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  • The Perfect Villain

    As I get ready to watch Andor: Season 2 this weekend, I appreciate this piece by Jim Vorel in Paste that serves as kind of ode an to Orson Krennic, this season’s villain.

    He has long been my favorite modern era Star Wars villain, and Andor season 2 is the perfect excuse to remind the world of why Krennic is such a fantastic character for this setting: Not because he’s an evil genius, but because he’s such a perfectly pathetic, bootlicking rube. In a fictional universe where the bad guys are typically overpowered space wizard warlords or cooly calculating strategists, Krennic is neither: He’s an entitled, petulant bureaucrat driven by a pathological need for praise and recognition, constantly being shown up and embarrassed by superiors and heroes who are far smarter than him. Which is to say, Orson Krennic is easily the most realistic of Star Wars villains, the guy who best encapsulates the worst aspects of our own society.

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  • A CGI Ape Takes To The Screen

    David Sims writes for The Atlantic about Better Man, the new Robbie Williams music biopic where the singer is depicted by a CGI ape.

    Why is he a primate? Better Man doesn’t ever explain—though in its trailer, Williams mentions feeling “less evolved” than everyone else—and none of the characters ever remarks on it. Instead, the meaning of the conceit is left in the hands of the audience. This decision is a baffling swerve for a celebrity biopic, one that will probably keep it from becoming an out-and-out sensation. But Better Man deserves to be treated as more than a strange curio: Despite the seemingly run-of-the-mill premise and the contrivance of the protagonist, it properly delves into its subject’s erratic persona, using the musical segments to advance the story instead of as mandatory breaks in the action. The result is one of the most thoughtfully constructed movies about a musician I’ve seen in years.

    It’s high concept stuff, for sure. I’m just not sure I could watch the movie without constantly feeling like it’s the spiritual successor to Dunston Checks In.