Islands: Adrift

Islands (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five); Unrated, but deserving a PG-13 for dramatic intensity, drug use and fleeting nudity

Available via: Amazon Prime and othr VOD options

By Derrick Bang

Sigh.

 

It starts so well.

 

Writer/director Jan-Ole Gerster’s brooding character piece initially radiates curiosity. 

 

Partly out of kindness, partly out of sympathyfor the clearly unhappy Anne (Stacey Martin),
Tom (Sam Riley, right) impulsively offers to spend a day touring her, her husband
Dave (Jack Farthing) and their young son around the island of Fuerteventura.

Tom (Sam Riley) wakens one morning, clothed and prone on beach sand; cinematographer Juan Sarmíento G. emphasizes the bright, blazing sunlight. Tom stumbles to his feet, slides into his nearby vehicle, and drives to his day job as a tennis instructor at a swanky resort hotel.

The disapproving receptionist, Maria (Bruna Cusí), hands him the week’s schedule, noting that he looks as rough as he feels. But Tom is popular — the schedule is fully booked — so his behavior apparently is tolerated by the Folks In Charge.

 

Tom spends the day cheerfully — but mindlessly — tossing tennis balls, lobbing and returning serves. He heads each night to Waikiki, a rowdy techno nightclub where he dances, smokes too much, drinks too much, does some drugs, and sometimes winds up in bed with a lovely lady (or two). He’s a blackout drunk, waking each morning with little (if any) memory of recent past events.

 

Lather, rinse, repeat: every day, apparently stretching back quite awhile. There isn’t much else to do, on this island setting of Fuerteventura. Tom is stuck, for reasons we don’t yet know.

 

(We rarely see him eat anything, which seems an odd oversight.)

 

Tom sees a fresh group of tourists arrive one day; one woman pauses, while stepping from the bus, and shoots him a contemplative glance. She appears later at his ramshackle office — where he keeps a concealed bottle of vodka, for occasional daytime snorts — having been directed there by Maria.

 

She introduces herself as Anne (Stacy Martin), and explains that she’d like tennis lessons for her 7-year-old son, Anton. Tom suggests his twice-weekly children’s group classes, but she insists on private lessons. Tom hesitates, then acquiesces, knowing that the French couple booked for the next day’s 9 a.m. slot rarely shows up.

 

Anne and Anton (Dylan Torrell) arrive on time, and Tom is impressed by the boy’s ability. Future bookings are made; on the next one, Tom meets Anne’s husband, Dave (Jack Farthing), quickly revealed to be a horse’s ass. Tom does the family a favor; Dave offers a cash thank-you, which Tom refuses. Instead, clearly liking Anne and Anton, Tom allows himself to be drawn into their island activities; he encourages as much, by spending a day touring them throughout Fuerteventura.

 

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain: Heartbreaking study of a tormented artist

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and (beginning November 5) Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

One rarely encounters such a Dickensian life, outside of a Charles Dickens novel.

 

Artist Louis Wain’s personal and professional life was just as tragic, as the majority of his vast output was playfully joyous. He remains, to this day, one of the most beloved commercial illustrators in English history; during the Edwardian era, it was the rare home that lacked one of his posters, or many of his children’s books.

 

Louis (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Emily (Claire Foy) are
surprised to find a scruffy, rain-soaked kitten in their
garden. They'll soon be even more surprised by the
degree to which this little feline affects the arc of
Louis' artistic career.

He also deserves credit for helping elevate the humble pussycat into a companion worthy of being a pet, rather than a pesky creature best relegated to the streets.

Author H.G. Wells famously noted — during a radio broadcast reproduced in this biographical drama — that “He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.”

 

Wain also was quite popular on this side of the pond, at the beginning of the 20th century, and then much later, in the 1970s, when his more outré cat paintings were ubiquitous among the, ah, college-age psychedelic set.

 

Director Will Sharpe’s poignant, deeply sensitive film is highlighted by sublime performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy. The script, by Sharpe and Simon Stephenson, is remarkably faithful to Wain’s life and career … the all-too-brief highs and numerous shattering lows of which, are almost too much to bear.

 

Indeed, this saga’s midpoint, highlighted by an intensely intimate scene between Cumberbatch and Foy, surely ranks as one of the saddest, most heartbreaking moments ever captured on film.

 

The story begins in the early 1880s, when — following their father’s unexpected death — 20-year-old Louis (Cumberbatch), as the family’s lone male, is forced to support his mother and five younger sisters. 

 

Fortunately, he has a remarkable — and rapid — facility for drawing and painting, which he’s able to do with both hands simultaneously (which Cumberbatch depicts persuasively). Louis specializes in animals and country scenes, and within a few years is selling work to journals such as the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and, a bit later, the Illustrated London News.

 

Unfortunately, Louis also suffers from a mental illness — possibly schizophrenia — which would remain undiagnosed throughout his lifetime. Symptoms include an irrational fear of drowning, which strikes unexpectedly. For the most part, he keeps such demons at bay via the manic intensity with which he fills every minute of every hour: sketching, tinkering with useless inventions, “composing” unmelodic musical works, and even sparring uselessly in an amateur boxing ring.

 

Along with a frenzied fascination with the wonders of electricity, which he comes to believe is a defining force in life and the universe.

 

So, yes: Cumberbatch once again is portraying an eccentric and deeply unstable genius, who’s all tics and twitches. But it must be acknowledged that his Louis Wain is completely distinct from his Sherlock Holmes, or his Alan Turing, or his Hamlet.