Dear Evan Hansen: A letter to remember

Dear Evan Hansen (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.24.21

Well, this is an emotional hurricane.

 

The Broadway production of Dear Evan Hansen won six of its nine Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, in many cases edging out Come From Away (which was Broadway robbery, in my humble opinion, but that’s a separate conversation).

 

Although circumstances have brought him closer to the girl he has long adored from
afar, Evan (Ben Platt) knows that his blossoming relationship with Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever)
is built upon a lie.

Evan’s messages of inclusion, self-acceptance and mended fences obviously resonated strongly with theatergoers, and I’m sure the same will be true of filmgoers. It’s refreshing to see a story about the importance of acknowledging one’s mistakes … sincerely, and in public. (A lot of politicians could learn from this example.)

That said, the story also veers dangerously close to the ragged edge of unpardonable behavior … and whether matters slide off that cliff, will depend on the individual viewer.

 

Playwright Steven Levenson, one of the Tony winners, has transformed his own book into this screenplay; Broadway star Ben Platt, also a Tony winner, reprises his lead role here. Ergo, there’s no question of fidelity … although I note the addition of two new songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (again, Tony winners), one of which — along with some, ah, adjustments by Levenson — definitely softens the harshness of the finale.

 

But it’s still painfully brutal.

 

Evan is a traditional musical, with distinct songs that enhance (or interrupt) a conventional storyline. That makes it a bit retro in this post-Les Misérables and Hamilton era, with most musicals relying more heavily on rap and operetta stagings. This softer, gentler approach is absolutely right for Evan, given its focus on vulnerability and fragility.

 

Director Stephen Chbosky echoes this choice. Most of the songs are poignant ballads, and you’ll find no opulent production numbers here; the introductory montage is as fancy as matters get.

 

High school senior Evan Hansen (Platt) has long suffered from social anxiety; he feels isolated, forever on the outside looking in (“Waving Through a Window”). One arm is in a cast — the reason for this injury, tellingly, remains undisclosed — and nobody is willing to sign it: not even his sole friend, Jared (Nik Dodani, channeling his near-identical role in Netflix’s Atypical).

 

Evan writes motivational letters to himself, as a means of bucking up his optimism about what might be good about each day. Such hopes do not include an unfortunate encounter with the volatile Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan) — also a loner, but angry and aggressive — who shoves Evan in the school hallway. Connor’s younger sister Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever) apologizes for this, which makes it worse, because Evan has long crushed on her.

 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye: An appalling gaze

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for sexual content and drug abuse

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

I’m hard-pressed to think of anybody whose life story interests me less.

 

Director Michael Showalter and scripter Abe Sylvia’s adaptation of the 2000 Fenton Bailey/Randy Barbato documentary clearly intends a re-evaluation of Tammy Faye Bakker, the more flamboyant half of husband Jim Bakker’s impressively massive PTL (Praise the Lord) broadcasting network and religious empire.

 

With their media empire crumbling amid multiple financial and moral scandals,
Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain) and Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) make a
last-ditch effort to plead their case on national news shows.

Being dragged once again through their decade of naked avarice and shameless hypocrisy, as they enjoy a lavish lifestyle funded by donations from gullible souls who bankrupted themselves in the belief they were helping God save the downtrodden, is almost beyond endurance.

That said…

 

The agony is intensified by the astonishing persuasiveness with which stars Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield portray the televangelist couple. It’s frankly spooky; more than once, I had to remember that this was a film, and not the 2000 documentary.

 

Chastain’s performance goes much deeper than the surface affectations of Tammy Faye’s clown-worthy makeup, hairstyles and trendy on-air garb. Chastain nails the head tilts, the perky smile, the gently swaying “moments with God” and — most notably — the initially cute Betty Boop voice, which becomes insufferable as Tammy Faye grows older.

 

Garfield, in turn, oozes insincere, egomaniacal smarm from the moment Jim and Tammy Faye meet, at Minnesota’s North Central Bible College. She’s sweet and impressionable; he radiates “stalker.” We see the wheels spinning behind Garfield’s gaze, as the far-thinking Jim immediately recognizes that this plain-spoken but clearly suggestible young woman will be an important asset to his future plans.

 

They marry almost immediately, much to the chagrin of her mother Rachel, played with richly nuanced depth — total honor and heart — by the always magnificent Cherry Jones.

 

The goal of a biographical film such as this — the reason for its existence — should be to explore the background of an individual who grows up to become such an unabashed monster. Alas, Sylvia’s script doesn’t give us much. 

