Don't Look Up: Profoundly unsettling, despite trying too hard

Don't Look Up (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for frequent profanity, sexual candor, graphic nudity and drug use

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.7.22

Ouch.

 

This is about as scathing an indictment of modern American behavior as can be imagined.

 

Hoping to share their dire and tremendously important discovery on national television,
Randall (Leonardo DiCaprio, center right) and Kate (Jennifer Lawrence, far right) little
realize they're about to be trivialized by hosts Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry).

Back in 2015, writer/director Adam McKay stunned us with The Big Short, a wildly entertaining and ferociously mocking blend of drama, quasi-documentary and break-the-fourth-wall cinéma vérité, in service of an economic crash course that brilliantly explained the upper-echelon machinations that drove our country off a financial cliff in 2007.

This time, McKay and co-scripter David Sirota set their sights much higher: the cognitive dissonance and blind stupidity that prompt so many Americans to deny the existence of climate change, safe covid vaccines, the results of the 2020 election, and a great deal more.

 

Willful ignorance runs rampant these days, which gives McKay and Sirota plenty to scream about. While quite a few of this film’s sarcastic bombs hit their target, Don’t Look Up isn’t as artistically tight as The Big Short, and I also miss that earlier film’s inventively cheeky directorial flourishes. Sarcasm and snark once again are in abundance, but McKay’s approach here is more dramatically conventional.

 

Perhaps that’s because the operative metaphor — and its real-world counterpart — are too sobering, too horrifying, for gleeful frivolity.

 

The Big Short was fun, whereas this one is deeply unsettling: mad-as-hell, take-no-prisoners storytelling.

 

Events kick off quietly, as university astronomy professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discover a new comet orbiting our solar system. Their initial excitement dwindles when Kate and a gaggle of fellow grad students watch Randall compute the comet’s trajectory on a white board, to determine whether it’ll be visible when it passes Earth.

 

The film’s most grimly impactful wallop occurs right here, as Randall — fully absorbed by complex mathematical equations — initially fails to register the implication of the zero he has just written on the board. DiCaprio sells this moment: Randall hesitates, starts to shake his head, knows he hasn’t made a mistake … but nonetheless erases the zero and empties the room. Except for Kate.

 

Computing the dimensions of the comet is similarly easy. It’s the size of Mount Everest … and if — when — it strikes Earth, in just over six months, it’ll be a planetary extinction event.

 

Well.

 

The Matrix Resurrections: It's déjà vu all over again

The Matrix Resurrections (2021) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and HBO Max (until January 21)

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.21

Charles M. Schulz sagely observed that a cartoonist is “someone who has to draw the same thing day after day, without repeating himself.”

 

Lana Wachowski, on the other hand, is a writer/director who makes the same movie time after time, while repeating everything.

 

Although not entirely convinced, Thomas (Keanu Reeves) instinctively senses that much
of what Bugs (Jessica Henwick) says is true ... and that his supposed life on Earth
isn't actually what he thinks.

Great gig if you can get it, I guess.

But the utter absence of originality in this fourth Matrix installment is both tedious and disheartening: in its own way, a contributor to the death of imagination. Wachowski — abetted by co-writers David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon — apparently can make the same movie ad infinitum, and fans don’t seem to mind.

 

What was novel and mind-blowingly audacious, back in 1999, has become familiar and boring.

 

A brief prologue introduces the feisty, blue-tressed Bugs (Jessica Henwick), a “white rabbit” on a covert mission in what clearly is a dangerous Matrix rabbit hole, seeking clues that will reveal more about “The One,” who sacrificed himself for humanity 60 years earlier.

 

Following that, we drop in on Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), a wildly successful computer programmer who has made a fortune for himself, and his company, with a three-part immersive game called The Matrix Trilogy.

 

Given that Thomas — known in the “real” world as Neo — died nobly at the conclusion of 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions, his appearance here clearly indicates fresh bad behavior by the intelligent machines that control the Matrix. (As a quick recap, all of humanity unknowingly exists within a simulated reality of our familiar world, their physical bodies actually trapped within pods that suck their life force for energy.)

