The Fantastic Four: First Steps — Fourth time's the charm!

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.10.25 

We’ve certainly waited long enough.

 

After this seminal superhero team’s disastrous earlier big-screen outings — in 2005, ’07 and ’15 — Marvel Cinematic Universe fans and long-time comic book nerds were understandably wary of this new attempt.

 

Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) has a polite "discussion" with the Fantastic Four's helpful
robot, H.E.R.B.I.E., regarding the proper way to cook a meal.

Well, worry no longer. Director Matt Shakman and five credited scripters — Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer and Kat Wood — have done right by this quartet of blue-costumed champions.

You’ll be charmed immediately by the film’s look and atmosphere. Production designer Kasra Farahani establishes a retro-futuristic style that evokes the era when writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby debuted their comic book series in November 1961. It’s a time when recordings still are made via vinyl discs and reel-to-reel tape, with fashion, cars and household accessories in a mischievous, not-quite-accurate reflection of what our grandparents wore, drove and used, back in the day.

 

A television documentary-style flashback celebrates the quartet’s fourth anniversary in a kinder, gentler world — this is Earth 828, in the multiverse — where they’re beloved by everybody, and nations peacefully cooperate amid mutual respect.

 

(God knows, this sure isn’t our Earth.)

 

The flashback clips describe how Dr. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) and her younger brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) were bombarded by cosmic rays during an outer space mission, granting them unusual powers as, respectively, the stretchable Mr. Fantastic, the super-strong Thing, the Invisible Woman and the Human Torch.

 

Scenes of the quartet saving civilians during natural disasters are intercut with battles against more ambitious foes; longtime comic book fans will smile when the FF’s first issue cover image monster and villain — the Mole Man — are referenced. Reed and Sue subsequently married, and the quartet established a fancy headquarters in New York’s iconic Baxter Building.

 

Moving to the present day, Shakman and his scripters take their time with the first act, focusing on the quartet’s “down time” behavior and interpersonal dynamics: the “human element” that immediately set Marvel Comics characters apart from their DC competitors (Superman, Batman, etc.). These four people are messy, and they struggle with relatable problems.

 

Reed, the resident scientist, agonizes over decisions big and small, constantly second-guessing himself; Pascal displays the right blend of analytical sharpness and emotional befuddlement. Sue, the group’s heart and calming influence, also is an accomplished diplomat for world peace; Kirby delivers a performance that radiates warmth, caring ... and a ferocious degree of protectiveness.

 

To the casual eye, Ben and Johnny are like squabbling brothers, the latter forever trying to get under the former’s rock-hard skin. Quinn emphasizes his character’s sloppy and often reckless behavior, particularly during a crisis. Moss-Bachrach’s Ben, finally, is the group’s tragic member: forever trapped in an oversized orange body that may delight children, but is a constant reminder that he’s unlikely to enjoy the sort of romantic relationship shared by Reed and Sue.

 

These folks are fun, behind the scenes. They’re like family.

 

The Bad Guys 2: Animated mayhem

The Bad Guys 2 (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for mild rude humor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.3.25 

This madcap adventure is even more fun and crazed than its 2022 predecessor.

 

Director Pierre Perifel definitely knows how to pace an animated action comedy, and he has ample support here from co-director JP Sans, elevated from his previous role as head of character animation for the first film.

 

The Bad Guys — Mr. Wolf, Mr. Shark, Mr. Snake, Mr. Piranha and Ms. Tarantula —
triumphantly confront the owner of the prized item they're about to steal.

The script, by Yoni Brenner and Etan Cohen — once again drawing from Australian author Aaron Blabey’s popular children’s graphic novel series — contains the same blend of visual slapstick and subtly sly adult humor. (As co-producer Diane Ross suggests, in the production notes, the goal is an homage to complex heist films, with a soupçon of Quentin Tarantino.)

As before, this romp takes place in an alternate universe with humans existing alongside anthropomorphized animals, where an oversized shark can successfully impersonate a man half his size. (It’s all in the costume and attitude, donchaknow.)

 

Rather than open precisely where the previous film concluded, we first get a flashback prologue that shows our quintet of bestial baddies — Mr. Wolf (voiced by Sam Rockwell), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) and Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina) — operating at their larcenous best, stealing a one-of-a-kind sportscar from a vain gazillionaire’s heavily guarded mansion.

 

The resulting vehicular pursuit — totally breathless — showcases Jesse Averna’s imaginative smash-cut editing.

