The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: A tasty treat

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018) • View trailer 

Four stars. Rated TV-14, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.28.20

Films with excessively long titles generally should be regarded with suspicion.

 

As two classic examples, nothing can be gained from watching 1962’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? or 1967’s Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad.

 

As the members of the Guernsey book club watch with varying degrees of amusement —
from left, Isola (Katherine Parkinson), Eben (Tom Courtenay), young Eli (Kit Connor),
Amelia (Penelope Wilton) and Dawsey (Michiel Huisman) — Juliet (Lily James, far
right) bravely agrees to taste the infamous potato peel pie.

Happily, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society — exclusive to Netflix — is an entirely different creature: a solid British charmer from director Mike Newell, who brought us Enchanted April, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Mona Lisa Smile. Scripters Don Roos, Kevin Hood and Thomas Bezucha have fashioned a solid adaptation of the best-selling 2008 book by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: not an easy task, given that it’s an epistolary novel, composed entirely of letters written between characters.

 

(Actually, the book’s creation is a fascinating story unto itself; curious souls are encouraged to research how Shaffer came to write it … but was unable to finish it.)

 

We meet author Juliet Ashton (Lily James) midway through a cross-country tour to promote her newest book; the setting is 1946, in a post-war England just beginning to rebuild itself. She is accompanied by publisher and best friend Sidney Stark (Matthew Goode), a solicitous fellow with the good-natured patience to tolerate his favorite writer’s occasional whims.

 

Such as her impulsive decision, following the exchange of a few letters, to visit the island community of Guernsey. Her curiosity is piqued by a farmer named Dawsey Adams (Michiel Huisman), who mentions belonging to a local book club dubbed, yes, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

 

Her departure displeases dashing American GI Mark Reynolds (Glen Powell), whose proposal she has just accepted (too rashly, we suspect). Even so, he graciously agrees to await her return.

 

Juliet’s arrival in Guernsey is greeted with enthusiasm by Dawsey and the other book club members: Eben Ramsey (Tom Courtenay), Amelia Maugery (Penelope Wilton) and Isola Pribby (Katherine Parkinson). Juliet soon learns that the “Society” was concocted during the early days of Guernsey’s German occupation, as a fabricated justification for breaking curfew (briefly revealed in a flashback prologue).

 

Needing to maintain the charade in order to satisfy a Nazi chaperone, the Society continued to meet on a regular basis. Even after their “minder” grew bored and stopped attending, the group realized how much they valued a book’s ability to whisk them away from what had become a bleak and brutal existence.

 

Howard: Done too soon

Howard (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated TV-PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.28.20

 

I remember — vividly — when everything changed.

 

Songs had been an essential part of Disney animated features going all the way back to 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, although their placement — and quality — tended to be random.

 

Lyricist Howard Ashman works with star Paige O'Hara, in order to shape her performance
so that the nuances of "Belle," the opening story-song in Beauty and the Beast, are
perfect from start to finish.

Every hit that emerged — “When You Wish Upon a Star,” from Pinocchio; “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” from Cinderella; and “The Bare Necessities,” from The Jungle Book — left dozens of instantly forgettable tunes behind. Most did little to augment or advance their respective storylines; they were simply jammed into the film every so often, of necessity (so the theory went), to prevent viewers from getting bored between songs.

 

Such films were no different than clumsy live-action movie musicals, where the action would pause — for no good reason — just so the characters could break into song.

 

Then, after Disney churned out a series of unremarkable animated features from the mid-1970s through most of the ’80s, came 1989’s The Little Mermaid.

 

Such a revelation.

 

It felt as though the genre had been re-invented as a professional Broadway musical, with clever, lyric-rich songs that not only were their own integrated book, but were brilliantly employed to advance the plot.

 

No surprise, since the songs came from somebody who grew up with a Broadway musical mentality.

 

Disney documentarian Don Hahn’s Howard, debuting on Disney Plus, is an affectionate, long-overdue tribute to Howard Ashman, the genius lyricist who — alongside composer Alan Menken — virtually transformed the Disney animated musical template. The tragic irony: Even as this was happening — even as The Little Mermaid was released, on Nov. 17, 1989; even as Ashman was working on the studio’s next two projects — he had only 16 months to live.

