The Fabelmans: Spielberg bares his soul

The Fabelmans (2022) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasional mild profanity, brief violence and fleeting drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Most films never attempt the breathtaking impact of a truly transformative moment; a lucky few manage one, perhaps two.

 

This film has many.

 

The magic, transformational moment: As his parents (Paul Dano and Michelle Williams)
watch, young Sammy (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) is blown away by his first
big-screen movie experience.

Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical ode to the relentless drive of artistic passion is gorgeously lensed throughout by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who won Academy Awards while working with Spielberg on Schindler’s Listand Saving Private Ryan. This affectionate big-screen love letter isn’t merely laden with a sense of wonder; it’s about that sense of wonder, which can render those so afflicted helpless in its grip.

Along the way, this quietly compelling story — co-written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner (Angels in America) — is a moving coming-of-age saga: poignant, whimsical, occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious, and (aren’t they always?) heartbreaking. It’s also a classic American narrative about heading west to find new fortune and freedom.

 

As for Spielberg’s insistence that it’s merely semi-autobiographical … well, it’s actually far more accurate than most big-screen films claiming to be wholly biographical.

 

Events begin in snowy, stormy New Jersey in 1952. Young Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord) is about to be taken to his first movie by parents Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams). The boy is frightened by the notion of confronting “giant people” — a concern no doubt influenced by anticipatory descriptions from his excessively technical father (about whom, more in a moment) — but his mother assures him the experience will be magical.

 

The film in question is The Greatest Show on Earth, and we eavesdrop as the boy’s eyes go wide during the climactic train wreck (which is a stunning sequence even today, and must’ve blown the minds of patrons at the time).

 

It’s Christmastime, and Burt makes a weak joke about having trouble finding their house, as they return home after the movie. “It’s the dark one,” Sammy grouses, disappointed by their lack of holiday lights.

 

He also has been dithering about what he wants for Hanukkah, but inspiration suddenly strikes. Over the course of the celebration’s eight days — in a charming montage — he receives the individual cars, transformer and locomotive of a Lionel train set.

Strange World: Very strange film

Strange World (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG, and too generously, for dramatic intensity and relentless peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This film’s title couldn’t be more apt.

 

Writer/co-director Qui Nguyen must’ve been smoking the good stuff when he concocted this psychedelic fever dream of an animated fantasy, and I’m amazed Disney was willing to release it. The chaotic, so-called story is a random mess that demands far too much patience from viewers, before finally sorta-kinda delivering a mildly clever ecological message.

 

Jaeger (far left), his son Searcher (center) and grandson Ethan, attempt to bond over
an elaborate card game, while faithful pooch Legend and the blobby blue Splat
participate in their own way.

Getting there, however, is a tedious assault on the senses.

One must be careful, particularly with fantasy, to establish a firm set of rules … and then follow them. If reality — as we know it — is to be warped, events must emerge in a manner that remains comprehensible.

 

But Nguyen and co-director Don Hall throw far too much stuff on the screen, and their core character story element — the often fractious relationship that results, when fathers expect too much of their sons — gets lost in this cacophonous assault on the senses.

 

We get tired of all the stuff and nonsense, long before the (supposedly) happy ending.

 

In an effort to make sense of the senseless…

 

Brawny, laugh-in-the-face-of-danger Jaeger Clade (voiced by Dennis Quaid) has long been an exploratory hero in the hamlet of Avalonia, a pre-industrial community surrounded on all sides by an extremely tall mountain range. His previous exploits notwithstanding, Jaeger is determined to discover what’s beyond those mountains.

 

All of his death-defying expeditions have been made alongside his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), a teenager when we first meet him. Alas, Jaeger is blind to the fact that Searcher is a reluctant companion at best. The story begins with Jaeger’s latest effort to summit the mountains, which goes awry when Searcher is distracted by an odd, lime-green plant with small spherical “fruit pods” that give off an electric charge when touched.

 

Searcher wants to return to Avalonia with this plant, believing it could become an important power source. Jaeger stubbornly insists on pushing ahead … by himself.

 

Flash-forward 25 years.

 

Searcher has become a successful farmer of pando, the name he has given to the plant that now covers massive acres of his land. He has a wife, Meridian (Gabrielle Union); they have a 16-year-old son, Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White).

 

Jaeger has been missing the entire time: presumed dead, and honored with a statue in the town square.

