The Croods — A New Age: Feels somewhat primitive

The Croods: A New Age (2020) • View trailer

Three stars. Rated PG, for mild rude humor

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.27.20

The Croods: A New Age — now playing in whatever theaters are open, and available via video-on-demand closer to Christmas — is akin to its 2013 ancestor … only much more so. 

 

Eep displays her strength by hoisting new best friend Dawn aloft, while the others — from
left, Ugga, Grug, Guy, Hope and Phil — watch with a blend of admiration and concern.

Director Joel Crawford eschews the subtler wit that filmmakers Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders brought to the original, instead favoring relentless pacing and a shrieking tone; both prove exhausting before this new film is even half over. These characters rarely chat; they’re always yelling, screaming, bellowing, howling … well, you get the point.

 

We’re once again in an imaginary prehistoric past, set — as DeMicco and Sanders cheekily suggested — somewhere between the Jurassic Age and the “Katzenzoic Era.” The entire voice cast has returned; the cave-dwelling Croods consist of father figure Grug (Nicholas Cage) and his wife Ugga (Catherine Keener); their teenage daughter Eep (Emma Stone), adolescent son Thunk (Clark Duke) and toddler Sandy (still not speaking); and Ugga’s mother Gran (Cloris Leachman).

 

As before, Grug maintains an inflexible set of rules intended to ensure their survival, most notably that the pack (which is to say, the family) Must. Stay. Together. Alas, this is becoming less likely, because Eep and Guy (Ryan Reynolds) — the young man they came across in the first film — have become a serious item, and are thinking about starting their own pack. 

 

It’s every father’s nightmare, and Cage once again is hilarious in full-tilt exasperation mode.

 

This sequel grants Guy a back-story, during a prologue that picks up years before the first film’s events, when — as a young boy — he’s orphaned during a close encounter with a tar pit (a rather grim opening for a family-friendly animated film). His parents’ final words direct him to “follow the light, to find tomorrow,” so the boy wanders … and wanders … and wanders.

 

Along the way, he finds the cuddly three-toed sloth, Belt, that becomes his constant companion and fashion statement. Years pass, and they eventually meet up with the Croods, and so forth.

 

Moving forward, the search for food remains a constant challenge that hasn’t gone well of late. The pack therefore is astonished to discover an idyllic, impressively farmed, food-laden paradise sheltered behind tall wooden walls. This proves to be the home of the aptly named Bettermans: Phil (Peter Dinklage), wife Hope (Leslie Mann) and teenage daughter Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran).

Sicario: Day of the Soldado — The sophomore curse strikes

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

2015’s Sicario was an impeccably self-contained story that resolved in just the right manner. Under no circumstances did it require a sequel; conceptually, that would be like demanding a sequel to Casablanca.

When unforeseen events separate them from the rest of
an American mercenary force, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro)
wonders how best to protect Isabel (Isabela Moner) ...
and, indeed, if he should bother.

But Hollywood rarely is guided by art, when commerce stands ready to interfere. Sicario proved unexpectedly successfully, and actor-turned-writer Taylor Sheridan was on a roll, having also delivered the terrific original scripts for 2016’s Hell or High Water and last year’s Wind River.

In fairness, it perhaps could be argued that Benicio Del Toro’s mysterious Alejandro, by far the most intriguing character in Sicario, deserved another look.

Sheridan gave it a good try. At its best, Sicario: Day of the Soldado has the multi-layered, parallel storylines that made 2000’s Traffic so compelling (and which, coincidentally, brought Del Toro an Academy Award). But Sheridan’s writing isn’t nearly as tight this time; a few plot details are fuzzy, and at one point simply daft.

More conspicuously, the film stumbles its way to a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion. The final 10 to 15 minutes feel as if director Stefano Sollima impulsively handed the reins to somebody far less qualified. Director Denis Villeneuve did a far superior job with the first film.

That said, Sheridan certainly cooks up a disturbing premise, which feels like a logical extension of our fear-driven world.

A pair of seemingly unrelated suicide bomber events — one during a foiled illegal immigrant crossing at the Mexico/Texas border, the other in a suburban Kansas big-box store laden with shoppers — leads U.S. intelligence agencies to an alarming conclusion: that Middle East terrorists are being ferried to Mexico by tanker ships “conveniently” ignored by Somali pirates, and then concealed among hopeful immigrants guided across the border by drug cartel traffickers.

