The Ballad of Wallis Island: Rhapsodic

The Ballad of Wallis Island (2025) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

You just can’t beat our cousins across the pond, when it comes to quirky dramedies.

 

This one comes from the inventive minds of co-writers Tom Basden and Tim Key, who also play the two leading roles. They’ve expanded their BAFTA-nominated 2007 short — The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island — into this even more beguiling feature-length film.

 

Seeking a way to bridge the awkwardness still present between them, Herb (Tom Basden,
left) encourages Nell (Carey Mulligan) and Charles (Tim Key) to make sky lanterns,
and set them aloft with a private wish.

The premise is hilarious, the execution note-perfect, and the unusually isolated setting an important character in its own right.

The story begins as international music superstar Herb McGwyer (Basden), having agreed to do a private gig on a remote island off the Welsh coast, arrives just off-shore his destination ... following a long trip in a small motorboat. Baffled by the absence of a dock, faced with having to wade the rest of the way, Herb makes matters worse by falling out of the boat and getting thoroughly drenched.

 

He's nonetheless greeted enthusiastically by his host, Charles Heath (Key), who compounds Herb’s perplexity with a ceaseless barrage of apologies, words of adulation, non-sequiturs, poor attempts at humor, and otherwise meaningless idle chatter. (Prepare yourself for a barrage of bad puns.)

 

Herb is further annoyed/confused to discover that they need to walk the several miles to the opulent hotel where he’ll stay ... which happens to be Charles’ home.

 

Its architectural opulence — compounded by touches of whimsy — is breathtaking. (It’s actually Derwydd Mansion, a Tudor-style property dating back to the 15th century.)

 

The décor is period by way of the occasionally bizarre, decorated by somebody with far more money than taste. Kudos to production designer Alexandra Toomey and her team, who filled the vast spaces with items sourced from antique marts and trunk sales.

 

Along the way, Herb has tried repeatedly to get details about where he’ll perform, and for how many people, and so forth. Charles curiously deflects all such questions, until Herb — understandably — finally gets a bit frosty.

 

Turns out that Charles — more than a little eccentric, and a massive fan-boy — is a millionaire many times over, having won the national lottery twice. This allowed him to fill his home with every bit of McGwyer memorabilia he could find, and buy himself the ultimate fan collectible: a concert. For one person. Himself.

Maestro: Rhapsodic

Maestro (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and drug use

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.5.24

This film’s title suggests that it’s about a man: acclaimed composer/conductor Leonard “Lenny” Bernstein.

 

But that’s not entirely true. Director Bradley Cooper’s thoughtful, lovingly crafted tone poem actually focuses on the lengthy, loving and tempestuous relationship between Bernstein and actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn.

 

When Felicia (Carey Mulligan) wants Lenny (Bradley Cooper) to slow down and truly
pay attention to her, they sit in a field, back to back: a sweet tableau laden with
quiet intimacy.

The result certainly is one of the year’s most visually sumptuous and imaginatively staged dramas. Cooper and cinematographer Matthew Libatique collaborated meticulously, almost intimately, in a manner rarely seen in today’s films; every setting, every frame, is a work of art.

Cooper and Libatique also worked together on 2018’s A Star Is Born, which earned the latter a well-deserved Academy Award nomination.

 

As was the case with that earlier film, Cooper again wears three hats: director, co-scripter — with Josh Singer — and star. Thanks to the finely crafted work of prosthetic makeup designer Kazu Hiro, Cooper’s transformation is uncanny: particularly during the onset of Bernstein’s career, in the 1940s. 

 

The performance goes much deeper than mere appearance. Cooper also nails the cadence of Lenny’s stiff, formal manner of speaking — adding emphasis with frequent pauses, as if ensuring his listeners are hanging onto every word — along with the man’s charismatic presence. He wasn’t merely the most interesting person in a given room; he consumed the very atmosphere.

 

He talks — and smokes — constantly. His running commentary is as relentless as the chained cigarettes.

 

Lenny also was his own, fiercest taskmaster. We get a sense that he rarely slowed down — perhaps didn’t even know how to do so — because he wanted to maximize the potential of each moment: whether composing, conducting, teaching, partying or indulging in a liberated sexual lifestyle that occasionally threatened his career.

