5 Beatles Movies Without The Beatles

My iTunes has been telling me all week that today was going to change my life -- but the news that the Beatles catalog is now available via Apple's music service didn't even change my "A Day in the Life," since like most Beatles fans, I had already picked up the CD reissues of recent years. And while the Beatles have their own distinguished filmography -- from the influential A Hard Day's Night to the larky Help! to the elegiac Let It Be -- the Fab Four have made enough of a pop culture impact to spawn movies about them that they weren't even involved in. Ahead, five Beatles movies without The Beatles.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand: Before Forrest Gump and A Christmas Carol, Robert Zemeckis actually used to make smart, sharp, whiz-bang comedies, and one of his earliest and best is this breathless little number about teenagers from New Jersey who come to Manhattan to see their idols John, Paul, George, and Ringo play The Ed Sullivan Show. It's one of the most loving and screwball examinations of obsessive fandom ever.

Yellow Submarine: OK, yes, the Beatles do make a very brief live-action cameo in this animated feature, but other actors provide their voices for the animation, and the band's immortal songs make for a trippy springboard into outrageous (yet kid-friendly) psychedelia.

Across the Universe: Julie Taymor's ambitious attempt to use Beatles songs (sung by her cast) as the backdrop for a story about love and rebellion in the Vietnam era crashes more often than it soars, but the good moments -- like the early number featuring a cheerleader's plaintive rendition of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" -- almost make the daggy bits worth enduring.

The Hours and Times: Pop culture historians may never agree on the exact nature of the relationship between John Lennon and Beatles manager Brian Epstein, but filmmaker Christopher Münch spins his own version of what might have gone down between the two of them during a weekend jaunt to Spain in 1963, just before the band conquered the world. (Ian Hart's performance as Lennon got him cast in the same role in the bigger-budgeted Backbeat three years later.)

All This and World War II: Here's a movie where the pitch meeting must have been as fascinating as anything on-screen -- newsreel footage of the second world war (and clips from 1940s 20th Century Fox films) is juxtaposed to Beatles tunes performed by the likes of Helen Reddy, Elton John, Bryan Ferry, and Ambrosia. After a week in theaters in 1976, the film was shelved, although bootlegs exist, and L.A.'s Nuart Theater ran it as a midnight movie a few years ago. At least the soundtrack sold -- and in the final analysis, it's still better than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which stunk up multiplexes two years later.