 

A brief flashback introduces us to adolescent Tammy Faye (Chandler Head), Rachel’s only child by a brief marriage that ended in divorce. Although she re-marries, making Tammy Faye the eldest of eight children in a blended family, Rachel remains a pariah in this tiny Minneapolis community, despite total devotion and commitment to her faith. As a result, Tammy Faye is forbidden to attend the Pentecostal church where her mother plays piano alongside a fire-and-brimstone preacher, lest she remind parishioners of the divorce.

 

But Tammy Faye wants to attend, wants more than anything to be part of this environment: to hear the word of God. After watching services from outside, via a window, she shrewdly perceives what is necessary. So she resolutely enters the church the following Sunday, walks up to the preacher, and collapses onto the floor in a rapturous fit, complete with muttered gibberish. The congregation is ecstatic.

Everybody's Talking about Jamie: As well they should!

Everybody's Talking about Jamie (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for thematic elements, suggestive content and fleeting profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.17.21

Director Jonathan Butterell’s thoroughly delightful blend of Billy Elliot and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is based on the Dan Gillespie Sells/Tom MacRae 2017 stage musical of the same name, which in turn is adapted from the 2011 television documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, which profiled Jamie Campbell.

 

After Jamie (Max Harwood) gets a bit too aggressive with an eyebrow pencil, his
best friend Pritti (Lauren Patel) graciously does her best to repair the damage.

(Got all that?)

MacRae handles the script here, and Butterell also directed the play’s original Sheffield and West End productions, so there’s no question this film is faithful to their original vision. That’s important, given the subject’s sensitivity, which Butterell treats with respect. The result is joyous, poignant, uplifting, frequently amusing and — at times — emotionally shattering.

 

Which you’d expect, given that we’re talking about a teenager who wanted to come out as a drag queen, in a conservative, working-class community in Sheffield, England.

 

Butterell’s film is powered by an incandescent performance by star Max Harwood, in a frankly amazing acting and singing debut. There’s often something special about a talented actor’s debut screen role: Absent expectations and preconceived notions — it’s not as if we know anything about Harwood — it’s easier to embrace the notion that he is this character.

 

And he has absolutely no trouble handling choreographer Kate Prince’s inventively staged song-and-dance numbers. The first one — “And You Don’t Even Know It,” which establishes Jamie’s personality, hopes and dreams — is a true stunner.

 

Indeed, Butterell and all concerned have “opened up” the stage production quite imaginatively.

 

Musicals are, by nature, strange beasts; some seamlessly integrate the songs and production numbers into the narrative — Cabaret, most famously — while others simply interrupt the story. Jamie is one of the latter, although — to its credit — all the songs are so heartfelt, poignant or flamboyantly fun, that it’s easy to succumb to the film’s spirit.

 

With his dyed platinum blond pixie cut, gaudy accoutrements added to the mandated uniform, and aggressively frank personality, Jamie New (Harwood) is quite a presence at Mayfield High School. That rarely works in his favor, and he’s often targeted by mocking lads egged on by the sneering Dean (Samuel Bottomley).

 

He has one friend: the diminutive Pritti Pasha (Lauren Patel, in an equally strong acting debut), a studious Muslim who plans to become a doctor. She’s Jamie’s exact opposite: a shy, conservative girl who wouldn’t dream of wearing makeup, and hates being the center of attention. But — even though Butterell and MacRae don’t go there much — the hijab clearly has made her an outcast in this community, so of course she understands and sympathizes with Jamie’s isolation.

 

Despite the fact that it’s his own fault, given the way he behaves. Indeed, she’s his second staunchest advocate, forever encouraging him to embrace his ambitions, to “stop waiting for permission to be you.”

 

Copshop: Plenty of sass and shooting

Copshop (2021) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

If this were a book, it’d be a lurid 1940s pulp thriller.

 

Actually, it’s still a lurid pulp thriller, albeit with 21st century levels of violence and an unrelenting barrage of gratuitous F-bombs. Sacramento-schooled writer/director Joe Carnahan has never been one for subtlety, having begun his career with gun- and testosterone-laden crime thrillers such as Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane, Narc and Smokin’ Aces.

 

Small-town rookie cop Valerie Young (Alexis Louder) doesn't know it yet, but she's
about to have a very, very bad night.

Copshop definitely belongs in their company.

Its genre placement aside, it’s also an ingenious example of claustrophobic, COVID-era filmmaking, as most of the action takes place within a single extensive interior setting. The premise — script by Carnahan, Kurt McLeod and Mark Williams — has vague echoes of 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13, which put John Carpenter on the map.

