BETTER MAN Review

With better musical numbers - at least as far as how they’re conveyed in the format of film - than Wicked and a more innovative take on the musical biopic certainly than anything that has been released since Bohemian Rhapsody became a four-time Oscar winner, Better Man transcends its multiple genres and demolishes expectations via a number of choices, perspectives, and ideas. Chief among these being that the main character, British pop star Robbie Williams, is rendered as a chimpanzee for the entirety of the film. Whether this is due to the fact he felt “less evolved” than those around him, that he felt treated like a circus act during his "Take That" days, or simply that he became something of an animal once fame afforded him the space to be, the central gimmick is more admirable in a distracting fashion than it is an influential one, but it doesn't not work and that was the risk in taking such a swing.

The facet that actually separates Better Man from the current crop of musical biopics is the fact Williams himself couldn't give less of a shit about PR. That is to say, the man has no issue showing you his scars or telling you how he feels about those that surrounded him. Getting this kind of unfiltered access and perspective feels more and more rare these days when the majority of musical documentaries are more or less controlled and therefore extremely filtered pieces of marketing material for their subjects. Luckily, a puff piece is not what neither Williams nor director Michael Gracey were interested in. As these things always go, it begins with wanting to make a father proud because of the lack of attention said father paid to their child while still on their own quest for fame and fortune. This neglect enables the kind of imposter syndrome Williams suffers from throughout the film and likely still to this day even with all of the awards and accomplishments, propping up the drive that has ultimately placed him in a position to command his own musical biopic despite what some might consider proper talent.

First Trailer for THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS Starring Michael Fassbender

Michael Fassbender is certainly one busy guy as 2016 will see Fassbender not only return as Magneto in X-Men: Apocalypse, but in at least three other films, maybe (possibly) even four. With an Untitled Terrence Malick project still sitting on the shelf one never knows what could happen. The actor also has Tresspass Against Us (directed by Adam Smith and co-starring Brendan Gleeson) and his re-teaming with Macbeth director Justin Kurzel on the video game adaptation Assassin's Creed set for a December release, but the one I'm most excited about is the latest from director Derek Cianfrance that pairs Fassbender with real life love interest Alicia Vikander and is based on M.L. Stedman's New York Times bestseller. Cianfrance has previously made the gut-wrenching Blue Valentine and the family epic The Place Beyond the Pines, the latter of which was one of my favorite films of 2013. So, to have another of his films on the horizon is a real treat. Cianfrance has adapted Stedman's debut novel, The Light Between Oceans, about a lighthouse keeper and his wife living off the coast of Western Australia who raise a baby they rescue from an adrift rowboat. Fassbender is lighthouse keeper Tom Sherbourne with Vikander (Ex Machina, The Danish Girl) playing his wife, Isabel. This first glimpse at the film via international trailer makes it clear the reasons Cianfrance felt motivated by the material and what drew it to him in the first place. The familial dynamics and the confrontations within the central relationship are prime Cianfrance territory that will undoubtedly allow him to explore the complexity of human emotion and how two entities of such strong emotions can intertwine over the plot that carries this story. The Light Between Oceans is one of my most anticipated of the year and also stars Rachel Weisz, Caren Pistorius, Benedict Hardie, Emily Barclay, Anthony Hayes, Leon Ford, Florence Clery and opens in the U.S. on September 2nd, 2016.

THE ROVER Review

The definition of rover is a person who spends their time wandering. This interesting, edgy, somewhat vague word that has garnered several interpretations is used here to define a wandering, drifting society. There is one man in particular with whom writer/director David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) is taken with in this transient existence and it is through this hardened and disconnected perspective we come to know the world ten years after it has seemingly collapsed. Everything about the world that Michôd has built through his imagery and his characters keep the outside world unclear and of little concern. This isn't a movie necessarily about anything as much as it is an analysis of what might happen were the structure we've always lived within to fall apart. All systems fail eventually, it is inevitable, but usually when something is perceived as failing it is because something better, more efficient has come along-it will have been superseded. This, unfortunately, is not the case in post-apocalyptic thrillers and while I am hesitant to use that genre classification at all I suppose it fits. The idea of society as we know it failing has always been an interesting idea because the reason something fails typically ties into the reason it was created in the first place. So, when we look at a world without any civilizing influences we begin to wonder what the point of it all was and why we allowed it to mean so much and determine such a portion of our lives, our happiness. Civility is cause for order and without either of them what we have is infrequent chaos and it is within one of these small pockets of havoc that Michôd introduces us to a protagonist, but not necessarily a hero, and sets us out on a journey with no urgent motivation. It isn't the trying to decode this incentive that pulls one into the film though, but instead the characters themselves and why they are who they are, how they have come to be this way and their own realizations of why they feel the need to take the actions they do. The Rover is an unnerving experience in many ways as it is slow, but never tedious. The actions that take place feel as random and authentic as the settings and physicality of the characters that the camera captures while all adding up to a beautifully depressing conclusion about what this life means to us and what our lives mean to others.