The Beach Boys: Summer never ends!

The Beach Boys (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for drug content and brief profanity

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang

Although nearly a dozen documentaries and dramatized films have been made about The Beach Boys — from 1985’s An American Band to 2000’s TV miniseries The Beach Boys: An American Family and 2014’s extremely odd Love & Mercy — Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny’s captivating new documentary is one of the best.

 

For several years during the early 1960s, The Beach Boys — from left, Dennis Wilson,
Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Brian Wilson and Mike Love — were the ultimate
ambassadors for the California dream of sand, surf and catchy songs.

They secured full cooperation and extremely informative face-time from surviving original members Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine; Brian’s ex-wife, Marilyn Wilson-Rutherford; and additional telling commentary by, among others, contemporaries Don Was and Lindsey Buckingham, and “Wrecking Crew” session musicians Carol Kaye and Don Randi. These new interviews are blended with ample vintage footage of the band’s rehearsals, live performances, TV appearances and studio work.

Marshall and Zimny also benefited from a wealth of photographs and home movies; the group’s early years were impressively well documented.

 

Marshall and Zimny spend most of their film on the popular California group’s origins and meteoric rise — and temporary fall — during the 1960s and early ’70s. While some may regard this as barely half the story, this film nonetheless packs a lot into its 113 minutes.

 

This saga had it all: a physically and emotionally abusive “stage father” who tried to compensate for his own failed music career by (badly) micro-managing that of his three sons; a tortured genius (eldest son Brian); constantly rotating personnel — who knew that Glen Campbell was briefly a Beach Boy (?!) — the friendly competition with The Beatles, for chart-topping hits and albums; increasingly complex and forward-thinking songs, courtesy of Brian; and eventual emergence into the well-deserved respect of history.

 

This film opens with a rapturous 1976 reunion concert at a stadium packed to the rafters with tens of thousands of fans, and then bounces back to the late 1950s. 

 

Brian Wilson was 16 in 1958; Dennis and Carl were 13 and 11, respectively. They grew up in Hawthorne, California. (Where else?) Their father, Murry, played piano and composed a handful of songs that had been modest hits during the previous few years. Brian was fascinated by the harmonies of vocal groups such as The Four Freshmen; Carl was enamored of Chuck Berry.

 

When the brothers got serious about writing, performing and recording songs, they roped in high school classmate Al Jardine, and cousin Mike Love. (Tellingly, Love grew up in the more upscale Los Angeles-area neighborhood of Baldwin Hills.)

 

Brian and Love co-wrote “Surfin’” and “Surfin’ Safari,” and the former was recorded as a studio demo in September 1961. The fledgling band’s first money performance was New Year’s Eve 1961, in Long Beach. Everybody sang, and by this point the boys had gravitated toward their instruments of choice: Carl on lead guitar, Jardine on rhythm guitar, Brian on bass, Dennis on drums, and Love handling lead vocals and occasional sax touches.

 

Consider: At this point, Brian, Dennis and Carl were only 19, 16 and 14.

The Miracle Club: Faith isn't quite enough

The Miracle Club (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for thematic elements and mild profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Although director Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s gentle little dramedy has its moments, the best efforts of a powerhouse cast can’t quite overcome the issues left unresolved in the original story by Joshua D. Maurer, Timothy Prager and Jimmy Smallhorne.

 

Lily (Maggie Smith, right), Eileen (Kathy Bates, center) and Dolly (Agnes O'Casey) —
with her young son, Daniel (Eric D. Smith) — are delighted to learn that they've won
a trip to Lourdes, in France.

The year is 1967, the setting the (fictitious) hardscrabble Dublin suburb of Ballygar. One gets a sense — enhanced by the authentic locale and John Hand’s superb production design — that life hasn’t changed much during the past century. Pleasures are simple: boisterous family gatherings, a talent show at the local church.

Work is hard, money is scarce, family responsibilities — even under the most loving circumstances — leave no time for anything else. 

 

Travel? A vacation? Idle fantasy.

 

Of late, though, the daily struggle has been augmented by fresh worries for a couple of close friends. Eileen (Kathy Bates) is terrified that a lump on her breast might be cancer. Lily (Maggie Smith) is succumbing to the crushing guilt that has plagued her for years (the details of which emerge slowly). Both mourn the recent death of another friend, Maureen.

 

Dolly (Agnes O’Casey), a generation younger — and the sole Ballygar resident determined to bring a bit of London mod to the community — despairs over her silent young son, Daniel (Eric D. Smith, wide-eyed and adorable). She fears that the boy’s muteness, or unwillingness to talk, is somehow her fault. 

