Remarkably Bright Creatures: A character-driven charmer

Remarkably Bright Creatures (2026) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for brief profanity, fleeting drug use and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang 

Author Shelby Van Pelt must be pleased; book-to-film translations aren’t often treated with this much respect.

 

Although Tova (Sally Field) finds it difficult to share her private anguish with anybody else,
she confides everything to Marcellus, the Giant Pacific octopus who resides in the
oceanarium where she works ... and he understands far more than she could imagine.

Granted, director Olivia Newman’s script — co-written with John Whittington — changes some minor details, and compresses events; that’s to be expecting, when turning a 368-page book into a 111-minute movie.

But the buoyant, rapturous result definitely captures the story’s heart, and all three key characters are portrayed marvelously. The supporting players also are well cast; my only complaint is that we don’t get to spend enough time with some of them.

 

(Just in passing, one must acknowledge the unlikely coincidence of getting two octopus-themed films in such short order, following 2020’s My Octopus Teacher.)

 

The film opens with a voice-over introduction by Marcellus (voiced gravely, and oh-so-perfectly by Alfred Molina), a Giant Pacific octopus who is the star attraction at the (fictitious) Sowell Bay Oceanarium, in Washington’s Puget Sound. He morosely begins by acknowledging that this morning is “Day 1,404 of my captivity.”

 

Marcellus laments that he is “subservient to a species beneath me in every possible way,” and has little use for the throngs of people who visit each day. That’s particularly true of the grimy, obnoxious young children who press their noses against the glass tank, or lick it, and leave greasy fingerprints that become a “tiny mural”: an admittedly disgusting image that Newman highlights from Marcellus’ point of view.

 

(One must admit, were an octopus — or any other critter — to be that sentient and intelligent, such on-display captivity would be an ongoing nightmare.)

 

Marcellus makes an exception for Tova Sullivan (Sally Field), the elderly janitor/cleaner who, after hours, spends each evening lovingly wiping all the aquarium glass, scraping chewing gum from the floors, and otherwise washing, buffing and scrubbing everything thoroughly. She’s particularly fond of Marcellus, and confides in him, somehow feeling that he understands her.

 

To a degree, he does. He recognizes that she carries a deep sorrow: “I felt the hole in her heart.”

 

Marcellus also is quite the escape artist, able to slip out of his tank when impelled by boredom or curiosity. We suspect that he periodically visits other tanks, while pointedly avoiding the one that contains savage wolf eels.

Promising Young Woman: Beware her wrath

Promising Young Woman (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for violence, sexual assault, sexual candor, drug use and relentless profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.26.21

If revenge is a dish best served cold, then Carey Mulligan’s Cassie Thomas leaves dry ice in her wake.

 

Cassie (Carey Mulligan) still hasn't quite decided how to handle Ryan (Bo Burnham),
but there's no denying his ability to have spontaneous fun in an unlikely setting.

Cunning, calculating and crafty as if borne to treachery, Mulligan’s Academy Award-nominated performance is a marvelous display of graceful subtlety: something at which she always has excelled. She’s both hero and anti-hero, drifting from one side of that fence to the other, enchanting us just as much as she (ultimately) terrorizes her victims.

 

All of which is delivered with ghoulish glee by Emerald Fennell, also Oscar-nominated for both directing and concocting this deviously nasty dark-dark-dark comedy. It’s available via Amazon Prime and other streaming services.

 

We meet Cassie under lamentable circumstances: dressed to kill but just this side of dangerously intoxicated, makeup askew and swaying slowly while trying to remain upright on the sofa in a trendy bar. Easy prey for a trio of good-looking guys on the make (Adam Brody, Ray Nicholson and Sam Richardson).

 

One — seemingly the “compassionate fellow” — separates from the pack, solicitously asks if she’s all right, chuckles sympathetically at her efforts to sound coherent. Offers to take her home, brings her to his place instead. Laughs off her slurred, wavery protests. He gets increasingly, ah, fresh.

 

Benjamin Kracun’s camera rises above this scene, tightens focus on Cassie’s face. Her drowsy eyes abruptly snap into full awareness. 

 

And we think Uh-oh…

 

Returning home, Cassie withdraws a small notebook from a place of concealment, flips through pages and pages and pages of red and black hash marks, reaches the page in progress, and adds a vertical red line.

 

And we think Yikes!

 

Fennell’s Promising Young Woman is the ultimate #MeToo statement. It’s a righteously angry response to an appalling situation — campus rape — that has been ignored, concealed or denied for far too long. What’s most impressive is that Fennell refrains from preaching; despite the awfulness of what occurs here — and of what occurred years earlier — her film remains … well … entertaining. Amusing, even.

