Fisherman's Friends: Quite a catch!

Fisherman's Friends (2019) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for fleeting profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.16.20 

You can’t get much more charming than this one.

 

Hoping to impress his rugged hosts, Danny (Daniel Mays) nervously rises at the crack
of dawn, in order to join a gaggle of men during a typical morning at sea.

Director Chris Foggin’s gently amiable comedy, available via Amazon Prime and other streaming services, gets additional sizzle from its factual origins. Scripters Piers Ashworth, Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft based their story — while adding a sweet romantic subplot — on the “discovery” of the actual Fisherman’s Friends, a group of Cornish fishermen who, for the past quarter-century, have met on the Platt (harbor) in their native Port Isaac, raising money for charity by singing traditional sea shanties.

 

They signed a major record deal in 2010; their debut album went gold, as they became the first traditional folk act to land a Top 10 album in the UK.

 

You can’t ask for a better premise on which to hang a typically droll touch of British whimsy.

 

A quartet of cynical, fast-living, London-based music executives, led by patronizing boss Troy (Noel Clarke), descend on Port Isaac for a “stag weekend” prior to one of their own getting married. They couldn’t be more insufferably arrogant, prompting the locals to dismiss them as useless tossers (with several deliciously arch insults hurled in their direction).

 

The newcomers also prove helpless when it comes to simple ocean activities such as stand-up paddle boarding, further irritating the townsfolk by necessitating a rescue at sea.

 

Having quickly lost interest in these “boring” surroundings, Troy and his mates perk up when they happen upon the local fishermen’s weekly pier-side concert (“the rock ’n’ roll of 1752”). But the performance quality cannot be denied; Troy encourages colleague Danny (Daniel Mays) to chat the group up, in the hopes of signing them to a contract.

 

This proves useless, of course; the cheerfully unruly, mildly grumpy men, led by nominal spokesman Jim (James Purefoy), can’t begin to take this big-city clown seriously. Indeed, they laugh him out of the pub (which actually happened to London record executive Ian Brown, the real-life Friends’ manager, on whom Danny is loosely based).

 

I'm Thinking of Ending Things: Why did anybody begin???

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) • View trailer

No stars (Turkey). Rated R, for profanity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.25.20

2017’s Mother! was the most boring, insufferably pretentious twaddle I’d seen in years. 

 

I figured a long, long time would pass before something similarly overblown arrived.

 

When Jake (Jesse Plemons, far left) brings his girlfriend (Jessie Buckley, standing) to
meet his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis), their "friendly dinner" quickly
turns increasingly peculiar.

Wrong.

 

Writer/director Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of novelist Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things — debuting on Netflix — actually is worse.

 

For all its failings, Mother! is an obvious allegory that builds to a graspable conclusion. Kaufman’s film offers no such relief in its final act, which grows more aggressively obtuse by the minute. Indeed, he ignores the resolution in Reid’s similarly weird book — which at least partially justifies what has come before — in favor of more eye-rolling stuff ’n’ nonsense.

 

Not 10 minutes into this unbearable 134-minute slog, a little voice in the back of your head will start screaming, “Abandon ship. Now.”

 

Be smart. Pay attention to it.

 

The frustrating thing is, Kaufman isn’t a talent to be ignored. (Sometimes.) His vivid imagination and defiantly non-linear storytelling style exploded with 1999’s Being John Malkovich, brought him an Oscar for 2002’s Adaptation, and demonstrated sheer genius with 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

 

It should be noted, however, that those films found Kaufman working alongside equally outré directors — Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry — who knew how to check the screenwriter’s more ludicrous tendencies. When Kaufman directs his own material — as with 2008’s Synecdoche, New York and 2015’s Anomalisa — the results are unwatchable.

 

As is the case here.

 

Our protagonist and voiceover narrator is an unnamed young woman (Jessie Buckley) who, somewhat against her better judgment, agrees to a day trip to visit boyfriend Jake’s (Jesse Plemons) parents at their secluded farm. She’s been thinking of ending the relationship — she repeatedly informs us, as things proceed — out of, I dunno, boredom, dissatisfaction, whatever.

 

She and Jake chat at length during this initial car trip, as they pass along the bleak and barren Oklahoma countryside. Their conversation rises from the depths of mundane banality, to the heights of philosophical speculation. She’s a quantum physicist — or maybe she’s a poet — or maybe she’s a student with a paper due Wednesday, on “Susceptibility to rabies infection in the sensory dorsal root ganglia neurons.” 

An Accidental Studio: An essential amusement

An Accidental Studio (2019) • View trailer 

Four stars. Rated TV-PG, for no particular reason

By Derrick Bang

The British film industry was in dire straits in the early 1980s.

