Rocketman: Blast off!

Rocketman (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug use and sexual content
By Derrick Bang

Elton John’s life is the stuff of legend anyway, so the fantasy touches certainly don’t feel out of place in director Dexter Fletcher’s audaciously opulent jukebox musical.

And so it begins: Reggie Dwight (Taron Egerton, left) and Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell)
are excited to discover that their musical strengths perfectly complement each other.

Granted, it’s disconcerting when little Matthew Illesley — as young Reginald Kenneth Dwight — warbles the first few lines of “The Bitch Is Back,” which promptly turns into a lavish dance production involving all the denizens of his family’s suburban Middlesex neighborhood. But Fletcher cleverly sets the film’s tone with that number, particularly with respect to cinematographer George Richmond’s clever use of color.

Nor is this sequence the first eyebrow-lift. The film actually opens when the adult Elton (Taron Egerton), in outrageous performance dress, strides down an institutional hallway in order to join a group counseling session at a fancy rehabilitation clinic. His saga subsequently unfolds as an extended flashback, with occasional returns to the present; as the story progresses, Elton sheds more and more of the costume, reflecting his willingness to be increasingly candid.

A rather obvious metaphor, but it works.

Rocketman covers Elton John’s life from childhood, in the late 1950s, to 1990, when he had a God-given moment of lucidity — amid a downward spiral of drugs, alcohol and depression — and wisely checked himself into rehab. Given a music library well in excess of 300 songs, armed with Bernie Taupin’s alternately energetic and poignant lyrics, it obviously wasn’t difficult for Fletcher to highlight each step of Reggie’s life with a cleverly appropriate (or archly ironic) tune.

Most of the 22 song choices and stagings are inspired; a few are a bit forced, a little too on the nose. They don’t arrive in anything approaching chronological sequence, but rather as suits a given scene (hence the aforementioned startling use of “The Bitch Is Back”).

Lee Hall’s screenplay occasionally loses steam, mostly during the second act (which seems crazy, given the arc of John’s career, but pacing here is crucial). Even so, the film’s overall impact is breathtaking: both because of the music, and its presentation, and Egerton’s flat-out astonishing performance.

At times, he looks, sounds and acts more like Elton John than the man himself. It’s not merely a matter of Egerton nailing John’s defiantly sassy, mildly pugnacious stage presence; the actor also has impressive vocal chops (as is obvious to anybody who’s seen his recent duets with John, on “Tiny Dancer” and “Rocket Man”).

Godzilla, King of the Monsters: Gawd-awful

Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019) • View trailer 
One star. Rated PG-13, for relentless monster carnage and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Sigh.

I’ve seen a lot of stupid over the years, but this one takes every cake in the bakery.

Not yet having realized that she's standing alongside a deranged sociopath, young
Madison (Millie Bobby Brown, right) watches while her mother, Emma (Vera Farmiga),
activates a whatzit in order to unleash a whozit.

Rarely has a big-studio blockbuster been directed this clumsily, written this poorly, and acted this atrociously. Doctoral theses could be written, about everything wrong with this misbegotten mess.

It’s a $200 million embarrassment.

When a film is this bad, every minute wasted with it — and we’re looking at 131 minutes here — is an exercise in put-me-out-of-my-misery tedium. Root canal surgery would be preferable.

This second entry in the modern Godzilla series once again demonstrates the folly of pleasing too many international masters, given that this is a co-production by Warner Bros. and China’s Legendary Entertainment. In theory, that should be a good thing, since it assures international casting; in practice, it has been the death of quality cinema.

Recent exhibits of shame include Skyscraper, Pacific Rim: Uprising, Man of Steel and, yes, the previous Godzilla. Among many others.

Each one is characterized by noisy, cataclysmic, landscape-leveling mayhem that goes on and on and on and on. Along with atrociously dumb dialogue, and performances so wooden they could warp.

And — worse yet in this case, with respect to emotional resonance — people who mostly stand around, slack-jawed, impotently staring at screens, or out windows. It’s difficult, nay impossible, to get involved with characters in a thriller of this sort, unless they’re pro-active and do something to make a difference.