 

The latter is a running undercurrent in Cooper and Singer’s script, which is drawn heavily from archival video footage, documentaries and interviews — notably those by TV newsman Edward R. Murrow and journalist John Gruen, briefly depicted in this film — and daughter Jamie Bernstein’s 2018 memoir, Famous Father Girl.

 

Following a brief color prologue that catches an aging Lenny during a solemn, meditative moment, the film stock shifts to monochrome as we bounce back to the World War II era, and the fortuitous event that launched his career. After having spent a few preceding years in Manhattan teaching piano and coaching singers, Lenny was appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

 

His lucky break came on November 14, 1943, when guest conductor Bruno Walter called in sick at the last moment. Lenny made his debut on short notice, without any rehearsal, facing an ambitious program that included works by Richard Strauss, Miklôs Rózsa and Richard Wagner.

 

Between the live national CBS Radio broadcast and the following day’s celebratory front-page story in The New York Times, Lenny became famous overnight.

She Said: Impressively inspiring

She Said (2022) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.18.22

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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.

 

The Dig: A captivating excavation

The Dig (2021) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for brief sensuality and fleeting partial nudity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.26.21

Director Simon Stone’s well-seasoned character drama, available via Netflix, is a thoroughly absorbing slice of old-style British filmmaking: a fascinating, fact-based story inhabited by engaging characters, set in England’s luxuriously verdant countryside.

 

After a harrowing reminder that amateur excavation can be quite dangerous, Edith Pretty
(Carey Mulligan) makes sure that archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) has
suffered no more than a terrible fright.

The countryside in question is Suffolk, the year 1939: just as Britain is battening down the hatches in anticipation of war with Germany. Odd, then, that widowed aristocratic landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) chooses this moment to investigate the large barrows (burial mounds) that dot her 526-acre Sutton Hoo estate (but, well, the actual Pretty did just that).

 

Such mounds were prevalent throughout much of the United Kingdom at this point in time, and it was accepted wisdom that — if they contained anything at all — the contents likely would date back to the Viking era. Edith has no reason to expect otherwise, but even Viking artifacts would be worthy of museum preservation.

 

She hires local archaeologist/excavator Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to investigate; after surveying the various mounds, he settles on a particularly large one. The digging is arduous, painstaking and slow, even with the help of a few estate workers. As the days and weeks pass, with Edith and her adolescent son Robert (Archie Barnes) taking an active interest — and since Basil is living on the estate — he becomes a welcome part of the family.

 

That’s no small thing, since the working-class Basil is akin to a servant himself. But Edith clearly gives no thought to that sort of thing: a deliberate contrast to the way Basil is regarded as “lesser” by his archaeological peers, since he’s self-taught after having left school at age 12.

 

Nothing is quite as condescending as British class snobbery, and Fiennes does a marvelous job of imbuing Basil with quiet dignity and patient resolve, when confronted by it. His deepening bond with Edith and Robert notwithstanding, he also tends toward obsession, ignoring frequent letters from his wife, May (Monica Dolan).

 

Basil becomes convinced that these Sutton Hoo barrows might pre-date the Viking era (eighth to 11th century): in fact, might be Anglo-Saxon (as early as the fifth century). Naturally, his disdainful colleagues dismiss this notion.

 

Then Basil finds some iron rivets. A ship’s iron rivets. (Bear in mind, we’re well inland.) Only figures of immense merit — such as kings — were buried with their ships.

Mudbound: Superb character study

Mudbound (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, disturbing violence, profanity and nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.12.18

This film likely hasn’t been on most folks’ radar, given its unconventional distribution.

That needs to change.

As their friendship develops, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund, right) insists that Ronsel
(Jason Mitchell) ride alongside in the front of his truck, rather than — as local custom
demands — back in the bed. This "familiarity" will not go unnoticed.

Director/co-scripter Dee Rees’ compelling adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s Mudbound boasts impeccable acting and a narrative too infrequently addressed these days: humble people just trying to get by. Rees’ film shares these sensibilities with classics such as the 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and the 1941 adaptation of Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley (both directed by John Ford).

