The filmmaking industry is complicated, and making movies is hard, which makes movies about filmmaking often intense experiences. The first movie shown to the public was in 1895, and this new technology enraptured the public. Directors became magicians, actors became celebrities, and movies became touchstone events.
However, when looking at movies about filmmaking over the years, it is often the dark side that the films shine a light on. Some of the releases still instill a sense of wonder as magic is made on the big screen, but when films pull back the curtain, it is never as glamorous as one might believe.
Jay Kelly (2025)
Jay Kelly is a brand-new movie about the filmmaking industry from director Noah Baumbach. Since this is a Baumbach movie, the film is dialogue-driven, with the characters’ own insecurities leading the story forward. George Clooney stars as the title character, a well-known actor trying to come to terms with his life.
Adam Sandler co-stars as Jay’s agent, Ron Sukenick, and this story follows him and Jay as they travel through Europe and come to terms with their life choices and the legacy they leave behind. Jay Kelly offers a fantastic non-comedic role for Sandler, one he has been excelling in for over a decade now.
Clooney is a perfect actor to cast as a Hollywood movie star, and he delivers the masterful performance that most fans would expect. Sandler matches up well with him, and the attack on celebrity status by Baumbach is dialed back, allowing viewers to enjoy the movie while watching the characters struggle.
8½ (1963)
8½ is possibly Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, released in 1963 as an avant-garde comedy-drama. The film follows a famous Italian director named Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) as he suffers from writer’s block while trying to direct an epic sci-fi film. It also follows his relationship with several women in his life.
The movie is also a meta-commentary on writer’s block, as this was supposed to be Fellini’s ninth film. This is a complicated movie to watch, as Fellini’s characters mostly drift from set piece to set piece, as it almost seems like Fellini himself is the one trying to figure out what his story is about.
Critics praised the movie’s design and the character Guido himself as someone who believes in his own mythology. Fellini earned an Oscar nomination for Best Director and shared the nomination for Best Story and Screenplay, while it won for Best Costume Design and Best Foreign Language Film.
Babylon (2022)
Babylon was a polarizing movie when it was released. It took great pains to show the debauchery and horror of Hollywood’s Golden Age, including the tragic young deaths, suicides, and career destruction of even the biggest stars. However, Damien Chazelle also tried to show the importance of movies in society.
The movie shows Hollywood when the silent era was ending and sound was coming into films. It showed a young actress (Margot Robbie) who became a massive star and an aging star (Brad Pitt) who was trying to hold on. It also showed a young man who believed in the power of cinema, who witnessed it all.
When released, many people believed Babylon would be a frontrunner at the Oscars thanks to its harsh look at Hollywood itself. That actually backfired and held it back, as it only received three technical nominations and didn’t win any of them. However, as a film about how Hollywood can destroy lives, few movies are better.
The Disaster Artist (2017)
The Disaster Artist is a different look at the filmmaking industry because it takes place outside the studio system. Directed by James Franco, the film tells the story of Tommy Wiseau and his movie The Room, which is widely considered to be one of the worst movies ever made, to the point that it has become a cult classic.
Franco plays Tommy in the movie as he sets out to make The Room, and many of the scenes in The Disaster Artist are exact replications from scenes from that original film, masterfully shot, with Franco delivering a fascinating performance as Tommy. It would win him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.
At the end of the day, The Disaster Artist is a movie that shows how hard it can be to make a movie. However, it also shows that anyone can achieve their dreams if they never quit. The Room might be a punchline for many movie fans, but the fact that people know about it says all a person needs to know about Tommy Wiseau’s story.
Hitchcock (2012)
In 2012, Anthony Hopkins starred as Alfred Hitchcock in the Sacha Gervasi biopic Hitchcock. This film takes place at a specific point in history as Hitchcock was making the movie Psycho in 1959, and it follows Hitchcock’s work on making the film and his relationship with his wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren).
It is fun to see today’s top stars playing classic Hollywood starlets, with Scarlett Johansson starring as Janet Leigh, Jessica Biel as Vera Miles, and James D’Arcy as Anthony Perkins. Michael Wincott also appears as serial killer Ed Gein, the character that Norman Bates was loosely based on.