One of this film’s major stars checks out so quickly, we scarcely have time to register the individual’s presence.

Three-quarters of the way into this debacle, somebody finally does something heroic. And then there’s an act of noble self-sacrifice, and for a moment — just a fleeting moment, but still — we actually care. A teeny-weeny bit.

Prior to that…

Non-Fiction: Not worth reading

Non-Fiction (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for sexual candor, nudity and profanity
By Derrick Bang

The whimsical poster art implies that writer/director Olivier Assayas’ new film is some sort of bed-swapping romantic comedy.

Don’t be suckered.

During a brief break from her busy shooting schedule as the star of a television cop show,
Selena (Juliette Binoche) enjoys a quick lunch with her lover, notorious author
Léonard Spiegel (Vincent Macaigne).

While it’s true that most of these narcissistic characters are sleeping with each other, lovers of reading, bookstores and informed knowledge will be horrified. Non-Fiction isn’t the slightest bit amusing; Assayas’ script is a grim, cynical and thoroughly depressing harangue on the pending destruction of traditional publishing, at the hands of know-nothing Internet trolls whose notion of “cultural history” dates back roughly 15 minutes.

This dreary sentiment aside, the film is deadly dull: way beyond boring. This is an interminable talking-heads experience, with the five primary characters repeatedly arguing that things — in this case, art — needs to change in order to remain the same. Which is to say that the pervasive dumbing-down of the written word is necessary, if it’s to survive at all.

Lengthy conversations — whether between just two people, or six — are littered with arrogant judgments and sarcastic one-liners: Informed criticism is worthless in a world guided by 280-character tweets. All politicians are venal hypocrites interested in nothing but money and fame. Libraries are doomed, and therefore a waste of space. TV shows are meant to be binged, not savored. Fewer people read less every year. And my favorite: “People say art is corrupt, thus worthless, so it should be free.”

Mind you, some of these observations are undeniably true (which is even more depressing). But Assayas doesn’t have his characters argue these issues as a means of thought-provoking socio-economic debate; all this jibber-jabber is mere window-dressing — no more meaningful than the bullshit “discussions” held by half-drunk bar patrons — while these insufferably smug men and women try to make virtues of their moral failings.

The libidinous heart of this roundelay is Léonard Spiegel (Vincent Macaigne), a notorious author who delights in his scruffy bohemian mannerisms, and whose fame is built upon a series of cruel “auto-fiction” novels that are graphic, thinly disguised accounts of his own extra-marital flings. He cares not a jot that his previous lovers are humiliated after recognizing themselves in all but name, and are further embarrassed when such notoriety goes public.

Léonard is married to Valérie (Nora Hamzawi), a vaguely defined political consultant who — at first blush — seems coldly indifferent to her husband. But this is before we’ve gotten to know Léonard; it quickly becomes obvious that he doesn’t deserve her. Valérie is much too decent for him.

(Actually, we soon wonder how the whiny, sleazy Léonard ever could have had such an apparently voluminous string of lovers. The perks of being French, I guess.)

Aladdin: Lost its luster

Aladdin (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.24.19

Too many Hollywood types ignore the universal maxim:

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

When arrogant soldiers thunder through the marketplace on horseback, Aladdin
(Mena Massoud) acts quickly enough to prevent two children from being trampled
beneath the hooves.

1992’s Aladdin was just right as a 90-minute animated fantasy. This “enhanced” live-action remake, at 128 minutes, is a textbook case of bloated overkill.

Disney obviously didn’t learn from the identical mistake made with 2017’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, similarly overblown at 129 minutes (as opposed to the 1991 animated version’s 84 minutes). More is not better, most particularly when the original’s sublime musical component gets saddled with new songs that aren’t merely inferior, but are noticeably out of synch with the rest.

Scripter/director Guy Ritchie — who shares writing chores with John August — has completely altered this fable’s heart and moral. Instead of a cautionary tale on the importance of recognizing that grandiose wishes are a hollow illusion, this Aladdin has been transformed, and quite clumsily, into a female empowerment saga.

