Aarcflick

 When watching or reviewing a biopic, I don’t recall spending much time wondering what the real-life subject would think of it. Would James Brown have liked *Get On Up*, the magnificent 2014 drama about his life? He probably would have found something to complain about. Elton John enthusiastically endorsed *Rocketman*, the 2019 film about him—a movie I found to be a ridiculously phony disaster. However, while watching *Tony*—Matt Johnson’s drama about the young Anthony Bourdain and the summer he spent in Provincetown working in a restaurant kitchen for the first time—I couldn’t help but wonder what Bourdain himself would have thought of the film. How could one not? He was a man of strong opinions who had no patience for nonsense; he was a huge cinephile and the sort of person who, far from being flattered by a movie about his life, would have torn it apart for failing to capture the real story. In my view, if a biopic about Anthony Bourdain doesn’t clear the "Bourdain would have l...