The all-important distinction is that Jordan’s saga gets additional dramatic heft from its depiction of the wary, prickly dynamic that passed for “race relations” in the post-WWII Deep South. Recent films addressing issues of race — 12 Years a Slave, Selma and Birth of a Nation immediately spring to mind — have concentrated on momentous individuals and/or points in history; it’s refreshing to experience a much more intimate, carefully sculpted depiction of jes’ plain folks.

Some of whom, it must be noted, are capable of unspeakable behavior.

Rees and co-scripter Virgil Williams adopt Jordan’s alternating narrative voices while introducing us to two families: the McAllans and Jacksons, both struggling on a remote, hard-scrabble cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta. It’s the winter of 1946, with flashbacks filling in crucial pre-war details.

Monsoon-like rains occasionally turn the entire farm into a dispiriting swamp of mud.

We meet Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke) and his younger brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) as they dig a grave for their recently deceased father, trying to complete this task ahead of another impending storm. Subsequently easing the plain wooden coffin into the grave proves too much for the two men; Henry requests help from their tenant farmers, the Jacksons, as their wagon ambles along the nearby road.

This request elicits palpable tension; we’ve no idea why.

Answers emerge via lengthy flashbacks.

Suffragette: Solid emancipation drama

Suffragette (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang 

Had Carey Mulligan been born in a different time and place, she likely would have become popular among painters or photographers eager to explore the complexities of her amazingly expressive features.

After being arrested a second time, Maud (Carey Mulligan) is presented with a tempting
offer by Inspector Steed (Brendan Gleeson). He'll make the charges against her melt
away ... if she'll become his spy.

Her capacity for forlorn resignation — for tolerant anguish, and acceptance of a fate that she understands is unjust — is particularly acute. I imagine her becoming the face of Dorothea Lange’s iconic, Depression-era photo, Migrant Mother.

Mulligan has demonstrated this capacity for quietly compliant sorrow in several films, most notably 2010’s haunting Never Let Me Go, likely to remain one of the bleakest — and most cautionary — science fiction parables ever made. What makes her work in such parts so memorably heartbreaking, of course, is the perceptive intelligence that’s always present behind her melancholy gaze.

She once again displays such emotional intensity in yet another of this season’s cinematic depictions of our turbulent past: the desperate, early 20th century nadir of the British women’s emancipation movement, in director Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette. Scripter Abi Morgan — who won a well-deserved Emmy Award for her compelling Cold War-era miniseries, The Hour — has surrounded Mulligan’s composite “typical working-class character” with actual historical figures, to persuasively portray what it must have been like for the agitators determined to win not only the right to vote, but a greater measure of control over their own lives.

And dignity. Definitely dignity.

I never cease to be amazed — becoming immersed in real-life stories of this nature — by mankind’s ability to exceed even my lowest opinion of their behavior.

In this particular case, of course, the emphasize is on mankind.

The setting is London in 1912, where Maud Watts (Mulligan) and her husband, Sonny (Ben Whishaw), work onerous, back-breaking — and highly dangerous — hours in a laundry. The shop is run by Norman (Geoff Bell), a slimy, lecherous brute who could have stepped right out of a Dickens novel, and whose interest in Maud feels decidedly unhealthy: a dynamic that Sonny obviously notices, but apparently chooses to ignore.

Maud’s world shifts slightly when, heading home one day, she finds herself in the midst of a vandalizing protest by members of the Women’s Society and Political Union (WSPU). Shop windows are smashed; the perpetrators melt back into the crowd before the police arrive ... but not before Maud recognizes one of them, Violet (Anne-Marie Duff), as a co-worker.

Far from the Madding Crowd: Frequently maddening

Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and needlessly, for mild sensuality and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.15.15

This has been obvious for (literally) centuries, but it bears repeating: Thomas Hardy was no Jane Austen.

Although Bathsheba (Cary Mulligan) knows that Gabriel (Matthias Schoenaerts) loves her,
she's too independent and stubborn to acknowledge that she quite likely feels the same.
Sadly, such innocence in matters of the heart is about to make her vulnerable to another
potential suitor: one who's far less honorable.

Although Far from the Madding Crowd — his fourth novel, and the one that brought him fame — paints a lovingly descriptive portrait of the rolling, rugged countryside of 19th century Southwest England, with the inflexible class divide that we’ve come to expect from the period, Hardy fails utterly in his novel’s most important task: the creation of a sympathetic protagonist.

