Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, 8/10
This is the most recent outing of the legendary duo, and their first feature length appearance since Curse of the Were-Rabbit almost 20 years ago. This sees the villain Feathers McGraw enacting his vengeance on Wallace, while Wallace's latest scheme has him invent an oddjobbing garden gnome robot. Things soon go awry and a whole lot of classic Wallace and Gromit shenanigans ensue.
It's definitely not as masterful as CotWR, but it's still good nonetheless. The animation still retains that textured, tactile feel, the visuals are splendid and the jokes land. Despite Peter Sallis having passed away the new replacement actor does a very good job, and if you didn't know Peter Sallis was dead you probably wouldn't even notice the difference. If CotWR was a bit creepy but in a very silly way, this is straight up nightmare fuel. The garden gnomes are incredibly unnerving, and some of the sequences involving them are creepy even as an adult. The one thing I feel kind of detracts from this movie is how it feels uncharacteristically modern for Wallace and Gromit. Not that they're referencing the internet and smartphones, but there's computer hacking and circuit boards involved, which kind of breaks that timeless feel their other outings have.
Better Man, 8/10
This is the already legendarily bombing Robbie Williams biopic, where he is represented visually by a CGI monkey. It covers his childhood, his time in the boy band take that, and about the first 10 years of his solo career. You'd think this would feel like a gimmick in an otherwise derivative biopic, but it's actually really terrific. The monkey thing never being addressed gives it both a visual identity and allows it to be watched more as an abstraction. When the character is a mocapped monkey, you're thinking less about how much the events were dramatized for the movie, and you also empathize with the character a lot more. It's far from a glossy fluff piece. It covers the events in a deliberately raw, unflattering light: for a lot of the movie Robbie is depicted as a genuine piece of shit, and he doesn't get to make any excuses for his behavior. This is not a celebration of Robbie Williams, it's a breakdown of him. Though there is a lot of stuff you expect from music biopics like drug abuse, family issues and ruining relationships, they're not brushed off as just one-off things but given actual depth and focus.
The movie purposely focuses less on Robbie's career, and makes his mental health the core throughline of the film. His difficult relationship with his fater, his conflict with his bandmates and his burning desire for fame are all explored in interesting and detailed ways. His career achievements aren't core parts of the movie, but mere milestones in his pursuit of fame that he thinks will make him happy. Throughout it during the numerous performance scenes he sees younger versions of himself in the audience berating him, reflecting his self-loathing and insecurity. This culminates in an absolutely fucking insane climactic setpiece that I won't spoil, but suffice to say that my jaw was on the floor looking at what initially seemed like a very typical music scene. Speaking of which, there are a lot of music scenes in the film where entire Robbie Williams songs play out, and some of them are absolutely incredible. The choreography, editing and energy are off the charts. There are a lot of surreal, even nightmarish visuals, slick and inventive transitions and stunning shots. Visually it's one of the best looking biopics I've ever seen.
If there's something keeping it from being truly fantastic, it's that being a musical biopic it still treads a lot of familiar ground. There's only so many ways you can make drug overdoses or a star trashing their room interesting. Its pacing can be a bit off at times, the ending scene especially felt well overlong, almost to the point of feeling self-congratulatory. I'm probably going to see it again, because it really benefits from being seen in the cinema, so we'll see if a second watch changes my opinion.