 

Ashman was one of the early, high-profile individuals to die of AIDS, at a time when the disease still was cruelly dismissed as “gay cancer.” Hahn’s film doesn’t shy from this aspect of Ashman’s final years; the approach is equally frank with respect to his gay lifestyle. Such candor speaks to Hahn’s belief that we now live in more enlightened times, which contrasts greatly to the challenges Ashman faced, as he grew up and entered the entertainment industry.

 

Sometimes Always Never: Absolutely!

Sometimes Always Never (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for occasional sexual references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.31.20

Fans of droll and quirk will love this slice of British whimsy; others are apt to find it much too precious and stylized.

Peter (Sam Riley, left) and his father Alan (Bill Nighy) "forgot" how to connect years ago;
they can't even bond over a game of Scrabble ... even though they're likely to play at
any moment, and in any setting.

Director Carl Hunter and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce clearly studied at the altar of Wes Anderson; Sometimes Always Never — debuting on Amazon Prime and other streaming platforms — has the mildly peculiar atmosphere and character eccentricity of (for example) Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

At the same time, Hunter and Boyce uncork a deeply — at times painfully — intimate story about grief, and the necessity of finding a way to move beyond tragedy.

We meet Alan (Bill Nighy) as he solemnly waits on a deserted Merseyside beach; he has arranged to meet his adult son, Peter (Sam Riley), for a day trip with a potentially fateful conclusion. Their relationship is wary and prickly. We sense that Peter long ago gave up trying to communicate meaningfully with his father, and for good reason; Alan’s cryptic comments and responses always seem three sentences behind, and in some entirely different conversation.

It gradually becomes clear that they’ve long been trying to find Alan’s other son, Michael — Peter’s older brother — who walked out of the house years ago, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. They’re currently chasing down a faint lead: something one or both of them must’ve done many, many times before.

It proves fruitless … although, during their overnight stop at a twee B&B, they meet Margaret (Jenny Agutter) and Arthur (Tim McInnerny), a couple navigating their own, similar grief.

Back at home in Lancashire, Alan — a professional tailor who earned a comfortable living, and is the sole occupant of a well-appointed home — finds that he cannot stand to be alone. He therefore becomes an unannounced guest in Peter’s home, where he’s accepted graciously by the latter’s warm and cheerful wife, Sue (Alice Lowe). She seems to understand and accept her father-in-law’s aloofness and affectations in a way that Peter cannot.

On the other hand, Peter and Sue have given up trying to fathom their teenage son, Jack (Louis Healy), forever buried in front of his computer screen, playing an endless array of first-person shooter games. Jack gives up the bottom berth of his bunk bed, in order to accommodate Alan; what feels like an imposition blossoms into a connection bridged initially by their shared interest in games.

Science Fair: An engaging presentation

Science Fair (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particularly reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.17.20

Think 2002’s Spellbound, but with STEM whiz kids rather than spelling bee champs.

Writer/directors Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster’s warm-hearted documentary — debuting on Disney+ — profiles nine high school students from around the globe, as they compete for top honors at the annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).

Despite being constrained by very limited resources, Gabriel and Myllena nonetheless
made a major medical breakthrough that could help combat the Zika virus.

The young contestants are a varied group, although united in passion, persistence and — let it be said — jaw-dropping intelligence and ingenuity. Following the Spellbound template, we meet each in turn, and I advise against picking an early favorite; each new candidate is likely to win a place in your heart.

The film actually opens with a previous year’s winner, Jack Andraka, who — as a high school freshman — took the grand prize for inventing a method to possibly detect the early stages of pancreatic and other cancers. His joyous rush to the stage is wholly out of control, his elation absolutely off the chart; we can’t help but laugh.

At a later (calmer) moment, the filmmakers get Jack to briefly explain what we’re about to see, and what it means to young students who are too frequently — and often contemptuously — dismissed as geeks by their peers.

Indeed, a few contenders are total outsiders. Kashfia, impeccably polite and soft-spoken, is a Muslim girl at a massive, sports-obsessed high school in Brookings, S.D. The hallways are lined with display cases: laden with sports trophies, with nary an academic honor to be seen. Worse yet, she’s unable to find a teacher willing to serve as her research advisor, so — and you have to love this — she bonds with the school’s head football coach.

