Normal Far from it (in a deliciously ghastly way)

Normal (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for profanity and relentless strong, bloody violence

Available via: HBO MAX and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

Paul Newman went through a period, for several years following 1961’s The Hustler, when superstition apparently prompted him to insist that several subsequent anti-hero single-word films begin with the letter “H,” in some cases prompting script character name changes: Hud, Harper and Hombre.

 

Confronted by unexpectedly overwhelming odds, Keith (Brendan Fletcher, left) Sheriff
Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) and Lori (Reena Jolly) become unusual allies.

Bob Odenkirk seems to be doing the same with his second-career emergence as a “regular, down-home guy turned reluctant avenger,” first in Nobody, and now in this one. One wonders what’ll be next ... Nowhere? Nevermore? Naturally?

(Okay, in fairness, his family guy in Nobody and its sequel wasn’t that ordinary. But still...)

 

Odenkirk stars as Ulysses (no last name given), hired as a temporary substitute sheriff in the quaint little township of Normal, Minnesota. It’s a sleepy community, looking very much like a throwback to 1950s Americana, with an entryway city sign that reads “We like it here.”

 

Ulysses has greeted this temporary assignment as a welcome respite from both marital woes and severe moral trauma suffered during the line of duty. He’s scheduled to be in Normal for just eight weeks, as an emergency stand-in for former Sheriff Gunderston (Pat Harris), who died unexpectedly ... under, as Ulysses soon discovers, rather unusual circumstances.

 

But that isn’t his problem. As he and Deputy Mike Nelson (Billy MacLellan) cruise Normal’s downtown streets, Ulysses expresses his desire — via voice-over, and (later) unanswered phone calls to his estranged wife, Penny — to leave the town exactly as he found it. He views himself as a “midwife with a gun,” merely helping a transition.

 

He meets glad-handing Mayor Kibner (Henry Winkler); local doctor/coroner Walter Vilie (David Lawrence Brown); yarn and craft shop owner Mary Beth (Megan MacArton); hardware store owner Maynard (Carson Nattrass); bar owner Moira (Lena Headey, still well remembered as Cersei Lannister, on Game of Thrones); cheerful sheriff’s office receptionist Sally Johnson (Lauren Cochrane); and co-Deputy Blaine Anderson (Ryan Allen), who eagerly anticipates being elected permanent sheriff.

 

Everybody treats Ulysses kindly, but with an odd touch of amusement or even condescension.

 

But this isn’t actually where the film begins. A brief prologue, set in Osaka, introduces a powerful and vicious Yakuza boss (Takahiro Inoue, as The Oyabun) who — during an early sign of the carnage to come — enforces a rather grisly ritual to determine which of his men will be dispatched for “a job” in Minnesota. 

 

(Guess where.)

Nobody 2: Escapist wretched excess

Nobody 2 (2025) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.17.25 

This is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

 

Director Timo Tjahjanto’s deplorably violent thriller is palatable solely because of the macabre dark humor in Derek Kolstad and Aaron Rabin’s crazy script, and the hilariously stoic performance by star Bob Odenkirk.

 

Four men get into an elevator, followed by the apparently mild-mannered Hutch Mansell
(Bob Odenkirk, center). How many will survive the trip?

The result is so excessively outrageous, that you can’t help laughing ... although you’ll likely feel guilty for having done so, when later describing this film to more conservative friends.

In this film’s 2021 predecessor, Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk) was introduced as a mundane office worker whose bland life concealed the fact that he was a former “auditor” (assassin) employed by the U.S. Intelligence Community. His ordinary existence — alongside emotionally starved wife Becca (Connie Nielsen), teenage son Brady (Gage Munroe) and adolescent daughter Sammy (Paisley Cadorath) — was interrupted by “events beyond his control.” In the aftermath, he and his family began anew.

 

Except not really, as this sequel quickly makes clear. A fleeting prologue, mimicking an identical scene in the earlier film, finds a bruised and badly damaged Hutch being interrogated by FBI agents ... this time alongside a large dog with a soulful gaze.

 

One bewildered agent asks, “Who are you?,” prompting Hutch to respond via a long flashback.

 

Things having gone very wrong during the intervening years, Hutch now spends his days “processing” assignments for “The Barber” (Colin Salmon), his former government handler. Hutch is slowly working off a $30 million debt incurred when he earlier destroyed the Russian Mob’s cash reserve.

 

Sadly, the constant daily grind — skirmishes, fights, all-out melees — have taken a toll on Hutch’s marriage and home life. He barely sees his wife and children, and Becca — fully aware of what he does, although this is kept from their children — flirts with the notion of leaving him.

 

Hutch isn’t blind; he recognizes the need to make amends. He therefore proposes a vacation to Wild Bill’s Majestic Midway and Waterpark, a family-friendly theme park in nearby Plummerville. It was the one and only place where Hutch and his brother Harry went on vacation as kids. In short, it’s one of Hutch’s few happy childhood memories.

 

(Filming actually took place in Winnipeg, Manitoba; production designer Michael Diner was inspired by classic Midwestern Americana burgs like the Wisconsin Dells, where Odenkirk’s family vacationed when he was a kid.)