 

All three women — Eileen, Lily and Dolly — dream of making a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where millions travel each year, to bathe in the sacred waters and receive God’s grace. And, perhaps, a miracle.

 

Thanks to some clever maneuvering by the kindly parish priest, Father Byrne (Mark O’Halloran, note-perfect), a small miracle does occur … and, suddenly, all three get their wish: an all-expenses-paid trip to Lourdes. 

 

This includes something else they never expected: a brief bit of freedom. And independence.

 

Alas, the jubilant mood is dampened — for Eileen and Lily — by the unexpected appearance of Maureen’s daughter, Chrissie (Laura Linney), who fled to America 40 years ago, beset by scandal (the usual kind, given the time period). Dolly is too young to have any emotional response to Chrissie’s arrival, but it opens old wounds and long-unspoken betrayals involving Eileen and Lily.

 

Worse yet, Chrissie insists on joining the trip to Lourdes.

Boston Strangler: Riveting true-crime drama

Boston Strangler (2023) • View trailer

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

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.17.23

Writer/director Matt Ruskin’s new film is an excellent companion to last autumn’s She Said.

 

His fact-based account of the early 1960s serial killer is far more honest than its 1968 big-screen predecessor, with Tony Curtis in the title role; it focused exclusively on a lead detective — played by Henry Fonda — who “single-handedly” obtains the murderer’s confession.

 

After Jean Cole (Carrie Coon, left) and Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) become the
"public face" of the rapidly developing Boston Strangler story, they're soon flooded by
hundreds of letters from women who insist they've been approached by the killer.

That film is, to put it kindly, a work of fiction very loosely inspired by actual events.

It completely ignored the two newspaper journalists who — most crucially — broke the story; recognized the crucial patterns that pointed to a serial killer (a phrase not even coined, at the time); and doggedly pursued subsequent leads … much to the displeasure of the Boston police.

 

Both were women, of course: Boston Record-American journalists Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole, played here by (respectively) Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon.

 

We’ve lately been enjoying a welcome surfeit of films that shine a long-overdue light on previously unsung women of major consequence, from 2016’s Queen of Katwe and Hidden Figures, to last year’s The Woman King and She Said (all of which make me wonder how many more equally inspiring stories are waiting to be told).

 

Boston Strangler definitely belongs in their company.

 

Knightley’s McLaughlin is introduced as an ambitious journalist thoroughly bored — and frustrated — by the softball society column fluff to which she has been relegated. Efforts to cover meatier material get shot down by her editor, Jack Maclaine (Chris Cooper, appropriately gruff and grizzled), who is sympathetic but unwilling to budge.

 

The message is clear: “This is simply the way of things.”

 

But McLaughlin continues to follow police reports, and becomes intrigued by the murders of three Boston women, aged 56 to 85, during the latter half of June 1962. Lacking any effective inter-departmental means to share information, and with differing jurisdictional oversight in various parts of the city, the police fail to recognize a common element that links the killings: the fact that all three were strangled with nylon stockings or a bathrobe belt.

 

Another odd detail: None of the apartments showed signs of forced entry, suggesting that the victims either knew the killer, or assumed he was a “trusted” figure such as a building maintenance man, or some other service individual. (We roll our eyes, at the thought of such naïve, innocent times.)

 

McLaughlin wants to pursue this lead; Maclaine won’t have it. But he grudgingly agrees to let her profile the three victims — on her own time — to learn if they had anything else in common.

 

Belfast: Deeply moving snapshot of a nation in crisis

Belfast (2021) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters, Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

Armed with an impressive seven Academy Award nominations, Kenneth Branagh’s riveting, semi-autobiographical drama has just become available via streaming services.

 

This is must-see cinema.

 

Buddy (Jude Hill, his back to camera) listens quietly while his mother (Caitriona Balfe),
grandmother (Judi Dench) and grandfather (Ciarán Hinds) explain what has been
happening in their neighborhood.

It isn’t easy to layer an era of chaos, tumult and danger with warmth and humor, and Branagh — who wrote the script, as well as directing — has done so sublimely. He wisely followed John Boorman’s lead, who in 1987’s Hope and Glory similarly depicted the horrors he experienced as a child in London during World War II.

In this case, Branagh’s quasi-surrogate self is 9-year-old Buddy, played with beguiling innocence and impishness by Jude Hill, in a stunning feature film debut. Because this story is viewed through Buddy’s experiences and imagination, Hill is in practically every scene, and he capably carries the film; he’s beyond adorable. 

