Won't You Be My Neighbor? — The gentle power of quiet joy

Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for archival footage of dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.29.18

In an intriguing case of serendipity, I caught this film within hours of learning about the passing of Koko, the western lowland gorilla famous for the depth of her communication skills via modified American Sign Language.

In a quiet response to an ugly example of American racism, Fred Rogers made a point
of sharing a foot bath with renowned African-American opera singer and frequent
co-star François Scarborough Clemmons, in the latter's guise as "Officer Clemmons."

Intriguing, because both this documentary — and the lengthy Los Angeles Times tribute to Koko — mention their 1998 meeting on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Intriguing, as well, because both were uniquely kind and gentle individuals, with a benevolent generosity of spirit that this country sorely lacks at the moment. Indeed, an interviewee wonders — toward the end of this film — just what Fred Rogers would make of our current institutional mendacity and incivility.

I suspect he’d spend a week to address it with the warmth, candor and calm moralizing that characterized every one of the 912 episodes that aired from Feb. 19, 1968, through Aug. 31, 2001.

Documentarian Morgan Neville’s heartfelt portrait of Rogers is as endearing as its subject: an engaging blend of Neighborhood clips, archival footage, interview excerpts with the man himself, and observations/reminiscences from those who lived and worked with him.

Neville has a knack both for selecting captivating subjects, and illuminating them in a manner that’s both instructive and fascinating. His nonfiction film work dates back to the mid 1990s; recent highlights include 2011’s Troubadours, which traces the lives and careers of Carole King and James Taylor; and 2013’s Oscar-winning 20 Feet from Stardom, an enchanting depiction of the mostly anonymous back-up singers who make pop stars sound as good as they do.

Plenty of famous faces visited Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood during its lengthy run, but Neville clearly wasn’t interested in a string of fawning accolades (no matter how sincere). Won’t You Be My Neighbor instead tackles its subject “from the inside out,” focusing on interviewees such as Rogers’ widow, sister, two sons and “Neighborhood” folks such as François Scarborough Clemmons (“Officer Clemmons”), producer/assistant director Margaret Whitmer and floor manager Nick Tallo (quite a hoot).

What emerges is the revealing evolution of an ordained minister who — literally at the last second — abandoned plans for church service and instead navigated a unique course in the uncharted waters of public television’s children’s programming. He was appalled by the soul-crushing cacophony that characterized network “kiddy TV” in the 1960s: the violence, the cruelty, the hyper-editing, the complete absence of redeeming social values, and — most of all — the noise.

Believing little children to be America’s most priceless treasure — a radical view at the time — Rogers wanted to be a positive, nurturing force. 

Hearts Beat Loud: The healing power of music

Hearts Beat Loud (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for fleeting profanity and mild drug references
By Derrick Bang

Unexpected little charmers, such as this one, are the reason I love this job.

The core premise has been can’t-miss ever since Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney made the immortal suggestion — “Hey, kids; let’s put on a show!” — back in 1939’s Babes in Arms.

Whatever else might be happening in their lives, Frank (Nick Offerman) and his daughter
Sam (Kiersey Clemons) always experience joy when making music together

The format shifted a bit over time, these days generally attaching itself to gentle relationship dramas, where a shared love of music paves the way toward love, reconciliation and/or inner peace. Recent examples include director John Carney’s delightful trio: Sing Street (2016), Begin Again (2013) and the incomparable Once (2007).

Director/co-scripter Brett Haley’s Hearts Beat Loud definitely belongs in their company.

Haley has quietly been building an indie career characterized by unabashedly sentimental dramas such as I’ll See You in My Dreams and The Hero: gentle little films no doubt mocked by condescending viewers who sprinkle cynicism on their breakfast cornflakes, but which are adored by those of us seeking relief from lowest-common-denominator Hollywood bombast.

Haley makes films about people: folks you might know, and certainly would like to know. And if they happen to have an artistic streak, well, that just makes them more interesting.

Frank Fisher (Nick Offerman) owns a one-man record store in Red Hook, Brooklyn: a relic more than a generation out of date, whose shelves are lined solely with vinyl. Customers are a long-vanished species; the shop is approaching the final few seconds of the last track on Side B. Frank has just informed his landlady, Leslie (Toni Collette), that he’s packing it in.

The decision kills him, because music has long been in his blood. He met his wife while both performed in clubs: She sang, he played backup. She’s years deceased, under tragic circumstances that Haley and Marc Basch’s script reveals cleverly, subtly, delicately.

