Abominable: A huge delight!

Abominable (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.27.19

Well, this is quite the charmer.

Writer/director Jill Culton — aided by co-director Todd Wilderman — has delivered a gentle, heartfelt fantasy that sends its young heroine on a journey that enables her to find her best true self, while undertaking a rather unusual mission of mercy. The title character of Abominable isn’t your garden-variety yeti — if there is such a thing — but a creature of extraordinary talents, who is at one with nature in unusual ways.

Believing that they've finally escaped their pursuers, Yi and her friends — from left, Peng,
"Everest" and Jin — are dismayed to discover that things remain quite dire.

A mildly creepy prologue introduces the white-furred critter as an unwilling captive at a massive, secret scientific complex replete with scary medical bays, long corridors and nasty doors that slam shut from above. Even before the yeti is shown — the first few panicked minutes take place from its point of view — we empathize with this Whatzit, given that it’s held captive in such a frightening environment.

And once it’s revealed, during a pell-mell escape that sends the terrified creature into the chaos and cacophony of a major metropolis, our hearts and minds are wholly won over. Nobody could resist such a cuddly beast, with its massive blue eyes, and mouth forever stretched into the semblance of a wide smile … even if it is the size of a large truck.

Elsewhere, we meet teenage Yi (voiced by Chloe Bennet), a feisty, high-spirited dreamer who never seems to spend time with her mother (Michelle Wong) and grandmother Nai Nai (Tsai Chin), much to their lamentation. But they allow this semi-detachment, recognizing that Yi still hasn’t recovered from the recent death of her beloved father, a concert violinist whose instrument is her most prized possession.

Yi has spent the summer working all manner of odd jobs, in an effort to raise enough money to solo on the lengthy vacation trip that she and her father had long planned. This has made her a joke to all her self-absorbed, social media-crazed peers, including 18-year-old downstairs neighbor Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor), a narcissistic cynic who can’t pass a mirror without verifying that he’s still the hunkiest guy in town.

Jin’s 9-year-old cousin, Peng (Albert Tsai), is more sympathetic to Yi’s moods, but he’s an unbridled “total kid” who bounces off the walls, and constantly tries to get his older friends to play basketball.

Yi soon stumbles across the yeti’s hiding place, on her apartment roof. Mutual fear gives way to wary friendship, particularly when Yi realizes — thanks to a nearby billboard extolling Mount Everest, which the yeti can’t stop staring at — that the frightened creature simply wants to return home. She dutifully dubs it “Everest.”

Judy: A faded rainbow

Judy (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, substance abuse, and profanity
By Derrick Bang

This film has moments — quite a few, actually — that are sublime, and not merely due to Renée Zellweger’s mesmerizing portrayal of Judy Garland.

Determined to revive her career with a cabaret tour in London, Judy Garland (Renée
Zellweger) bids what she hopes will be only a temporary farewell to her children,
Lorna (Bella Ramsey) and Joey (Lewin Lloyd).

Everything comes together during such sequences: Zellweger’s performance, scripter Tom Edge’s dialog, cinematographer Ole Bratt Birkeland’s framing, and director Rupert Goold’s equally sensitive handling of the supporting actors in a given scene. The results are both magical and (frequently) utterly heartbreaking.

If only the entire film could be so assuredly composed.

Such highlights aside, other portions of Judy feel clumsy and ill-conceived: particularly those having to do with Mickey Deans, Garland’s fifth — and most ill-advised — husband. Finn Wittrock’s boyishly giddy performance doesn’t feel the slightest bit genuine, and he tries much, much too hard. Wittrock appears to have been cast for his resemblance to the actual Deans, but that doesn’t get him very far.

It’s quite jarring to see such a false, tin-eared performance alongside Zellweger’s far superior work.

Judy is a distinctly British take on the iconic American film and music star. It’s adapted from Peter Quilter’s play End of the Rainbow, which depicts Garland’s on- and off-stage trials and tribulations during what would become her final series of live performances. She began a five-week cabaret run at London’s Talk of the Town restaurant on Jan. 14, 1969; the results were chaotic, unpredictable, disastrous … and occasionally incandescent, which is why the punters kept purchasing tickets.

That said, late-night cabaret audiences could be brutal; these are far from the refined patrons at concert hall productions.

Zellweger’s all-in portrayal is authentic enough to be frightening. This was Garland at the fragile lowest of low ebbs: twitchy and jittery, her head often bobbing like that of a terrified bird; rambling, dismissive and often incoherent, due to chronic insomnia; beholden to a constant cocktail of uppers, downers, sleeping pills and tranquilizers; and with far too much make-up applied in an effort to conceal a frame so emaciated that it appeared skeletal.