 

Branagh extracts an amazingly accomplished and nuanced performance from this young lad. It’s a crime that he didn’t secure a Best Actor nod to accompany all the other well-earned nominations.

 

Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos opens with an imposing, full-color overview of today’s Belfast. We then slide into a crowded, working-class pocket neighborhood; the image turns monochromatic as we’re whisked back to the summer of 1969. Children play merrily in the sun-dappled streets; adults chat amiably while walking to and from the little shops nestled in between row houses.

 

Everybody knows everybody else. When Buddy’s Ma (Caitriona Balfe) calls him in for tea, the message is passed along via children and adults until it finally reaches him. 

 

Then, suddenly, anarchy: An angry mob rounds a street corner like a swarm of maddened bees, laying waste to homes, shop windows, vehicles and anything else in their path … with a focus on Catholic families. It’s the opening salvo of the five-day political and sectarian violence that quickly spread through Ireland and led to the 30-year conflict dubbed “The Troubles.”

 

Buddy, terrified, stands frozen like a deer caught in headlights. We see the disconnect in his gaze; the boy cannot begin to comprehend the savage reality of what’s happening.

 

In that instant, his life — and that of his family, and everybody else — is altered. Forever. The calm of sociable neighborliness has been shattered, never to return; Catholic and Protestant families, once close friends, now eye each other warily. (Buddy and his family are Protestants.)

 

In the aftermath, streets are barricaded; watchers are posted 24/7. Buddy’s universe — this tiny portion of Northern Belfast — has become an artificial island.

 

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.

The Courier: Suspenseful espionage saga

The Courier (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, dramatic intensity, brief profanity and fleeting nudity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.14.21

The more I learn about early 1960s Cold War posturing, and Nikita Khrushchev’s volatility, the more frightened I get in hindsight.

 

Thank God, the adults in the room remained calm and rational.

 

Once Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch, right) agrees to become a spy for MI6,
his initial meetings with Soviet military intelligence Col. Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze)
are the stuff of total anxiety. Over time, though, Wynne blossoms and embraces his
clandestine role.

Director Dominic Cooke’s The Courier, opening today at a theater near you, is adapted reasonably faithfully from actual events; the result is an absorbing slice of old-style British espionage cinema. Cooke’s tone, Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography and Suzie Davis’ impeccable production design strongly evoke classics such as The Ipcress File and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold; indeed, at times this film feels as if it had been made during the same era.

 

Events begin in July 1960, when Soviet military intelligence (GRU) Col. Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) — gravely concerned about Khrushchev’s plans regarding Cuba and nuclear missiles — impulsively approaches a pair of American students on Moscow’s Moskvoretsky Bridge; he hands them a packet of documents and insists they be delivered to the American Embassy.

 

The two young men oblige.

 

In London, we meet business consultant Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his wife Sheila (Jessie Buckley). He exudes aptitude and refinement: the sort of cultured, impeccably dressed British chap who’d smoothly navigate a deal over drinks at a gentlemen’s club. 

 

Cumberbatch makes him the epitome of ordinary: happily married, satisfied with his profession, at ease with life. Wynne isn’t overly intelligent, his dyslexia having hampered formal schooling, but he seems to have made peace with that.

 

In short, Wynne is just the sort of fellow who — thanks to his frequent international business trips — would make the ideal undercover agent, because the Soviets wouldn’t look twice at him.

 

Which is precisely what MI6 operative Dickie Franks (Angus Wright) and CIA agent Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan) propose, to the utterly astonished Wynne. More precisely, they want him to act as the courier conduit to the information Penkovsky wishes to supply to Western powers.

 

Franks and Donovan appeal to Wynne’s patriotism, while also stressing how extremely valuable Penkovsky’s intel is.

Ford V Ferrari: Turbo-charged!

Ford V Ferrari (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.15.19

Christian Bale never ceases to amaze.

His performances are “all in” to a degree most actors couldn’t even contemplate, let alone accomplish. Nor is it merely the surface gimmick of his extreme weight losses and gains; Bale never appears to be “acting.” He simply becomesthat person, whether an industrial worker fearing for his sanity (The Machinist); a former boxer turned crack addict (The Fighter); or an ex-neurologist-turned-stock market savant suffering from Asperger syndrome (The Big Short).

Having made yet another series of adjustments, driver/engineer Ken Miles (Christian Bale,
left) prepares to test-drive their high-performance vehicle again, while designer
Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) waits apprehensively.