Responding to demands from the (unseen) U.S. president that something be done to stop this, Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine) summons CIA Deputy Director Cynthia Foard (Catherine Keener) and her favorite mercenary “fixer,” federal agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). The latter has become darker, scarier and more cynical since the case he shared with Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, in Sicario; he now believes that a desired end justifies any means.

Trafficking has become epidemic, Matt reasons, because of greed-inspired harmony between rival Mexican cartels. Provoke a war between cartels, and that accord will cease in a violent heartbeat; the resulting chaos will put an end to terrorist trafficking. (This conclusion seems unduly optimistic.) And the best way to create an internecine cartel war lies not with killing a king, but with kidnapping a prince.

Or, as it turns out, a princess.

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.

Begin Again: A melody-laden charmer

Begin Again (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.4.14

It’s a bit rough around the edges at first, the approach uncertain, the artist perhaps nervous and worried about looking foolish.

A needless concern.

With Dan (Mark Ruffalo, far right) acting as an on-the-fly director, Greta (Keira Knightley)
performs one of her songs in a New York City alley, accompanied by several talented
instrumentalists, and watched by a gaggle of neighborhood children.

I could be discussing the first song we see performed by Greta (Keira Knightley), reluctantly and a bit shyly, in front of an indifferent bar crowd. But I’m actually talking about this film itself: Perhaps writer/director John Carney is that clever, to have mirrored Greta’s stumbling debut before the public eye, with our reaction to the manner in which her story unfolds.

Because, in both cases, the talent involved can’t help but win us over.

Begin Again is the newest offering from the Irish filmmaker who charmed us so thoroughly with the saga of a Dublin busker in 2006’s Once, a film cherished just as much for its music — and that marvelous, Academy Award-winning song, “Falling Slowly” —  as for the gently romantic manner in which its story unfolded.

Carney’s new film once again revolves around music, but the setting and tone are both different and somewhat grittier. This narrative has a villain, but it’s an entity rather than an individual: the music industry, depicted as the instrument by which pure expression is quashed, either benignly or overtly. Remaining true to one’s dreams, passions and (reasonable) expectations is the ideal here: a goal too easily corrupted, as we shall see, by outside forces conscious only of the bottom line.

Those who adore New York for its cornucopia of emotions and experiences will delight in Carney’s rapturous depiction: a Big Apple we’ve not seen idolized so passionately since Woody Allen’s Manhattan, back in 1979. This is a New York of joyous romance, much like the Paris of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie: the city as we imagine it, based on cinematic valentines like this one.

The story opens in the aforementioned East Village bar, as the unwilling Greta is dragged to the stage for one song: a brief musical interlude noticed by nobody except Dan (Mark Ruffalo), whose presence — in that bar, at that moment — is explained during the first of Carney’s clever flashbacks. Dan, once a lauded record label exec, has fallen on hard times prompted by a crisis in his personal life; the result is growing friction with his longtime partner, Saul (Mos Def), which climaxes in yet another humiliation.

Dan also drinks too much, and has been doing so for too long. But his radar remains unimpaired: He’s drawn, moth to flame, by this hesitant performance by a British singer/songwriter who’d rather be anywhere else.

Captain Phillips: Take-charge thriller

Captain Phillips (2013) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence and substance abuse
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.11.13

Some stories are so astonishing, they could only be true; you’d never believe them as plots in a novel.

Utterly helpless at the hands of four heavily armed Somali pirates, Rich PHillips (Tom
Hanks, center) nonetheless weighs every option, primarily concerned about the safety
of his crew, but also — at all times — seeking a psychological edge that might allow
him to outwit his captors.

The credibility-stretching 2009 saga of Captain Richard Phillips and the U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama is just such a narrative, and it has become a taut, tension-laden drama in the capable hands of documentarian-turned-filmmaker Paul Greengrass.

Thriller fans know Greengrass for his superlative entries in the Jason Bourne series, most notably 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy, by far the best of the bunch. But Greengrass also is the writer/director who uncorked United 93 five short years after 9/11, constructing a tense, deeply unsettling real-time depiction of what likely happened that horrible day.

