Best movies like Bolden
Where the music began
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Bolden Starring Gary Carr, Michael Rooker, Ian McShane, Yaya DaCosta, and more. If you liked Bolden then you may also like: Young Man with a Horn, Us Again, New York, New York, Night Trap, Nightmare and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A mythical account of the life of Buddy Bolden, the first Cornet King of New Orleans.
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New York, New York
An egotistical saxophone player and a young singer meet on V-J Day and embark upon a strained and rocky romance, even as their careers begin a long uphill climb.
Night Trap
A New Orleans cop tries to track down and stop a vicious and demonic killer whom has sold his soul to the devil for invulnerability and immortality.
Ray
Born on a sharecropping plantation in Northern Florida, Ray Charles went blind at seven. Inspired by a fiercely independent mom who insisted he make his own way, He found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard. Touring across the Southern musical circuit, the soulful singer gained a reputation and then exploded with worldwide fame when he pioneered coupling gospel and country together.
Jazz on a Summer's Day
Set at the Newport jazz festival in 1958, this documentary mixes images of water and the town with performers and audience. The film progresses from day to night and from improvisational music to Gospel. It's a concert film that suggests peace and leisure, jazz at a particular time and place.
Kansas City
A pair of kidnappings expose the complex power dynamics within the corrupt and unpredictable workings of 1930s Kansas City.
All Night Long
Over the course of one eventful evening, the anniversary celebration of the musical and romantic partners Aurelius Rex and Delia Lane, a jealous, ambitious drummer, Johnny Cousin, attempts to tear the interracial couple apart.
Before We Go
A woman who is robbed on her way to catch the 1:30 train to Boston is left stranded in New York City. She meets a man who helps her during the course of the night and the two form a romance.
Belle of the Nineties
Cabaret entertainer Ruby Carter shifts her operations to New Orleans and becomes exceedingly popular with the local men.
Born to Be Blue
Jazz legend Chet Baker finds love and redemption when he stars in a movie about his own troubled life to mount a comeback.
Delta Heat
An L.A. cop investigates the death of his partner in the swamps of Louisiana. Enlisting the help of an ex-cop who lost his hand to an alligator many years before.
The Five Pennies
Dixieland cornetist Red Nichols runs into opposition to his sound, but breaks through to success. He marries a warm, patient woman and even finds time to raise a family. Then tragedy strikes when their daughter contracts polio.
Fractured
The film follows "Dylan White" who works as a cook in Baton Rouge. He is also in a solid relationship with his girlfriend "Brandy". Things are great until strange events prompt him to seek out the truth about himself -- following clues, Dylan discovers a dark past in New Orleans. Can he right his past wrongs and find redemption for his sins?
The Glenn Miller Story
A vibrant tribute to one of America's legendary bandleaders, charting Glenn Miller's rise from obscurity and poverty to fame and wealth in the early 1940s.
The Dangerous
Brother and sister Ninja warriors get revenge for their sister's death by killing the drug dealers in New Orleans. The police enlist the help of a biker warrior to solve the crime. The head drug dealer stirs the pot even further by hiring Cajun warriors to kill those he believes are responsible for the deaths of his dealers.
Mo' Better Blues
Talented but self-centered trumpeter Bleek Gilliam is obsessed with his music and indecisiveness about his girlfriends Indigo and Clarke. But when he is forced to come to the aid of his manager and childhood friend, Bleek finds his world more fragile than he ever imagined.
Three Days To Vegas
Four grumpy old men go on a road trip from their retired life in Florida to the excitement of Las Vegas in order to stop one of their daughters from marrying the wrong guy.
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday spent much of her career being adored by fans. In the 1940s, the government targeted Holiday in a growing effort to racialize the war on drugs, ultimately aiming to stop her from singing her controversial ballad, "Strange Fruit."
Highway 61
A naive Canadian barber who knows US popular culture inside and out meets a flamboyant roadie who needs someone to drive her and her "brother's" corpse from Thunder Bay, Ontario to New Orleans. Chaos ensues after the barber agrees to drive her, the corpse, and the drugs stashed within all the way.
I'm Bout It
I'm Bout It is a 1997 film by rapper Master P. The plot details his life in a New Orleans uptown ghetto. Master P wrote, directed and acted in the film.
Imagine the Sound
An examination, shown through both interviews and performances, of the avant-garde free jazz movement which reigned during the 1960s.
The Invisible Avenger
Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow, investigates the murder of a New Orleans bandleader.
Is Everybody Happy?
It is the story of Ted Lewis, popular band leader and clarinettist. The music for the film was written by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke, except for "St. Louis Blues" by W. C. Handy and "Tiger Rag". The film's title comes from Lewis's catchphrase "Is everybody happy?" The film's soundtrack exists on Vitaphone discs preserved at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, but the film itself is considered a lost film, according to the Vitaphone Project website. A five minute clip from the film can be found on YouTube.
Paris Blues
During the 1960s, two American jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls and must decide between music and love.
