Captain America: Brave New World — Oh, really?

Captain America: Brave New World (2025) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence and mild profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

The bloom definitely has worn off the Marvel Cinematic Universe rose.

 

More than most, this new Captain America outing relies too heavily on details from previous MCU entries. Keeping a score card isn’t enough; nothing short of an annotated spread sheet would suffice.

 

When two American fighter pilots inexplicabgly go rogue, and start firing on Japanese
military vessels, Captain America (Anthony Mackie, right) and Falcon (Danny Ramirez)
know they must act quickly, to prevent a war.

The result here is something of a mess, with one engaging sub-plot overwhelmed by a far too complicated set of fresh crises. But that’s to be expected from a film with five (!) credited scripters, who seem to have competed with each other, in a contest to resurrect the most obscure MCU nugget.

That said, Anthony Mackie deserves ample credit for navigating the herculean task of holding this mess together as well as possible, and for capably replacing Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers as the new red, white and blue Captain America. Mackie’s Sam Wilson isn’t quite the same shield-slinger, though; he’s more a Cap 2.0.

 

Lacking Rogers’ super soldier serum-enhanced strength and agility, Sam has compensated with a set of vibranium and gadget-laden wings that would be the envy of Iron Man. Sam also has a fresh-faced partner: Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez, as playful as a puppy), a “Falcon-in-training,” last seen in 2021’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV miniseries.

 

As this overcooked saga begins, former military hawk Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) has just been elected President of the United States. Elsewhere, Sam and Joaquin are tasked with retrieving a cannister of the metal alloy adamantium, stolen by the mercenary Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) from Japanese scientists who’ve extracted it from the massive “Celestial Island.” 

 

(This “island” actually is the dead body of a celestial named Tiamut, now floating in the Indian Ocean, who was defeated by the Eternals in their eponymous 2021 film, which many of today’s viewers won’t know, because that film was a notorious flop.)

 

Cap and Falcon are successful, although Sidewinder survives to fight another day. Sam also gets an unexpected “attaboy” from the newly installed President Ross, who has long held a love/hate relationship with superheroes. At this moment, though, Ross insists that his views have changed, and he even floats the notion of re-establishing The Avengers.

 

(In the MCU, Ross’ behavior dates back to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, when — then played by William Hurt — he oversaw a project with his daughter Betty’s boyfriend, scientist Bruce Banner, which went awry and transformed him into the not-so-jolly green giant. Ross went on a vengeful tear that ultimately disbanded and divided the Avengers in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, which left Earth more vulnerable when Thanos subsequently wreaked havoc in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. And, much to Ross’ dismay, drove Betty into estrangement from her father.)

 

Sam isn’t convinced that Ross has changed for the better. But as a gesture of good faith, the president agrees to let Sam extend a White House invitation to Isaiah Bradley (the always regal Carl Lumbly), a Korean war veteran and sole survivor of the many African Americans unwillingly subjected to super soldier serum experiments during the 1950s (also introduced in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). 

 

Worse yet, Isaiah subsequently spent three years in prison, during which time he was further experimented upon.

 

This sidebar story resonates strongly, since it deliberately echoes the heinous Tuskegee Experiment’s 40-year syphilis study on unknowing African American participants.

 

Isaiah, although similarly dubious, joins Sam and Joaquin at a fancy function highlighted by President Ross’ announcement of a multi-national agreement to share adamantium research and development throughout the world. Alas, the celebratory moment is cut short when Isaiah tries to assassinate Ross ... but later remembers nothing about it.

 

Worse yet, Japanese Prime Minister Ozaki (Takehiro Hira) suddenly presents damning evidence that Ross hatched the plot to steal the adamantium, covertly pinning the blame on Sidewinder. The result: American and Japanese battleships mobilize around Celestial Island, weapons bristling.

 

Can Cap and Falcon prevent a war?

 

Director Julius Onah and his five writers keep us guessing for awhile. Ross clearly has anger management issues, and still doesn’t trust “supers”; Ford’s seething hostility is quite convincing. At the same time, it’s equally clear that some clandestine figure is manipulating events behind the scenes.

 

That would be Samuel Sterns, aka The Leader (also not seen since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk).

 

A few words about this guy:

 

Even with pale skin and a body disfigured by radiation scars and blobs, Tim Blake Nelson’s portrayal of this character isn’t such a much. He looks about as dangerous as a sneeze, and — frankly — his role here as “Master Villain” is laughable. His dialogue is beyond corny and stilted, and his several confrontations with Cap are just silly.

 

Shira Haas is far more intriguing, as Ruth Bat-Seraph, President Ross’ security advisor ... and, it turns out, an Israeli-born, ex-Black Widow operative who trained in the notorious Soviet-Russian Red Room, from which Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff and Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova also emerged. (see 2021’s Black Widow.) The diminutive Haas makes Ruth a spunky and capably intelligent agent, and she’s apparently being positioned for Avengers: Doomsday, due in May 2026.