This new subtext doesn’t integrate well with the existing storyline; indeed, it’s clearly a contrived sop to the #MeToo movement, complete with a (new) power ballad that Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) belts out at a climactic moment. But here’s the irony: Immediately after she sings that song, Aladdin is the one who saves the day.

And why shouldn’t he? Disney animated films are laden with powerful female characters: Ariel, Belle, Pocahontas, Mulan, Merida, Tiana, Rapunzel, Lilo, Moana and — needless to say — Anna and Elsa. Is there anything wrong with leaving Aladdin a guy story?

It’s also blatantly obvious that Jasmine’s aforementioned mantra — “Speechless” — was crafted to sound as much as possible like “Let It Go,” the Academy Award-winning anthem from Frozen. That “coincidence” aside, this new tune doesn’t belong with the others.

The original film’s Alan Menken/Howard Ashman/Tim Rice songs boast the witty lyrics and clever melodic counterpoint of masterful musical theater numbers. And while Menken still wrote the music for “Speechless,” the lyrics — by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — are unimaginative and redundant. It’s not a song; it’s a diatribe.

Sigh.

A Dog's Journey: A slightly milder tail-wag

A Dog's Journey (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for brief peril and mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.17.19

Utterly shameless.

Relentlessly manipulative and sentimental.

Also adorable and poignant.

CJ (Kathryn Prescott) remains oblivious to the fact that best friend Trent (Henry Lau)
has been sweet on her since they were 10 years old; her far more perceptive dog,
Molly, wonders why they don't simply lick each other and get it over with.

Author W. Bruce Cameron has made quite the cottage industry of his Dog books, with two core novels having blossomed into an additional four one-offs, half a dozen young reader Puppy Tales, and an entirely separate story trilogy, all during the past decade.

Director Lasse Hallström transformed 2010’s A Dog’s Purpose into a cinematic charmer two years ago, with a writing assist from Cameron (and rather a lot of co-scripters). He and most of the same writing team have collaborated anew on the script adaptation of that book’s sequel, A Dog’s Journey, this time placing their faith in indefatigable, Emmy Award-winning TV director Gail Mancuso (everything from Scrubs and 30 Rock to Man with a Plan and Modern Family).

Her touch doesn’t quite hit the sweet spot of compelling pathos and gentle humor that has characterized Hallström’s career — notably in Chocolat and The Cider House Rules — and gave his Dog its special radiance. He has an affinity for heightened reality that makes it seem not only credible, but reasonable. Mancuso is a sitcom director: Her approach is broader, with supporting characters who feel more like exaggerated burlesques than actual people, and a more obvious reliance on comedy (particularly with respect to canine one-liners). 

This film therefore leans in the direction of TV’s fast-paced artifice, rather than the naturalistic verisimilitude of its predecessor. The emotional content isn’t as authentic, and a few elements have a whiff of calculated contrivance.

In fairness, that’s also because Cameron’s sequel novel isn’t nearly as fresh as its predecessor. It’s hard to pull off the same clever trick twice.

The gimmick is that Cameron’s alpha canine is a regenerative soul that remembers all of its past lives and responsibilities. This begins in the first film when 8-year-old Ethan gets his first dog: a rambunctious Golden Retriever puppy dubbed Bailey, who becomes his best friend. Dog’s lives being so cruelly brief, Bailey soon leaves a heartbroken Ethan behind; ah, but after a series of subsequent bodies and owners, Bailey is reunited with an older Ethan (Dennis Quaid), now as a Australian Shepherd/St. Bernard cross.

The Sun Is Also a Star: Shines sweetly

The Sun Is Also a Star (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for suggestive content and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

It’s refreshing to see a young adult romance that doesn’t involve people who are white and wealthy.

And aren’t suffering from some exotic, debilitating or fatal disease.

Despite her analytical cynicism, Natasha (Yara Shahidi) finds it hard to resist the charm
assault that Daniel (Charles Melton) mounts so effectively.

Director Ry Russo-Young’s The Sun Is Also a Star is a sweet little charmer, graced with the comfortable chemistry between stars Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton. Scripter Tracy Oliver hits the essential plot beats of Nicola Yoon’s best-selling 2016 novel, although the faith-oriented content is absent (likely viewed as one subtext too many, in a film already laden with considerable emotional baggage).