 

Thomas suffers from bad dreams, despite having shakily moved beyond a recent psychotic break that prompted a suicide attempt: a crisis expertly managed by his warmly sympathetic psychiatrist (Neil Patrick Harris). Worse yet, Thomas is confronted by his boss — Jonathan Groff, suitably smarmy and condescending, as Smith — and informed that they’re going to make a fresh sequel to the Matrix game trilogy: something Thomas swore he’d never do.

 

In a bit of cheeky meta, Smith explains that they have no choice; their corporate owners, Warner Bros., will do the game with or without them. 

A Journal for Jordan: A heartwarming read

A Journal for Jordan (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for sexual candor, partial nudity, drug use and mild profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Messing with a Pulitzer Prize-winner’s memoir requires considerable chutzpah, as I’m sure director Denzel Washington and screenwriter Virgil Williams must’ve been well aware.

 

It takes quite awhile, But Dana (Chanté Adams) finally persuades Charles
(Michael B. Jordan) to visit her in New York ... at which point, what could be more
romantic than a walk in the park?

Nor is A Journal for Jordan a run-of-the-mill memoir; it’s the deeply moving saga of two wildly dissimilar people who — almost reluctantly — stumbled their way into one of The Great Love Affairs Of All Time, and of the touching legacy that a father left his infant son.

Heavy stuff.

 

To their credit, Washington and Williams have nobly honored the source material, while delivering a heartfelt romantic drama that — inescapably — builds to a tear-jerking conclusion.

 

It’s not spoiling anything to reveal that, as this film begins, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King (Michael B. Jordan) is dead; that much is blindingly obvious from our introduction to New York Times journalist Dana Canedy (Chanté Adams), at lowest possible ebb. It’s 2007, and she’s utterly unable to channel or process her grief; she’s prickly at work, irritated by the concern of longtime friends, and hanging on solely because of her infant son, Jordan.

 

Even under these emotionally battered circumstances, Adams conveys a strong sense of Dana’s initiative, investigative resourcefulness and journalistic chops … along with a hell-you-will refusal to share her work with a colleague, simply because he’s a male colleague. And — quickly determined — a wet-behind-the-ears and clearly unprepared male colleague, at that.

 

(Will we never get beyond such sexist behavior?)

 

This scene, in the New York Times bullpen, is a quick glimpse of how Washington and Williams will sketch the rest of their film: via revealing expressions and body language, and concise — but quite telling — exchanges of dialogue.

 

This is a true relationship drama; the story unfolds via illuminating dialogue exchanges between lovers, parents and children, and caring friends. The overall tone is gentle and mostly quiet, allowing us to enter these characters’ lives, as they bond with each other. Washington extracts sensitive, heartfelt performances from everybody, including the minor players.

 

We enjoy spending time with them. How often can you say that?

 

The King's Man: A royal good time!

The King's Man (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong, bloody violence, profanity and sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.24.21

Fans of this series are apt to be mighty surprised — happily, one hopes — by this third entry’s unexpected shift in tone and style.

 

En route to Russia in a private train, Orlando (Ralph Fiennes, far left) shares what he
knows about Grigori Rasputin, while, from left, Shola (Djimon Hounsou),
Conrad (Harris Dickinson) and Polly (Gemma Arterton) listen attentively.

Whereas 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2017’s Kingsman: Golden Circle are deranged, profane and gleefully over-the-top comic book burlesques, this new entry is only mildly naughty. It’s more accurately a sly bit of alternate history, with director/co-scripter Matthew Vaughn — and co-writer Karl Gajdusek — setting their cheeky Kingsman origin story against the very real horrors of World War I.

The tone is more akin to a Golden Age classic such as 1939’s Gunga Din … albeit with dollops of 21st century hyper-violence.

 

Key events are rigorously accurate: from the triggering assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which set the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) against the Triple Entente (France, Russia and Britain); to the ghastly horrors of trench warfare that claimed the lives of an estimated 9 million soldiers.

 

Other films have depicted the latter more authentically — director Sam Mendes’ 1917 immediately comes to mind — but Vaughn, Gajdusek and production designer Darren Gilford convincingly establish a similarly grim tableau. One sequence, achieved with some clever CGI, is particularly effective: a bit of time-lapse legerdemain that reveals the impact of two years’ of war, as a pastoral Western European landscape transforms into a barren wasteland laden with mutilated corpses.