Their daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) is the second apple of Frank’s eye: an ambitious, hard-working student with plans for medical school. She has thus far spent the waning days of her final summer, before college, cracking the books in an effort to get a head start in what she knows will be a highly competitive environment.

It’s a double loss for Frank: his shop and his daughter.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado — The sophomore curse strikes

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

2015’s Sicario was an impeccably self-contained story that resolved in just the right manner. Under no circumstances did it require a sequel; conceptually, that would be like demanding a sequel to Casablanca.

When unforeseen events separate them from the rest of
an American mercenary force, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro)
wonders how best to protect Isabel (Isabela Moner) ...
and, indeed, if he should bother.

But Hollywood rarely is guided by art, when commerce stands ready to interfere. Sicario proved unexpectedly successfully, and actor-turned-writer Taylor Sheridan was on a roll, having also delivered the terrific original scripts for 2016’s Hell or High Water and last year’s Wind River.

In fairness, it perhaps could be argued that Benicio Del Toro’s mysterious Alejandro, by far the most intriguing character in Sicario, deserved another look.

Sheridan gave it a good try. At its best, Sicario: Day of the Soldado has the multi-layered, parallel storylines that made 2000’s Traffic so compelling (and which, coincidentally, brought Del Toro an Academy Award). But Sheridan’s writing isn’t nearly as tight this time; a few plot details are fuzzy, and at one point simply daft.

More conspicuously, the film stumbles its way to a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion. The final 10 to 15 minutes feel as if director Stefano Sollima impulsively handed the reins to somebody far less qualified. Director Denis Villeneuve did a far superior job with the first film.

That said, Sheridan certainly cooks up a disturbing premise, which feels like a logical extension of our fear-driven world.

A pair of seemingly unrelated suicide bomber events — one during a foiled illegal immigrant crossing at the Mexico/Texas border, the other in a suburban Kansas big-box store laden with shoppers — leads U.S. intelligence agencies to an alarming conclusion: that Middle East terrorists are being ferried to Mexico by tanker ships “conveniently” ignored by Somali pirates, and then concealed among hopeful immigrants guided across the border by drug cartel traffickers.

Responding to demands from the (unseen) U.S. president that something be done to stop this, Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine) summons CIA Deputy Director Cynthia Foard (Catherine Keener) and her favorite mercenary “fixer,” federal agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). The latter has become darker, scarier and more cynical since the case he shared with Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, in Sicario; he now believes that a desired end justifies any means.

Trafficking has become epidemic, Matt reasons, because of greed-inspired harmony between rival Mexican cartels. Provoke a war between cartels, and that accord will cease in a violent heartbeat; the resulting chaos will put an end to terrorist trafficking. (This conclusion seems unduly optimistic.) And the best way to create an internecine cartel war lies not with killing a king, but with kidnapping a prince.

Or, as it turns out, a princess.

Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom — 'Sauring' adventure

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for relentless action violence and all manner of dino rage
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.22.18

This film is a cautionary tale that hearkens back to the immortal line from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, which has been paraphrased — in movies, TV shows and other books — many times since:

With a particularly nasty Indoraptor loose in her family's private Cretaceous museum,
young Maisie (Isabella Sermon, far right) hopes that Owen (Chris Pratt) and
Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) can keep her alive.

“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge.”

Its function as a klaxon-blaring environmental warning aside, this fifth installment in the Jurassic series also is a rip-snortin’ rollercoaster ride. Director J.A. Bayona and editor Bernat Vilaplana maintain an impressive level of intense, edge-of-the-seat suspense for two full hours. Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow’s script is cleverly structured into three distinct acts, each laden with distinct goals, challenges and dangerous pitfalls.

At the same time, a thoroughly unsettling message percolates beneath the surface, until finally blossoming — nay, exploding — during the climax.

That’s a problem. The care with which Connolly and Trevorrow have built their plot suddenly sags beneath the weight of too much extraneous exposition during the final 15 minutes: one genuine surprise, a failure to resolve, and a lingering catastrophe that has been foretold by Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm (and it’s very nice to see him again).

We’re left with enough open-ended material to fuel two or three more films ... which, frankly, is quite irritating.

Up to that point, however, Fallen Kingdom is a lot of fun, in great part because Bayona, Connolly and Trevorrow wisely follow — and often reference — many of the ingredients that made Steven Spielberg’s 1993 handling of Michael Crichton’s original novel so thoroughly absorbing.

Stalwart heroes: check. Well-meaning scientists with their ideals shattered: check. Greedy corporate villains: check. One (and only one) comic-relief character: check. A child in peril: check.

Plenty of unexpected jump-attacks by swiftly moving dinosaurs: Check-check-check.

