Not many films hit an emotional crescendo around the publication of a Pitchfork review, but Bill Pohlad’s “Dreamin’ Wild” is sufficiently sincere and embedded in musical nerdery to make it work. As onetime brother act Donnie and Joe Emerson huddle with their family around a 30-years-late evaluation of the album they recorded as teenagers, one particular critical reference sends them giddily reeling: “To twist a Brian Wilson phrase,” it reads, “[the album] is a godlike symphony to teenhood.” For fortysomething Donnie, who has spent his whole adult life scrambling for anyone to listen to his music — let alone love it — the mere mention of his musical hero in relation to his work is a crowning triumph: Donnie, as played by a typically disheveled, downcast Casey Affleck, looks briefly, guardedly happy for a moment, and this often melancholic film is suddenly suffused with well-being.

For those who remember Pohlad’s last film, the fine, deeply felt Brian Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy,” the name-drop neatly underlines a common thread between Wilson and Emerson, at least as presented on screen: two brilliant, emotionally fragile men, made and undone by their obsessive, possessive devotion to their music, working towards their own kind of peace. The music itself aligns too, with Emerson’s late-‘70s brand of soft rock and blue-eyed soul audibly in thrall to Wilson’s writing and densely layered production style. The difference between them, of course, is that one is an icon and one never came close, making Pohlad’s sweet, slightly sorrowful film the lower-key B-side to his previous one — a poignant examination of what happens when a star is conceived, but not born.

Oliver Stone on Nuclear Energy: 'We Need to Get Away From Mentality of Fear'

'Blue Jean' Review: A Lesbian Teacher Faces (and Perpetuates) Systemic Homophobia in a Quietly Searing British Debut

'No Bears' Review: Jafar Panahi's Inventive, Illuminating Autofiction Builds to a Tragic New Twist in the Tale

“Dreams come true in time, occasionally 4/4 time,” reads a title card at the outset of “Dreamin’ Wild” — a quote attributed to nobody, which rather emphasizes its greeting-card quality. It’s a cornball note on which to start a film that mostly proves to be better at avoiding such schmaltzy pitfalls, though it does chime in with the romantic, starry-eyed spirit of the adolescent Donnie (a perfect, mop-topped Noah Jupe), as we open on him idly futzing with a guitar in an isolated timber cabin on his family’s sprawling pine farm in Washington State. He looks up to see an imagined crowd screaming before him, hanging on his every chord, that then evaporates in the starry night. It’s 1979, he’s 17, and the world is his oyster, unless it snaps right shut.

Fast-forward to 2011, and the middle-aged Donnie has moved only as far as the nearest town, where he manages an ailing recording studio with his wife Nancy (an underused Zooey Deschanel), plays cover-band gigs at weddings and bars, and dedicatedly raises a family that gets oddly scant screen time in Pohlad’s script — adapted from a profile by journalist Steven Kurutz. It’s not the life he imagined when he and his older brother Joe (played, in earlier and later life respectively, by Jack Dylan Grazer and Walton Goggins) recorded their scrappy, self-funded and prodigiously sleek album “Dreamin’ Wild” as teens.

It sold a handful of copies locally and piqued the interest of a Hollywood record producer, but never caught on — not until three decades later, that is, when a record collector’s chance discovery of “Dreamin’ Wild” in a thrift shop spurs a word-of-mouth revival, prompting indie label boss Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina) to contact the brothers and reissue the album. For Joe, an only modestly talented drummer who long ago shelved any musical aspirations to join his father (Beau Bridges) in the family logging business, this is nothing but a delightful fairytale outcome.

For Donnie, it’s something rather more bittersweet: an unsolicited confrontation with a youthful sensibility that he’s left behind, from which he feels he’s evolved. As the record acquires an underground following and invitations for the brothers to perform flood in, he finds himself uncomfortable slipping into the songs and stage dynamics of the past, while his newfound admirers show no interest in any of his newer work. “I feel like this dream is coming true but the wrong people are in it,” he admits to Nancy, as Pohlad and DP Arnaud Potier — painting in suitably autumnal, warm-but-wilted tones — mark his growing agitation with hectic handheld shooting.