The film shows a lot about the making of Psycho, but the primary focus of the film is on Hitchcock’s relationship with Alma at the time, and both Hopkins and Mirren were at the top of their game.
Mank (2020)
David Fincher directed the black and white movie Mank in 2020, and it was a polarizing look at one of the greatest movies of all time, Citizen Kane. Gary Oldman starred as Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who developed the movie Citizen Kane for Orson Welles, and the struggles to get this masterpiece right.
The movie only received a limited theatrical release, so most people watched it on Netflix, which stripped away a lot of Fincher’s brilliant filmmaking. However, when looking at the story and how William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) tried to ruin Citizen Kane’s production, it’s an incredible story of the dark side of Hollywood.
Despite its polarizing critical response, Mank earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress (Amanda Seyfried). However, it only won two awards, one for cinematography and another for production design, which makes sense considering the movie it was about.
Baadasssss! (2003)
Baadasssss! was a very personal movie for director Mario Van Peebles. That is because the film was based on the struggles of his own father, Melvin Van Peebles, as he attempted to make his movie, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. That 1970s movie proved to Hollywood that there was an audience for Black films.
Not only did Van Peebles direct the film, but he also starred as his father in retelling how hard it was to get Hollywood to understand what he wanted to do with his seminal movie. By the end, he not only got his film made, but it helped open the door for the creation of the blaxploitation genre.
Critics praised the film, with a 91% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and it picked up several awards. It was nominated for five Black Reel Awards, winning one for Best Director, and three Independent Spirit Awards.
The Bad And The Beautiful (1952)
Released in 1952, this was a Golden Age movie that looked at the drama behind the scenes of Hollywood productions. Kirk Douglas stars as Jonathan Shields, an unscrupulous movie producer who moves to the top of the Hollywood industry while using and discarding everyone who helps him get there.
The supporting cast is excellent, with Lana Turner as movie star Georgia, Barry Sullivan as director Fred Amiel, and Dick Powell as writer James Lee Bartlow. However, when Shields reaches out and offers the three a chance to work together again, the film breaks down why it is not always best to come back home.
Interestingly, this fictional tale also parallels the lives of several real-life movie producers, including David O. Selznick, Orson Welles, and Val Lewton. It went on to earn six Oscar nominations, winning five of them, with only Kirk Douglas losing Best Actor to Gary Cooper (High Noon)
Ed Wood (1994)
The man widely called the “worst director in history” was a man named Ed Wood. However, in his 1994 biopic, Tim Burton set out to show that Ed Wood might have made a lot of bad movies over his career, but he was a man with a dream, and wouldn’t let anyone hold him down and keep him from achieving that dream.
Johnny Depp starred as Ed Wood in the movie, with Martin Landau turning in an Oscar-winning performance as Bela Lugosi. The movie is a loving look at an eclectic director who had a vision and believed everything he was doing was going to result in a fantastic film, and never let his failures hold him down.
By the time Ed Wood died, he had never achieved success in Hollywood, and he earned his Worst Director nickname after his death. However, more people know who Ed Wood is today than many better directors of his era, showing that his hard work paid off in the end.
Nouvelle Vague (2025)
Nouvelle Vague is one of two movies about filmmaking that came out in 2025, this one a comedy-drama directed by Richard Linklater. While the other movie, Jay Kelly, is a fictional look at acting, Linklater’s movie is a biopic about Jean-Luc Godard and the making of his masterpiece Breathless.
Linklater shot the movie in France with a mostly French cast, as he chose to film the story in black and white and show the highs and lows of Godard filming his seminal French New Wave movie. Nouvelle Vague ended up with only a limited theatrical release before hitting Netflix.
Critics praised Nouvelle Vague, awarding it a 90% Rotten Tomatoes rating and calling it a masterful look at recreating a “groundbreaking production.” Linklater showed the love that went into the masterpiece, making this a movie about filmmaking that shows love for the industry.