 

Frozen II: Shouldn't have been thawed

Frozen II (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.22.19

I want to know what this film’s writers were smoking.

Granted, this sequel to 2013’s Frozen has its moments, almost exclusively those involving Josh Gad’s hilarious supporting performance as the relentlessly loquacious snowman, Olaf.

Having just penetrated the strange mist that conceals an enchanted forest, Elsa (foreground)
continues to hear a mysterious voice, although her companions — from left, Sven, Olaf,
Kristoff and Anna — do not.

The rest, however, is a mess.

Folks with a chronic aversion to musicals — and their numbers are legion — generally don’t shun classics such asThe Wizard of Oz, Singing in the Rain or West Side Story, or later genre refinements such as Cabaret and La La Land. No, such folks hate bad musicals: 1969’s Paint Your Wagon, 1975’s At Long Last Love, 1982’s Grease 2 and many others too numerous to mention.

Musicals with wafer-thin stories that usually make no sense, and which are interrupted constantly when the orchestra swells, an actor or two pauses in mid-sentence, stares heavenward, and we recoil with a sotto voce “Oh, gawd; they’re gonna sing again.”

Musicals with truly atrocious songs, not one of which is memorable enough to linger beyond the end credits.

Frozen II is a bad musical. A very bad musical, with genuinely awful, unmelodic and instantly forgotten tunes. Some of which are heard (endured?) more than once.

Songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez clearly felt they had to match the success of “Let It Go,” their inspirational, Academy Award-winning ballad from the first film. Ergo, most of these seven new tunes are similarly overcooked and overwrought power anthems, not one of which comes within shouting distance of “Let It Go.” The absence of musical variety — particularly during the film’s second half — becomes unbearable.

You could hear the clanking of eyeballs rolling in their sockets, during Monday evening’s preview screening, each time viewers muttered, “Oh, gawd; she’s gonna sing again.”

There’s such a thing as trying too hard.

Love Is Strange: Poignant glimpse of family values

Love Is Strange (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, and rather harshly, for occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.26.14

As first-world challenges go, few can be more heartbreaking than the turmoil sometimes created by our nobler instincts.

On the morning of their official nuptials, George (Alfred Molina, left) assures Ben (John
Lithgow) that yes, they will make it to the appointed place on time ... even if they're not
able to hail a taxi.

We like to believe that we’re capable of helping people — particularly friends and family members — much the way we’d hope to be helped, under similar circumstances. The uncomfortable truth, however, is that benevolence generally extends only so far, and no farther ... and then most people are too polite to confront what has become an intolerable situation.

And so the kettle bubbles, until it boils over: the initial generous act inevitably overwhelmed by hurtful confrontations that cannot be taken back, leaving bruised feelings all around.

Put simply, and to quote a telling line from Ira Sachs’ painfully intimate new film, “When you live with people, you know them better than you care to.”

The speaker is Ben (John Lithgow), whose life has taken a disappointing turn: such a letdown, from the radiant happiness he enjoyed only a few weeks earlier.

Sachs and co-scripter Mauricio Zacharias open Love Is Strange on a triumphant event: After having lived together for 39 years, Ben and George (Alfred Molina) joyfully tie the knot, thanks to New York’s new marriage laws. The morning of, the two men are a study in contrast: Ben, artistic and nervous, fusses over every detail; George, practical and calm, knows that all will be well.

They share both the service and subsequent celebratory party with close friends and family: Ben’s nephew Elliot (Darren E. Burrows), his wife Kate (Marisa Tomei) and their teenage son Joey (Charlie Tahan); Ted (Cheyenne Jackson) and Roberto (Manny Perez), the gay New York cops who live together downstairs; and numerous other well-wishers.

Kate makes a truly charming, heartfelt speech: brimming with love.

The elation doesn’t last long.

Ben doesn’t really have a job; he dabbles at painting. George, the primary breadwinner, teaches private music lessons but earns the bulk of their income from his longtime job as choir master at a local Catholic school. Unfortunately, although all concerned have known and tolerated George’s sexual orientation during his entire 12-year stint at this school, the marriage is an “official” act that cannot be condoned by the Catholic hierarchy.

George is summarily dismissed. Absent that income, he and Ben no longer can afford their apartment, nor — thanks to New York’s relentless real estate market — can they find another place to live. They reluctantly call a family meeting and present this news, hoping for the group to offer a stopgap, if not a solution.

The resulting silence, as the various implications settle, is merely the first of this film’s many gut-wrenching moments.