As with United 93, Greengrass’ new film is ripped from disturbing headlines, with screenwriter Billy Ray (Shattered Glass, Breach) adapting the 2010 memoir A Captain’s Duty:Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS and Dangerous Days at Sea.

That book is written by Phillips, with an assist from Stephan Talty ... which does, by definition, dilute some of this film’s suspense. But that hardly matters; to a great degree, Phillips’ ordeal is well known by Americans who sat glued to their TV sets during five days in April 2009. The key point here is that Greengrass depicts this saga with a degree of verisimilitude, and an attention to detail, that border on documentary realism.

Add superlative performances from Tom Hanks and the actors playing his Somali captors, and the result is can’t-miss cinema: You literally won’t take your eyes off the screen.

The film opens quietly, as veteran merchant mariner Rich Phillips (Hanks) packs in anticipation of another routine assignment; we get brief face-time with his wife, Andrea (Catherine Keener), but then she’s never seen again.

(Which, just in passing, might be a missed bet: Just as much drama unfolded in Vermont, as media crews bird-dogged an agonized Andrea Phillips, while she followed these events ... and I’d love to have seen the impressively talented Keener play that role. Then again, Greengrass may have felt that her end of the saga would have diluted the drama.)

Enough Said: Whimsical ode to second chances

Enough Said (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for profanity, sexual candor and partial nudity
By Derrick Bang

This is a sweet little dramedy: the gentle saga of two lonely middle-aged people attempting to establish a second act with each other. Despite taking full advantage of its upper-middle-class Los Angeles setting, Nicole Holofcener’s intimate, conversation-laden film easily could be a stage play, where I suspect it might have more success finding an audience.

Albert (James Gandolfini) really isn't ready for a new relationship; neither is Eva (Julia
Louis-Dreyfus). Somehow, though, not being ready together begins to work. Alas, an
unexpected complication is destined to interfere with their growing bond; the question
is whether they can survive the fallout.

Even during these calmer days of early autumn, with the bombastic summer behind us, films such as Enough Said struggle for viewers.

That’s a shame. Far too few movies explore the quiet isolation of late fortysomethings who worry that life has passed them by: that they’re no longer entitled to the happily-ever-after that once seemed an essential clause in the contract of adulthood. In that respect, Holofcener’s film is refreshing merely by its very existence; that it explores this subject with honesty and candor is a bonus.

Holofcener has based her artistic career on serio-comic examinations of modern American women in crisis, starting with 1996’s Walking and Talking, and continuing with Lovely & Amazing (2001), Friends with Money (2006) and Please Give (2010). She clearly has an artistic rapport with Catherine Keener, who starred in all four of those films, and also has a strong presence in this new one.

But Keener takes a supporting role this time; the central character, Eva, is played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a strong TV presence — most famously in Seinfeld, currently in Veep — whose big-screen career has been restricted mostly to voicing characters in animated features. That’s a shame, because her wry, self-deprecating shtick is an ideal defense mechanism for her character here.

(That said, a few of Louis-Dreyfus’ comebacks do sound too much like a stand-up routine; Holofcener could have reined her in just a little bit.)

Eva works as a professional masseuse and has adapted, if reluctantly, to life as a single mother. She remains on reasonably cordial terms with her ex, and has custody of their teenage daughter, Ellen (Tracey Fairaway). We meet Eva during the strenuous routine of an average day, as she schleps her unwieldy portable massage table from one client to the next, obviously deriving no joy from these regular encounters with often self-absorbed people.

But it’s a living, and Eva can take solace from regular contact with best friend Sarah (Toni Collette) and her husband, Will (Ben Falcone). And we sense that Eva has worked hard to derive comfort — if not satisfaction — from her workaday schedule. Unfortunately, that stability is about to be shattered, because Ellen is days away from leaving for college. Eva, her very soul wrapped up in her daughter’s constant companionship, is fraying visibly around the edges.

The Croods: Stone Age family frolic

The Croods (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG, and needlessly, as this film is fine for all ages
By Derrick Bang

Although the enormously successful Ice Age franchise would seem to have captured the market for animated features set in prehistoric times, that series has focused exclusively on animals, while ignoring the early stirrings of humanity.