Director Thomas Vinterberg and star Carey Mulligan do their very best, in this newest film adaptation of Hardy’s novel. In appearance, spirit and resourcefulness, her handling of Bathsheba Everdene positively sparkles: an effervescent young woman who’d be the center of attention at any social gathering, warding off the advances of countless suitors.

Mulligan is adorable. Her radiant smile is granted additional intensity by a mischievous glint in her eyes, and her nose crinkles in a particularly endearing way when that smile blossoms into a delightful grin that hints at the promise of ... something.

But that’s the problem: Bathsheba is all coy suggestion, with no delivery. Her behavior is to be excused, in Hardy’s view, by her innocence; the parentless upbringing that fueled her pride and grit — and most particularly a determination to prove that a woman can go it alone, despite the era’s disparagement of single women — also left her clueless in kinder social graces such as diplomacy, tact and sensitivity.

By surface appearance, we can’t help admiring Bathsheba. By her actions ... well, that’s another matter indeed.

Part of the problem, of course, is the widening gap that separates our 21st century sensibilities from this novel’s 1874 publication date, with all that entailed. During the past 50 years in particular — since this book’s best-known 1967 adaptation by director John Schlesinger, with Julie Christie handling the title role — we’ve grown less tolerant of a 19th century male author’s clumsy attempt at a female protagonist, and far more impressed by Austen’s progressive 18th century creation of (to us) much more interesting heroines.

Inside Llewyn Davis: Sour notes

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang 

To borrow shamelessly from a mordant holiday song, the only thing you’ll find inside Llewyn Davis is a heart that’s full of unwashed socks, and a soul that’s full of gunk. His brain is full of spiders; he’s as cuddly as a cactus and as charming as an eel.

He really is a heel.

Llewyn (Oscar Isaac, left) is undeniably talented, as he demonstrates when effortlessly
filling in for a session musician during the recording of a novelty tune in honor of
astronaut John Glenn. The song is penned by Llewyn's friend Jim (Justin
Timberlake, center), with a comic vocal assist from Al (Adam Driver)

None of which is the slightest bit amusing or entertaining, as was the case with the green-skinned Grinch. Llewyn Davis is simply a self-centered jerk: a struggling Greenwich Village folk singer attempting to make it in a business he neither understands nor admires, and who bitterly stomps on the feelings of anybody daft enough to extend a gesture of kindness.

We are, once again, spending nearly two hours in the presence of a thoroughly unlikable boor, and to no purpose. Llewyn doesn’t learn anything; neither does he mature or experience anything close to an epiphany. He has no spiritual side, and family ties are (ahem) mangled up in tangled-up knots.

He simply uses people without gratitude or a thought of compensation; the words “thanks” probably would choke him to death.

And yet all these personality failings aren’t the most irritating part of Inside Llewyn Davis. No, the biggest disappointment comes from the knowledge that this is a Joel and Ethan Coen film, and we wait in vain for any trace of the clever allegory, scathing character analysis or deliciously dark humor that has invigorated previous films such as Fargo and No Country for Old Men.

Solace comes there none. This new film is just a dreary slog.

The story follows Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) during what we can imagine is a typical few weeks in the winter of 1961/62, as he struggles to hustle up gigs while spending nights on the couches of the few people still willing to tolerate him. He’s a story-song purist: an angry young man determined to succeed on his own terms, and not yet aware that his brand of poetic, soul-baring angst is about to be buried beneath the hook-laden folk of Bob Dylan and the more melodic, listener-friendly music of (for example) Peter, Paul and Mary.

Not to mention the even more pernicious influence of bubble-gum pop songs.

As always is the case with a Coen brothers film, this one boasts a killer soundtrack. All the music is engaging and illuminating, not to mention a perfect depiction of the era. Isaac is persuasively credible behind a microphone, a guitar held in two capable hands; his music emerges from somewhere deep within, and for a brief moment we can imagine that he actually has something important to say.

The Great Gatsby: Not mere hyperbole

The Great Gatsby (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor, violence and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.10.13

Teachers have been aggravated for generations, when Hollywood brings a classic novel to the big screen; too many lazy students then seek answers from the film, rather than reading the book.