 

She Said: Impressively inspiring

She Said (2022) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and explicit sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.18.22

We assume, when one of the victims finally agrees to share her story with New York Times investigative journalists Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), that this will be the most harrowing moment of director Maria Schrader’s richly compelling and superbly acted drama.

 

Investigative journalists Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan, far left) and Megan Twohey (Carey
Mulligan), along with assistant managing editor Rebecca Corbett (Patricia Clarkson,
far right), listen with admiration and delight as executive editor Dean Baquet
(Andre Braugher) crisply puts an irate phone caller in his place.

The speaker: nervous, soft-spoken, embarrassed and ashamed, the words emerging haltingly amid tears and choked-off syllables, as she so vividly recalls what happened to her in the privacy of Harvey Weinstein’s hotel suite.

The listener: appalled, silent, eyes growing wider by the second.

 

We viewers: equally stone-silent, sickened and enraged.

 

The story moves on; we exhale shakily, thinking OK, the worst is over.

 

But no: Twohey and Kantor soon reach another victim, sit quietly as another — mercilessly similar — confession emerges, this time made even more intense by the performances, and the way Schrader cuts back and forth between framed one-shots of the two actresses.

 

And then another. Even more awful, in part because of the repetition, the familiarity, the by-now recognized patterns of an apex sexual predator.

 

This is smart and savvy filmmaking. She Said deserves place of pride alongside its all-time best cousins: All the President’s Men and Spotlight.

 

When done persuasively — and Schrader’s film is very persuasive — nothing beats a well-constructed investigative journalism drama. They’re part mystery (just how deep and widespread IS this story?), part puzzle (how does one finesse details, acknowledgments and confessions from people unwilling or unable to talk?) and part building suspense and rage-fueled anticipation (what will it take to nail this bastard?).

 

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s sharp script is based on Twohey, Kantor and Rebecca Corbett’s months-long New York Times investigation into the shocking behavior of Weinstein — and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge Hollywood attitude that tolerated and even conspired to maintain it — and their subsequent 2019 book, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.

 

This film is rigorously authentic: Names are named — to an often surprising degree — dialogue is lifted from transcripts, progress unfolds as it occurred (if, perhaps, accelerated a bit to accommodate a two-hour film).

Enola Holmes 2: The game's still afoot!

Enola Holmes 2 (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence and bloody images

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

I concluded my review of this film’s 2020 predecessor by expressing the hope that it would be popular enough to generate a sequel.

 

My wish has been granted.

 

Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), justifiably pleased with herself, after deducing one
of the puzzles on her older brother Sherlock's "clue board," favors us viewers with a
smile of satisfaction.

Enola Holmes 2 is every bit as stylish, witty and entertaining as the young heroine’s first on-screen escapade. Almost all the major stars have stepped back into their characters; director Harry Bradbeer and writer Jack Thorne also have returned. The one holdout is Sherlock Holmes’ older brother Mycroft, and he isn’t missed; Sam Claflin made him too much of a boorish crank in the previous entry.

Unlike that first film, this one isn’t based on one of author Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes books; Bradbeer and Thorne have concocted an original tale that feels right in this young heroine’s wheelhouse. Better yet, this adventure places these fictitious characters within an actual 1888 major event (and, unless you’re a scholar of 19th century British history, you’re not likely to see it coming, until revealed within the end credits).

 

Following the successful resolution of her first case, now a bit older and wiser, Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) has optimistically set up her own private detective agency. Alas, all the adverts in the city cannot stop the look of dismay that crosses the face of would-be clients, when they realize Enola is (horrors!) a young woman.

 

Worse yet, on the few occasions she’s able to retain somebody long enough to explain that she did, after all, solve a high-profile case, the response is invariably something along the lines of “Didn’t Sherlock Holmes actually solve that?”

 

Disappointed beyond words, Enola prepares to close things down. Cue the last-minute arrival of young Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss, cute as a button), a penniless “matchstick girl” who works atrocious hours in a match-making factory with her sister Sarah (Hannah Dodd) and scores of other orphaned girls. Sarah has gone missing; Bessie hopes Enola will be able to find her.

 

With Bessie’s help, Enola poses as a new matchstick worker. She meets Mae (Abbie Hern), one of the older matchstick girls; and quickly runs afoul of the factory’s foreboding foreman, Mr. Crouch (Lee Boardman, appropriately ill-tempered). Employing quick wits and a handy diversion, Enola sneaks upstairs and sees factory owner Henry Lyon (David Westhead) in a meeting with Treasury Minister Lord Charles McIntyre (Tim McMullan) and his secretary, Mira Troy (Sharon Duncan-Brewster).