 

Back in the present day, however, the former Bad Guys — having gone straight as the first film concluded — are finding it impossible to obtain gainful employment, since everybody associates them with their larcenous past. The only bright spot is Gov. Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), who helped secure the group’s freedom, and now maintains an arm’s-length flirty relation with Mr. Wolf.

 

The world still doesn’t know that Foxington formerly was an elusive master thief known as The Crimson Paw.

 

Local law enforcement — headed by the anger-prone Police Commissioner Misty Luggins (Alex Bornstein) — is baffled by a series of high-profile burglaries conducted by an elusive and never-seen culprit. The most troubling detail is that this mysterious individual has been using some of the distraction gimmicks once employed by The Bad Guys ... which turns Luggins’ attention to them.

 

Realizing it’s in their best interest to help identify the actual criminal, Mr. Wolf employs his detail-oriented observational skills to suss out the likely next target for theft; he realizes that all stolen objects were made of a precious metal dubbed MacGuffinite (and there’s a sly joke for long-time movie buffs).

 

Alas, in an increasingly complex escapade laden with double, triple and even quadruple-crosses, things often aren’t what they seem. Except when they sometimes are.

Finally Dawn: It can't come quickly enough

Finally Dawn (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Not rated, but equivalent to a mild R, for debauched behavior and drug use

Available via: Amazon Prime and other video-on-demand options

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.27.25 

Italian writer/director Saverio Costanzo’s period drama is a wickedly uneasy character piece, until the story’s key character succumbs — in the third act — to a regrettable case of The Stupids.

 

Bad enough that Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci, far left) is in over her head at this lavish
party; what she doesn't realize is that her companions — from left, Josephine (Lily James),
Sean (Joe Keery) and Rufus (Willem Dafoe) — may not have her best interests at heart.

That aside, the acting is solid throughout, and this piece also is an affectionate nod to Italy’s post-World War II filmmaking period, when Rome became know as “Hollywood on the Tiber.” The city attracted many international productions — particularly from the United States — to its famed Cinecittà studios.

Costanzo opens on a grim, black-and-white sequence toward the end of the war. This 5-minute prologue turns out to be a film, The Sacrifice, being watched in a crowded movie theater by two sisters — vivacious, gorgeous Iris (Sofia Panizzi) and younger, mousy Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci) — and their mother Elvira (Carmen Pommella). After the film concludes, they debate the merits of lush Hollywood artifice as opposed to Italian cinema’s then-rising neorealism.

 

Everybody agrees about the allure of the film’s Italian star, Alida Valli (Alba Rohrwacher) and her American co-star, Sean Lockwood (Joe Keery).

 

As the trio departs the theater, they’re intercepted by a smarmy talent scout seeking extras for a sword-and-sandal epic current being filmed at Cinecittà; drawn by Iris’ allure, he insists that she try out. Elvira and her husband Rinaldo (Enzo Casertano) give their permission, and the two young women duly present themselves at the studio the following day, with Mimosa acting as chaperone after their mother is left at the gate.

 

As a sidebar, Elvira and Rinaldo apparently expect Iris to marry well, given her good looks and personality, whereas they’ve “arranged” for Mimosa to wed a working-class policeman. (We meet him briefly. It’s a fate worse than death.)

 

Iris nails the audition, despite being asked to remove her sweater; the more prim Mimosa balks at that request and thus is dismissed. While subsequently searching for her sister, Mimosa wanders the lot. She first stumbles into a screening room, where studio execs watch footage for a news documentary about the recent discovery of a dead aspiring young actress, Wilma Montesi, on the Capocotta beach adjacent to a lavish estate owned by Ugo Montagna, who had hosted a party the previous evening.

 

(Costanzo is referencing the actual murder of 21-year-old Montesi, which places this film’s events in 1953.)

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: Ferociously memorable

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for violent/bloody images, profanity, sexual assault and underage smoking and drinking

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.20.25 

Films this powerful don’t come along very often.

 

Director/scripter Embeth Davidtz’s boldly unflinching drama is adapted from Alexandra Fuller’s award-winning 2001 memoir, which depicts the author’s childhood in white-controlled Rhodesia, before and after that country’s 1980 independence and re-christening as Zimbabwe.

 

Sarah (Zikhona Bali), the family housekeeper, is the only adult who takes any interest
in young Bobo (Lexi Venter), who has become an almost uncontrollable feral child.