 

But this comes a bit later. The conceit of Vaughn and Gajdusek’s script is that this nation-shattering abattoir was orchestrated clandestinely, behind the scenes, by a nefarious cabal whose many members include Russia’s mad monk, Grigori Rasputin (Rhys Ifans). Their leader, known only as The Shepherd — he remains unseen, as with the early 1960s machinations of James Bond’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld — is motivated by an enraged hatred of England, for its centuries-old repression of Scotland.

 

Meanwhile…

 

Following a brief 1902 prologue set during South Africa’s Boer War, during which we meet Orlando, the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), and his young son Conrad (Alexander Shaw), the story flashes forward a dozen years. Fiennes excels at this sort of refined, crisply authoritative figure; Orlando is unapologetically aristocratic but also mindful of his station, and the need to behave honorably for the common good.

 

As a result of events during that prologue, he’s also a devoted pacifist: a philosophy that increasingly puts him at odds with the impetuous Conrad (now played by Harris Dickinson), who — like so many young men of his era — wishes to prove his bravery in “glorious battle.”

Nightmare Alley: Not worth a visit

Nightmare Alley (2021) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.17.21

Mid-20th century touring carnivals, by their very nature, seem … well … sordid.

 

Squalid. Uneasily unpleasant, as if something nasty is happening in the tent around the corner.

 

Although Molly (Rooney Mara) is instinctively wary around charismatic carnival newcomer
Stan (Bradley Cooper), his charm and aw-shucks persistence eventually wear her down.
Which isn't good news...

No surprise, such an environment proved alluring to director Guillermo del Toro.

Nightmare Alley began life as a 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham (who, rather disturbingly, in 1962 committed suicide — via sleeping pills — in the same hotel room where he had written the first draft). Dashing Hollywood star Tyrone Power, looking for something meatier than the romantic and adventure roles for which he had become famous, persuaded 20th Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck to buy the rights for him.

 

The resulting film was rushed into production and hit theaters the following year; alas, nobody wanted to see Power play such a morally tainted character, and the movie also endured considerable bad publicity — and moral outrage — due to the story’s squalid elements (quite strong, for the time).

 

History has been much kinder; it’s now regarded as one of the era’s finest film noir entries … a reputation del Toro’s remake hasn’t a chance of attaining.

 

Granted, this new adaptation looks terrific; production designer Tamara Deverell and cinematographer Dan Lausten persuasively establish the late Depression era, down to the grime and foulness; and an atmosphere of impending dread hovers over the carnival setting like a shroud.

 

The performances are uniformly strong, and the characters are riveting, with most of them displaying various shades of corruption. It’s also nice to see del Toro and co-scripter Kim Morgan retain Gresham’s grim conclusion. (The 1947 version “softened” the ending, which is that film’s sole flaw.)

 

Alas, del Toro’s pacing is lethargic and ponderous to a degree that ruins everything.

 

The Los Angeles Times recently ran an article titled “Are movies too long?,” and this one’s a poster child for a resounding yes. The 1947 version knew when to get off the stage; it’s a just-right 111 minutes. Del Toro’s remake is a butt-numbing 150 minutes, with nothing to show for such expansion. Indeed, the additional length actually works against the story’s atmosphere and suspense.

 

That’s a shame, because all concerned otherwise do their best, and the classic elements are in place. Every true noirrequires a louse; a very, very, very bad gal; a second, usually trusting and naïve woman whose virtue will be compromised; and assorted sidebar characters of dubious moral quality.

West Side Story: Totally captivating

West Side Story (2021) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and rather generously, for strong violence, strong profanity, attempted rape and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.10.21

The initial few seconds are crucial.

 

Any faithful presentation of West Side Story must begin with a dark stage or screen, as we hear the call-and-response pair of whistled triplets … followed by a brief pause, and then the vibrant opening bars of Leonard Bernstein’s overture, as the Jets assemble for the first electrifying dance number.

 

This can't end well: Although the school gym is supposed to be neutral territory, the white
kids (left) and Puerto Ricans clearly aren't sizing up each other's dance moves ... even
though this sequence quickly explodes into one of the film's many amazing
production numbers.