Downton Abbey: A joyous reunion

Downton Abbey (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

Goodness. What more could one desire?

Despite having settled everybody quite pleasingly, when Downton Abbey concluded its television run on Christmas Day 2015, creator/writer Julian Fellowes once again has worked his magic: ingeniously concocting fresh upstairs/downstairs dramas that unite the aristocratic Crawley family and its voluminous house staff.

When cascading events at Downton prove too overwhelming for the comparatively
untrained head butler, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery, center) asks Mr. Carson (Jim Carter)
to return, much to the amusement of Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan).

Mind you — as always was the case, during six enthralling television seasons — the Crawleys remain more progressive than most of their stuffy peers, and the staff manages far more impertinence and independent thinking, than ever would have been allowed, back in the day. Such is the shrewdness of Fellowes, who layers these one-century-removed escapades with enough modern attitude to reference contemporary issues, without damaging the period authenticity.

All the while making us smile, occasionally giggle and — yes, even this — shed a tear or two.

Very little has changed here, aside from the slight march of time. Fellowes managed to assemble just about the entire cast: a frankly stunning achievement, given that several of these talented actors have moved on with their individual careers. The only notable absence is Lily James’ Lady Rose MacClare, and I do miss the warmth of her sparkling smile; she always was a breath of effervescence, alongside the far more severe Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael).

This big-screen adventure unfolds like an even better Christmas special; the enhanced budget’s only noticeable impact is a broader location backdrop for production designer Donal Woods to fill — which he does splendidly — and cinematographer Ben Smithard’s spectacular swooping shots of Downton and a few of its equally majestic neighbors.

Indeed, the film opens on an extremely clever sequence, as Smithard’s camera follows the posting of a Most Important Letter, while it crosses England by train and — finally — reaches its destination by individual carrier. That would be Downtown, of course, and our first glimpse of its familiar grounds is accompanied by the equally familiar swell of composer John Lunn’s iconic theme. 

Theater patrons breathed an audible sigh of happy satisfaction, at that moment.

The year is 1927. Some children have grown a bit older; a few new moppets have arrived. The aforementioned letter announces the impending arrival of their Majesties King George V and Queen Mary, who will stay at Downton for a full day, during a tour of Grantham and the surrounding countryside. This news naturally causes all manner of consternation, given the precise dictates of custom, tradition and regard. 

The Earl (Hugh Bonneville) and his wife, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) — Mary and Edith’s parents — have all manner of details to coordinate, not the least of which is the royal parade scheduled for the same afternoon: an event eagerly anticipated by all the local townsfolk. Downstairs, Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan), Mr. Bates (Brendan Coyle), Mrs. Patmore (Lesley Nicol) and all the other servants are just as excited about this opportunity to attend to the most prestigious guests in the land.

Ad Astra: Voyage to nowhere

Ad Astra (2019) • View trailer 
No stars (turkey). Rated PG-13, for violence, brief dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.20.19

Put the ballots away; the contest for 2019’s worst big-budget Hollywood production has concluded.

Doesn’t matter what emerges between now and Dec. 31; nothing will be poorer than Ad Astra.

Having reached the Mars outpost, Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is warned by Helen
Lantos (Ruth Negga), superintendent of the American sector, that his military superiors
have been less than candid with him.

This portentous, deadly dull and hopelessly self-indulgent train wreck is the most outrageously overblown sci-fi misfire since 2000’s Battlefield Earth. And that’s woeful company to keep.

Ad Astra is what happens when directors get too full of themselves. History is littered with similar studio miscalculations: Michael Cimino, and Heaven’s Gate; Steven Spielberg, and 1941; Warren Beatty, and Ishtar; Barry Levinson, and Toys. Mega-budget stinkers, every one of them.

James Gray — who co-scripted with Ethan Gross — and star/co-producer Brad Pitt have topped them all.

As I’ve observed before, when science-fiction goes bad, it goes very bad.

Rarely have 122 minutes passed with such agonizing sluggishness. This is the film for folks who thought 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t slow enough.

It’s also the film to watch, for those who can’t get enough of Pitt. You’ll never again see so many tight close-ups and relentlessly slow takes on his face; cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema lingers on every dimple, blemish and wrinkle with the adoration of a reverential acolyte.

