The Sparks Brothers

Watch The Sparks Brothers (2021) online on iFILM — a music documentary directed by Edgar Wright, running 140 minutes through five decades of one of the strangest careers in pop history. The subjects are Ron and Russell Mael, the Los Angeles duo who have been releasing records since 1972 and remain, somehow, both influential and chronically underknown.

Wright gathered a remarkable bench of witnesses: Beck, Giorgio Moroder, Flea, Alex Kapranos, members of Duran Duran, New Order, and Erasure, plus Mike Myers, Fred Armisen, and "Weird Al" Yankovic, all explaining in different ways why Sparks quietly rewired their idea of what music could do. Twenty-five albums. Glam, avant-garde, synth-pop, chamber opera — each decade a deliberate reinvention. The film moves with the energy of a live set rather than an archive dig, cutting between interviews, footage, and animation without losing pace for a single one of its 140 minutes.

The real trick is that it works equally well as an introduction and as a deep dive. Come in knowing every album, or come in knowing nothing: both versions of the audience leave changed. Stream The Sparks Brothers (2021) online on iFILM.