The pomp and splash of a fancy nightclub cannot prevent Tom (Joel Edgerton, far
right) from noticing that his wife, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), is being wooed shamelessly
by Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio, far left). Nick (Tobey Maguire), growing accustomed to
the emotional chaos that inevitably erupts when in the company of his new friends,
adopts his favorite means of retreat: another stiff drink.

Well, here’s a twist: Director Baz Luhrmann’s vibrant, mesmerizing adaptation of The Great Gatsby likely will encourage people to buy and read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel. Rarely has a movie so successfully breathed fresh excitement into a literary work which, no matter how well regarded by scholars, often is regarded as a yawn by readers.

It’s like struggling through Shakespeare’s prose on the printed page, absorbing very little along the way, and then seeing the play come to energetic life when staged with a cast of articulate and charismatic actors.

Yep, Luhrmann’s accomplishment is that impressive.

For openers, the film is a visual masterpiece; it’s literally breathtaking. (Cinematographer Simon Duggan, take a bow.) Never has 3-D cinematography been used so cleverly, or so successfully; the dimensionality opens up the narrative’s symbolic settings, thus lending greater emotional weight to the class-burdened archetypes represented by the five primary characters.

At the same time, Luhrmann and co-scripter Craig Pearce are impressively faithful to Fitzgerald’s original prose, at times bringing large chunks of text to life via the hyper-realism that Luhrmann employed so well in Moulin Rouge.

You’ll not soon forget production designer Catherine Martin’s grandiosely ghastly realization of Fitzgerald’s so-called “Valley of Ashes,” the desolate, begrimed region that separates the decadence of both New York City and the outlying aristocratic enclave of West Egg. (Fitzgerald was inspired by the hellish trash-burning zone along the road from Great Neck to Manhattan, the sole transit in an era before the Long Island Expressway or the Grand Central Parkway.)

Given Luhrmann’s sensibilities and visual pizzazz, it’s easy to imagine him particularly captivated by one element in Fitzgerald’s description of this site: the huge “eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg” that stare out from the remnants of an oculist’s long-discarded billboard. Almost more than Gatsby’s palatial estate — also a spectacular setting — these giant eyes become one of the film’s driving images: the blank stare of an omniscient being who catalogues but does not interfere with the events that take place in the gas station located in a small settlement — not even a town — perched on one edge of this stygian, lung-fouling inferno.

Drive: Stalls after the first lap

Drive (2011) • View trailer for Drive
2.5 stars. Rating: R, for brutal violence, gore, profanity and nudity
By Derrick Bang

Attitude and fuzzy storytelling will go only so far; eventually, one must deliver the goods or risk being exposed as a fraud.

Movie stunt driver by day, criminal getaway driver by night. Ryan Gosling's
unnamed protagonist has a workable life carved out, but his iron-hard exterior
cracks after meeting an attractive neighbor who arouses his sympanthy. And,
just like that, we know this guy is doomed ... along with lots of other folks.

And even when the minimalist acting comes from Ryan Gosling — far more interesting than most, particularly when he channels the “king of cool” as some sort of latter-day Steve McQueen — the pregnant pauses and long, motionless camera takes wear thin after awhile.

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, making his American film debut, errs badly — his first mistake of many — with a slick, crisply executed prologue that the rest of his film fails to match. Nothing could top the smooth tension and cleverly choreographed maneuvers within this early heist/chase sequence, and that's a shame; Drive demonstrates considerable promise on the basis of this introduction, and then turns vague, moody and needlessly contrived.

Gosling is introduced as an impeccable getaway driver: a consummate pro who knows the greater Los Angeles area's mean streets like the back of his hand. He comes complete with a well-practiced speech that defines his area of involvement — no guns, no waiting, just driving — and is delivered by Gosling with an iconic élan that matches Clint Eastwood's “I know what you’re thinking” warning, way back in the first Dirty Harry film.

By day, our deliberately unnamed protagonist works as a film stunt driver; off hours, he repairs cars at an auto shop run by longtime friend Shannon (Bryan Cranston, at his scruffy best). Every so often, local goombah Bernie (Albert Brooks) routes an extracurricular assignment through Shannon, which our Driver-With-No-Name accepts with scarcely a change of expression.