Nor is it a happy face. Ever. Pitt spends the entire film in mostly silent remorse and (supposedly) thoughtful brooding. His line deliveries are quiet, flat and emotionless: completely in contrast to his character’s hilariously overblown off-camera narration, where each sentence is separated by pauses so pregnant they could deliver. You’d think Gray and Gross believed their text had been lifted from Moses’ stone tablets.

I despise preachy, pompous science fiction. It’s the first refuge of so-called storytellers who believe that a futuristic setting is the only way they can impart Wisdom Relevant To Our Contemporary Lives. The result is invariably condescending and insufferably patronizing.

Beyond all that — aside from the relentless pomposity — Gray and Gross fail on the most primary level: They don’t tell a good story. The journey isn’t interesting, and the “resolution” leaves far too many key questions and issues unresolved … after which, we get a bewildering epilog that feels as though it has been yanked in from some other film.

Official Secrets: Thou shalt not lie

Official Secrets (2019) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.13.19

This fact-based drama could not be better timed.

More than ever, we must be reminded of the imperative necessity of speaking truth and integrity to power.

Once exposed and arrested, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) is allowed a brief visit from
her husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri). In a touching act that feels genuine, he brings her a
thick jacket, because he knows the jail cell will be cold.

Along with the value of the Fourth Estate, and its role in exposing the filthy secrets of power-mongers who believe they can get away with anything.

And of the foolishness of reflexively relying on a crutch such as Spell check.

Director Gavin Hood makes smart, thoughtful films that don’t get near enough attention in the mainstream market. Folks who stumbled across 2015’s Eye in the Sky were mesmerized by its intriguing depiction of a wartime conundrum — do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few? — as it related to the potential civilian fatalities that would result from a drone strike targeting a suicide bomber.

Hood’s film had the intensity of an intimate stage drama, and it was comforting (if naïve) to imagine that the civilian/military chain of command actually might ponder such consequences. At the end of the day, though, Eye in the Sky — however provocative — remains a mere philosophical exercise, because it’s fictitious. 

That’s not the case with Official Secrets. 

Hood’s newest film isn’t merely a depiction of actual events; it illuminates an impressively brave act that should be a humiliating footnote in this country’s reckless 2003 invasion of Iraq. Instead, the incident is all but unknown on this side of the pond … which, frankly, is shameful.

It made far more noise in England, where — to this day — people debate whether Katharine Gun is an honorable patriot on par with our own Daniel Ellsberg … or a traitor to her country.

That should be enough to get you into a movie theater. Better still, Hood and his co-scripters — Gregory and Sara Bernstein, adapting Marcia and Thomas Mitchell’s nonfiction book, The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War — have crafted their film with the clever precision of a multi-act suspense thriller.

Somewhere toward the middle, you’ll begin to wonder: How the hell could we not have known about this?

Add a terrific ensemble cast of top-notch British actors, and you couldn’t ask for more.

Hustlers: Don't be conned

Hustlers (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for nudity, pervasive sexual content, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Sometimes the elements simply don’t gel.

The whole winds up less than the sum of its parts. And in the case of Hustlers, the parts aren’t that engaging to begin with.

Having fleeced hundreds of thousands of dollars from drugged marks, the gals — from
left, Annabelle (Lili Reinhart), Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), Mercedes (Keke Palmer) and
Destiny (Constance Wu) — treat themselves to some party time.

Director/scripter Lorene Scafaria’s lurid little drama is “inspired by” Jessica Pressler’s lengthy December 2015 feature article in New York magazine. Scafaria actually strip-mined Pressler’s piece quite extensively; in terms of detail, the resulting film is much more authentic to its source than most claiming to be “based on actual events.”

But that’s far from satisfying. The major problem is that both Pressler and Scafaria have hitched their respective narratives to highly unreliable narrators. Pressler wisely adopted a clinical journalist’s approach, putting more faith in details subsequently verified by police investigations.

Scafaria, in contrast, constructed a story inhabited by characters who — if not sympathetic — would at least be interesting.

In this, alas, she failed. 

More than anything else, Hustlers — with its quartet of scheming escorts — is boring. Extremely boring. It also falls into a trap common to films that attempt to illuminate exploitative behavior: It becomes relentlessly exploitative.

On top of which, it’s difficult to ignore the cynicism of this film’s creation. It’s clearly a vanity project for Jennifer Lopez, who — in her parallel role as producer — ensures that Jennifer Lopez (as star) gets plenty of exposure. That descriptor is deliberate; there’s no question that Lopez wants us to be impressed by her 50-year-old body, much the way Demi Moore strutted her stuff in the 1996 adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s Striptease.

