The music movie is dead.

At least it was, until about a week ago. It seemed as if after June’s “Jersey Boys” Broadway-turned-movie dud Hollywood was a far cry from the Academy Award winning music biopics earlier in the ‘00s, films like “Ray” and “Walk the Line” that found critical and commercial success.

It’s fitting, then, that a movie about rebooting life has also rebooted a passion for music in film. No one goes through the motions in director John Carney’s “Begin Again” (Rated R; 104 min). The performances feel genuine, and like in last month’s “Chef” the passion is evident. The headlines may read Hollywood is having a horrible summer, with blockbusters tanking left and right, but this is really a revival of honest filmmaking. You just have to know where to look.

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“Begin Again” doesn’t tell an overly complicated story; the movie follows two down-on-their-luck New Yorkers, Dan (Mark Ruffalo) and Gretta (Keira Knightly), who cross paths in a bar. Dan has been kicked out of the record label he started and has quite the drinking problem. Gretta figured out her rock star boyfriend has been cheating on her when she listens to the lyrics of his new song.

It turns out Gretta is a talented artist herself, and Dan believes he can take her from the small time to his label, getting his job back in the process. The two compliment each other’s flaws. And when they begin recording, “Begin Again” stops being a film and becomes a love letter to starting over in New York City. It’s hypnotic watching these two make their way through the streets, listening to and bonding over music.

Carney knows the pitfalls he must avoid and manages to steer clear of melodramatic territory, even when Dan’s daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld) threatens the film with a dose of teenage angst.

Even when the script deals with the deepest of Dan’s demons there’s an infectious hope in Carney’s screenplay. Ruffalo and Knightly work together in a give-and-take that mirrors Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence in Russell’s “Silver Linings Playbook.” There’s no romance here, but there are two flawed characters worth investing our time in because each realizes he or she is the yin to the other’s yang.

It seems as Hollywood can only produce one of these breezy summer films per year; last year it was “The Way, Way Back.” The story is different here, giving its characters more desperate circumstances. But it’s the refreshing take on the material, bolstered by the film’s appreciation of music, that makes “Begin Again” a showstopper we’ve missed so far in the “Transformers”-assisted drought.