 

Perhaps recognizing that neither The Leader nor Sidewinder qualify as suitable adversaries, this complex saga’s third act also introduces Red Hulk — much larger than Banner’s olive-hued version — about whom, I’ll say no more.

 

As usual, the numerous skirmishes once again defy the laws of physics and the frail limitations of the human body. We could forgive Steve Rogers’ near-invulnerability, thanks to the super soldier serum, but Sam and Joaquin are just regular guys ... and yet, improbably, both keep on ticking despite punishment that should have reduced them to smears on the pavement.

 

The quieter moments, particularly those involving Sam’s effort to prove Isaiah innocent, have far more dramatic heft; Mackie and Lumbly josh, bicker and spar persuasively, while making it obvious that each man respects the other.

 

I also miss the underlying humor, which has made most MCU films more entertaining than their DC Universe cousins (Superman, Batman, etc.) Aside from fleeting bits of banter between Sam and Joaquin, this film’s atmosphere remains rather grim.

 

Finally, this film’s title eludes me; I’ve no idea why this adventure is a “brave new world.” Certainly doesn’t feel like it... 

The Oscar Shorts: The great ... and not so great

The Oscar Shorts (2024) • View trailer

Five to zero stars (out of five). Not rated, but absolutely not suited for young children

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

I always look forward to the annual Academy Award-nominated short subjects, because succeeding in that form requires a special skill.

 

It’s the visual equivalent of literary talent. It’s easier to develop an engaging page-turner in the limitless expanse of a novel, but far more difficult to achieve the same dramatic or comedic punch in 14 short pages.

 

And, given how many current big-screen films are overly long and self-indulgent, watching a 22-minute filmlet is a welcome relief.

This year’s crop of live-action entries is quite strong, but the animated nominees are ... a mixed bag.

 

Starting with the former, director Adam J. Graves’ Anuja is the gripping saga of the 9-year-old title character (Sajda Pathan) and her older sister, Palak (Ananya Shanbhag). They live on the streets of Delhi, India, and eke out a hand-to-mouth existence by working in a sweatshop garment factory. The parentless girls’ “home” is an abandoned building, their food meager at best.

 

Palak knows that her younger sister is whip-smart, with a talent for math. Anuja is given an opportunity to attend school, but the placement exam involves a fee that girls never could raise. Worse yet, when the factory’s intimidating manager (Nagesh Bhonsle, in a hissably oily performance) learns of Anuja’s talent, he wants her to spend one day a week doing clerical work for him ... and warns that if she chooses school, Palak will lose her job.

 

Graves’ storytelling approach is unembroidered, which adds to the dramatic impact. He doesn’t preach, choosing instead to simply show every detail of the girls’ grinding, hard-scrabble existence.

 

The story’s conclusion is a nail-biter, but additional dramatic heft comes from the final text block: Graves’ film was made with the support of the Salaam Baalak Trust, a nonprofit that provides food, shelter and education to thousands of street and working children in New Delhi. Pathan — as impressively gifted young actress — is one of those children. Simply amazing.

All We Imagine as Light: Incandescent

All We Imagine as Light (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

Most memorable films are driven by a strong, compelling narrative that dictates the behavior of its characters: challenges to be overcome, problems to be solved, relationships to be resolved.

 

As Prabha (Kani Kusruti, left) watches apprehensively, Anu (Divya Prabha) tries to
figure out where this unexpected gift — a fancy rice cooker — came from.

Indian writer/director Payal Kapadia takes a different approach, with this delicate, heartfelt drama. All We Imagine As Light is more of an atmospheric, cinematic tone poem: a calmly meditative piece that makes its Mumbai setting — brought to exquisite life by cinematographer Ranabir Das — as much a character as the three women whose lives intersect in gently poignant and quietly heartbreaking ways.

We’re first introduced to the city itself, as viewed through the windows of a passing bus, via an impressively long tracking shot: bustling, cacophonous, overwhelmingly crowded. And hot, humid and wet; rain is constant, windows nonetheless left open to catch an occasional stray breeze.

 

This portion of the city — Lower Parel to Dadar — is in constant transformation, with rapacious developers demolishing residential chawls (tenements) that have long housed the workers who keep the city functioning, into gated luxury building complexes and high-end shopping malls.

 

One particularly obnoxious billboard shamelessly flaunts the blatant unfairness of India’s caste system: “Class is a privilege ... reserved for the privileged.”

 

Random individuals express their thoughts, off camera and in different languages — Gujarati, Bhojpuri, Bengali — as this bus proceeds, each brief snippet a haunting saga of its own:

 

“I’ve lived here maybe 23 years, but I feel afraid to call it home. There’s always the feeling I’ll have to leave.”