 

A high-ranking Cabinet official, discussing something with the owner of a grubby matchstick factory?

 

Odd, that.

The Automat: Magic for a nickel

The Automat (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated TV-PG, and suitable for all ages

Available via: HBO Max, Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

There was nothing like the coffee at the Automat

Its aroma and its flavor was supreme

From a silver dolphin spout, the coffee came right out

Not to mention at the end a little spurt of cream.

 

The Automat at 21557 Broadway, in New York City, circa 1930s.

Viewers must wait until the end credits of director Lisa Hurwitz’s charming little documentary, to watch Mel Brooks sing those lyrics — along with additional droll verses — of the song he wrote to honor a topic obviously near and dear to his heart.

Brooks also gets considerable face time in this affectionate ode to what once was a gleaming jewel of progressive food service technology, and was for decades the largest and most popular restaurant chain in the United States … despite having locations in only two cities: Philadelphia and New York.

 

“This was by any measure,” notes Automat historian Alec Shuldiner. “The number of restaurants, the number of people served every day, the number of people employed. It was a true phenomenon of its time.”

 

Essential history and background commentary, as this film proceeds, is provided by Shuldiner, New York City historian Lisa Keller, and Marianne Hardart and Lorraine Diehl, authors of the 2002 book, The Automat: The History, Recipes and Allure of Horn & Hardart’s Masterpiece.

 

Hurwitz began work on this film in 2013, having been intrigued — while in college — by the communal nature of cafeteria food, and having discovered Shuldiner’s PhD dissertation, Trapped Behind the Automat: Technological Systems and the American Restaurant, 1902-1991. This prompted her deep, eight-year dive into the careers of Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart, who opened their first restaurant — a lunchroom with a counter and 15 stools, but no tables — in Philadelphia in December 1888.

 

The venue became a quick success because of their secret weapon: Hardart, raised in New Orleans, introduced Philadelphians to his home city’s style of coffee, blended with chicory. People couldn’t get enough of it.

 

Horn & Hardart incorporated in 1898. Four years later, inspired by Max Sielaff’s Automat Restaurants in Berlin, they opened their first U.S. Automat on June 12, 1902, in Philadelphia. The first New York Automat followed a decade later, after which this “mini-chain” exploded in number.

Hello, Bookstore: An excellent read

Hello, Bookstore (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

Bibliophiles will adore this little film.

 

I’d like to believe that it also will appeal to a broader audience.

 

How much nicer it was, back in the day: Bookstore owner Matthew Tannenbaum enjoys
chatting with his customers, just as much as making a sale.

A.B. Zax’s charming documentary is a profile of Matthew Tannenbaum, who since 1976 has run an independent bookstore — cheekily called The Bookstore — in Lenox, Massachusetts. He purchased it on April Fool’s Day that year — an intriguing date on which to close a business deal — from David Silverstein, who had opened it a decade earlier after encouragement from a friend, Alice Brock.

(Who, just in passing, is the title character in Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant.”)

 

It quickly becomes clear that this establishment isn’t merely a bookstore; it’s a community gathering place, where folks come, yes, to buy books, but also to chat with Tannenbaum — mildly disheveled, invariably dressed casually — and delight in the stream-of-consciousness anecdotes, memories and convivial conversation that mark A True Raconteur.

 

When he insists that “There’s a book for everyone,” we know he’s serious … and that he’ll scour the shelves to find the perfect title for a given customer.

 

The bookstore also is home to the “legendary Shade Gallery” and the “Get Lit” wine bar. (“Our motto,” Tannenbaum explains, “is that you can’t drink all day, unless you start in the morning.”)

 

A custom-designed alphabet block sits on the counter, the letters on its six sides spelling W-R-I-T-E-R. (A writer’s block, of course.)

 

Zax knew The Bookstore well, having spent many happy hours, weeks and years browsing its stacks, smelling that rarified and distinctive “book scent,” and — by his own words — “watching Matt hold court” with customers. Zax undoubtedly conceived this project as a means of celebrating the ongoing, four-decades-plus success of an independent bookstore: not an easy thing, in this era of online shopping.

