE (2005)

With his basso profundo voice and bad boy turned spiritually reverent singer image, Johnny Cash was a hard man not to love; but director James Mangold shows the good, the bad and the ugly of Cash. Phoenix turned in a stellar performance just before he grew a massive, mangy beard and started his hip-hop career.

CRAZY HEART (2010)

Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake, an aging country singer who starts a relationship with a young journalist and tries to stop drinking which, in country music movies, is a common, if ultimately unachievable theme. In Crazy Heart, Bridges is more dude ranch than Dude, and his performance grounds the movie.

 

(Kevin Longrie)

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