Marley
Tagline: One Love
Bob Marley has been such an intrinsic part of popular culture for so long that it’s a bit surprising the definitive documentary had yet to be made about him. But with the blessing of the Marley family, director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void) has here assembled rare footage, brilliant performances and revelatory interviews with the people that knew him best.
And Marley is receiving notable notices for not just showcasing the good side to the Jamaican star, who died in 1981, but the bad (for starters, he was a notorious adulterer who fathered 11 children by seven women). Time Out London plays up the tactic (“Such an honest depiction can only contribute to a deeper appreciation of this remarkable artist”) with its New York counterpart equally ebullient: “A ‘redemption song’ for anyone dreaming of a musician profile done right.” Empire calls it “a testament befitting a legend,” while our colleagues at Entertainment Weekly single out Macdonald, noting that he “shows off his chops not by doing anything dazzling — the film is documentary prose, not poetry — but by treating Marley as a man of depth and nuance, of inner light and shadow.”
LIST:Bob Marley in TIME’s Top 10 Celebrity Grave Sites
Darling Companion
Beth (Diane Keaton) saves a lost dog from the side of the freeway in Denver. Joseph (Kevin Kline), is Beth’s distracted, self-involved husband. And since Beth and Joseph are not exactly seeing eye to eye right now, she proceeds to forms a special bond with the animal. After Joseph somehow loses the dog following the wedding of their daughter (Elisabeth Moss), Beth — by now ready to pretty much slice and dice Joseph up and feed him to any animal — ropes in the remaining wedding guests and a mysterious woman (Ayelet Zurer) in a search quite possibly unlike any in cinematic history. And this is all done under the watchful eye of The Big Chill director Lawrence Kasdan who, once upon a time, might have run a mile from such material (or at least handled it differently). Apart from that though, a masterpiece, right?
For the likes of Salon, it’s all too easy to spot the issue at stake. “Kasdan was one of the hottest guys in the business for at least a decade. Today, although he’s younger than Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese … Kasdan looks like a flailing, irrelevant has-been.” The Village Voice goes down a similar path: “The handsome pooch is … the only appealing aspect of the latest tale of privileged boomer pulse-taking from Lawrence Kasdan …” The Associated Press feels exactly the same (just about every critic does, in fact), noting that Darling Companion “feels utterly neutered, a film with little on the line and a talented cast begging for a little wit and a few jokes.”
LIST: TIME’s Top 10 Films of 2011
NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: Whether you know his material or have an opinion on him as a person, Marley remains the must-see choice of the week.