 

He began filming in the autumn and winter of 2019 … and then Covid hit, at which point Zax was forced to pivot. Suddenly a film intended to honor Tannenbaum and his bookstore became an as-it-happens study of grim survival in the pandemic era. And as this 86-minute film proceeds, we begin to wonder if the shop will endure.

 

The narrative cuts back and forth between late 2019 and the spring and summer of 2020, although it opens during the latter. Tannenbaum — wearing a cranberry-colored mask — refuses to allow anybody into the store, and conducts transactions by speaking loudly through the closed door. Patrons then are asked to step back, while he places the purchased item(s) on a stool in front of the store.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — Sophomore slump

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, strong violence and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.11.22

If this new entry falls short of its predecessor, it’s mostly because the 2018 film set the bar so impressively high.

 

Okoye (Danai Gurira, left) and Shuri (Letitia Wright) adopt disguises in an effort to
infiltrate MIT, where they hope to locate — and rescue — the scientist who has
developed a controversial vibranium detector.

That said, director Ryan Coogler’s second entry in the Black Panther series has a massive hole in its center: the tragic absence of star Chadwick Boseman. Try as they might, Coogler and co-scripter Joe Robert Cole — both of whom brought us the first film — can’t quite fill that gap.

And, in an effort to compensate — while also honoring the series’ ongoing heritage — they spend too much time on grief, lamentation and bleak dialogue exchanges between the story’s primary characters. You’ll find very few smiles in this long-winded saga, which at a ridiculously self-indulgent 161 minutes, overstays its welcome by at least one massive melee too many.

 

On top of which, this story’s central character — the science-minded prodigy, Shuri (Letitia Wright) — is burdened by an unnecessary amount of heartbreak.

 

A year has passed since the untimely death of Shuri’s older brother, King T’Challa, from circumstances left vague. Wakanda’s Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) struggles to protect their nation from intervening world powers, some of whom — notably France and the United States — wish to get their hands on the African realm’s fabled vibranium metal, with its extraordinary abilities to absorb, store and release large amounts of kinetic energy.

 

This meteoric substance also remains invisible to conventional scanners, making it a potential game-changer in global rivalries … which Queen Ramonda knows only too well. She has no intention of sharing vibranium with anybody.

 

Ah, but elsewhere at sea, a U.S. research facility is monitoring the progress of a deep-water machine that CAN detect — and has found — an undersea vibranium deposit. But before this discovery can be celebrated, everybody at the facility is slaughtered by an ocean-going platoon of blue-skinned underwater denizens, led by the remorselessly vicious Namor (Tenoch Huerta), lord of the hidden undersea civilization of Talokan.

 

(A brief sidebar, for those unfamiliar with Marvel Comics history: Namor, most famously known as the Sub-Mariner, dates all the way back to 1939. Since then, he has become both hero and villain, generally in service of trying to prevent his undersea kingdom of Atlantis from being discovered and/or destroyed by “surface dwellers.” 

 

(More recently in the Marvel Comics universe — given that both are hidden civilizations with advanced tech and militaristic tendencies — Wakanda and Atlantis have been embroiled in a punishing, long-term war that has wreaked havoc on both sides: hence, this film’s core plotline.)

 

(But I’ve no idea while Coogler and Cole made up “Talokan,” when they could — should — simply have used Atlantis.)

The Banshees of Inisherin: Wails of discontent

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R for violence, brief graphic nudity and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.4.22

Back in 2008, writer/director Martin McDonagh teamed with actors Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson for In Bruges, a darkly meditative — and frequently funny — study of loyalty and death between two contract killers (likely enjoyed only by viewers with broad-minded sensibilities).

 

Pádraic (Colin Farrell, right) makes another effort to determine precisely why he's being
shunned by former best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson), but the latter refuses to engage.

I’d love to say that McDonagh’s reunion with Farrell and Gleeson is equally appealing … but that’s far from the truth.

The time is 1923, the setting the harsh, rocky (and fictitious) island of Inisherin, off the west coast of Ireland. Pádraic Súilleabháin (Farrell), a hard-working milk farmer, lives with his sister Siobhán in a simple rustic house they often share with their pet miniature donkey, Jenny. Eight years have passed since their parents died; the sibling bond is tight and loving.

 

Every day at 2 p.m., presumably going back years, Pádraic has walked over to the house belonging to his best friend, Colm Doherty (Gleeson); the two then head over to the local pub: the island’s sole form of entertainment.