The driver lives alone in an apartment that betrays no personality; he has grown quite comfortable with a nomadic, no-strings-attached existence. Then capricious fate interrupts the flow with an attractive neighbor — Carey Mulligan, as Irene — who catches his eye once, then twice, then a crucial third time.

Gosling conveys the wheels turning in his character's brain: weighing options, calculating consequences. He knows he should ignore her; even something as innocuous as a lift home comes freighted with significance. It's a spark: a connection.

He succumbs. And, just like that, we know he's doomed. The only questions are how, when and the likely number of collateral casualties.

Never Let Me Go: This one won't let you go

Never Let Me Go (2010) • View trailer for Never Let Me Go

4 stars (out of five) • Rated R for brief nudity, sexual candor and unsettling dramatic intensity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.14.10

Science-fiction isn't solely robots and space ships; some of the genre's best entries aren't even recognized as such. A story's speculative elements can be concealed beneath a cloak of social commentary, character interaction or even comedy.

Despite plenty of adolescent "play-acting training," Kathy
(Carey Mulligan, left), Ruth (Keira Knightley) and Tommy
(Andrew Garfield) are completely paralyzed by the process
of ordering a meal during their first visit to a restaurant;
they wind up requesting the same items simply because
this decision requires less thought. But why does this
"ritual" intimidate them so?

1951's The Man in the White Suit, ostensibly one of Alec Guinness' numerous British comedies of that decade, concerns a scientist who develops a fabric that repels dirt and won't tear; clothes made of this material never need to be replaced. Unexpectedly, though, the story's frivolous elements are overshadowed when blue-collar workers in the British garment industry go on a rampage, correctly deducting that their jobs are in jeopardy.

Pure sci-fi, but with a pretty powerful message.

Margaret Atwood's highly disturbing The Handmaid's Tale was made into an equally unsettling 1990 film; the story is set in an unspecified future, when radical, racist, religious elements have taken control of our country. Natasha Richardson stars as one of the many young, healthy white women who are brainwashed into bearing children that will become a new "pure" generation.

Atwood's novel, clearly an angry response to those wanting to roll back the clock on women's rights, feels even more relevant 20 years later, as we routinely hear of Islamic radicals who would deny women any rights ... and not just their women, but all women.

Science-fiction ... or uncanny prescience? That's when the genre truly makes its mark.

All of which brings us to Never Let Me Go, adapted by Alex Garland from Kazuo Ishiguro's unsettling 2005 novel, and brought to brilliant, heartbreaking life by actors Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield. Director Mark Romanek draws memorable performances from his three stars, while quietly indicting those who regard some living things as inferior to the rest of us.

Wall Street 2: 'Money' Talks

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010) • View trailer for Wall Street 2
Four stars (out of five) • Rated PG-13 for brief profanity and dramatic intensity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.23.10

Asked by a scorpion to give it a ride across a lake, a frog wisely hesitated, reasonably concerned that the predator would sting it. 

"Why would I do that?" the scorpion replied. "I'll be on your back; if I sting you, I'd drown."

This sounded logical to the frog, which therefore allowed the scorpion onto its back. But sure enough, halfway across the lake, the scorpion stung the frog. 

"Why?" the frog gasped, as painful black waves of death closed in. "Now we'll both die!"

"It's my nature..." the scorpion answered. 

Jacob (Shia LaBeouf) fails to recognize that his
relationship with fiancee Winnie (Carey Mulligan) will
be severely threatened by his dealings with her
estranged father, particularly when he starts seeing
the man -- the infamous Gordon Gekko -- behind
her back.

I've always wondered, given writer/director Oliver Stone's left-leaning, populist politics, if he regretted having created the character of Gordon Gekko, so brilliantly played by Michael Douglas in 1987's Wall Street. 

Because while Gekko was designed as the villain we were intended to loathe, Douglas did his job too well; the fictitious financial shark made his malignant behavior charming, and became the admired role model for white-collar hooligans who went on a two-decade binge of Wall Street shenanigans that led, inevitably, to the economic crisis that afflicts us to this day. 

Given the opportunity to redress the catastrophe that he helped create — in his cinematic world — would Gekko mend his ways? 

Or would he remain true to his nature?