Clearly, that oversight begs to be addressed, and The Croods does so with considerable humor: much of it derived from the cheekily anachronistic manner in which these characters interact with an environment that never quite existed in our own past. Writer/directors Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco have set their saga — in their own words — somewhere between the Jurassic Age and the “Katzenzoic Era” ... which explains the colorful assortment of birds, reptiles and mammals that we’re unlikely to find in the fossil record.

Think of television’s The Flintstones, although considerably more primitive, and with a lot more attitude.

The Croods can be transfixed by the simplest things, and so we frequently see
expressions of awe fill the faces of, from left, Gran, Eep, Grug, Thunk, Sandy and
Ugga. And things get even better when they meet the new neighbor...

Our family is composed of a father figure, Grug (voiced by Nicholas Cage), who does his best to preserve the safety of his mate, Ugga (Catherine Keener); their adolescent son, Thunk (Clark Duke); and toddler Sandy (not really talking yet). The clan also includes Grug’s mother-in-law, Gran (Cloris Leachman); and typically rebellious teenage daughter Eep (Emma Stone).

At first blush, it wouldn’t seem that Eep has much to rebel against, but in fact her home life has become insufferably claustrophobic. The Croods once shared their valley with several other family units, all of which have perished, often in some larger predator’s stomach.

As a result, the iron-handed Grug has issued a series of edicts that allows his family only two activities: foraging for food, and hunkering for safety in a dark cave. He regards their continued existence as proof that his various credos are the height of wisdom: Fear is good, change is bad; Anything fun is bad; and Never not be afraid.

A rather stifling set of rules, particularly for a headstrong and curious young woman who wants to live, and see more of her world.

Following a brief explanatory prologue, in order to set the stage, Sanders and DeMicco open their story with a frenetic set piece: a typical egg hunt, in order to secure breakfast. This hilarious sequence has the rip-snortin’ pace of a classic Warner Bros. cartoon short, with Alan Silvestri’s equally tumultuous score further propelling the action. I promise, you’ll gasp for breath, mostly from laughing so hard.

It’s a great way to introduce these six characters, and their dangerous environment.

The Soloist: Solid duet

The Soloist (2009) • View trailer for The Soloist
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for profanity, drug use and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.24.09
Buy DVD: The Soloist • Buy Blu-Ray: The Soloist [Blu-ray]

A high school history professor used weekly current events pop quizzes to encourage his students to read a daily newspaper, a ploy so successful, in my case, that the Los Angeles Times became a faithful and much-enjoyed addiction that continues to this day.

The hard news aside, I've always been drawn to columnists, and therefore noticed immediately when Steve Lopez joined the staff in May 2001, having transitioned to the Times after four years with Time Inc., where his work appeared in Time, Sports Illustrated, Life and Entertainment Weekly.

Happily "parked" in a traffic tunnel, for the setting's open expanse and purity
of sound, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx, left) tentatively tries the cello that
L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) has brought him.

More than any other columnist I had followed before, or have discovered since, Lopez exemplifies an old-style journalistic ombudsman: a sharp-eyed observer of both human nature and civic affairs who rails with intelligence, perception and wit about everything from street potholes and other neighborhood frustrations, to big-ticket issues such as mayoral indifference and the overly cozy inner-circle workings of the Los Angeles City Council.

Above all else, Lopez loathes hypocrisy, and is quick to lash out at elected officials behaving badly; of late, he's been death on L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's deputy mayor of transportation, Jaime de la Vega — who, in his position, should set a good example — because the man drives a Hummer.

Sometimes, though, Lopez just writes about people. I always enjoy his occasional visits to a downtown barber shop, usually as election time rolls around, for the colorful tapestry of opinion that the columnist obtains from the working-class folks who both staff and patronize this business.

In 2005, Lopez began a series of columns about a bedraggled but somehow quite dignified homeless man named Nathaniel Ayers, who poured his soul into a violin having only two strings. Somehow, Lopez realized, Nathaniel found inner calm through music, despite a chatterbox, stream-of-consciousness instability that no doubt had led to the man's life on the streets.

The columns led to mountains of mail and an ongoing relationship between the two men; Lopez had, with his graceful and sympathetic approach, put a face to mental illness. Readers responded; a publisher responded; Hollywood responded. The book — The Soloist — came first, which Lopez expanded from his columns; then he suddenly found himself in the enviable position of being portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. in a deeply moving film directed by Joe Wright (Atonement).