Director Steven Spielberg nails it, with this pulsating, big-screen adaptation: honorably faithful to the 1961 film, while also demonstrating its own, equally dynamic personality.

Actually, everybody nails it.

 

Screenwriter Tony Kushner — who earned Oscar nominations for his two previous collaborations with Spielberg, 2005’s Munich and 2012’s Lincoln — retains the essential late 1950s/early ’60s setting, while adding focus to the “urban renewal” (i.e. slum clearance) that puts additional pressure on the Jets and their rivals, the Puerto Rican Sharks. No wonder they jockey ever more furiously for control of their rapidly shrinking turf.

 

Indeed, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski opens the film with slow, sweeping pans past huge wrecking balls that hover over the demolished remnants of several city blocks that now look like a war zone: a deliberately grim reminder that neighborhoods of color invariably are targeted for such development.

 

(In a rather droll touch, Kaminski’s camera also slides past a large sign that heralds the impending creation of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.)

 

The opening “call to arms” is led by Riff (Mike Faist), who propels the expanding cadre of Jets toward an equally large gathering of the Sharks, led by Bernardo (David Alvarez). The unison dance moves are feral, taunting and gracefully balletic; choreographer Justin Peck, of New York City Ballet, clearly quotes Jerome Robbins’ original dances, albeit with even more intensity.

 

Peck’s staging of subsequent numbers, as the story proceeds, is audaciously clever. The show-stopping “America,” always a highlight, has been moved from a nighttime rooftop to the San Juan Hill’s daytime streets, where it explodes into a massive neighborhood block party of store merchants and passersby, in addition to our main characters. It’s a breathtaking sequence that gets progressively bold and colorful, the moves ranging from Robbins-esque ballet to Caribbean pachanga.

 

“I Feel Pretty” is given an ironic twist, as Maria (Rachel Zegler) and the many female members of her late-night cleaning crew cavort amid the mannequins on the ground floor of Gimbels … where all the clothing and accessories are aimed at white patrons. “Cool,” a straight dance piece in the 1961 film, has been transformed into an increasingly angry confrontation between Riff and Tony (Ansel Elgort), as they wrestle for control of a gun while trying to evade the gaping holes on a rotting pier at the edge of the city.

 

It’s a ferociously tense sequence, Spielberg deliberately playing on our fear that the damn thing’s gonna go off at any moment.

tick, tick ... BOOM! — Explosively dazzling

tick, tick ... BOOM! (2021) • View trailer

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

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

The creative process can be soul-deadening.

 

We in the outside world tend to think solely in terms of a result. For example, Rent was a smash success from the nanosecond it opened on Broadway in April 1996, and it brought creator Jonathan Larson the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, along with Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score, along with a boatload of other honors.

 

While working his day job at the Moodance diner, Jonathan (Andrew Garfield) suddenly
finds himself dancing with — among many others — Bernadette Peters, during a
high-spirited production number titled "Sunday."

But how did Larson get there?

Like most so-called “overnight successes,” Larson was anything but, as this musical reveals. tick, tick … BOOM! got its start as a one-man autobiographical “rock monologue” initially titled Boho Days, and performed by Larson at the Village Gate and New York Theater Workshop on December 14, 1992. The piece is a painfully autobiographical account of the struggle he endured while spending eight years writing his first professional musical, Superbia.

 

Not quite a decade later, tick, tick … BOOM! was reconstructed by playwright/director David Auburn as a three-person show at New York’s Jane Street Theater, where on November 11, 1992, a 21-year-old theater major named Lin-Manuel Miranda attended a performance.

 

We all know what happened to him.

 

It’s therefore not merely serendipitous, but absolutely proper, that Miranda make his feature film directing debut with this screen adaptation. And — no surprise — he has done a superb job.

 

The film is anchored by a sensational lead performance from Andrew Garfield, starring as Larson: a mesmerizing blend of acting chops and heartfelt singing, given that he anchors or solos most of the musical numbers. It’s the sort of exhilarating effort that transcends artifice; not even half an hour into this film, we’re firmly convinced that it is Larson on the screen.