 

From the late 1950s through the 1970s, between 90 and 120 films had been made each year; the average Briton watched 11 per year. Only 23 films were made in 1982, and average attendance was down to 0.4.

 

Former Beatle George Harrison, center, makes a fleeting appearance in
Monty Python's Life of Brian, officially billed as "Mr. Papadopolous."

The primary culprit: corporate consolidation. The industry was controlled by just two major studios — Rank and EMI — both of which green-lit only “safe” projects. Today’s multiplicity of indie studios and production companies hadn’t yet arrived.

 

“Rank and EMI famously said no,” recalls film journalist Terry Ilott, “to almost everything that was interesting.”

 

Rescue arrived from a completely unexpected direction. Indeed, said resurrection had begun a few years earlier.

 

Bill Jones, Kim Leggatt and Ben Timlett explore the 11-year reign of George Harrison’s HandMade Films in An Accidental Studio — available via Amazon and other streaming services — a thoroughly engaging documentary that charts this brief Renaissance in British cinema. The former Beatle became a hero in his native land, lauded for having “saved” the British film industry.

 

The saga is depicted via contemporary talking heads and archival interviews with scores of the major filmmakers and stars involved: Michael Caine, Richard E. Grant, Bob Hoskins, Neil Jordan, Cathy Tyson, Brenda Vaccaro and the entire Monty Python troupe, among many others. There’s also considerable footage of Harrison, revealing him as the most quietly relaxed mogul the industry ever produced.

 

(If this documentary kindles your curiosity, you’ll also want to read Robert Sellers’ equally delightful 2013 book, Very Naughty Boys: The Amazing True Story of HandMade Films.)

 

HandMade’s origin was as cheeky as its first project. Harrison had gotten to know Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam and the other Pythons; he considered them good friends. Following the success of 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the gang secured a deal with EMI to make their next project, Monty Python’s Life of Brian. With locations scouted and pre-production underway, EMI severed the arrangement just as filming was about to begin.

 

(As the Pythons collectively recall, EMI’s chairman, Bernard Delfont, “finally read the script.” And was appalled.)

The Booksellers: A novel delight

The Booksellers (2019) • View trailer 

Four stars. Not rated, and suitable for all ages

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.18.20

An average person’s notion of a book collector, we’re told in director D.W. Young’s delightful documentary — available via Amazon Prime — is a middle-aged (or older) man in a tweed jacket with elbow patches, and a pipe. And a glass of sherry.

 

Argosy Books — co-owned by, from left, Adina Cohen, Naomi Hample and Judith
Lowry — is one of the few original bookstores remaining in New York City, from a
time when dozens of similar outlets, on Fourth Avenue alone, prompted a section of
that street to be called "Book Row."

Although some of the individuals profiled and quoted in this film fit that description, an equal number do not; indeed, one of the savviest next-gen rare book dealers is Rebecca Romney, a go-to expert on TV’s Pawn Stars, who has been in the trade since 2007.

 

Like everybody else here, she’s enthusiastic and impressively articulate … and perhaps just a trifle unconventional. It goes with the territory.

 

Aside from Romney and a few other geographical outliers, Young’s film spends most of its time in New York’s book world, with its assortment of obsessives, intellects, eccentrics and dreamers. The tone and atmosphere are unapologetically Big Apple, but the charm of Young’s approach is the ease with which he slips us into this scene.

 

This film was made by book people, for book people; folks who use their dictionaries as door stops probably won’t last 10 minutes. But those of us who love walking into a home with a wall of stuffed floor-to-ceiling shelves, and who always smile at the faintest whiff of that characteristic “old book smell,” are certain to enjoy this alternately fascinating and whimsical 99-minute journey.

 

Actually, anybody with a collector’s mentality likely will see themselves in many of these folks.

 

“The world is divided into people who collect things,” one dealer observes, “and people who don’t know what the hell these people are doing, collecting things. [They think] if you’re a collector, you’re just a sick, obsessive-compulsive person who would sell your grandmother to buy something you really like.”

 

(Which could be true, in a few cases.)

 

The film opens at the Park Avenue Armory’s annual Antiquarian Book Fair, the world’s largest event of its type, where more than 200 American and international dealers display a massive assortment of rare books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera in the realms of literature, art, medicine, photography, autographs, first editions and, well, honestly, I couldn’t keep track. Cinematographer Peter Bolte’s overhead view of the place is breathtaking.

 

It’s somewhat appropriate that the massive building’s large clock long ago stopped working; as with Las Vegas casinos, the Book Fair evades any acknowledgment of time’s passage.

 

The Sleepover: Far from a snooze

The Sleepover (2020) • View trailer 

Three stars. Rated TV-PG, for fantasy peril

By Derrick Bang

This is a silly little film.

