Film reviews: Despite its poignancy and strong lead, Michael is a surprisingly dull biopic
Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson on the set of the Thriller music video. Picture: Lionsgate/Glen Wilson.
★★★☆☆
The most celebrated case of arrested development in pop music history, Michael Jackson gets the biopic treatment in (12A), which opens in 1966 with the young Michael (Juliano Valdi) already an effervescent singer with the Jackson Five, the all-brother group dominated by their violent father, Joseph (Colman Domingo).
Dynamic and charming in public, brutalised in private, and persuaded to lie about his age (ie, pretend he’s younger than he really is) by Motown supremo Berry Gordy (Larenz Tate), Michael withdraws into a fantasy world where he idolises Peter Pan, the fictional boy who never grew up.
The frequent allusions to Peter Pan and Neverland seem to be foreshadowing more sinister developments when the adult Michael finally dons the crown of superstar, but while Antoine Fuqua’s film is thronged with llamas, chimps, snakes, and giraffes, it steadfastly ignores the elephant in the room. Nor are we given much insight into Michael’s artistic struggles; the story simply anoints him a pop genius from an early age, and charts his growing popularity via the Jackson Five and his solo albums Off The Wall and Thriller.
What tension there is comes via Michael’s desire to escape his father’s grasping control, but even there, Colman Domingo’s Joseph is a one-note ogre, all blustering threats when the adult Michael (played by Michael’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson) finally musters the courage to go his own way.
Jaafar Jackson is a saving grace in the lead role, delivering a wonderful physical presence that expertly mimics Michael’s aura of child-like naïveté, and proves himself a brilliant dancer in the wonderfully choreographed live performances.
Poignant at times (there’s a heartbreaking scene where the grown Michael plays Twister alone with only Bubbles the chimp for company), gauche at others (the risible sequence in which Michael choreographs rival LA gangs for the Beat It video), is for the most part a surprisingly dull biopic.
- Theatrical release
★★★★☆
(15A) stars Charlize Theron as Sasha, an adrenaline junkie who travels deep into the Australian Outback to white-water kayak through a remote canyon.
Threatened by the boorish locals, Sasha is initially relieved to encounter Ben (Taron Egerton) at a remote camping site, but the ostensibly friendly and helpful Ben very quickly reveals himself to be a sociopath who hunts tourists with a crossbow.
Written by Jeremy Robbins and directed by Baltasar Kormákur, is a thrilling variation on the Outback Gothic genre, in which narrative is stripped back to reveal the oldest story we know, hunter vs prey.
Alas for the charmingly lunatic Ben, Sasha is a very tough cookie, and her resourcefulness delivers plenty of twists, chills and spills.
It’s effectively a two-hander for the full 90 minutes, a relentless series of tense sequences that play out in canyons and floods, in subterranean caves and while scaling the face of vertical cliffs, with both leads full value in a hugely entertaining thriller.
- Netflix
★★★★☆
(15) stars Kazunari Ninomiya as the ‘Lost Man’, a commuter who inexplicably finds himself trapped in the endless loop of a subway tunnel system, and who must navigate his way to freedom by noticing almost imperceptible clues as he plods around and around the same three tunnels.
Adapted by Genki Kawamura from the ‘walking simulator’ video game of the same name, is a slow-burning psychological horror that is heavily indebted to Franz Kafka for its nightmarish sense of claustrophobia and MC Escher for its apparently simple but fiendishly complex setting: the ‘Lost Man’ is trapped in a limbo that serves as a metaphor for modern life, encountering similarly lost souls on his circuitous journey through the human equivalent of a laboratory rat’s maze.
The words ‘adapted from a video game’ don’t usually inspire confidence, but isn’t just a smartly executed adaptation; it’s also a film in which the alert viewer can participate in the game.
- Theatrical release