Russo-Young and cinematographer Autumn Durald also deliver a dreamy portrait of New York City at the bustling height of its melting-pot boisterousness: a vibrant, richly diverse cacophony of cultures, languages, colorful storefronts and wonderfully bizarre public art. It’s a side of the city far removed from Manhattan’s chic opulence, and much more exciting for this absence of aristocratic hauteur.

Jamaica-born Natasha Kingsley (Shahidi) is in a panic, desperately trying to reverse a deportation order mandating her family’s immediate return to their native country. Her father brought them to the States illegally almost a decade earlier, hoping for the better life of an American dream; a random ICE sweep now threatens to rip 17-year-old Natasha from the city she loves, and the educational opportunities that mean so much.

It’s literally the last day before they must return to Jamaica. Natasha leaves their apartment, hoping to get an early morning appointment with a U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) case handler.

Elsewhere, first-generation Korean-American Daniel Bae (Melton), college-bound and carrying the weight of family expectation, heads off for a crucial final interview that could determine his entry to Dartmouth. His doting parents (Keong Sim and Cathy Shim) have long desired that he become a doctor — a plan emphasized via Korean ritual, when Daniel was but an infant — but he’d far rather be a poet.

Natasha is pragmatic to the point of cynicism, believing solely in reason, science and logic; if it can’t be quantified and/or manipulated, it doesn’t exist. Daniel is creative, passionate and open to the mysterious, mischievous vagaries of fate, destiny and dreams. He firmly accepts the caprice of deus ex machina improbability (and when’s the last time a film made an ongoing metaphor of that literary phrase?).

Tolkien: Not entirely Hobbit-forming

Tolkien (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.10.19

Aside from outliers such as Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King, most writers lead rather ordinary lives.

And what they do — crafting humble words into mesmerizing stories, generally in isolation — is hardly the stuff of engaging cinema.

Surrounded by the notes and illutrations that he feverishly sketches while playfully
creating entirely new languages, John Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult) nonetheless cannot shake
the feeling of not really belonging in his highbrow Oxford surroundings.

That said, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s back-story is more provocative than most.

Director Dome Karukoski’s Tolkien hits the myriad heartbreaking high points of Tolkien’s youth and young adulthood, and star Nicholas Hoult persuasively conveys the curiosity, intelligence, facility with languages, and almost magical gift for storytelling that later would inform his literary career.

David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford’s sensitive script clearly is well-intentioned, and Karukoski’s touch is sincere.

And yet…

The pace is dreadfully slow, and the decision to employ Tolkien’s horrific World War I experiences as a framing device is questionable, to say the least. We’re apparently expected to recognize that this is the devastating Battle of the Somme; context for this portion of the film is utterly absent. Every so often, Karukoski drags us back for another grim interlude, as Tolkien wanders through the body-strewn trenches in a daze, under the watchful gaze of a young private (Craig Roberts) who worries that his companion is about to drop dead.

The apparent point of these sequences is that the disoriented Tolkien — suffering from an acute case of debilitating trench fever — hallucinates the battle carnage into symbolic smoke- and shadow-laden warriors and monsters that later will inform the mythic creatures he concocts for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Well … no.

It’s a clumsy, contrived device that simply becomes tedious as the film proceeds. It’s also superfluous; we’ve already seen that young Tolkien was inspired by his mother, Mabel (Laura Donnelly), who — as a means of distracting her two young sons from their “impecunious” existence — excels at spinning fantastical narrative adventures with the aid of a slowly spinning shadow lamp festooned with magical patterns. This sequence is far more magical — and persuasively credible — than the repeated bounces back to the trenches.

The Hustle: Small-time con

The Hustle (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and rather generously, for crude sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Office workers from the pre-digital era will recall that making copies of copies was an exercise in rapidly diminishing returns.

The results became increasingly smudgy. Less distinct.

Having agreed to a May The Best Woman Win grudge match, Josephine (Anne Hathaway,
right) seethes quietly when Penny (Rebel Wilson) blunders into a posh casino in the
guise of a blind American tourist.