 

“I fought with my dad, so I packed my bag and left for Mumbai. My brother had a job at the dockyard. His place smelled so bad, the first night I couldn’t sleep.”

 

“I was pregnant, but I didn’t tell anyone, because I’d recently found a job at a house. I had to take care of a lady’s kids, but they were pests. But the lady ... she fed me well. That year I ate like a queen.”

I'm Still Here: A formidable tribute to one woman's courage

I'm Still Here (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, drug use, fleeting nudity and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Political statements don’t come much stronger than this one.

 

Nor as authentic.

 

Rubens (Selton Mello) and his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) enjoy a playful moment
with their two youngest children, Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira) and Maria (Cora Mora),
on the beach in front of their home.

Brazilian director Walter Salles’ quietly chilling docu-drama is based faithfully on Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s Ainda Estou Aqui, a 2015 biography of his mother, Eunice, and what she and her family endured in the early 1970s.

The setting is Rio de Janeiro, six years into the 21-year military dictatorship that overthrew the democratically elected president in 1964. Eunice (Fernanda Torres), her husband Rubens (Selton Mello) and their five children — Vera (Valentina Herszage), Eliana (Luiza Kosovski), Nalu (Barbara Luz), Marcelo (Guilherme Silveira) and Maria (Cora Mora) — live comfortably in a welcoming beachside home. Their doors and windows are always open, beckoning friends and neighbors.

 

Beloved live-in housekeeper Zeze (Pri Helena) may as well be a family member.

 

Salles spends considerable time on this idyllic introduction. The family often is at the beach, Marcelo kicking a soccer ball with friends, while his sisters play volleyball. Eunice floats contentedly in the calm ocean waters. Meals are cheerfully boisterous, often with visitors. Marcelo finds an adorable stray dog on the beach; Rubens hasn’t the heart to refuse his son’s entreaty to adopt it.

 

The warmth, tenderness and conviviality displayed in these early scenes is the best argument I’ve yet seen for establishing an Academy Awards category for casting directors. In this case, Leticia Naveira has assembled an amazing ensemble of actors; the children, in particular, display the closely knit camaraderie and love we’d expect from an actual family. Interactions with their parents, and peers and other adults, are equally persuasive.

 

These establishing scenes are an intoxicating blend of Adrian Teijido’s gorgeous 35mm cinematography — as luxurious as the beachside setting — and amateur footage shot by Vera, with her new Super 8 camera

 

If all of this looks and feels unexpectedly intimate, it arrives honestly. Salles has long known the Paiva family; he spent part of his adolescence in the house that becomes central to this film. Directors often regard certain projects as a “labor of love,” and that’s absolutely, clearly the case here.

Love Hurts: A painful outcome

Love Hurts (2025) • View trailer

2 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Ke Huy Quan, still fresh from his Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All at Once, can’t be blamed for capitalizing on his renewed 15 minutes of fame.

 

But one could wish he chose his projects more carefully.

 

When Rose (Ariana DeBose) rashly decides to come out of hiding, she hopes to enlist
Marvin (Ke Huy Quan) in her scheme to seek revenge for past events. Alas, Marvin
doesn't wish to wreck the comfortable life he has build ... but will he have a choice?

At its best — and I use that term very loosely — this fitfully amusing guilty pleasure can be regarded as a more vicious nod to Jackie Chan’s chaotic, exploit-the-surroundings martial arts style.

Quan has serious taekwondo chops, having spent his 20-year acting hiatus working as an action/stunt consultant under the tutelage of Hong Kong director/choreographer Corey Yuen. Quan displays all the right moves here, employing everything from office furniture to laptops while handling everything (literally) thrown at him by stunt coordinator Can Aydin.

 

This film’s wafer-thin plot — cobbled together by scripters Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passmore — also gets points for its mordant humor. One baddie fancies himself a poet; a second one can’t figure out how to patch things up with his wife; the Valentine’s Day setting repeatedly comes into play.

 

But stunt coordinator-turned-first-time-director Jonathan Eusebio and his writers break the cardinal rule of such films: Killing innocents isn’t kosher ... and it’s a particularly egregious sin when their demise is accompanied by a slice of gratuitously tasteless gore.

 

Eusebio’s film lurches to an abrupt stop when he so indulges ... and, in the blink of an eye, the fun drains away.

 

Never to return.

 

(The endless F-bombs also don’t help.)

 

Marvin Gable (Quan), a realtor heading his own Milwaukee firm, has achieved considerable success thanks to the savvy care and charm with which he matches prospective buyers with their imagined dream homes. Alas, a crimson envelope shatters his routine on this particular February 14; it’s from Rose (Ariana DeBose), a former partner-in-crime whom he long ago left for dead.