 

Steven Levenson’s screenplay follows Jon during the eight frenzied days leading up to a crucial workshop performance of Superbia. This coincides with the looming arrival of his 30th birthday: a milestone that weighs heavily, because he regards it as the last-gasp chance for being “discovered” at the appropriate point of what he hopes will become a career.

 

The pressure of this “ticking clock” — which we occasionally hear, albeit faintly, when it isn’t overwhelmed by the frequently passionate songs — acts as a metronome for everything else being balanced: his day job as a waiter at the Moondance Diner; the dwindling relationship with girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp), whose desire to pursue her own ballet career is pulling her elsewhere; and the decision by longtime best friend Michael (Robin de Jesús) to abandon the acting grind for a stable, 9-to-5 job in advertising … which Jon regards as a sell-out (while nonetheless being envious of Michael’s doorman apartment).

 

And, as these eight days pass, the advancing specter of the AIDS epidemic also looms large.

Being the Ricardos: We still love Lucy

Being the Ricardos (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and (beginning December 21) Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Writer/director Aaron Sorkin loves the crackling intensity of rapid-fire dialogue amid interpersonal conflict, as we’ve seen in earlier projects from TV’s The West Wing and The Newsroom, to big-screen efforts such as The Social Network and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

 

The stars of I Love Lucy — from left, Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), William Frawley
(J.K. Simmons), Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda) and Lucile Ball (Nicole Kidman) — rehearse
a scene wherein Ricky and Lucy Ricardo attempt to "re-unite" the bickering Fred and
Ethel Mertz.

When Sorkin is at the top of his game, the result is exhilarating: absolutely the word to describe this new film.

Being the Ricardos is set primarily during a tumultuous single week in late 1952, as the stars, writers and sponsors of I Love Lucy shape the second season’s next episode, prior to it being performed and filmed before a live studio audience. That said, frequent flashbacks reveal the early careers of Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), and how they met and married.

 

Those elements are fascinating, as Sorkin deftly sketches the ambition, shrewd intelligence and business savvy that — once they got together — transformed two B-movie contract players into industry visionaries: They co-created one of television’s all-time most successful shows (No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings for four of its six seasons) and then founded Desilu, one of the world’s top TV production companies at the time (and later the home of Star Trek, among many other hits).

 

Captivating as all this is — and the power couple’s many innovations almost are too numerous to take in, so quickly (a Sorkin trademark) — the film primarily focuses on three crises that erupt during this one week:

 

• A newspaper photo that leads Ball to believe that Arnaz is having an affair;

 

• Muckraking gossip columnist Walter Winchell’s bombshell announcement that Ball is a communist (!); and

 

• The revelation that Ball is pregnant with their second child, and her determination — with Arnaz’s support — to break television’s then-cultural taboo against showing pregnant women on screen.

 

While all these events are factual, Sorkin has “massaged” history — and heightened the intensity of his film — by having them occur simultaneously. (They didn’t. Most notably, Winchell’s radio bombshell wasn’t made until a few days after Ball’s second meeting with the House Un-American Activities Committee, in September 1953.)

 

Ergo, the cacophony of calamity is artistic conceit, but it’s a forgivable sin.

 

Verbal jousting is ubiquitous throughout, in the audacious manner of a 1930s screwball comedy: between Ball and Arnaz; between both of them and their three favorite writers, Madelyn Pugh (Alia Shawkat), Bob Carroll Jr. (Jake Lacy) and Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale); and between all five of them and the CBS suits (Clark Gregg, Nelson Franklin and Dan Sachoff) and Phillip Morris representative (Jeff Holman) who question, nitpick, challenge and argue over any line or act that might be considered controversial, risqué or offensive to American TV viewers.

 

It’s a revelation, to be reminded of the jaw-droppingly insane restrictions placed on TV shows, back in the day … and the long-suffering patience required of the stars, writers and directors who had to put up with such nonsense.

 

Alan Baumgarten’s editing, throughout, is as tight and quick as the rat-a-tat dialogue.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife — Definitely worth a call

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for supernatural action and intensity

Available via: Movie theaters 

By Derrick Bang

This is just as much fun as the 1984 original.