 

It’s also reasonably well plotted, crisply paced, family-friendly and — given the proper frame of mind — a lot of fun. Director Trish Sie and scripter Sarah Rothschild toss a quartet of energetic children into a “suspense lite” scenario; while the results certainly won’t set the cinema world on fire, there’s no denying the entertainment value. (You'll find it via Netflix.)

 

Having successfully captured an intruder, our young heroes — from left, Mim (Cree
Cicchino, Lewis (Lucas Jaye), Kevin (Maxwell Simkins) and Clancy (Sadie Stanley) —
are about to learn that he's a WITSEC handler ... in other words, a good guy.

It’s also refreshing, given the genre, that a) these kids are not insufferable brats whose sole purpose is to make all adults look stupid; and b) the story does not succumb to the needless destruction of personal and public property.

 

But yes: We do get a car chase.

 

Adolescent Kevin Finch (Maxwell Simkins) is introduced while fabricating a whopper during a classroom presentation designed to share each student’s family life: an apparently frequent tendency toward wild exaggeration that fails to amuse his teacher. 15-year-old sister Clancy (Sadie Stanley) has a crush on senior Travis (Matthew Grimaldi); she’s also an accomplished cello player, but too shy to perform in public.

 

To Clancy’s greater mortification, parents Margot (Malin Åkerman) and Ron (Ken Marino) refuse to give her a phone, leaving her the only kid in the entire school without one (she insists).

 

To add insult to injury, Clancy’s savvy, über-cool best friend Mim (Cree Cicchino) always is glued to her phone.

 

Clancy further believes that her parents are hopelessly square. Dad, an accomplished pastry chef, forever embarrasses her by (among other things) “working out” — in public — with tiny finger-grippers. Ron actually fits that characterization: Marino, well remembered as smarmy Vinnie Van Lowe on TV’s Veronica Mars, plays the guy as a good-natured doofus.

 

Margot, though, has a bit of an edge; we catch a glimpse when, as school lunch monitor, she confronts a trio of disrespectful eighth-grade jerks.

 

On this otherwise average evening, Kevin is hosting best friend Lewis (Lucas Jaye) on a sleepover; Ron, determined to wean the boys from video games, insists they camp out in the back yard. This doesn’t sit well with timid Lewis, unable to enjoy kid-hood due to a helicopter mother who relentlessly broadcasts his many physical and emotional ailments and shortcomings (more perceived than real, we suspect).

 

Clancy, despite being grounded for smart-mouthing her mother, intends to sneak out with Mim, in order to attend a party at Travis’ house (while his parents are away). After all, he invited her.

 

Words on Bathroom Walls: Profound thoughts

Words on Bathroom Walls (2020) • View trailer 

Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, sexual candor and brief profanity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.11.20 

Films concerning mental illness generally rely on actors to convey the disease’s twitchy instability, erratic behavior and the often heartbreaking frustration that comes from self-awareness: Mary Stuart Masterson (1993’s Benny & Joon) and Bradley Cooper (2012’s Silver Linings Playbook) come to mind.

 

More than anything else, Adam (Charlie Plummer) wants to lead a "normal" life ...
which means that he insists on keeping  his mental instability secret from Maya
(Taylor Russell).

Our sense of such characters remains mostly external; we rarely experience the unreality of their shattered senses. Skillful authors can depict that in a novel, but it’s much harder to convey visually, without the result becoming silly … or, even worse, trivialized.

 

Director Thor Freudenthal and scripter Nick Naveda deftly avoid such pitfalls, with their sensitive, shattering — and, at times, even chilling — adaptation of Julia Walton’s 2017 novel. Thanks also to a strong cast, this saga of teenage schizophrenia is illuminating, sobering and, yes, heartwarming.

 

That said, the book’s fans will note that while Naveda retains the essential plot points, he has taken serious liberties with details. Numerous characters have been dropped, and key events have been altered. (Rather crucially, the significance of the book’s title has been tampered with.) It’s perhaps safer to say that this film is inspired by Walton’s novel, rather than faithfully adapted from it.

 

Much the way Walton presents her story as a series of journal entries, Adam (Charlie Plummer) narrates his saga during a series of sessions with an off-camera psychiatrist (never revealed). He’s a standard-issue high school kid with a doting single mother (Molly Parker, as Beth); the two of them have become a “team” after being abandoned by his father.

 

Charlie’s a bit on the nerdish end: mildly unkempt, with long, straggly hair that frequently obscures his eyes. Partly in an effort to cheer up his mother, following the breakup, he experimented with cooking, and has developed considerable culinary talents; he dreams of becoming a chef in a posh restaurant.

