Listen to Pet Sounds. If you've never done so before, listen with headphones. If you think of the Beach Boys as a band about surfing and California, listen to Pet Sounds. If you think of them as the band from Full House, listen to Pet Sounds. If you're alive right now, listen to Pet Sounds. I am not generally at home to the Baby Boomer canon of rock music, but one place they got it right is Pet Sounds. This is the music of the human soul.

What this film does best is show the process of recording this album. It's fan service, certainly, to play that drum beat from "I'm Waiting for the Day," to let that riff play,…

A recording studio in Southern California. A group of studio musicians assembled. An undeniably brilliant (and possibly insane) young man wanders the room, obsessively perfecting each instrument’s part. One player calls him over. Something is wrong. All the strings are in one key, and the horns are in another. How is it going to work?

Brian Wilson shrugs. It works in his head. So it will work on tape.

LOVE & MERCY is like that too. It tells two simultaneous stories about one man played by two actors working in very different keys. Paul Dano uncannily recreates the young Brian Wilson; he looks and sounds just like him. John Cusack plays the middle-aged Wilson and looks and sounds just like ...…

88/100

Unlike anything I've ever seen, as it simultaneously condenses and expands on the tropes of the "sub-genre" (biopic) that it's been unfortunately squeezed into. Todd Haynes crafted 6 different versions of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There., but Bill Pohlad was wise in sticking with the dual-structure, especially because the conclusion rhymes in a way that works towards its yearning, symmetrical fashion. Separate sections of a complete whole have never felt so brilliant in their various contradictions, and like the good old days of vinyl, Love and Mercy enthralls like a perfect A-Side/B-Side record.

The two performances, both portraying Brian Wilson but each in different mindsets and settings (60s and the 80s), by Paul Dano and John Cusack are,…

www.lawrence.com/weblogs/scenestealers/2015/jun/5/musicians-dominate-the-week-especially-w/

There are many things to enjoy about the unconventional new Brian Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy,” so let’s start with the obvious one: the music. Not only does director Bill Pohlad concentrate on 1966 to 1967, the most adventurous and fruitful period of The Beach Boys’ career (“Pet Sounds,” “Good Vibrations,” “Smile”), but he actually shows the artist at work in the studio.

A good story is built on conflict, so many rock biopics focus only on the melodramatic parts of a musician’s life, skipping over or simplifying any serious examination of their music, which is the real reason they warrant a movie in the first place.

In “Love & Mercy,” Paul Dano plays a young Wilson at the peak of…

Biopic rarely are *excellent* in that they are 4.5-5 star worthy. Typically they range from terrible to good, often dependent on how interesting the subject of the biography is about; a facet in which the writer/director of the film cannot control (except for I suppose no one makes biopics about uninteresting things - although Bono has a biopic, so...). Perhaps the problem is sometimes the picture focuses on covering the entire story (Jersey Boys, Bohemian Rhapsody) rather than just focusing on the most important/interesting part of the story (The King's Speech, Mank, Walk the Line perhaps).

Love & Mercy does a good job of just sticking to the latter. It doesn't walk you through the history of The Beach Boys, focusing…

I love the way that this film portrays an artist's ability to see something those around them don't see. In the case of Brian Wilson, he can hear the music that others can't hear (even those that are involved in the actual creative process). The representation of the creation of Pet Sounds within this movie felt comparable to what it must be like to be a director. It's a collaborative process to be sure, but ultimately the director is the one keeping the pieces moving and the bigger picture in mind. Similarly, Brian Wilson acted as the "director" to Pet Sounds. There's a scene of confrontation between Mike Love and Brian Wilson where Love accuses Wilson of just using the…