The Light Between Oceans
2016
**½
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz, Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson
A lighthouse keeper, who has just returned from World War I, marries a local woman. After two traumatic miscarriages, the couple experience a miracle when a rowboat carrying a dead man and a newborn baby strands on the island. Derek Cianfrance's adaptation of M. L. Stedman's 2012 novel starts well, but the contrived story then takes some laughable turns on the way to its overly melodramatic conclusion. The story is supposedly set in Australia, but as good as Fassbender, Vikander, and Weisz are in their roles, they don't sound like they're from that part of the world.