 

But it goes deeper than that. Director Jason Reitman — who co-wrote this new film’s script with Gil Kenan — also honor that four-decades-old classic. Although we’re introduced to an entirely new set of characters, the all-important tone and balance are maintained: same snarky humor and whimsical atmosphere, along with some genuinely scary jolts and gotcha moments.

 

Following a wild, hell-for-leather chase, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard, left) Phoebe (Mckenna
Grace) and Podcast (Logan Kim) realize that something definitely is wrong inside the
ominous mountain outside their small town.

(Reitman and all concerned wisely pretend that 2016’s abysmal, gal-oriented remake never happened.)

Composer Rob Simonsen even quotes much of the late Elmer Bernstein’s score for the 1984 film, at first teasing us with occasional chordal hints, and finally — as we move into the exciting third act — unveiling Bernstein’s primary themes in their entirety. 

 

(Bearing in mind how much of Bernstein’s music is used, a highly visible co-credit for this film’s score would have been proper, rather than the tiny “original themes” acknowledgment buried deep within the voluminous end credits crawl.)

 

Considerable time has passed in this franchise’s universe, as it did in the real world. Following a spooky, suspenseful prologue, we meet single mom Callie (Carrie Coon), her 15-year-old son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and 12-year-old daughter Phoebe (Mckenna Grace). Everything has gone wrong in poor Callie’s life, up to a sudden eviction that leaves them homeless.

 

With nowhere else to go, they drive to the tiny community of Summerville, Oklahoma, where her long-estranged father spent the final decades of his life in a ramshackle farmhouse. Callie hopes to sell the place and its contents for enough to make a fresh start, but a local Realtor (Annie Potts, fleetingly reprising her role as Janine Melnitz) gently explains that the land is worthless, and the property burdened by debt.

 

So they settle in. Reluctantly.

 

Trevor, a typical teenage boy, immediately makes a clumsy play for Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), who works at a retro, roller-skating fast-food joint. He’s obviously punching above his weight, but she finds him amusing, and tolerates his presence; he soon joins her clique of friends.

 

Callie, mindful that her curious, super-smart but socially hopeless daughter needs some sort of focus, enrolls Phoebe in the local middle school’s summer session science class. She immediately comes to the attention of Podcast (Logan Kim, utterly adorable), so named because he constantly films and interviews anybody who foolishly fails to evade him.

 

The irrepressibly cheerful Podcast is an impetuous, fearless chatterbox; Phoebe is quiet, shy and stoic. She also can’t tell a joke to save her life (a cute running gag with a terrific third-act payoff). But they’re both inquisitive and boldly (foolishly?) scientific. Naturally, they become fast friends.

 

Phoebe also catches the eye of the class teacher, Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), an affable guy with a laser-focused interest in seismology: specifically the region surrounding Summerville, which seems prone to far more than its share of earthquakes.

King Richard: Game, set and match!

King Richard (2021) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence, brief profanity, sexual candor and fleeting drug references

Available via: Movie theaters and (until December 19) HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

Truth isn’t merely stranger than fiction; sometimes it’s also more inspiring.

 

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard is many things: an amazing underdog story, a touching family drama, a gently powerful indictment of institutional racism, and — most of all — the inspiring study of one man’s determination to doggedly persevere, despite being repeatedly knocked down … in some cases, literally.

 

Serena (Demi Singleton, left) and Venus (Saniyya Sidney) listen intently as their father,
Richard (Will Smith) emphasizes the need to give equal weight to training body,
mind and soul.

In a stunning screenwriter debut, Zach Baylin’s sensitivity to this true-life saga is sublime; he has a keen ear for husband/wife and parent/child dynamics, and an acute awareness of how to play us viewers. At various moments, we laugh, cry, wince or hold our breath in nervous anticipation.

Given that Serena and Venus Williams serve as co-executive producers, there’s no doubt they’ve intended this film as a valentine to their father, and an acknowledgment of the miracle that he wrought. That said, there’s no false sentimentality here; the emotions are credible and authentic, the journey never contrived or sensationalized.

 

Actually, there’s no need; the truth is astonishing enough on its own.