RBG: Legal Jedi knight

RBG (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

I know what you’re thinking.

A documentary about an 85-year-old U.S. Supreme Court Justice? How interesting could that be?

Boy, are you in for a surprise.

During her twin careers as Columbia Law School professor and American Civil Liberties
Union general counsel, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was welcomed at the White House by
President Jimmy Carter.

Documentarians Betsy West and Julie Cohen have crafted a film that’s every bit as compelling as a political thriller, and fueled by a subject every bit as captivating as a seasoned Hollywood star. RBG is shrewdly assembled: not merely a biographical study of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but also an absorbing analysis of the degree to which her work has changed the nation in which we live.

The contrast is both droll and fascinating. In person — via clips extracted from various interviews and lectures — the diminutive Ginsburg is quiet and seemingly shy, to the point of near invisibility. You’d expect her to be the timid individual seated by herself in a distant corner, during a noisy party: the person everybody would overlook.

And yet she blossoms into a true Jedi warrior when discussing law and — perhaps more important — justice.

Her age notwithstanding, Ginsburg is indefatigable; she must be one of the lucky souls able to survive on just a few hours of sleep each night. She’s also a quiet hoot, despite the repeated insistence — from many of the individuals interviewed during the course of the film — that her husband Martin is “the funny one” (which is quite true, but still...).

West and Cohen open their film with a hilarious series of voiceover rants about Ginsburg, likely from right-wing radio commentators, who make her sound like the spawn of Satan.

We’re then eased gently into aspects of her daily routine, which include personal appearances, case prep and research, and workout sessions with trainer Bryant Johnson. (Eighty-five and lifting weights! Talk about empowerment!) Her children, Jane and James, supply tantalizing details; a session with granddaughter Clara Spera — as they page through scrapbooks — is quite endearing.

As the film progresses, West and Cohen periodically cut back to the brilliant speech Ginsburg prepared and read, during her confirmation hearings. She was nominated by President Clinton and took her seat as an Associated Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on Aug. 10, 1993; all these years later, as Clinton looks back, he’s clearly still in awe of her. (Although not his first choice, he confesses that he decided to put her forward a mere 15 minutes after meeting her.)

Equally intriguing is the respect paid by political adversaries such as Orrin Hatch, who was the Republican ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the aforementioned confirmation hearings.

Incredibles 2: Close, but not quite

Incredibles 2 (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.15.18

The frequently delightful and long-awaited Incredibles 2 (14 years!) has much to recommend it, and writer/director Brad Bird obviously used the time wisely; his sequel avoids many of the pitfalls that characterize the often dismaying “sophomore curse.”

When you're taking the baby for a family stroll, confronting a super-villain can be awkward:
from left, Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, Dash, Violet and baby Jack-Jack decide how best to
handle the subterranean-dwelling Underminer.

That said, this second outing lacks the spark, snap and freshness of its predecessor. The pacing is uneven — the first act is particularly slow — and the balance is off. The numerous sequences with infant Jack-Jack are undeniably hilarious — a hyper-edited encounter with a raccoon could be extracted as a terrific cartoon short — but the baby steals too much focus from the rest of his family ... and, indeed, from the core plot.

As the first film made abundantly clear, the super-heroic Parr family functions best when it functions together ... and this story waits far too long to deliver on that promise.

Events kick off in the immediate aftermath of the previous adventure. Super-powered crime fighters remain illegal: The government and general public still are unwilling to overlook the collateral damage that results when the good guys do their best to bring down super-villains such as the Underminer and his massive conical drill (which broke through to the surface world in the first film’s final scene).

(Geek alert: Given that Bird clearly intended the Parr family as an homage to Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four, the Underminer is a similarly droll wink-and-nod to the Mole Man, whom the FF battled in their debut November 1961 comic book.)

Despite the best efforts of Mr. Incredible (voiced by Craig T. Nelson), Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), teenage daughter Violet (Sarah Vowell) and adolescent son Dash (Huckleberry Milner), the Underminer’s drill takes out a massive swath of downtown Municiberg. Adding insult to injury, the villain escapes.

Worse yet, longtime colleague and “fixer” Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks), whose Super Relocation Program has helped the Parrs — in their civilian identities — evade public censure, informs them that his division has just been shuttered by the government. Bob, Helen and their children are on their own ... and homeless, thanks to events in the first film. Dicker’s last bit of generosity is a two-week stay in the amusingly droll Safari Court Motel.