At first blush, Davidtz seems an unlikely choice as filmmaker; she’s best known as the accomplished actress who delivered memorable performances in Schindler’s List, Junebug, Mansfield Park and television shows such as Mad Men and Ray Donovan. As it happens, though, at age 8 the American-born Davidtz moved with her South African parents to Pretoria in the early 1970s, where she grew up confronted by that country’s institutional racism.

It's not hard to understand what drove her to this material.

 

Her film gets its quiet, skin-crawling intensity from the casual indifference with which its “superior” characters of privilege — or power — turn a blind eye to casual, systemic cruelty. In that respect, Davidtz’s film deserves pride of place alongside classics such as Schindler’s List and The Zone of Interest, although this one is even more disturbing because of its child’s-eye perspective.

 

The story’s primary character — she cannot possibly be termed a “heroine” — is 7-year-old Bobo Fuller (Lexi Venter, simply amazing), who lives on a family farm on the outskirts of Umtali, with her teenage older sister Vanessa (Anina Hope Reed) and their parents, Tim (Rob Van Vuuren) and Nicola (Davidtz). Three dogs are a constant presence.

 

It’s a dangerous time, days away from a presidential election between Robert Mugabe, favored by Black Africans, and the Western-educated Bishop Abel Muzorewa, viewed by his countrymen as a puppet controlled by the minority white population. Unrest has turned violent, with members of both races being slaughtered (although radio and TV coverage focuses on white victims).

 

The girls are warned never to enter their parents’ bedroom at night, because they sleep with loaded guns.

 

To say that Bobo runs wild is an understatement. She’s a completely unsupervised feral child: perpetually grimy and smelly, often dressed in the same ragged shorts and a gray T-shirt with the slogan “Come to Umtali and get bombed,” which is a) tasteless for somebody her age; and b) laced with an unsettling double meaning.

 

She often roars through a nearby village on a dirt bike, rifle slung over one shoulder, taunting the Black children to chase her. She parrots racist beliefs — “Black people have no last names” — not because she understands how hateful they are, or even what they mean, but simply because that’s what she hears her parents and their friends say.

Everything's Going to Be Great: Well ... not quite

Everything's Going to Be Great (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for partial nudity, sexual candor and frequent profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other video-on-demand options

By Derrick Bang

Folks passionate about All Things Theater — amateur or professional — are guaranteed to adore this modest Canadian dramedy.

 

Everybody else ... likely not. 

 

After a particularly trying day at school, Les (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) receives some
encouraging — if typically quite unusual — advice from his father, Buddy (Brian Cranston).

Director Jon S. Baird’s flamboyant touch approaches burlesque at times, and mainstream folks may find star Bryan Cranston’s character totally annoying. It’s also hard to forgive the unexpected midpoint hiccup in Steven Rogers’ script, after which the film loses considerable steam, never to be regained.

The year is 1989, the initial setting Akron, Ohio. Carefree Buddy Smart (Cranston) has led his family through a series of temporary theater management jobs ever since marrying his wife, Macy (Allison Janney), two decades ago. Everybody pitches in, whether serving as stage manager, prop handler, ticket seller or accepting roles in the current production.

 

Trouble is, they’ve never been successful enough to remain in one place for long, after which it’s on to the next small-town theater seeking new management.

 

The indefatigable Buddy is a relentless cheerleader nonetheless, insisting that this time will be different; they’ll finally make it; and so forth. Every time the clearly overwhelmed Macy points to the grim result from their failure to put enough warm bodies in theater seats, Buddy brushes her off by insisting, “Everything’s going to be great.”

 

In a word, he’s exhausting ... but Cranston, so adept at body movement and well-timed dialogue, makes him endearingly exhausting. Most of the time.

 

Younger son Les (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), who worships his father, is fully on board; he’s a pretentious kid given to exaggerated outfits, with a tendency to quote lines from plays. During moments of confusion or crisis, he receives advice from dead thespians and playwrights such as Noël Coward, Ruth Gordon, Tallulah Bankhead and William Inge (each amusingly played by, respectively, Mark Caven, Chick Reid, Laura Benanti and David MacLean).

 

To say that Les stands out from his classmates is the worst of understatements; he may as well have the word “nerd” tattooed on his forehead.

 

“They don’t get me,” he glumly says to his father, at one point. No kidding.

Superman: Up, up and away!

Superman (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for fantasy violence and action, and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.16.25

It’s damn well about time.

 

I had begun to worry that the current Warner Bros. regime didn’t have the faintest idea how to properly handle Big Blue.