Structurally, editor Annette Davey’s tangled, intuitive criss-crossing of past and present abets a clear kinship between Affleck and Jupe’s performances as Donnie, despite no great resemblance between the two. The actors share a pensive, sometimes far-away air of inner quiet, though Jupe’s calm, straight-backed self-assurance stands in stark contrast to Affleck’s crumpled body language and weary, whispery delivery. Always at his best playing men trying to run up the down escalator, the older actor is achingly moving in the story’s latter stages, as Donnie’s ambitions and anxieties battle each other to an exhausted draw; he has pitch-perfect support, too, from Goggins and Bridges as the men who love him but can’t find his frequency.

These performances hit the honest notes in a screenplay that sometimes labors a little too hard to put Donnie’s unrest into words. We have his lovely, plainly worded songs for that, filling the soundtrack and delivered in the real man’s voice throughout: In particular, the sensuous, satiny soul ballad “Baby” becomes the film’s shifting leitmotif, played in past and present recordings that variously connote unformed teen yearning and a more crackly, wistful middle-aged want. When Affleck gives way to Emerson himself in the closing number, a hopeful, newly written tune about dreams enduring and begetting further dreaming, what could be a cheesy biopic gambit instead feels fully earned: Emerson has waited long enough for the spotlight to come to him, and a little longer still to accept it.

The Best Albums of the Decade

Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.

The singer saluted the beloved monarch's "70 years of service."

A Carnegie Mellon University professor drew pushback on Twitter after wishing Queen Elizabeth a painful death after it was announced she was in poor health.

Peter Summers/Getty ImagesRoyalist is The Daily Beast’s newsletter for all things royal and Royal Family. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Sunday.Prince Harry departed Balmoral Castle on Friday morning the same way he had arrived—alone.The prince, who spent just over 12 hours at Balmoral, has become estranged from his family since he and his wife, Meghan Markle, left their status as working royals and gave a series of interviews condemning the family and the institution, and making a

Kylie Jenner lives in a $35 million mansion that seems to have super weak water pressure.

The Duke of Sussex raced to Balmoral to be at his beloved grandmother’s bedside, but arrived more than an hour after Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen had died, aged 96.

Prince Harry has left Balmoral following the Queen's death, but has changed his plans and will stay in England.

Jennifer Aniston, 53, posed in the shower to tease the launch of LolaVie’s Restoring Shampoo and Conditioner, which launched on September 8.

Host also suggested reparations to British colonies since the late queen "wore a crown with pillaged stones from India and Africa"

We're breaking down Queen Elizabeth's net worth and exactly how much money the Queen had in the bank before she passed this afternoon (hint: it's a lot).

The King and the Princess Royal were the only two senior members of the Royal family who made it to Balmoral before Queen Elizabeth II’s death, it is understood.

As The Queen’s health quickly declined on Thursday prior to her passing, the entire royal family, sans Kate Middleton, had confirmed they were racing to the matriarch’s side. This included Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, whose spokesperson released a statement saying both the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were en route… Until, shortly after, their […]

Supermodel Kendall Jenner attended NBA 2K's 2K23 launch with Devin Booker wearing sheer patterned pants. See her nearly nude and leather look here.

Behar is pretty baffled by all the "Don't Worry Darling" drama, particularly in regards to Harry Styles and Shia LaBeouf

Amid the many rumors swirling around Olivia Wilde's "Don't Worry Darling" set is that lead star Florence Pugh ghost-directed scenes.

Queen Elizabeth died Thursday at 96.

The world's most famous diamond adorned the Queen Mother's crown. Indians say it must now be given back

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, revealed he didn't write a tweet from 2020 about "Friends" but wishes he had.

Manager Paul Rosenberg said there were some fears that Slim Shady might have suffered brain damage after the 2007 incident.

"There is that natural inclination that is one of pure commerce that says, 'Hey, you just had a hit, so do it again and you’ll have a hit.'"

The Duchess of Cambridge is remaining in Windsor while the rest of the royal family rushes to the queen's bedside.