No shattering revelations dot this look at the pre-Beatles John Lennon growing up in working-class Liverpool. What conceptual-artist-turned-director Sam Taylor-Wood vividly creates, from a script by Matt Greenhalgh (adapting the memoir of Lennon's half sister), is an intimate love triangle involving John (Kick-Ass star Aaron Johnson), Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), the free-spirited mother who gave him up, and Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas), the hard-nosed aunt who took him in. Johnson doesn't resemble, much less embody, Lennon, but he does catch his distinctive glint of mischief tinged with pain. Duff and Scott Thomas are both exceptional, revealing how John's relationship with these two clashing sisters marked his character. Nowhere Boy is smart enough not to spell it all out. You can hear it in Lennon's music, which plays in your head as the movie works its subtle magic.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."