 

The Barber tolerates this brief respite, albeit with a warning: “Wherever you go, you’ll be you.”

 

Meaning, Hutch can’t help finding trouble that needs to be extinguished.

Long Shot: Genuinely unlikely

Long Shot (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for strong sexual content, drug use and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.3.19

An engaging premise — with some shrewd topical jabs at our real-world political dysfunction — beats within the heart of this fitfully entertaining romantic comedy.

As proximity encourages increasingly intimate contact, Fred (Seth Rogen) finds his
childhood dream coming true, as Charlotte (Charlize Theron) begins to share his
romantic feelings.

Too bad the charm is so frequently buried beneath vulgarity, relentless profanity and jaw-droppingly lunatic bursts of physical slapstick.

It’s a shame, because — absent such wretched excess — scripters Liz Hannah and Dan Sterling could’ve had a keenly observed little parable. 

Instead, in the hands of apathetic director Jonathan Levine — who most recently gave us 2017’s Amy Schumer/Goldie Hawn train wreck, Snatched — we have yet another failure that tries to satisfy wildly divergent target audiences, and succeeds at neither.

Not that it’s entirely Levine’s fault. Plenty of blame also falls on his frequent acting collaborator, the forever unrestrained Seth Rogen, who rarely misses the opportunity to ruin a scene with his own inimitable brand of overkill. This overly protracted 125-minute disappointment could be a much more manageable 100 minutes, if Levine and editors Melissa Bretherton and Evan Henke were more disciplined about not holding the camera, while Rogen mugs and mumbles interminably.

He simply isn’t as funny as he believes.

Nor does he possess one-tenth of the sharp, savvy comic timing of co-star O’Shea Jackson Jr., who rocks every one of his (lamentably) too few scenes.

Rogen stars as Fred Flarsky, a hot-headed, otherwise talented journalist who frequently sabotages his own sharp commentary by succumbing to a strident tone and raging, ultra-left-wing sensibilities that leave no room for negotiation. He’s his own worst enemy; when his beloved alternative newspaper is absorbed into a conglomerate run by international media mogul Parker Wembley (Andy Serkis), Fred quits in a huff, rather than allow himself to be laid off by a sympathetic editor, thereby retaining unemployment benefits.

Any resemblance between Wembley and Rupert Murdoch is purely intentional. But as is typical of their feeble script, Hannah and Sterling don’t give Serkis enough material with which to make this under-written parody really sizzle. Apparently, we’re supposed to be sufficiently impressed by the make-up work. (Not hardly.)

Incredibles 2: Close, but not quite

Incredibles 2 (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.15.18

The frequently delightful and long-awaited Incredibles 2 (14 years!) has much to recommend it, and writer/director Brad Bird obviously used the time wisely; his sequel avoids many of the pitfalls that characterize the often dismaying “sophomore curse.”

When you're taking the baby for a family stroll, confronting a super-villain can be awkward:
from left, Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, Dash, Violet and baby Jack-Jack decide how best to
handle the subterranean-dwelling Underminer.

That said, this second outing lacks the spark, snap and freshness of its predecessor. The pacing is uneven — the first act is particularly slow — and the balance is off. The numerous sequences with infant Jack-Jack are undeniably hilarious — a hyper-edited encounter with a raccoon could be extracted as a terrific cartoon short — but the baby steals too much focus from the rest of his family ... and, indeed, from the core plot.

As the first film made abundantly clear, the super-heroic Parr family functions best when it functions together ... and this story waits far too long to deliver on that promise.

Events kick off in the immediate aftermath of the previous adventure. Super-powered crime fighters remain illegal: The government and general public still are unwilling to overlook the collateral damage that results when the good guys do their best to bring down super-villains such as the Underminer and his massive conical drill (which broke through to the surface world in the first film’s final scene).

(Geek alert: Given that Bird clearly intended the Parr family as an homage to Marvel Comics’ Fantastic Four, the Underminer is a similarly droll wink-and-nod to the Mole Man, whom the FF battled in their debut November 1961 comic book.)

Despite the best efforts of Mr. Incredible (voiced by Craig T. Nelson), Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), teenage daughter Violet (Sarah Vowell) and adolescent son Dash (Huckleberry Milner), the Underminer’s drill takes out a massive swath of downtown Municiberg. Adding insult to injury, the villain escapes.

Worse yet, longtime colleague and “fixer” Rick Dicker (Jonathan Banks), whose Super Relocation Program has helped the Parrs — in their civilian identities — evade public censure, informs them that his division has just been shuttered by the government. Bob, Helen and their children are on their own ... and homeless, thanks to events in the first film. Dicker’s last bit of generosity is a two-week stay in the amusingly droll Safari Court Motel.

The Post: Fast-breaking drama

The Post (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for profanity and brief war violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.19.18

Although Steven Spielberg’s riveting new film gets most of its dramatic heft from the democracy-threatening events that swirled around the release of the Pentagon Papers in June of 1971, we’re most emotionally involved with the plight of Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham: at the time, the only woman in a position of power at a major national newspaper.