Ivo, a similarly soft-spoken German aeronautical engineering student, has re-designed a century-old, single-wing aircraft that was deemed impractical and abandoned. The young man’s outside-the-box enhancements improved stability and efficiency to a degree that impressed judges at the German National Fair, which in turn qualified him for ISEF, and his first trip to the United States.

West Virginia’s Robbie is an awkward, hopelessly shy misfit with a fondness for flamboyant shirts. Although a math genius and programming savant, he has little use for conventional instruction, and nearly flunked out of algebra. He spends his free time in the attic, building computers with parts scavenged from a local junkyard.

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead: 'Orson Around

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated TV-MA, for nudity and strong sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.10.20

Mention Orson Welles, and everybody — everybody — immediately thinks of Citizen Kane.

Film buffs are equally likely to cite The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight.

While Peter Bogdanovich (left, holding megaphone) waits to deliver his next line,
cinematographer Gary Graver adjusts lights according to the very precise instructions
given by Orson Welles (seated).

Baby-boomers are more apt to remember Welles’ ubiquitous TV commercials for Paul Masson — “We will sell no wine before its time” — which were parodied mercilessly by stand-up comics.

But in Hollywood, during his final few decades — Welles died on Oct. 10, 1985 — he was just as notorious for an expanding list of unfinished projects. They include:

• Don Quixote, filmed — off and on — between 1957 and ’69 (!), when production was halted after the death of star Francisco Reiguera, although Welles continued editing footage well into the 1970s;

• The Deep, based on Charles Williams’ novel Dead Calm, shot between 1966 and ’69, but left unfinished when financing evaporated, and completion was rendered impossible when star Laurence Harvey died in 1973 (Williams’ novel later was filmed by entirely different hands in 1989, with Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill); and

• The Dreamers, based on two short stories by Karen Blixen, which went no further than two 10-minute segments Welles filmed in 1979.

And one other, which has become the stuff of legend.

Documentarian Morgan Neville’s They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead — a Netflix original — depicts the fascinating, frustrating and ultimately heartbreaking saga of what Welles intended as his last great film: The Other Side of the Wind.

Neville’s project also gains class and dramatic heft from Alan Cumming’s arch on-camera narration, filmed in gorgeous monochrome by cinematographer Danny Grunes.

Welles’ film was cheekily autobiographical, although he repeatedly denied as much while giving cheerful interviews during the many years that production limped along. He took a “film within a film” approach; the primary action is set during a lavish party being thrown for once-famed film director Jake Hannaford (played by John Huston), who has been struggling to complete a commercially viable feature, in order to revive his faded career.

Maiden: A fantastic voyage

Maiden (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, and needlessly, for mildly salty language
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.19.19

The only thing better than a captivating underdog drama is a captivating underdog documentary.

Although her capable and resourceful crew members handle their various tasks with
skill, skipper Tracy Edwards (left) is equally involved with every aspect of the yacht
she has dubbed Maiden.

Director Alex Holmes’ Maiden is mesmerizing: an absorbing depiction of one person’s determination to triumph despite odds and obstacles that the word “overwhelming” cannot adequately convey. And — even more important — this is a thoroughly satisfying empowerment saga, which traces a young woman’s resolve to penetrate a rather unusual (but still insufferable) gender barrier.

Let it be said: Tracy Edwards is an extraordinary individual.

Seventeen yachts and 167 crew members participated in 1973’s debut Whitbread Round the World Race. This highly competitive event subsequently has taken place roughly every three years (and since 2001, with a change of sponsorship, has been known as the Volvo Ocean Race).

For more than a decade, women played almost no role: not as crew, and certainly not as skippers. Indeed, the very concept of a woman participating was greeted with sexist, dismissively jeering smirks that bordered on the superstitious: like sailors who regarded the killing of an albatross as bad luck.

At first blush — as the opening chapter of Holmes’ film makes clear — Edwards seems an unlikely champion to go up against the yachting world’s impregnable gender barrier. Unlike most who participate in the annual race, she didn’t grow up in a sailing family; she also had a troubled childhood, dropping out of school and running away at 16, in order to flee an antagonistic, alcoholic stepfather.

