I'm picking up Good Vibrations......

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2016)

In the late 1960s, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson stops touring, produces "Pet Sounds" and begins to lose his grip on reality.
By the 1980s, Wilson, under the sway of a controlling therapist, finds a Saviour in Melinda Ledbetter.......
Sometimes there are life stories that a so bonkers ,so wonderfully out of this world, that they have to be true. Love and Mercy is a prime example of the above sentence.
The film is devised into two narrative parts, Wilson at the top of his Beach Boys fame with Dano as Wilson, and Wilson as an empty Shell, almost autonomous due the needless therapy given to him, with a performance so brilliant, Cusack has redeemed himself for every foul direct to DVD movie he's been in since 2005.
But as the narratives are coherent with one another, the connotational arcs are almost the polar opposite to one another. The Dano arc begins with him being relatively well, and becoming more and more troubled. And this is Vice Versa with the Cisack arc.
And honestly, the film shocked me that little but more than a Die Hard Beach Boys fan, because I never knew the struggle that Wilson went through in the eighties, or how much of a prisoner he was in his own life due to the puppet master that was Landy.
So to the untrained eye, you begin to side with Landy, and his quest to make Wilson feel an element of normality. But to the trained eye of someone who watched a hell of a lot of movies, you know that any biopic or music based film will always have Giamatti as the main protagonist (see also Private Parts, Rock Of Ages), and as always Giamatti is a wonderful actor to hate.
But because Cusack spends the majority of his role in a pseudo shell, appearing to give up life, to give up love, just adds to the aura of dictatorship Landy already has.
McAdams is the reverse, and thank heavens the future Mrs. Wilson persevered with her journey to free Wilson form his captor. That's true love for you.
The earlier scenes suffer a little because of the power of the later segment, Dano is good, he really emulates Wilson from that era, and the scenes with his father are heartbreaking. But the parts with him in the studio just come across a little too pretentious for my liking, and the scenes where he is suffering again, come across just a little too psychedelic, they take something away from Wilsons suffering.
But all in all, it's a fascinating insight to someone who found a new lease of life, someone who met someone who made him realise that the best years were not behind him, but ahead of him.
Highly recommended.