Some Call It Loving
A jazz musician falls in love with a comatose woman at a carny sideshow and takes her to his mansion to join his cabinet of sexual curiosities.
A Tuba To Cuba
A son seeking to fulfill his late father’s dream takes his band from the storied city of New Orleans to the shores of Cuba, where — through the universal language of music — dark and ancient connections between their peoples reveal the roots of jazz.
A Thousand Kisses Deep
The suicide of an old woman from her apartment building sends a nurse on a strange journey back through time to try to rectify her past mistakes.
What Am I Bid?
Discharged serviceman stops off in Hollywood and gets discovered as a next potential big country music star. Really just an excuse to have several country acts perform on film.
The First 9½ Weeks
An investment banker travels to Louisiana to snag the account of an eccentric millionaire but gets involved with his lusty wife, Mardi Gras, and (possibly) a satanic cult. The events in and around New Orleans change him forever and give a new slant on The American Dream.
Signpost to Murder
An escaped mental patient, reported to be homicidal, hides out in a woman's rural home.
Satchmo the Great
In this 1957 biography film of the jazz-great Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, he and his band tour the world as American good-will ambassadors bring jazz at its best to the people of the world. Within the film, the life of Louis Armstrong is portrayed through the music. One of the outstanding scenes in this "biography/docudrama" shows blind songwriter W. C. Handy, with tears streaming down his face, as Armstrong, backed by Leonard Bernstein leading the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, play Handy's immortal "St. Louis Blues."
The L-Shaped Room
Jane is young, French, pregnant and unmarried. Bucking convention, she is uninterested in settling with her baby's father or getting an abortion. After renting a room in a dingy London boarding house, Jane befriends the odd group of inhabitants and starts an affair with one boarder, Toby. As Jane's pregnancy threatens her new relationship, and the reality of single motherhood approaches, she is forced to decide what to do about both her baby and her budding romance.
A Man Called Adam
A famous jazz trumpeter finds himself unable to cope with the problems of everyday life.
Stony Island
"Stony Island gives you a priceless look back at Chicago’s South Side neighborhood, at a time when very few films were made in within the city at all — and features a legion of legendary Chicago players (Gene Barge, Phil Upchurch, Larry Ball, Richie Davis, Tennyson Stephens, Ronnie Barron, and a young Susanna Hoffs) alongside Dennis Franz (“NYPD Blue”) and Rae Dawn Chong. Telling the story of a group of multiracial R&B performers, and how they’re affected by the death of a veteran musician from their circle, Stony Island is an incredible time capsule, and provides a sweetly funky soundtrack to boot!" -- The Cinefamily
A Place Called Truth
Love, pride and jealousy are aroused when a ranch owner's daughter, called Lizzie, has an affair with a cowboy. Meanwhile a mysterious woman seduces the various lovers of Lizzie, who has fled to New Orleans to escape her arranged marriage.
New Orleans
A gambling hall owner relocates from New Orleans to Chicago and entertains his patrons with hot jazz by Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman, and others.
Chasing Trane
An account of the life of the brilliant jazz musician John Coltrane (1926-67), a gifted saxophonist, an extraordinarily talented thinker whose original, avant-garde work has impacted and influenced people all over the world. A story about music's ability to entertain, inspire and transform.
Scott Joplin
The life story of Scott Joplin and how he became the greatest ragtime composer of all time.
Pete Kelly's Blues
In 1927, a Kansas City, Missouri cornet player and his band perform nightly at a seedy speakeasy until a racketeer tries to extort them in exchange for protection.
Ma Belle, My Beauty
A surprise reunion in southern France reignites passions and jealousies between two women who were formerly polyamorous lovers.
Learn to Swim
Toronto jazz saxophonist Dezi Williams is withdrawn from his band and tries to spend his days in solitude as an instrument repair technician, but is haunted by his memories, a mounting pain in his jaw, and an intrusive new neighbour.
Almost Blue
The young jazz saxophonist Morris Poole is at the height of his career. When his wife dies he is almost overcome by grief and blames himself. When after a while he finds a new love, he ends up in a situation that reminds him of his wife's mysterious death.
Birth of the Blues
Jeff grows up near Basin Street in New Orleans, playing his clarinet with the dock workers. He puts together a band, the Basin Street Hot-Shots, which includes a cornet player, Memphis. They struggle to get their jazz music accepted by the cafe society of the city. Betty Lou joins their band as a singer and gets Louie to show her how to do scat singing. Memphis and Jeff both fall in love with Betty Lou.
A mythical account of the life of Buddy Bolden, the first Cornet King of New Orleans.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Bolden Starring Gary Carr, Michael Rooker, Ian McShane, Yaya DaCosta, and more. If you liked Bolden then you may also like: Young Man with a Horn, Us Again, New York, New York, Night Trap, Nightmare and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Young Man with a Horn
Legendary trumpeter Art Hazzard teaches young Rick Martin everything he knows about playing, so Rick becomes a star musician, but a troubled marriage and the desire to play pure jazz instead of commercial swing songs cause him problems.