Or, in this case, feisty English sports car racing engineer and driver Ken Miles. Five minutes into this film, Bale ceases to exist. He is this guy. The mannerisms, posture, short temper and pugnacious attitude are wholly unlike any other character he has played, during a career that began when he was 12. 

That said, Bale’s Ken Miles is by no means defined solely by his truculence; the scenes he shares with Caitriona Balfe and Noah Jupe — also excellent, as Miles’ wife Mollie and their young son Peter — depict a kinder, gentler and loving man wholly at odds with the automotive genius who suffers fools not at all, let alone gladly.

(For the record, Bale dropped 70 pounds to play Miles, after having plumped up for Dick Cheney, in Vice.)

The notion that Bale has yet to win a Best Actor Oscar defies comprehension.

His sublime performance is far from the only high point in Ford V Ferrari, director James Mangold’s consistently absorbing, fascinating and suspenseful depiction of the American automobile company’s hare-brained, mid-1960s decision to challenge Italy’s boutique car-maker in the annual 24-hour Le Mans endurance race. Despite a running time of 152 minutes, Mangold’s film is never less than compelling … and the racing sequences are breathtaking. 

Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael and a trio of editors — Andrew Buckland, Michael McCusker and Dirk Westervelt — deserve considerable applause. Sound designer Jay Wilkinson deserves an Academy Award.

Kudos, as well, to scripters Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller, for bravely tackling the corporate back-story and hijinks that led to this automotive clash. The narrative execution is never less than enthralling, to the same degree that 1976’s All the President’s Men turned plodding investigative journalism into a gripping suspense thriller.

Nor do the writers fill time with the soapy relationship melodrama relied upon by 1969’s Winning and 1971’s Le Mans. This film is cars, cars and nothing but cars … and that’s not a bad thing. If you’re not a racing fan prior to seeing Ford V Ferrari, you certainly will be 152 minutes later.

Judy: A faded rainbow

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

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

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

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

If only the entire film could be so assuredly composed.

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

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

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

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

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

On the Basis of Sex: Thin gruel

On the Basis of Sex (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for fleeting profanity and suggestive content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.18.19

2018 was quite the year for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, subject of both an award-winning documentary (RBG), and a dramatized depiction of the early years that led to her first significant gender discrimination victory.

Young Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones), eager to impress during the initial session
of her first class at Harvard Law School, quickly discovers that her almost entirely male
classmates regard her with — at best — patronizing amusement.

The latter arrived during the holiday rush: just in time for Oscar consideration. Unfortunately, director Mimi Leder’s On the Basis of Sex isn’t likely to earn any accolades, despite the significance of its subject. First-time scripter Daniel Stiepleman’s narrative is too bland, and star Felicity Jones — although an excellent physical choice for the role — rarely gets a handle on Ginsburg’s essential passion and dignity.

This film is too ordinary and “safe.” That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that Steipleman is Ginsburg’s nephew; he clearly took a respectful, strawberry-lensed approach that stops just short of canonizing his aunt. (She deserves it, but still…) 

Steipleman also fails to balance his dual focus: both the formative years of Ginsburg’s career, and the sexist barriers that would have thwarted anyone less determined; and the warm mutual devotion shared with husband Martin, her staunchest advocate and — as a highly skilled tax lawyer and litigator himself — a key collaborator. Unfortunately, we get a far better sense of the Ginsburgs’ quieter, intimate moments — Jones and co-star Armie Hammer (as Martin) are quite sweet together — than of Ruth’s legal acumen.

By the time we hit the second-act squabbling between Ruth and rebellious teenage daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny), the film threatens to devolve into a stereotypical, TV-style family melodrama: definitely not the proper tone for this particular story.

Which is a shame. At other moments, we get tantalizing glimpses of a much stronger and more dynamic film, particularly when feisty Kathy Bates is on screen, as renowned feminist and ACLU co-founder Dorothy Kenyon.

And to be fair, Leder and Stiepleman build to a terrific climax, as Jones’ nervous Ruth prepares to deliver her first courtroom argument in November 1972, before the three judges on the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. This episode is milked for maximum dramatic impact, and it’s one of the few times that Jones displays the appropriate level of resolve, grit and forthright sincerity.

But that’s getting way ahead of things. We begin in the fall of 1956, as Ruth becomes one of only nine women to enroll alongside roughly 500 men at Harvard Law School. Several economical scenes deftly sketch the devotion shared between Ruth and Martin, and the love that both shower on their toddler daughter Jane.

Green Book: An inspirational journey

Green Book (2018) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasional profanity and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.23.18

Period biographical dramas rarely are this amusing.

Comedies rarely are laden with this much shrewd social commentary.

Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen, left), having promised to write frequent letters to his wife,
is surprised when Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) expresses more than a casual
interest in the process.

Sharply etched characters rarely are portrayed so precisely — so perfectly — by the actors cast to play them.

In a word, Green Book is superb: a thoroughly engaging slice of gentle filmmaking that veers from droll, to instructive, to heartbreaking, to laugh-out-loud hilarious. It’s a richly entertaining, feel-good experience that plays, at times, like a perfect blend of Driving Miss Daisy and The Odd Couple.

But such a simplistic elevator-pitch descriptor does a disservice to director/co-scripter Peter Farrelly’s marvelous road picture, and the two memorable, lovingly depicted characters who actually made this trip together, in the real world.

Talk about your “journey of discovery.” That phrase carries a lot of weight here.

The time is 1962. Bronx-born Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) — who goes by Tony Lip — is an imposing, well-dressed bouncer at New York’s Copacabana Club. Thanks to a facility for calculated charm that blends well with his capacity for rough stuff, Tony has managed to straddle this realm of celebrities and mob honchos, where he’s respected without getting wholly co-opted by the latter.

He’s a classic Damon Runyon archetype who might have stepped out of the era popularized by Guys and Dolls. Tony is far larger than life — literally, as Mortensen gained 30 pounds and an impressive paunch for the role — but still, at the end of each night shift, a devoted family man who returns home to his beloved wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) and their two young sons.

Their home is the locus for a noisy, extended Italian family that chatters, bickers and fills a room with the boisterous revelry of a 24/7 party. These sidebar relations are deftly and memorably defined: the curmudgeonly father, the smart-ass brother, assorted cousins and spouses. Utter chaos delivered via thick Bronx accents.

When the Copa closes for renovations during the final two months of the year, Tony is left without employment (aside from occasional wagers, details of which are best left discovered as they occur). Potential financial relief arrives with an unusual job offer, as chauffeur for a certain Dr. Don Shirley. Tony dresses up for the interview, expecting a medical office and some sort of world-famous surgeon.

Instead, he’s escorted into a posh private apartment directly above Carnegie Hall, where Dr. Shirley (Mahershala Ali) turns out to be a world-famous concert pianist.

And is African-American.

Bad Times at the El Royale: Well titled

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for strong violence, profanity, drug content and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

It begins with such promise.

During the first hour, I couldn’t wait to see this film a second time.

Traveling salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm, left) and touring soul singer
Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) are just as surprised as desk manager Miles Miller
(Lewis Pullman), when their check-in procedure is interrupted by a brazen newcomer.

Shortly thereafter, my enthusiasm began to wane. Ninety minutes in, it was obvious that one viewing would be sufficient.

By the time this interminable slog had concluded, I wanted my 141 minutes back.

Yes, it’s that long. No, the length isn’t justified. Not by any means.

I suspect writer/director Drew Goddard intended Bad Times at the El Royale to be a similarly snarky and dark-dark-darkblend of this past spring’s Hotel Artemis and Quentin Tarantino’s Hateful Eight. The preview certainly suggested as much, and Goddard’s pedigree is solid; he was the guiding hand behind 2012’s ferociously clever The Cabin in the Woods, and he cut his teeth writing and directing episodes of cult TV faves such as Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Alias and Lost.

What could possible go wrong?

Well … a lack of self-discipline, for starters. An inability to recognize when “mischievous” veers into “tasteless.” And a failure to perceive that although his script has a great set-up and premise, the execution leaves much to be desired. By the bonkers third act, at which point the film has gone completely off the rails, one gets a sense that Goddard was hastily scribbling fresh pages as he went along.

Such a disappointment.

That said, there’s no denying the skill with which Goddard toys with us, during the ingeniously twisty first hour.

It’s January 1969: a time of momentous upheaval, as the last vestiges of the debonair, Rat Pack jazz era are buried beneath the rock ’n’ roll-fueled counter-culture revolution. Richard Nixon has just been inaugurated as the 37th president of the United States, and a new decade beckons.

But on the border between California and Nevada, the once-glorious El Royale still seems time-locked in the 1950s. The resort is cheekily built to straddle both states, with a fat red line dividing the two wings of rooms, and running right down the middle of the spacious lobby. The establishment offers warmth and sunshine to the west, and hope, opportunity — and gambling — to the east. Once upon a time, this Tahoe hot spot catered to the country’s most famous celebrities and politicians; now it’s just this shy of being a ghost.

(The El Royale is inspired by the actual Cal Neva Resort and Casino, which similarly straddled both states.)