The entire Washington Post editorial staff — including executive editor Ben Bradlee and
publisher Katharine Graham (Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, third and fourth from left) —
reacts with stunned silence after learning that The New York Times has been forced, by
a federal injunction, to cease reporting on the Pentagon Papers.

As the film begins, and as we’re introduced to Graham via Meryl Streep’s thoroughly engaging performance, the poor woman is hopelessly — helplessly — out of her depth.

We spend almost the entire film waiting for her epiphany, and for the “Meryl Streep moment” when the actress — Graham finally having found her spine — verbally eviscerates one of her patronizing male colleagues.

It’s a long wait ... and well worth the anticipation.

The Post isn’t opportune merely as a reminder — at a time when the White House is occupied by an infantile gadfly who defends his lies by screaming “Fake news!” — of the crucial role played by our Fourth Estate. Scripters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer couldn’t have known, as their film was being shaped, that its parallel focus on Graham would resonate so well at a moment when American women have risen en masse to challenge male hegemony.

The resulting drama serves both mindsets, while also taking its place alongside top-drawer journalism dramas such as All the President’s Men and Spotlight (the latter having brought Singer — also a veteran of TV’s West Wing — an Academy Award).

The sequence of events taking place during just a few days in the early summer of 1971 almost defy credibility. The film opens on a sidebar issue, as Graham prepares for a presentation to The Washington Post Company board of directors, in anticipation of raising badly needed capital via a stock offering when the paper goes public, on June 15.

Streep’s Graham is nervous and flustered, despite having solid notes prepared with the assistance of longtime friend and confidant Fritz Beebe (Tracy Letts, nicely understated), a former Wall Street lawyer and chairman of the board. Even before knowing anything about this woman, we feel for her; Streep makes her anxiety palpable.

We therefore groan inwardly, when — her moment having come — she’s too tongue-tied even to speak, and her carefully prepared details are introduced by Fritz.

This is before Graham learns, a few days later, that the stock offering could be scuttled by her paper’s growing involvement in the nation-shattering spat between Richard Nixon and The New York Times: the first time, in the history of the republic, that a U.S. president has attempted to silence a national newspaper.

Nebraska: A memorable trip

Nebraska (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and vulgarity
By Derrick Bang

I’ve been waiting 40 years for Bruce Dern to snag this sort of role.

And so, I would imagine, has he.

When David (Will Forte, left) insists on seeing the house where his father Woody (Bruce
Dern, center left) grew up, the building's sad, dilapidated and abandoned state aptly
mirrors Woody's dismay over the lifetime of disappointment that haunts him. Woody's
wife Kate (June Squibb) takes advantage of this excuse to dredge up unpleasant
memories, while David's brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk) warily watches his combative
parents, wondering if they'll flare into another squabble.

The American film industry has no shortage of unsung and underappreciated actors, male and female. Some carve out respectable careers as supporting players: familiar faces who, with their mere presence, immediately raise the quality of a given movie. Jack Warden, George Sanders, Joan Cusack, Shelley Winters and George Kennedy come to mind.

Others work just as hard but never quite achieve name-brand recognition: forever hoping for that one golden shot that’ll make all the difference, usually retiring into obscurity without having had that chance.

Thanks to Nebraska, Dern is one of the lucky ones.

Until now, he has been the stalwart second banana in projects as varied as Smile, The Great Gatsby, All the Pretty Horses and Coming Home, the latter earning him a well-deserved Academy Award nomination. Leading roles have been few, but I’ve never forgotten the intensity of his essentially solo turn in 1972’s Silent Running (a sci-fi entry dismissed as preposterous at the time, which has become more uncomfortably prophetic with every passing year).

Dern brought life not only to his own role in that cautionary tale, but also to the three boxy, robotic “drones” that — thanks to his persuasive performance — developed their own individual personalities. No small feat, decades before CGI magic was even a gleam in anybody’s eye.

Even then, Dern was a master of earnest, heartbreaking passion, imbuing his sad-sack characters with the forever chagrined intensity of the eternally downtrodden and disenfranchised. Men who nonetheless cling to even the faintest hope, no matter how preposterous.

A great work of art doesn’t emerge from an empty canvas, of course; Nebraska also owes its deliciously biting charm to its rich script from newcomer Bob Nelson — a remarkable big-screen debut — and the sensitive, perfectly modulated direction of Alexander Payne, who has delighted us with misfit sagas such as Sideways, Election and The Descendants.

Payne usually writes or collaborates on the scripts for his film; Nebraska marks the first time he has fully surrendered the screenplay chores. But it’s easy to see why; Nelson’s droll premise and mordant execution display the same slow-burn humor and slightly left-of-center sensibilities, while granting us a central character every bit as stubborn, irascible and resolutely unlovable as Jack Nicholson’s title character in Payne’s About Schmidt.

Tone is everything in Payne’s films, and Nebraska could be considered Fargo on downers: somewhat quieter and slower, but every bit as rich with Midwestern quirks and slow-drawlin’ ambiance.