 

Nor is this a hearts-and-flowers depiction of the man who molded two of the world’s greatest tennis stars. Will Smith’s starring performance — certain to earn an Oscar nomination — is prickly at times: frequently admirable, but often unlikable. By all accounts (including his own), Richard Williams was very difficult to live or work with: stubborn, demanding and often unreasonable, answering solely to his own (frequently bewildering) logic and carefully crafted vision.

 

He’s the epitome of “my way or the highway.” As it happens, though, his way usually proves successful.

 

Smith’s portrayal is all these things, along with nobler aspects: devotion to his wife and daughters; fierce protectiveness, to the point of personal peril; a stickler for family values and a solid work ethic; a shrewd judge of character; and a pragmatic awareness of the limitations society places on its Black citizens … along with a feisty desire to circumvent such restrictions, whenever possible.

 

He’s also the man of a thousand maxims. The film’s best running gag is the relish with which Smith delivers these pearls of wisdom, with a slight, totally endearing mangling of the King’s English: dead-on accurate to the actual Richard’s cadence … as is the unhurried, gently swaying manner with which he walks.

 

The performance is fascinating … as is the man himself.

House of Gucci: Dressed to Kill

House of Gucci (2021) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, sexual content, brief nudity and violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.26.21

These folks would have been right at home in the 15th century, living next door to the Borgias.

 

Ridley Scott’s cheeky depiction of the Machiavellian treachery, manipulation, avarice and grasping ambition that roiled the fabled Italian fashion empire for two decades, is a showcase of bravura acting chops by five high-wattage stars. The narrative approach is simultaneously giddy, sordid and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, the latter due to the often arch script by Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna, adapting Sara Gay Forden’s 2000 non-fiction book.

 

Patrizia (Lady Gaga, second from right) listens intently as Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino, far
right) waxes enthusiastic about his plans for the fashion empire, while — from left —
Paolo Gucci (Jared Leto), his wife Jenny (Florence Andrews) and Maurizio Gucci
(Adam Driver) listen, with varying degrees of interest.

Ah, the obscenely rich. They truly are their own repugnant species.

At its core, this is the saga of two fathers, two sons, and the scheming woman who — with impressive success — maneuvers them against each other. The latter is played by Lady Gaga, with a mesmerizing blend of dramatic intensity and voluptuousness rarely seen on screen since Marilyn Monroe’s reign. We hang on her every word, deed and sinuous shimmy; cinematographer Dariusz Wolski ensures that she’s framed and lighted — and frequently shadowed, within sinister darkness — for maximum carnality.

 

The setting is the late 1970s. Patrizia Reggiani is introduced working for her adoptive father, Fernando (Vincent Riotta), who runs a successful Italian trucking empire. Scott opens his film as Patrizia saunters to the trailer office on an average morning, in a form-fitting va-va-voom dress, deliberately teasing the drivers hosing down their rigs. It’s an entrance, by Lady Gaga at her most vampish, that tells us everything necessary about this woman.

 

Her family’s success allows Patrizia to mingle with the jet set; during a discotheque party, she chances to meet Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver). He’s shy and bookish, clearly uncomfortable in this raucous, libidinous environment; Driver is oddly endearing in this stammering nerd mode.

 

Patrizia seems unlikely to give him a second glance; indeed, her initial approach is mildly taunting, which embarrasses Maurizio even further. But her attitude abruptly shifts upon hearing his last name; we can practically hear the click of opportunistic hunger behind her eyes.

 

She subsequently stalks him. He’s surprised and flattered, and succumbs all too quickly. Really, he’s no match for her.

 

Maurizio takes her to meet his father, Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons), who with his bother Aldo (Al Pacino) controls the Gucci empire. But although Rodolfo carefully safeguards his 50 percent, wholly expecting Maurizio — studying to become a lawyer — to one day take his place, he has little to do with business operations. He’s distant, withdrawn and distracted by ghosts from his past.

 

Even so, Rodolfo is a shrewd, steely eyed judge of character, and he sizes up Patrizia in a heartbeat. “She is not the girl for you,” he cautions, in a stern tone that matches the gravitas Irons summons for the moment. But Maurizio, hopelessly in love, ignores this counsel.

 

The aftermath is severe.