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‘Becoming Madonna’ Review: It Comes on as a Look at Madonna’s Early Days, but Most of This Archivally Rich, Dramatically Scrappy Doc Is Set Long After She Became Madonna
Madonna's pre-fame adventures in New York are fascinating, but most of Michael Ogden's film churns through familiar history, with a focus on scandal.
Marketed as an IMAX spectacular, it has made $10 million, and it’s a captivating Zep documentary, with one major qualifier: A story-of-the-band portrait that culminates in the release of “Led Zeppelin II,” the movie can’t help but leave you with a feeling of “Damn! She became one of the formative warrior-activists of the AIDS era, like Elizabeth Taylor (whose friendships with gay men also loomed large), and by the time of the Blonde Ambition tour, this symbiosis had exerted a profound influence on Madonna’s performance persona. video she created with director Mary Lambert for “Like a Prayer,” the release of the coffee-table art-porn book “Sex” in 1992 — the film tries to pump up the cosmic transgression of all this, showing us the tabloid headlines calling her a “slut” and “trash,” as well as the mainstream media coverage that was always so shocked by it all.
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