Timothee Chalamet mesmerises in A Complete Unknown, The Monkey is a tiresome horror

The story: Star-producer Timothee Chalamet channels American folk poet Bob Dylan in a Hollywood musical biopic up for eight Academy Awards, including best actor, director, picture and screenplay.

- Whang Yee Ling

In 1961, a 19-year-old from Minnesota hitches a ride to New York City with his guitar to meet his folk singer idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) and establish a career.

By 1965, amid a climate of civil rights and anti-war activism, he has been anointed "The Voice of a Generation" for his raw protest songs Blowin' In The Wind (1963) and The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964) until he scandalises the crowd at the Newport Folk Festival by blasting electric instruments: Dylan, even now at 83, continually reinvents himself.

American indie film-maker Todd Haynes' answer was to cast six characters as the multifaceted minstrel in I'm Not There (2007). A Complete Unknown is nowhere so innovative. An adaptation by American director James Mangold and his co-writer Jay Cocks of the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, this account of the musician's four formative years ascending from scruffy vagabond to cultural force - is a straightforward celebrity origin story like Mangold's Walk The Line (2005) on American country legend Johnny Cash.