 

The execution sprays enough macho, attitude-laden testosterone to be bottled and sold retail.

 

Carnahan initially cross-cuts between two sets of events. The first is a routine — read: dull and boring — night shift at a small-town Nevada police station, where chatty rookie officer Valerie Young (Alexis Louder) stands out among her mostly white, disinterested and overweight colleagues. Elsewhere, the frantic Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo) roars down the highway in a car laden with bullet holes, clearly trying to escape something not far behind him.

 

Valerie and her partner respond to a brawl that has disrupted a wedding; while separating the combatants, she’s sucker-punched — hard — by Murretto, who has just rushed to the scene. Naturally, he’s arrested, driven to the station and put in a cell … as he intended.

 

A few minutes later, another pair of officers drag in a disheveled, incoherent drunk who’s barely able to stand, let alone walk. He’s placed in the “drunk cell,” across the aisle from Murretto’s temporary cage.

 

Ah, but that’s no drunk. We’re not surprised, once they’re left alone, when he snaps to sharp-eyed awareness and faces Murretto with the feral anticipation of a lion about to devour a lamb. Meet professional assassin Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler), whose current contract is Murretto: a “fixer” for the Mob who got too greedy, and must be dealt with.

 

Viddick playfully taunts his prey, occasionally glancing at his watch, which is counting down the minutes to … what? Murretto, assuming himself safe in the cell, responds with superficial bravado.

Nightbooks: A shivery read

Nightbooks (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated TV-PG, for suspenseful intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

This is a delightful bit of family-friendly frights.

 

Director David Yarovesky’s modest chiller is adapted from J.A. White’s 2018 young adult novel of the same title, which is a modern — and spooky — riff on the ancient saga of Scheherazade (who, you’ll recall, kept herself alive by starting a story at the end of each of 1,001 Arabian nights, concluding it the following evening, and then starting another).

 

While exploring their captor's massive library, Alex (Winslow Fegley) and Yasmin
(Lidya Jewett) find scribbled notations on the pages of one book: perhaps clues
on how to escape?

Nightbooks is co-produced by Sam Raimi, who made his rep with the extremely gory Evil Dead series, but this little film stays within its TV-PG rating. That said, the final 20 minutes get rather intense, and may be too much for the youngest viewers.

Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis’ script hews closely to White’s novel, including the stories-within-the-story element, and the essential moral: that it’s always important to be true to one’s self.

 

Young Alex (Winslow Fegley, remembered from last year’s Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made) has long loved scary stuff. His bedroom is a shrine to pop-culture movies and TV shows, and his doting parents (Jess Brown and Mathieu Bourassa) have cheerfully indulged this passion, even to the point of occasionally dressing up and transforming their apartment into a haunted house.

 

Alex — a budding Stephen King — also has written many of his own scary stories, carefully preserved in a stack of Nightbooks.

 

But, as the story begins, Alex has just hit a crisis. Tired of being teased at school for the unusual way he dresses, humiliated by having been tagged with the nickname Creepshow, he rashly decides to destroy his life’s work. He gathers up his Nightbooks, runs to the elevator and punches the button for the basement, intending to hurl his notebooks into the boiler room furnace.

 

The elevator stops elsewhere, opening onto a mysterious, spookily illuminated hallway. He’s drawn to apartment 4B; once inside, the door vanishes behind him.

 

This is the home of Natacha (Krysten Ritter), a sinister witch with a fondness for runway glam outfits. (Costume designer Autumn Steed had a good time.) She’s accompanied by Lenore, a creepy, hairless Sphinx cat with the ability to turn invisible. Having somehow learned of Alex’s talent for spinning terror tales, Natacha commands him to tell her a story.

 

She further warns that if his story isn’t scary enough, he’ll meet a dire fate … typified by the disturbingly life-like, doll-size figurines of children placed on a shelf.

 

And so, (fortunately) armed with his Nightbooks, Alex tells a story — “The Playground” — which we watch in animator Mary Yang’s deliberately retro, low-tech style.

 

The telling doesn’t unfold smoothly; Natacha keeps interrupting, editing Alex’s narrative elements, or simply insisting “That isn’t scary.” These exchanges are quite droll, thanks to Ritter’s exaggerated haughtiness and Fegley’s persuasive blend of confusion and terror.

 

Alex succeeds, and survives the night.

Worth: Not as much as it should be

Worth (2020) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for brief profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

What price a life?

 

Insensitive and vulgar as that question seems — how can anybody put a monetary value on the loss of a loved one? — actuaries, lawyers and insurance companies routinely do so.