Less acceptable.

Ergo, the news that we were getting a remake of 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels — which itself is a remake of 1964’s Bedtime Story — was greeted with a gimlet eye (at best).

In fairness, director Chris Addison’s modest little comedy has its moments, most involving the Laurel & Hardy pairing of Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson. The gender reversal is an inspired touch, with Hathaway and Wilson standing in for Michael Caine and Steve Martin (1988), and David Niven and — believe it or not — Marlon Brando (1964).

The core plot beats have been retained, with full acknowledgment to original writers Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning and Dale Launer. Scripter Jac Schaeffer has punched up this new film’s incidental sight gags, in order to tailor them to these femmes most fatale.

The premise remains the same: Sophisticated con artist Josephine Chesterfield (Hathaway), a seductive Brit with a penchant for fleecing gullible wealthy men of their expensive jewelry, has fashioned a glamorous lifestyle that includes an opulent home in the French Riviera’s Beaumont-sur-Mer.

Half a world away, low-level grifter Penny Rust (Wilson) rips off neighborhood bar low-lifes (making a point of targeting shallow jerks with a visible antipathy to her plus-size presence).

Collectively, they’re a welcome switch in this #MeToo era. God knows there are plenty of piggish men — of all social standings — who deserve serious comeuppance.

But whereas Josephine’s stylish scams have been honed to polished perfection — with the assistance of her urbane butler, Albert (Nicholas Woodeson), and the cheerfully corrupt local police captain, Brigitte Desjardins (Ingrid Oliver) — Penny’s sloppier, smash ’n’ grab approach has its drawbacks. Forced to flee the long arm of legitimate law, she impulsively winds up in Beaumont-sur-Mer.

Where Josephine is less than pleased to see such a vulgar, low-rent opportunist on her turf.

Long Shot: Genuinely unlikely

Long Shot (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for strong sexual content, drug use and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.3.19

An engaging premise — with some shrewd topical jabs at our real-world political dysfunction — beats within the heart of this fitfully entertaining romantic comedy.

As proximity encourages increasingly intimate contact, Fred (Seth Rogen) finds his
childhood dream coming true, as Charlotte (Charlize Theron) begins to share his
romantic feelings.

Too bad the charm is so frequently buried beneath vulgarity, relentless profanity and jaw-droppingly lunatic bursts of physical slapstick.

It’s a shame, because — absent such wretched excess — scripters Liz Hannah and Dan Sterling could’ve had a keenly observed little parable. 

Instead, in the hands of apathetic director Jonathan Levine — who most recently gave us 2017’s Amy Schumer/Goldie Hawn train wreck, Snatched — we have yet another failure that tries to satisfy wildly divergent target audiences, and succeeds at neither.

Not that it’s entirely Levine’s fault. Plenty of blame also falls on his frequent acting collaborator, the forever unrestrained Seth Rogen, who rarely misses the opportunity to ruin a scene with his own inimitable brand of overkill. This overly protracted 125-minute disappointment could be a much more manageable 100 minutes, if Levine and editors Melissa Bretherton and Evan Henke were more disciplined about not holding the camera, while Rogen mugs and mumbles interminably.

He simply isn’t as funny as he believes.

Nor does he possess one-tenth of the sharp, savvy comic timing of co-star O’Shea Jackson Jr., who rocks every one of his (lamentably) too few scenes.

Rogen stars as Fred Flarsky, a hot-headed, otherwise talented journalist who frequently sabotages his own sharp commentary by succumbing to a strident tone and raging, ultra-left-wing sensibilities that leave no room for negotiation. He’s his own worst enemy; when his beloved alternative newspaper is absorbed into a conglomerate run by international media mogul Parker Wembley (Andy Serkis), Fred quits in a huff, rather than allow himself to be laid off by a sympathetic editor, thereby retaining unemployment benefits.

Any resemblance between Wembley and Rupert Murdoch is purely intentional. But as is typical of their feeble script, Hannah and Sterling don’t give Serkis enough material with which to make this under-written parody really sizzle. Apparently, we’re supposed to be sufficiently impressed by the make-up work. (Not hardly.)