Movie Reviews
‘Everywhere Man: The Lives and Times of Peter Asher’ Review: Documentary Traces a Remarkable Under-the-Radar Musical Legacy
I love when a project has a title that seems just a little off but offers a purposeful piece of wordplay.
It doesn’t have to be distractingly askew.
Everywhere Man: The Lives and Times of Peter Asher
The Bottom Line Overlong and uneven, but filled with musical magic.
Venue: Telluride Film Festival
Directors: Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine
1 hour 57 minutes
Take, for example, Everywhere Man: The Lives and Times of Peter Asher, the new documentary by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine (Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song). It’s a title you could skim a dozen times without stopping and going, “Wait, isn’t the idiom ‘life and times’?”
It takes very little time into Geller and Goldfine’s slightly overstuffed and slightly imbalanced documentary to recognize what they’re doing.
Peter Asher is one of several figures who served as the Forrest Gump or Zelig or Chance the Gardener of the counterculture — people who pop up in the background of seemingly every photograph taken across several decades, whose names grace the liner notes of every significant album, whose accomplishments merit acknowledgment in countless award show speeches.
If you’re a devotee of Swinging London of the ’60s or the Sunset Strip folk rock scene of the ’70s, he’s already an icon. But even if you’re not, his integrality to countless pop culture narratives beggars belief, because he has, indeed, lived many lives both in the spotlight and immediately adjacent. The pleasure of Everywhere Man is that every time you think you’ve seen the wildest piece of Peter Asher adjacency, the next chapter proves you wrong. Kinda.
The problem of having multiple lives, though, is that not all lives are created equal. At 117 minutes, Everywhere Man is a sprawling film, one that goes from exciting and unpredictable to the stuff of countless rock-n-roll biopics, but the directors treat everything equally — or else lack the material to make the second half of the documentary anywhere near as engaging as the first.
The bold-type version of Asher’s career is that he went from one-half of the British Invasion duo Peter & Gordon — you’ll recognize “World Without Love” — to the legendary producer who steered artists like James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt to the biggest hits of their careers. He has called himself one of the inspirations for Austin Powers, and his list of celebrity friends includes … everybody.
But it’s the little details and not the broad strokes that inspired Asher to write and perform the one-man show — or “musical memoir” — that Geller and Goldfine use as the spine of the documentary.
To hint at only a few of the head-scratching biographical oddities of Asher’s lives: His father was the physician responsible for identifying and naming Munchausen syndrome. He and his ginger siblings had acting careers promoted with the unlikely headshot promo “All Have Red Hair.” He contributed, directly or indirectly, to the relationships between Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He helped introduce Taylor to Carole King and helped convince Carole King to perform as a solo artist.
The first half of the documentary is a delightful and thoroughly unlikely progression through one of the most colorful artistic moments in recent history, steered by Asher’s own memories and appearances by friends including Twiggy, Eric Idle and many more. The music is wonderful and the archival footage a blast.
I compared Asher to Zelig and Forrest Gump and Chance the Gardener, but that’s reductive. Some parts of his rise were absolutely based on happenstance and circumstance: His sister was dating Paul McCartney (interviewed here in audio only), who allowed Peter & Gordon to record “World Without Love,” a Lennon-McCartney composition that Lennon hated. But however self-deprecating Asher often is, it’s clear that he was more than just in the right place at the right time. He was talented, and there were bigger-picture societal trends that he helped bring together.
Interestingly, as the documentary goes from the parts of Asher’s biography that might be interpreted as luck-driven to the chapters in which his genius is most obvious, it becomes less entertaining, albeit never unentertaining.
Taylor is a guarded, but appreciative interview subject, and if you’re interested in his growth from the first artist signed to the Beatles’ fledgling Apple label into one of the most significant figures in the ’70s folk movement, this is good stuff. Is it better than the 2022 documentary (Carole King & James Taylor: Just Call Out My Name)that gives Taylor and King full focus? Probably not.
Ronstadt is a guarded, but appreciative interview subject, and if you’re interested in her growth from eclectic vocalist with a reputation for being “difficult” to one of the most versatile and beloved stars of the ’70s and ’80s, this is good stuff. Is it better than the 2019 documentary that gives Ronstadt full focus? Probably not.
The stories of his production innovations and inspirations are nerdy and cool, especially the talk of Asher being one of the first producers to insist on giving back-of-the-album credit to the individual musicians assisting bigger solo artists. But the stories of wild tours, drug use and the like are strictly old hat. Asher’s eagerness to talk about the good times and his immediate reticence to engage on the disintegration of his first marriage (the topic of a James Taylor song, “Her Town Too”) made me wonder what else was being left out.
It’s also odd that after all of the depth given to Asher’s personal relationships with the Beatles and Taylor and Ronstadt, we reach the ’80s and ’90s and the documentary is pretty much, “And then he worked with Diana Ross and Cher and Neil Diamond and Billy Joel,” who are all absent from the documentary.
Everywhere Man simply falls victim to Asher living such a conventionally impressive life after having already lived several unconventionally remarkable lives. What a pity!
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM
AFFECTION movie poster | ©2026 Brainstorm Media
Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026
AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.
There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.
Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.
But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.
The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.
Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.
Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.
The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?
AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.
Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.
We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.
As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.
Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.
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RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — In this episode of 8News Reel Talk, digital producer Julia Broberg is joined by anchor Deanna Allbrittin and reporter Allison Williams to talk about “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”
The hosts gave their reviews and assigned the following star ratings:
Deanna: ★★★★.5
Allison: ★★★.25
Julia: ★★
To watch more livestreams and digital video content, head to the WRIC+ Originals page. You can also watch full on-demand videos on your smart TV using the WRIC+ app.
Billie Eilish fans prepare yourself, the much talked about secret project has finally arrived on the big screens!
Billie Eilish has always been about intimacy over artifice, but her latest concert film takes that to a visceral new level. Co-directed by Eilish and James Cameron, Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) manages to bridge the gap between a massive stadium show and the quiet grit of life backstage.
The film starts 18 minutes out from the show and builds the tension until audiences are literally folded into a box with her. Being taken under the stage, passing fans who have no idea she’s inches away, sets a tone of total immersion. What makes this film different is the balance between the spectacle and the behind-the-scenes reality. We see the creative shorthand between Billie and James Cameron as they chase what she calls the “best kind of sensory overload”.
The film is very much fan focussed, with the sound mix being so specific that you can hear individual fans singing along in sync with the visuals.
There are so many standout moments, the handheld camera work during “Bad Guy” that gives a dizzying POV of the band, and the chilling minute of silence Billie requests from the crowd to record a vocal loop.
The film captures her unique stage presence. Influenced by rap culture, Billie refuses to have anyone else on stage, unlike many female artists that use back up dancers. Billie can hold the entire stadium in awe by herself which is incredible to witness, until Finneas joins her for a beautiful, emotional piano set.
Between the high-tech visuals and the “Puppy Room” (where she keeps rescue dogs for staff to decompress), the film feels incredibly personal. While the film doesn’t give us any new insights into Billie, Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) is an enjoyable experience that elevates the tradition concert film.
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