 

Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo, center) and Clark Kent
(David Corenswet) are disturbed by the misleading spin that media talking heads have
put on Superman's recent activities.

Director Zack Snyder’s previous cycle — Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League, all with Henry Cavill donning the cape — was a dour, dreary, dull and depressing slog, without the faintest trace of the noble Kryptonian who battled for truth, justice and a better tomorrow.

(Yes, it used to be “...and the American way,” but there’s nothing wrong with making Superman’s pledge more universal.)

 

Writer/director James Gunn has swooped to the rescue, granting this adventure the same blend of world-threatening thrills and snarky character dynamics that made his first two Guardians of the Galaxy entries so much fun. (We’ll pretend the third one never happened.)

 

Gunn also pays affectionate tribute to many key elements from the Christopher Reeve series, starting right out of the gate, when this film’s rousing David Fleming/John Murphy score hits us with a few bars of John Williams’ iconic Superman theme.

 

Sharp-eyed viewers also will spot several members of Gunn’s repertory actors, albeit in very fleeting roles.

 

All that said, this definitely is a “darkest before the dawn” story, and “dark” dominates the entire first hour. Gunn kicks things off as a defeated Superman (David Corenswet), punched halfway around the world, crashes hard into Antarctic snow near his Fortress of Solitude. He’s in agony, suffering from broken ribs, a ruptured bladder and — given his labored breathing — fluid in his lungs.

 

(What? I hear you cry. Superman can be damaged? Goodness, yes; he’s tough, but not wholly invulnerable.)

 

The situation then becomes almost farcical — not in a good way — when he desperately whistles to Krypto. The clearly insufficiently trained super-pooch arrives quickly ... but only wants to play, completely oblivious to Supe’s distress.

 

This is a cheeky way to start: a totally James Gunn maneuver.

 

Once Superman recovers — thanks to a sustained blast of our yellow sun’s healing rays (Gunn knows his Superman lore) — and returns to Metropolis, we discover how dire things have become. 

 

Holy Cow: An earthy, beguiling character study

Holy Cow (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Not rated, but equivalent to an R, for nudity, explicit sexuality and occasional violence

Available via: Amazon Prime and other video-on-demand options

By Derrick Bang

Discovering charming little films like this one, and bringing them to viewer attention, is my favorite part of this job.

 

Having yet yet another hindrance to his idealistic goal of making the best possible
Comté cheese, Totone (Clément Faveau) considers his options ... and younger
sister Claire (Luna Garret) has faith that he'll work it out.

French director Louise Courvoisier’s feature film debut is an accomplished coming-of-age saga so raw, naturalistic and intimate at times, that it often feels like we’re eavesdropping on actual people, rather than actors playing roles.

(As a quick sidebar, her film’s original title — Vingt dieux — translates to Twenty Gods, not Holy Cow: a terrible substitution slapped on by the American distributor.)

 

The lush farmland setting of Jura, in the eastern French region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, is captured splendidly by cinematographer Elio Balezeaux; this has much to do with the film’s cinema-verité atmosphere. That said, Courvoisier and Balezeaux don’t exploit these countryside locales for their natural beauty; this is an environment of dirt, mud, sweat, hard work, earthy casual sex and often flinty relationships.

 

We sense that most of these folks don’t bathe very often.

 

Nor does the story — by Courvoisier, Théo Abadie and Marcia Romano — make it easy on us. Their main character is a thoroughly unlikeable waste of space who — unlike the artisan cheeses produced within this region — doesn’t improve with age and additional exposure ... at least, not for a very long time.

 

In fairness, 18-year-old Totone (newcomer Clément Faveau) never had a chance, having been raised by an alcoholic, hands-off father whose wife apparently fled long ago. We meet the deadbeat teenager during a typical late-night binge of booze, cigarettes and casual sex, accompanied by best friends Jean-Yves (Mathis Bernard) and Francis (Dimitry Baudry), who aren’t much better.

 

By day, the badly hungover Totone does nothing to help his father with the family’s struggling Pimorin Cheese Dairy. His sole display of responsibility is taking younger sister Claire (Luna Garret) to school each day, after which he joins Francis while they watch Jean-Yves work on his lovingly modified stock car.

 

This routine abruptly shatters when Totone’s father wrecks his car and dies, having gotten behind the wheel while hopelessly drunk. (We gasp at the stupidity of this, but apparently these folks don’t watch out for their own.) This isn’t a community with options such as social services; Totone has no income, the dairy collapses without his father’s guidance, and now the young man must care for Claire 24/7.