But she finds a new family, of sorts, when she joins a hard-partying tribe of boat crew gypsies, working as a cook and stewardess on private vessels and for-hire yachts that ferry tourists between island resorts. All these years later, a blaze of excitement illuminates Edwards’ gaze, as she thinks back to how quickly this new, exhilarating lifestyle became an epiphany moment.

Holmes and editor Katie Bryer blend intimate, on-camera recollections by Edwards, and other participants, with an impressively diverse assortment of archival footage (some of it obviously obtained under quite hazardous conditions, as the story proceeds). Holmes was blessed by the availability of so much video; it’s almost as if somebody knew, so many decades ago, that Edwards was destined to become a “chosen one.”

Non-Fiction: Not worth reading

Non-Fiction (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for sexual candor, nudity and profanity
By Derrick Bang

The whimsical poster art implies that writer/director Olivier Assayas’ new film is some sort of bed-swapping romantic comedy.

Don’t be suckered.

During a brief break from her busy shooting schedule as the star of a television cop show,
Selena (Juliette Binoche) enjoys a quick lunch with her lover, notorious author
Léonard Spiegel (Vincent Macaigne).

While it’s true that most of these narcissistic characters are sleeping with each other, lovers of reading, bookstores and informed knowledge will be horrified. Non-Fiction isn’t the slightest bit amusing; Assayas’ script is a grim, cynical and thoroughly depressing harangue on the pending destruction of traditional publishing, at the hands of know-nothing Internet trolls whose notion of “cultural history” dates back roughly 15 minutes.

This dreary sentiment aside, the film is deadly dull: way beyond boring. This is an interminable talking-heads experience, with the five primary characters repeatedly arguing that things — in this case, art — needs to change in order to remain the same. Which is to say that the pervasive dumbing-down of the written word is necessary, if it’s to survive at all.

Lengthy conversations — whether between just two people, or six — are littered with arrogant judgments and sarcastic one-liners: Informed criticism is worthless in a world guided by 280-character tweets. All politicians are venal hypocrites interested in nothing but money and fame. Libraries are doomed, and therefore a waste of space. TV shows are meant to be binged, not savored. Fewer people read less every year. And my favorite: “People say art is corrupt, thus worthless, so it should be free.”

Mind you, some of these observations are undeniably true (which is even more depressing). But Assayas doesn’t have his characters argue these issues as a means of thought-provoking socio-economic debate; all this jibber-jabber is mere window-dressing — no more meaningful than the bullshit “discussions” held by half-drunk bar patrons — while these insufferably smug men and women try to make virtues of their moral failings.

The libidinous heart of this roundelay is Léonard Spiegel (Vincent Macaigne), a notorious author who delights in his scruffy bohemian mannerisms, and whose fame is built upon a series of cruel “auto-fiction” novels that are graphic, thinly disguised accounts of his own extra-marital flings. He cares not a jot that his previous lovers are humiliated after recognizing themselves in all but name, and are further embarrassed when such notoriety goes public.

Léonard is married to Valérie (Nora Hamzawi), a vaguely defined political consultant who — at first blush — seems coldly indifferent to her husband. But this is before we’ve gotten to know Léonard; it quickly becomes obvious that he doesn’t deserve her. Valérie is much too decent for him.

(Actually, we soon wonder how the whiny, sleazy Léonard ever could have had such an apparently voluminous string of lovers. The perks of being French, I guess.)

Never Look Away: You simply can't!

Never Look Away (2018) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for graphic nudity, sexual content, dramatic intensity and brief violent images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.1.19

He who saves one life, saves the world entire.

It therefore stands to reason that he who destroys one life, destroys the world entire. And he who destroys many lives, destroys a galaxy of worlds.

When finally given the opportunity to create any sort of art that he desires, Kurt (Tom
Schilling) finds it difficult to reverse years of the repressive limitations he was forced
to observe, lest he come to the attention of the wrong sort of people.

Hold that thought.

German writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away is like getting thoroughly absorbed by a sweeping historical novel … and I mean that in the best possible way.

Von Donnersmarck previously brought us 2006’s mesmerizing The Lives of Others, which deservedly won the Oscar for that year’s best foreign film, and also should have been nominated — at the very least — for screenplay.

