In the Dark Reviews

'Becoming Led Zeppelin' explores roots

Kirk Boxleitner | Apr 03, 20250

Courtesy photo

One of rock's most influential bands looks back on "Becoming Led Zeppelin."

One of rock's most influential bands gets an entertaining origin story in "Becoming Led Zeppelin," while medieval fantasy serves as grist for the mill of modern class-conscious satire in "Death of a Unicorn."

Becoming Led Zeppelin

As much fun as VH1's "Behind the Music" could be, was there anyone besides "The Doors" director Oliver Stone who was really psyched to see those musical artists' inevitable downfalls?

"Becoming Led Zeppelin" manages to be a feel-good documentary by focusing on the band's formative years, culminating in its popular public debut, because it's easy to avoid Lori Mattix in 1972 when your film concludes with the group becoming the No. 1 band in the world in 1970.

The film opens by acknowledging how growing up in the post-World War II rebuilding of Britain contributed to the future bandmates' yearning for the promise of what American rock had to offer, in the face of working- and middle-class parents expressing varying degrees of skepticism.

Led Zeppelin occupies a remarkable place in rock history, having drawn from folk and blues music to pioneer the development of album-oriented and stadium rock, and paving the way for hard rock and heavy metal to come.

But what's at least as notable is how well the four band members' personalities and aptitudes complemented each other, to the point that watching "Becoming Led Zeppelin" reminded me of nothing so much as the first "Ghostbusters" film.

Jimmy Page was Egon, the unparalleled auto-didactic polymath prodigy. John Paul Jones was Ray, the generationally honed talent whose skills and insight made him conversant with Jimmy. John Bonham was Winston, practically minded, unfailingly dependable and woefully underrated in his ability to bring the unanticipated. And Robert Plant was Peter, the slightly sketchy charisma kid whose versatile voice and literary lyrics sold the total package of their music.

Listening to Jimmy Page talk about how he taught himself the finely tuned details of sound engineering and studio production is like hearing Neil deGrasse Tyson hold forth on science.

I basked in Page and John Paul Jones' memories of playing as part of Shirley Bassey's performances of the "Goldfinger" theme, and when Jones recalled how his own musician father earnestly congratulated his son on surpassing his career, I'll admit, it was quietly moving.

It was lovely to see the surviving old lads' faces crinkle with smiles, as they heard the voice of their long-departed bandmate, John Bonham, when the filmmakers played quotes from his archival audio interviews, just as never-before-seen footage of the band's early concerts had the audience in my theater applauding after each set.

Death of a Unicorn

Who knew that A24 could weaponize "The Unicorn Tapestries" medieval artworks to create a graphic horror fantasy comedy that figuratively and literally skewers the "1 percent?"

When a widowed lawyer (Paul Rudd) and his daughter (Jenna Ortega) take a business trip to the nature preserve estate of his ailing boss (Richard E. Grant), who heads up a global pharmaceutical corporation, the distracted dad's rental car accidentally hits a unicorn on the way, and its sparkly purple blood turns out to possess physically restorative properties.

When the boss doses himself with the unicorn's blood, he discovers it can cure cancer, so he, his social-climbing wife (Téa Leoni) and their indolent idiot son (Will Poulter) scheme to use a mythical creature's magic to confer what amounts to immortality to the world's most privileged people.

Everyone in this cast is effectively running on typecasting autopilot, but they're all doing it very well. Rudd and Ortega vibe effortlessly as the well-meaning but weak single dad and his ethical, angsty and perpetually disappointed daughter. Meanwhile, Grant chews the scenery as ruthlessly as he did in Bruce Willis' "Hudson Hawk" (this is a compliment), and Poulter steals every scene he's in as the jaw-droppingly narcissistic, affluenza-ridden heir to his dad's exploitative empire.

"Death of a Unicorn" manages to combine a credibly researched primer of the real-life historic roots of "The Unicorn Tapestries" with multiple takes of Poulter snorting and smoking the powdered shavings from a unicorn horn, to gain mind-altering highs.

And because this film comes from A24, the thinking man's Blumhouse, it doesn't skimp on its graphically rendered depictions of dismemberment, often delivered via serrated unicorn horn.

"Death of a Unicorn" is Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" for the Lisa Frank and pharma-bro set, retold with even more sly crassness and even less tolerance for subtlety than Roger Corman managed in 1964.