 

A chance meeting at an opera performance allows Ken Feinberg (Michael Keaton, left)
and Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci) to start bridging the divide that has found them
judging the 9/11 compensation fund from strikingly different points of view.

Director Sara Colangelo’s provocative drama, which opens in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, follows the struggle to assess justice and fairness in one of American history’s most monumental attempts to assess “worth.” Max Borenstein’s screenplay is drawn from the 2006 memoir by Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed “Special Master” of the U.S. government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

As Borenstein’s script quickly depicts, however, this Congressional act of apparent compassion was — to a great degree — surface gloss. The fund was attached to the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act, a $15 billion bailout bill passed just 10 days after the terrorist strikes. The “fund gesture” hoped to “encourage” the survivors of 9/11 victims not to sue the industry into oblivion, thereby — in the words of airline corporate doomsayers attending a key meeting with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (Victor Slezak) — preventing a “possible economic cataclysm.”

 

Feinberg (Michael Keaton) is introduced a few days earlier, as he demonstrates the legal nature of “worth” to a class of university students. He’s a number-cruncher and creature of pure pragmatism, believing to the core that any issue can be solved with carefully calculated equations, and that all individuals involved will behave rationally and respect the resulting “tort-style compensation” of such efforts.

 

Keaton is ideal for this role, his feral intensity and smirky condescension operating at full throttle. This master-of-the-universe aura notwithstanding, he certainly isn’t evil; he genuinely believes that he’s doing good, and that the best possible outcome can be achieved if everybody simply acknowledges that he knows best.

 

Such blunt expediency takes its toll; Feinberg relaxes, at the end of each day, by bathing himself in classic opera. We get a vague sense that his rough edges are softened by his wife, Dede (Talia Balsam); we also suspect that she doesn’t entirely agree with his attitude. But Borenstein’s script leaves their relationship badly under-developed.

 

Feinberg and his firm — his chief lieutenant is Camille Biros (Amy Ryan) — gained their lauded reputation as master mediators after chaperoning previous high-profile cases involving asbestos personal injury litigation, and Agent Orange product liability litigation. But those cases developed over the course of years, even decades, by which time emotions had cooled; on top of which, there never was a single “asbestos incident” that snuffed thousands of lives in a blinding flash: a distinction Feinberg fails to recognize.

 

As a result, when he gathers an initial few hundred victim survivors — mere months later — he treats the presentation just like the classroom lecture we witnessed earlier, expecting all participants to be uniformly impressed by his charts and graphs. He’s therefore genuinely baffled — Keaton’s expression radiates total confusion — when the attendees turn on him like a pack of snarling wolverines.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Solid, fantasy-laden fun

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.10.21

Actors love to play villains, it has oft been said, because they get the best lines.

 

That’s certainly true here, where the villain is by far the most fascinating character.

 

A routine San Francisco bus ride turns lethal when Shaun (Simu Liu) is attacked by a
cluster of thugs led by the aptly named Razor Fist (Florian Munteanu).

Which is not to disparage Simu Liu’s engaging performance as the heroic Shang-Chi. No question: The man has moves, and charisma, in equal measure.

But the character of Shang-Chi’s father, Xu Wenwu, has been crafted with impressive complexity by writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton and co-scripters Dave Callaham and Andrew Lanham, and played with equally nuanced precision by celebrated Chinese actor Tony Leung. Every line he speaks — even the most mundane (although few of those exist here) — commands attention.

 

He conveys more, with a thoughtful pause or hardened gaze, than pages of dialogue.

 

Wenwu is an immortal Big Bad who has cruelly, subtly shaped our world during hundreds of lifetimes: a villain who, intriguingly, finally stopped being evil because it was too banal. (Granted, there also was another big reason.) Leung makes it easy to believe that this individual has been around for millennia; he has the regal bearing and economy of speech and movement one would expect.

 

But we’re getting ahead of things.

 

The story opens in San Francisco, where our hero and his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) have long parked cars for a living, much to the consternation of her family. She knows her buddy as Shaun, and he seems like the next ordinary guy; indeed, he has worked hard (as we eventually learn) to maintain that mundane guise.

 

That image goes out the window — along with a lot of other stuff — when a routine bus ride explodes into a violent fracas, as a bunch of thugs demand the jade pendant Shaun has long worn around his neck. Worse yet, one of said thugs’ amputated arm sprouts a huge, energy-powered razor blade. (Yeah, I know: totally silly. But that doesn’t lessen the intensity of what follows.)

 

To Katy’s astonishment, Shaun holds his own … if just barely.