 

But Charlie has become increasingly dogged by often terrifying illusions, always triggered by black mists and a growling, disembodied voice emanating from open doorways. He and his mother pursue various drugs and therapies, none of which slows his frightening slide into mental instability.

 

The One and Only Ivan: A noble hero

The One and Only Ivan (2020) • View trailer 

3.5 stars. Rated PG, for mild dramatic intensity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.4.20 

Break out the Kleenex; you’ll be snuffling before this gentle little fable concludes its first act.

 

Which is not to say that The One and Only Ivan, debuting on Disney+, is an unrelenting tear-jerker; far from it. But by replicating the “gimmick” from Katherine Applegate’s Newbery Medal-winning 2012 children’s novel — in which the title character, a silverback gorilla, narrates his own story — scripter Mike White puts us squarely into this intelligent creature’s heart and soul.

 

Under the watchful eye of Bob, a stray dog and best bud, Ivan reluctantly
agrees to baby elephant Ruby's request that he tell her a story.

I’ve not been a fan of the increasingly convincing CGI talking animals in recent Disney films — particularly when they burst into song — because their speaking ability destroys the otherwise astonishing accuracy with which such critters are created. But it works here, because it is essential that we understand what motivates this saga’s star: what he imagines and yearns for, and how he reacts to the environment, people and other animals in his orbit.

 

Right from the start, it’s easy to embrace the fact that we’re sharing Ivan’s thoughts … which was, of course, the point of Applegate’s book. Considerable credit also goes to Sam Rockwell, who voices Ivan so sensitively; and director Thea Sharrock, who plays us like a fiddle. Let us not forget that Sharrock helmed 2016’s Me Before You, which had folks sobbing in the aisles.

 

Needless to say, this film — as was the case with Applegate’s book — also is a quietly powerful statement in our ongoing reassessment of wild animals in captivity. Indeed, the fact that this story is set in a circus, of sorts, feels uncomfortable. But it’s a period piece, faithful to the 1980s setting; more to the point, Sharrock and White don’t preach. 

 

Viewers have no trouble drawing the proper conclusions.

 

Events take place at the Exit 8 Big Top Shopping Mall and Video Arcade, which for years has boasted a “little top” circus. (Filming took place in Lakeland, Fla., although the script deliberately avoids specificity; this could be any indoor mall, in any city or state.) Ivan, the 400-lb. star, is joined by Stella (voiced by Angelina Jolie), an aging African elephant, and a small assortment of other critters.

 

The tiny circus was founded years earlier by Mack (Bryan Cranston), as a means to accommodate and earn a living with Ivan, who was rescued as a baby but quickly outgrew his initial suburban home. The two have long shared a special relationship.

 

In the tradition of such stories, Ivan, Stella and the other animals converse avidly with each other, but never with humans. It’s a testament to both Cranston and CGI wizardry, that we recognize the Mack/Ivan bond via silent expressions, forehead touches and other tiny — but powerful — shared gestures.

 

The Burnt Orange Heresy: Nothing but ash

The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019) • View trailer 

1.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, nudity, sexual content, drug use and violence

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.25.20 

Deliver us from filmmakers who cherish attitude and atmosphere over plot logic and credible characters.

 

James (Claes Bang, left) and Berenice (Elizabeth Debicki) are initially awed to be in
the presence of renowned art power-broker Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger), but they
become more wary when their host explains what he wants from them.

Director Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy — available via Amazon and other streaming services — drowns beneath pretentious monologues and arch behavior. It’s a confined four-hander: a tedious stage play with delusions of big-screen glory. Scripter Scott B. Smith makes absolute hash of celebrated crime writer Charles Willeford’s 1971 novel, pitting three condescending men — each an insufferable aristocratic sophisticate — against a lone woman who may as well have the word “victim” tattooed on her forehead.

 

Indeed, it’s painful to watch an actress of Elizabeth Debicki’s talent play such a relentlessly stupid and blindly reckless character.

 

If Capotondi wanted to emulate the gritty, neo-noir ambiance of Willeford’s prose — 1984’s Miami Blues remains a masterpiece of hard-boiled crime fiction — the director missed by a mile.

 

Danish actor Claes Bang (no relation, I assure you) rapidly becomes tedious as arrogant art critic James Figueras: fallen from his profession’s grace, and reduced to lecturing witless tourists in Milan, in hopes of selling more copies of his book, The Power of the Critic. (Was there ever a more pompous title?)

 

Not even five minutes into this film, you’ll seek escape.

 

This particular day is different; James’ oft-repeated presentation concludes with the appearance of the coquettish Berenice Hollis (Debicki). She has sought him out — for reasons Smith’s script never makes clear — and mutual lust slides them into bed.

 

Cue a gratuitously explicit sex scene that suggests we’re in for an erotic thriller: a genre Capotondi never comes close to delivering.