 

Except this time, as the story begins, Colm refuses to answer the door. Pádraic peers through a window, and sees Colm inside, silently brooding at a table. Pádraic knocks again; Colm doesn’t move.

 

Bewildered, Pádraic heads to the pub by himself; the publican, Jonjo (Pat Shortt), can’t believe his eyes. You’ve had a row, he suggests; Pádraic insists not.

 

“A’ least, I don’t tink so,” he admits.

 

Farrell’s expression, thus far, is puzzled and mildly hurt. Assuming that he somehow must be at fault, when Pádraic later corners Colm at a table — the latter also wants his daily pint — Pádraic does what all good friends do, and apologizes for whatever unintended slight may have occurred.

 

It’s a sincere apology. Farrell’s expression is earnest, his gaze both curious and worried.

 

Colm’s response is breathtakingly callous: “I just don’ like you any more.”

 

Blunt as that statement is, Colm’s subsequent explanation is even worse. Being older, he has begun to brood about his mortality, and the fact that — unless things change — he’ll leave nothing behind. He thus refuses to spend another minute with Pádraic — whose simple kindness is “too dull,” and who can spend hours ruminating about what emerges from Jenny’s rear end — in favor of focusing on his fiddle, and composing music that will outlive him. Like Mozart.

 

Farrell’s wide-eyed reaction prompts laughs, because — at first blush — this seems so ridiculous. To Pádraic, it’s like a parent suddenly disowning a child, for no reason. But when it becomes clear that Colm is serious, Pádraic begins a slow slide into deep sorrow. Farrell’s richly nuanced performance is heartbreaking: the palpable embodiment of unrelenting grief.

Wendell & Wild: A fractured Halloween fable

Wendell & Wild (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13 for dramatic intensity, violence, brief strong language, and an overall ookie-spooky atmosphere

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

The Brothers Grimm would have loved this film.

 

Director Henry Selick’s newest stop-motion fantasy is gleefully, grotesquely ghoulish: full-tilt macabre and disturbing at a level that absolutely warrants its PG-13 rating. (Parents, take note.)

 

While her sorta-kinda friend Raúl watches nervously, Kat prepares to have a close
encounter with something rather unpleasant.

But while the film looks fantastic, it’s somewhat over-written, with at least one sub-plot too many, and a tendency to short-change supporting characters who deserve more exposure. The clumsy script is by Selick and Jordan Peele, based on an unpublished book by Selick and Clay McLeod Chapman.

 

A fleeting prologue lasts just long enough to introduce 8-year-old Kat Elliot, who immediately loses her parents in a tragic car accident, for which she blames herself. (Bad enough that so many Disney films, animated or otherwise, feature characters who lose one parent; this poor girl loses both?)

 

Before we can wonder about Kat’s subsequent fate, we’re whisked to a cacophonous underworld setting, where an immense demon named Buffalo Belzer (voiced by Ving Rhames) has built a crazy-quilt amusement park for despondent lost souls on his massive chest. His two much smaller sons, Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Peele), spend eternity by applying dollops of rejuvenating hair cream on Belzer’s balding pate … all the while dreaming of building their own, vastly superior amusement park for the dear departed.

 

(Amusement parks for the dead? On a demon’s chest? Seriously? No wonder Selick and Chapman haven’t been able to sell their book.)

 

Time leaps ahead in the surface world. Kat (Lyric Ross), now a defiant, punk rock-loving 13-year-old, has endured the worst of the foster care system; she’s brought back to her home town — in shackles — for her “last-chance placement” at the local all-girls Catholic school. She’s shocked to see that her beloved community of Rust Bank is a sorry shadow of itself; her parents’ brewery burned to the ground shortly after their demise, and most homes and storefronts are barricaded, with ugly “Klax Korp” posters warning people not to trespass.

 

Kat’s sullen attitude doesn’t dent the chirpy greeting from the school’s preppy “RBC Girls”: Siobhan (Tamara Smart), Sweetie (Ramona Young) and Sloane (Seema Virdi), accompanied by their adorable pet goat. They want to become instant BFFs; Kat wants no part of them. She’s a bit more tolerant of Raúl (Sam Zelaya), a quiet, artistic trans lad who has turned the school attic into a well-appointed studio workshop.

 

The school is run by Father Bests (James Hong) and Sister Helley (Angela Bassett), with assistance from a couple of squat, forever scowling nuns dubbed Penguins (old joke, right?).