 

This extended melee is the first of Cretton and stunt coordinator Brad Allan’s jaw-dropping sequences, and it’s a corker: taking full advantage of San Francisco’s steep streets and the awkward physics of an articulated bus. Totally stunning.

Love and Monsters: Quite a ride

Love and Monsters (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for sci-fi violence and mild profanity

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.3.21

A movie with a title like this, is either going to be a lot of fun … or a stinker.

 

Happily, the former is true.

 

Joel (Dylan O'Brien) finds that his new canine companion is quite useful in what has
become an extremely dangerous world.

Director Michael Matthews’ audacious adventure thriller was the dark-horse candidate for last year’s visual effects Academy Award, and Brian Cox’s team definitely earned their place on that short list. On top of which, this film is far more entertaining than the category winner (Christopher Nolan’s overblown Tenet).

I know we’ve been deluged by “giant monster” movies of late — Godzilla, King Kong, Pacific Rim and so forth — but this one’s different. In addition to the terrific effects, the secondary attraction is Brian Duffield and Matthew Robinson’s cheeky script, which goes a long way toward turning star Dylan O’Brien into a most unlikely action hero.

 

On top of which, local viewers will get a kick out of the fact that some of these events are set in Fairfield, of all places. (Filming actually took place in Australia.)

 

At some point into the future, a massive asteroid threatens to wreak havoc when it hits Earth. Governments cooperatively scramble to successfully destroy it, but the process blankets our planet with a chemical residue that causes cold-blooded animals — bugs, amphibians, sea creatures — to mutate into huge monsters that soon kill off (um, devour) most of humanity.

 

The United States’ few survivors have holed up in underground bunker “colonies” spread throughout the country, which maintain contact with each other via short wave radio. Joel (O’Brien), belonging to one such colony, is something of a misfit. Everybody is kind — they love his minestrone (!) — but he feels useless.

 

He isn’t strong or brave enough to join his older comrades when they go topside to forage for supplies, a dangerous endeavor that often has tragic consequences.

 

Worse yet, he’s the colony’s only singleton; everybody else has paired off. He nurses the memory of his former girlfriend, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), whom he hasn’t seen since they were separated seven years earlier, during the evacuation of Fairfield. He knows where she is — another colony, 85 miles away, on the California coast — but that doesn’t help much.

 

When his colony is breached by a giant ant, with disastrous consequences, Joel decides he’d rather die trying to reunite with Aimee, than spend whatever remains of his life cowering in a hole. And so he grabs a crossbow and a backpack’s worth of supplies, and heads topside. Nobody tries to stop him; they all understand.

 

Needless to say, his quest proves quite hazardous.

Beckett: Solid acting, inept script

Beckett (2021) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated TV-MA, for violence and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Although the bulk of director/co-scripter Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s “innocent on the run” thriller generates considerable suspense — and John David Washington throws everything into his lead role — the story eventually collapses under the weight of its overly complicated narrative.

 

Beckett (John David Washington) and April (Alicia Vikander), enjoying their vacation in
Greece, playfully concoct fictional back-stories for the other tourists they spot.
Alas, things won't remain casual and carefree much longer.

Even worse, this is yet another frustrating film that stops abruptly, rather than concluding appropriately. Yes, one key issue is resolved, but Filomarino and co-scripter Kevin A. Rice leave several other hanging chads twisting in the wind, giving us no means of separating good from evil, or determining Who Was Behind It All.

On top of which, a running thread of soul-shattering grief and personal responsibility is disagreeably mean-spirited.

 

(On a trivial note, Beckett is a terrible title. Something along the lines of Nightmare in Greece would be far more appropriate.)

 

American tourists Beckett (Washington) and girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander) are vacationing in Greece: a gorgeous, architecturally stunning setting granted lavish exposure by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. Beckett and April are very much in love; their cute, flirty banter fuels a lengthy prologue that overstays its welcome.

 

Depending on one’s tolerance for such things — in fairness, it’s not as if Washington and Vikander are hard to watch — you’ll either get increasingly nervous, waiting for some awful unexpected shoe to drop … or you’ll become annoyed by the way Filomarino seems to be vamping for time.

 

(I favor the latter.)

 

Eventually, though — finally — that shoe does drop.

 

In the aftermath, Beckett walks along the imposing Vikos Gorge, near a small town in Northern Greece, trying to piece together what actually happened. His probing curiosity is interrupted by a hard-edged blonde (Lena Kitsopoulou) who, without warning, pulls out a gun and starts shooting. One bullet punches through his left arm; in abject terror and confusion, Beckett takes panicked flight through the mountainous Tsepevolo countryside.