So, okay, yes: Lopez is in phenomenal shape. Truly stunning. No argument.

But therein lies another problem: Her presence overwhelms this tawdry saga. It’s always Jennifer Lopez, walking, talking and stalking. At no time does she transcend her own self in order to become Ramona, ringleader of a coterie of cuties who graduate from pole twirling and lap dancing to the unpalatably larcenous — and, for a time, highly successful — fleecing of wealthy Wall Street jerks.

It Chapter Two: Two much of a good thing

It Chapter Two (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, profanity, highly disturbing violent content and gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.6.19

This impressively creepy chiller delivers a relentless 100 minutes of gruesome, appalling, terrifying, look-between-your-fingers heart-stoppers.

Having made their way into the heart of Evil's lair, our heroes — from left, Bev (Jessica
Chastain), Mike (Isaiah Mustafa) and Ben (Jay Ryan) — are confronted by yet another
in an endless wave of ookie-spooky monstrosities.

Director Andy Muschietti and scripter Gary Dauberman leave no horror movie cliché neglected — no phobia unexploited — in their handsomely mounted, atmosphere-drenched conclusion to Stephen King’s 1986 best-seller.

Unfortunately, this film runs 169 minutes.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re discussing chocolate milk shakes or cinematic shocks; indulge too much, and the result simply becomes bland.

Which is ironic, because the best part of 2017’s It was the clever way in which Muschietti and his writers — Dauberman was assisted that time by Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga — stripped away the over-written dead flesh of King’s 1,138-page exercise in diminishing returns. With this second “half” of King’s saga, they’ve succumbed to the same self-indulgent excess.

Quite a pity. Particularly since the first two acts are — no question — macabre and terrifying at every turn.

Doesn’t matter what irrationally frightens or repulses you; Muschietti and Dauberman tap into it. Spiders? Claustrophobia? Disgusting flying bugs? Long, dark hallways? Slithery, worm-like nasties? Naked old people?

Clowns?

Clowns with massive, jaw-stretching, needle-sharp teeth? (The better to eat you with, my dear…)

There’s actually much to admire in this grim fantasy’s concluding installment, starting with an ensemble of well-cast actors who persuasively feel like grown-up versions of the first film’s adolescent heroes. Dauberman also manages the clever feat of integrating this sequel with its predecessor’s events, while simultaneously making it a coherent stand-alone experience for anybody unfamiliar with that 2017 entry. (Likely no more than one or two of you, but still…)

Brittany Runs a Marathon: An inspiring effort

Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief drug content
By Derrick Bang

We’ve often heard that artists suffer for their work.

Jillian Bell suffered more than most.

When Brittany (Jillian Bell) enters her first actual race, she winds up pacing
Seth (Micah Stock), who quickly becomes her comrade-in-agony.

She pulled a Christian Bale before and during the filming of Brittany Runs a Marathon, which is highlighted by her effervescent — and, at times, quite brave — performance in the title role. (Bale notoriously dropped 63 pounds when he made 2004’s The Machinist.)

Writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo’s indie charmer is the sort of “modest” film that rewards discovery, and deserves to be enjoyed by as wide an audience as possible. The icing on an already delectable cake: It’s based on a real-world woman’s actual journey of self-discovery and accomplishment.

As much as Bell owns this film, she’s surrounded by a wealth of engaging supporting characters, all brought to captivating life by an equally talented ensemble cast. Their diverse personalities are thoughtfully constructed; the resulting duo and group dynamics are spot-on; and Colaizzo’s script drops plenty of hilarious one-liners without making these individuals seem any less real-world.

That’s a neat trick.

On top of which, Colaizzo inserts some perceptive — and desperately needed — jabs at the too-frequently-cruel narcissism of the social media generation.

New York-based Brittany Forgler (Bell), 27 and feeling more like 37, has lost control. Her life — hard partying, chronic under-employment and ghastly “relationships” — is the stuff of an immature high school or college student, with no thought of adult responsibility. And, yes; she has let herself go physically, and it’s catching up with her.

All of which has become a serious concern to her older sister, Cici (Kate Arrington), and brother-in-law, Demetrius (Lil Rel Howery), who essentially raised Brittany following a nasty parental divorce. But sibling disapproval isn’t sufficient; Brittany isn’t brought up short until she tries to score some prescription Adderall, and instead gets a gentle reprimand from her doctor (Patch Darragh, in a brief but telling role).

The message: Get healthy. Before the downward spiral becomes dire.