He’s clearly intrigued by what prompted the madness that infected his country during the Nazi years, and the repression that followed amid the subsequent blockaded decades, prior to the barriers coming down in November 1989 (and the Berlin Wall’s destruction, two years later). 

The Lives of Others focused on a Stasi (secret police) operative inexorably drawn into the desires and behavior of those he surveilled over the course of several years. Never Look Away takes a much longer view of how one young man’s life becomes woven — without his awareness — into the fabric of a heinous Nazi loyalist.

Von Donnersmarck opens his new film in 1937 Dresden, as 6-year-old Kurt Barnert (Cai Cohrs) is taken by his beloved young aunt, Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl), to see the touring Entartete Kunst (“Degenerate Art”) exhibit at a nearby museum. Von Donnersmarck takes his time with this sequence, as cinematographer Caleb Deschanel’s camera slowly pans over works by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Kirchner and others, while a smug Nazi guide contemptuously dismisses everything as a “disgusting sign of mental illness.”

But young Kurt is transfixed, with whispered encouragement from Elisabeth. “Never look away,” she tells the boy. Never be afraid of something new, something different, something challenging.

Alas, her three-word mantra soon takes on an entirely different meaning.

Cold War: Can love conquer all?

Cold War (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for nudity, sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Literature is laden with swooning sagas of lovers who never quite get their timing right: They’re from different social strata; he’s available, but she’s married; she divorces, but he has moved to another country; and so forth.

As they settle into a relationship, Zula (Joanna Kulig) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) realize
that they want different things out of life. Alas, that will become a growing problem, as it
also becomes clear that they cannot live without each other.

Director/co-scripter Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War, Poland’s Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, cleverly sets that timeless plot device against that country’s emergence from the ruins of World War II. The narrative takes place over the course of roughly 15 years, and is based on the lives of Pawlikowski’s parents, who — in the filmmaker’s own words — “spent 40 years together, on and off, breaking up, chasing and punishing each other on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

“They were both strong, wonderful people. But as a couple, they were a never-ending disaster.”

Indeed, this film’s characters — Zula and Wiktor — are named after Pawlikowski’s mother and father, who died in 1989: in a final slice of heavy irony, just before the Berlin Wall came down.

No surprise, then, that Pawlikowski’s approach has the sweeping, unapologetically dreamy atmosphere of classic Hollywood gothic tragedies such as Wuthering Heights. But Pawlikowski also gets considerable gravitas from the ominous and repressive geo-political environment in which this love story takes place, and which gives his film its title.

The saga begins in 1949, as skilled pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and music ethnographer Irena (Agata Kulesza) tour their country’s devastated villages and hamlets, collecting folk songs as a means of preserving regional heritage. They also have a much grander goal: to use this music as the basis for a song and dance performance ensemble, appropriately costumed, to share such culture with a broader national audience.

They subsequently establish a rigorous school of performing arts, where talented young men and women will be groomed for what comes to be known as the Mazurek Ensemble. Wiktor and Irena’s activities are supervised by Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc), a manager of sorts — handler? watchdog? — soon to become an authoritarian apparatchik.

During auditions, Wiktor is struck by the spirit, presence and radiant beauty of teenage Zula (Joanna Kulig). Irena, not fooled for a moment — she and Wiktor have been a casual item — tolerantly agrees to accept the girl into the company. By the time the students have been trained into an accomplished unit routinely performing to enthusiastic, sell-out crowds, Wiktor and Zula have become impassioned lovers.

Stan & Ollie: A warm, heartfelt tribute

Stan & Ollie (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were enormously popular film stars for roughly a decade starting in 1927, in great part because they were among the very few comedy actors who successfully navigated the transition from silent films to talkies.

Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan, left) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly, right) are dismayed
when their British manager/handler, Bernard Delfont (Rufus Jones), explains that
they'll be stuck playing small, run-down theaters ... at least, for awhile.

(Indeed, some of their later one-liners remain gems to this day. “You can lead a horse to water,” Stanley observes, in the 1930 short Brats, “but a pencil must be led.”)

Credit for teaming the slim Englishman (Laurel) with the corpulent American (Hardy) goes to early motion picture impresario Hal Roach, who made them an official double act with the 1927 silent short, Putting Pants on Philip. They became indefatigably busy thereafter, with a résumé that boasts 32 silent shorts, 40 sound shorts — including 1932’s Academy Award winner, The Music Box — and 23 features.