 

But before he can consider the implications of her reappearance, Marvin is attacked by the hulking Raven (Mustafa Shakir); the subsequent skirmish destroys Marvin’s office, the cacophony somehow failing to be noticed by the rest of his staff.

 

Even executive assistant Ashley (Lio Tipton) regards the noise behind her boss’ closed door with little more than mild curiosity, but she has an excuse: cynicism and disillusionment with life, exacerbated by the hearts-and-flowers trappings of this contrived “day of love.”

The Brutalist: A monumental effort

The Brutalist (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, rape, profanity and drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.2.25

This film is impressive in many respects. 

 

Director/co-writer Brady Corbet ambitiously tackles an overwhelming, quite possibly unattainable endeavor much the way this story’s protagonist does.

 

Immigrant architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) has an uphill battle, persuading old-money
movers and shakers that his cutting-edge structure will be an asset to their community.

Alas, Corbet’s reach ultimately exceeds his grasp.

From the very first frame, this film Calls Attention To Itself. Lol Crawley’s cinematographic choice is 70mm VistaVision, a throwback logo and widescreen variant long discarded since its 1950s debut. Sebastian Pardo’s title credits design mimics the shape and style of the Brutalism architectural movement that erupted in Europe and — as in this story — Pennsylvania during that same decade.

 

Further mimicking this Old Hollywood approach, Corbet’s film opens with an overture, then proceeds with a first act — “The Enigma of Arrival” — a 15-minute intermission (with a clock that counts down against a key photograph), followed by a second act — “The Hard Core of Beauty” — and an epilogue.

 

Daniel Blumberg’s wildly eclectic score often clashes — deliberately — with the cacophonous “slabs of noise” from Andy Neil’s sound design. The result is jarring, startling and disorienting, reflecting the central character’s professional, mental and emotional journey.

 

It often feels like this saga is based on actual events, and actual people, but no; aside from acknowledging the post-WWII Brutalism movement itself, Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvoid’s entirely fictitious story and characters are merely suggested by Brutalist architects Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph and Ralph Rapson, with a narrative arc that owes much to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and a soupçon of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

 

László Tóth (Adrien Brody) is introduced in a confusing blur of motion: a Hungarian Holocaust survivor newly arrived in the United States, on a ship laden with fellow immigrants. Tellingly, his first view of the Statue of Liberty is upside-down, and then sideways, as he emerges from the ship’s bowels: a warning that America’s promise of opportunity is skewed.

 

That, coupled with the preceding Goethe quote — “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free” — promises that László’s subsequent journey will not end happily.

September 5: Impressively powerful

September 5 (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.26.25 

Ingenuity under pressure is fascinating.

 

Director Tim Fehlbaum’s fact-based depiction of what occurred during the 1972 Munich Olympics — and how those events were broadcast to the entire world — is a suspenseful and riveting docudrama: a true, edge-of-the-seat nail-biter.

 

Members of the ABC News sports team — from left, standing, Jacques Lesgardes
(Zinedine Soualem), Geoff Mason (John Magaro) and Carter Jeffrey (Marcus
Rutherford) — surround translator Marianne Gebhard (Leonie Benesch) as she 
dictates an update from the Munich police radio frequency.

The suspense derives not from the terrorist attack itself — the details of which are well known, and remain seared into history — but the resourceful, behind-the-scenes scrambling by the ABC News sports broadcasting team, which allowed 900 million global viewers to witness this incident, in real time.

The key phrase in that previous sentence is “sports broadcasting team” ... as opposed to seasoned television news journalists. That distinction heightens this story’s drama.

 

Events begin quietly, following coverage of events taking place during Day 10 of the Olympics. Newbie coordinating producer Geoffrey Mason (played by John Magaro) is granted the opportunity to helm the next day’s coverage, thanks to a recommendation by Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), then vice-president of ABC-TV’s Olympic Operations. They both answer to Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), then president of ABC Sports (and later president of ABC News, from 1977 to ’98).

 

World-wide broadcast of the Games has been made possible, for the first time, thanks to new satellite technology.

 

The “thrill of victory and agony of defeat” sporting events aside, these summer Olympics are hugely important for political reasons: the first Games hosted by a German city since Adolf Hitler’s notorious 1936 Berlin travesty. The 1972 invitation was extended, in part, as a means of giving West Germany an opportunity to showcase its reborn democratic virtues.

 

This is tremendously important to the ABC team’s German translator, Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), who wants the world to see her “new and improved” country.

 

(Unlike the aforementioned individuals, and a few others, Gebhardt is a fictitious character based on a composite of several translators.)

 

Everything goes pear-shaped at 4:30 a.m. September 5, when gun shots are heard from within the Olympic Village. They’re followed quickly by reports on the local police radio frequency — which Gebhardt translates — that armed individuals have invaded the quarters of the Israeli Olympic team.