Ocean's 8: Larkish ladies of larceny

Ocean's 8 (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for brief profanity, fleeting drug use and mild suggestive content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.8.18

As long as reasonable care is taken — sharp script, skilled direction, a competent cast — light-hearted caper thrillers can’t miss.

That’s definitely the case with Ocean’s 8.

With their compatriots "on assignment" at Cartier headquarters, the bulk of the team —
from left, Debbie (Sandra Bullock), Tammy (Sarah Paulson), Nine Ball (Rihanna),
Lou (Cate Blancett) and Constance (Awkwafina) — tracks progress via a computer monitor.

If this new film pales slightly when compared to 2001’s sparkling remake of Ocean’s Eleven, it’s mostly because the formula has lost some luster via repetition. Still, the well-designed gender switch compensates for such familiarity, and there’s no question that director Gary Ross — who also scripted this re-boot, with Olivia Milch — assembles the pieces with élan, and then guides them through a devious chess game laden with twists ... at least one of which likely will be a surprise.

Mostly, Ross delivers the necessary level of fun, which was so crucial to the 2001 predecessor’s success. We always had a sense that George Clooney & Co. were playing themselves, as much as their characters — which was absolutely true of the 1960 Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin original — and that added effervescent bonhomie to the action. These were guys with whom we wanted to share war stories over cocktails; the same is true of this Girls Just Want To Have Fun reworking.

And yes — just to be clear — this gender switch is far better, in every possible way, than 2016’s conceptually similar but otherwise misguided remake of Ghostbusters.

We meet Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) — the equally larcenous sister of Clooney’s Danny Ocean — immediately following a prison stretch of five years, eight months and 12 days. Rather than accept this sentence as a lesson learned, Debbie spent the entire time devising, refining and perfecting what she now believes will be the perfect crime: the theft of the Toussaint, a unique diamond necklace valued at $150 million, which stays locked in an impenetrable vault in the bowels of the Cartier mansion.

All she needs is a crew.

Bullock’s Debbie is perky, poised and polished: utterly unflappable, and generally sporting a mildly self-confident smirk that potential marks immediately find disarming. This contrasts nicely with the wary and somewhat hardened Lou (Cate Blanchett), Debbie’s former partner in crime, who is less than enthusiastic when given the opportunity to resume their illicit ways.

Debbie mocks; Lou challenges. Bullock and Blanchett make an excellent team, and the script teases us with the possibility that their relationship might run deeper than mere professional camaraderie.

Hotel Artemis: Make a reservation!

Hotel Artemis (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity, sexual references and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Back in the era of double features — when dinosaurs roamed the earth — a prestige “A-picture” frequently was accompanied by a low-budget companion pejoratively known as the “B-picture.”

The Nurse (Jodie Foster) and her newest patient — the local crime lord known as
Wolfking (a bloody Jeff Goldblum) — argue "politely" over chain of command, while the
latter's hair-trigger son (Zachary Quinto, center) watches with mounting impatience.

But a studio’s more modest units often were a training ground for gifted, up-and-coming talents, and it wasn’t at all unusual for a B-film to be more entertaining than the bloated, top-of-the-bill “spectacular” that brought folks into the theater.

Given Hollywood’s current obsession with over-hyped franchises and brain-dead popcorn fare, we’ve once again entered a time when unpretentious indie productions can be far more interesting than their mega-budget cousins. We simply don’t call ’em B-films anymore.

Case in point: Hotel Artemis, which marks an impressive directorial debut by writer/producer Drew Pearce, best known — up to this point — as part of the scripting teams on Iron Man 3 and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Pearce’s first solo effort as writer/director is a smart, savvy “what if” thriller set in the near future, with an intriguing premise that makes excellent use of ornately moody surroundings and a solid ensemble cast.

The setting is downtown Los Angeles, late on an average evening in the year 2028. (“It’s a Wednesday,” one of our primary characters wearily repeats on occasion, shaking her head each time.) The most violent riot in L.A. history has entered its third night, with the privatized police force pummeling blue-painted protestors whose only demand is clean water ... because the city’s water supply also has been privatized. Those who don’t pay get their bills cut off.

(As has been noted on numerous occasions, the best science-fiction is that which takes place in a near future that doesn’t seem far removed from reality. Frankly — given the degree to which today’s privileged one percent works so aggressively to disenfranchise the rest of us — I find Pearce’s notion disturbingly prophetic.)

One outwardly decrepit building stands undisturbed amidst a chaos that includes police helicopters being blasted out of the sky by weaponized drones: the imposing Hotel Artemis, seemingly a dilapidated relic of a long-ago past, when it might have been filled with movie stars, high-rollers and local aristocrats.