I hadn’t heard of the 2010 book “Popcorn: 50 Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll Movies” until I recently scored a copy for $2 at a library book sale. Penned by British music scribe Garry Mulholland, it was advertised as “The first and last word on the rock movie” six years before I self-published my tome “Rock Docs: A 50-year Cinematic Journey.”

So though I’d beg to differ with that blurb, I also know when to tip my cap to a pro. “Popcorn” is a wildly entertaining and rigorous look at both rockumentaries and music-themed feature films for the half-century starting in the mid-Fifties (my timeline is Beatlemania to 2014). Mulholland is a writer full of original thinking: astute, passionate, contrarian, righteous, risqué and often laugh-out-loud funny. You can’t wait to read the next review and find out what he’ll say about all these major music movies, even when you can tell by the star-rating that you’ll disagree with him.

That Thing You Do!: “Sixties rock according to Forrest Gump.”

This is a guy who likes “Help!” and “Yellow Submarine” better than “Hard Day’s Night,” prefers the Bob Dylan obscurity “Masked and Anonymous” over the iconic “Don’t Look Back,” and is as willing to praise John Waters’ “Hairspray” to the high heavens as he is to take the Rutles down a notch or two. But he will champion worthy obscurities like “Slade in Flame” with logic and love and assure us with 5-star ratings for “This is Spinal Tap,” “Quadrophenia,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Performance” and “The Filth and the Fury.”

 The Kids are Alright: “Unique, thrilling, and a great reminder of when snotty bands smashing up stuff was still shocking, big and clever”

The films earning one or two stars usually get a (often much-needed) hatchet job. Check out these “plot line” blurbs that appear under the rating.

The Doors: “Twat stops shaving and dies.”

Purple Rain: “A $6 million tribute to Small Man Syndrome.”

The Monkeys’ ‘Head’: “Boy band force fed drugs and abused by hippie fuckwits.”

Pink Floyd’s The Wall: “Walls are bad. But women are worse.”

Control: “The aesthetically pleasing death of Ian Curtis.”

With such stylistic flair and free-ranging opinions, Mulholland can sometimes go a bit daft. About the only thing he likes in “The Last Waltz” are those cloying interviews Martin Scorsese had with Robbie Robertson to sell their cinematic ego trip about a grandiose farewell concert. Meanwhile, he treats the rest of The Band (who did not want to break up the group) as if they were Mumford and Sons. Not cool. The only guest spot he approves of is Muddy Waters, a rare foray into the dubious Rock Critic Guide to Street Cred.

In Bed with Madonna (aka Truth or Dare): “It’s like spending 113 minutes inside a homophobic joke.”

Elsewhere, Mulholland (who is white) delves deep into the ever-issue of white co-option of black musical culture and does so via an intellectual process, not by lazy virtue signaling. Like I said, he has a righteous streak. He uses it to body slam both the likes of “The Blues Brothers” (“trades on the non-existent joke of two ugly sexist white blokes being the Kings of Soul”) and “Ray” (“The sick, cruel, racist America is stylized-to-fuck until it has the requisite glow of nostalgic cool”), exposing the ineptitudes of both low-brow comedies and Oscar-bait star vehicles masquerading as biography.

As for “Ray,” the author dutifully misinforms us that Jamie Foxx won the Oscar for “Best Actor in Sunglasses.” Mulholland may be from England, but his cheeky sense of humor will be much appreciated by rock fans weaned on the good old days of Detroit-based CREEM magazine (“The Wall” is judged to be “the rancid toenail clippings of fetid rotting dogs”). You get the idea. Keep a lookout for “Popcorn” on the discount shelf or see if your library has a copy. Then have yourself a good laugh—and a good think.

But if you’re interested, I still have a few copies of my “Rock Docs” available for sale. Inquire in the comments below. Thanks, Rick Ouellette