They never quite cracked the list of Top 10 American film stars — by box-office receipts — but they were among the Top 10 international film stars in 1936 and ’37. Their gentle brand of humor, and their films, were universal.

Director Jon S. Baird’s Stan & Ollie is a warm and deeply poignant tribute to what would become their swan song: an ambitious UK tour in 1953 and ’54, undertaken despite their declining health. After that final curtain, they never again appeared together; Hardy died in 1957, and Laurel survived him by another eight years.

Screenwriter Jeff Pope plays fast and loose with a few historical details, but the core narrative is reasonably faithful: most notably the bond between two men who had worked together for so long, that their relationship was far more deep than that with respective wives over the years. Pope’s tone is heartfelt, and Baird’s direction is impressively delicate; at no time does this often melancholy story become mawkish, nor is there any sense that the duo’s memory is being exploited unduly.

Mostly, though, the film is driven by superlative performances from Steve Coogan (Stan) and John C. Reilly (Ollie, more affectionately known as “Babe”).

Coogan is particularly impressive, clearly having studied Laurel meticulously enough to perfectly mimic his impeccably timed pantomime. It’s not merely a matter of reproducing the stage bits performed before an adoring public, but also mastering the doe-eyed, less-is-more dancer’s grace with which Stan carries himself, behind closed doors.

One of the key points of Pope’s script, however — adapted from A.J. Marriot’s 1993 book, Laurel & Hardy: The British Tours — is that Stan’s outwardly mild manner conceals a creative talent chafing at the contractual restraints imposed by Roach (Danny Huston, suitably imperious). As depicted here, Ollie is content and complacent, cheerfully willing to do as he’s told; Stan is ambitious, desiring the greater freedom that he knows will make them even more successful.

This dichotomy will resurface later, under less than ideal circumstances.

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.

Vice: Evolution of a monster?

Vice (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for profanity and violent images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.11.19

It’s sad when the whole doesn’t live up to the sum of its parts.

Vice is turbo-charged by a jaw-dropping performance from star Christian Bale: as wholly immersive as Gary Oldman’s similarly masterful portrayal of Winston Churchill, in 2017’s Darkest Hour. Bale’s impersonation is equally convincing; at times, you’d swear that Dick Cheney himself were on the screen.

The fateful meeting: Presidential candidate George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell, right) wants
Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) as his running mate, a traditionally toothless position that
interests the latter not at all ... until he perceives the degree to which this particular
U.S. president could be controlled and manipulated.

Bale is (in)famous for putting soul andbody into his performances, having dropped 70 pounds for his emaciated role in 2004’s The Machinist, then regaining the weight — plus another 30 pounds — the following year, for the first of his three stints as Batman/Bruce Wayne. More recently, he briefly porked up to 228 for the convincing pot belly sported in 2013’s American Hustle.

Now, in order to step that much more persuasively into Cheney’s shoes, Bale bleached his eyebrows, shaved his head … and gained 40 pounds.

But Bale doesn’t rely exclusively on such physical attributes; he wholly inhabits the man’s bearing, stance, brooding gaze and terse, clipped manner of speech. And the most important feature of all: the reptilian, thousand-yard stare with which Cheney could cut a person dead (or, at the very least, render the recipient into cowed silence).

Amy Adams doesn’t rest in Bale’s shadow. Her handling of Cheney’s wife Lynne is equally compelling, Adams’ acting chops every bit as authoritative. Writer/director Adam McKay clearly has assumed that just as Cheney was the (mostly) unseen power behind George W. Bush, Lynne was the (mostly) unseen power behind her husband.

Vice more or less profiles Cheney’s rise from alcoholic twentysomething ne’er-do-well to Master of the World: an often macabre and deeply disturbing validation of the old warning that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

McKay audaciously acknowledges, via introductory lines of text against an otherwise black screen, that he couldn’t possibly have any inside knowledge regarding many (most? all?) of the conversations taking place between this cheeky film’s numerous real-world characters. Even so, the blend of supposition and known fact is — at times — grimly unsettling, particularly when further juxtaposed against McKay’s satiric tone.

It’s not easy to simultaneously chuckle and gasp with revulsion, but you’ll do so. More than once.