May December: Acutely disturbing

May December (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content, graphic nudity, profanity and drug use

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.8.23

This is a profoundly uncomfortable film.

 

It’s also an acting tour de force by stars Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman: no surprise, since director Todd Haynes has a long-established talent for eliciting delicately nuanced performances in what are essentially two-character dramas (2015’s Carol and 2002’s Far from Heaven leap to mind).

 

At first blush, Joe (Charles Melton) and Gracie (Julianne Moore) seem a happy couple,
mutually devoted to each other. But still — and quite unwholesome — waters run deep...

But while those earlier films also explored the dangerous paths of “forbidden” relationships, the broken taboo this time — in Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik’s increasingly unsettling script — will be a challenge for conservative viewers.

(Sadly, the story is inspired by actual 1996 events; look up Mary Kay Letourneau.)

 

The year is 2015. Celebrated actress Elizabeth Berry (Portman) has traveled to the oak- and Spanish moss-laden neighborhoods of Savannah, Ga., in order to study Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Moore), the woman she’ll play in her next movie.

 

Gracie’s claim to fame? Back in 1992, at the age of 36 — a wife and mother — she was caught having sex with 13-year-old Joe Yoo, in the storeroom of the pet store where he worked alongside her son Georgie. She was arrested and imprisoned, had a child while behind bars, then divorced her husband and married Joe upon release: all of which fueled long-running, scandalized headlines in mainstream and tabloid publications.

 

Now, 23 years later, Gracie and Joe (Charles Melton) have three children: college-age Honor (Piper Curda) and twins Mary (Elizabeth Yu) and Charlie (Gabriel Chung), the latter two about to graduate from high school. Elizabeth has been invited, with Gracie’s full support, to “shadow” her and her family for several days.

 

Gracie also has instructed everybody to cooperate, to every extent possible.

 

(The casualness of such encouragement is just as unsettling as the situation itself. Which also speaks volumes about Gracie’s character.)

 

At first blush, Elizabeth finds the environment warm and inviting. Many folks — notably Mary — are dazzled by the mere presence of a celebrity in their midst. Joe is amiable and accommodating: a doting parent and husband.

 

But cracks surface; what seems warm actually is quietly stifling. Gracie soon reveals her true colors as a control freak (which Moore plays with chilling persuasiveness). When Elizabeth joins Mary and her mother when the girl selects a new dress to wear beneath her graduation gown, what should be a celebratory moment turns wincingly embarrassing, thanks to Gracie’s manipulative, left-handed “compliment.” (Yu’s expression, at this moment, is shattering.)

 

Bad Boys for Life: An excessive final (?) rodeo

Bad Boys for Life (2020) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for strong bloody violence, relentless profanity, sexual candor and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang

Too long, too loud and too laughably ludicrous.

Too profane, as well. Along with deplorably violent.

In characteristic fashion, Marcus (Martin Lawrence, left) wants to reason with a highly
agitated suspect, whereas Mike (Will Smith) prefers the more direct,
confrontational approach.

Par for the course, in a film co-scripted by Joe Carnahan (who previously brought us Narc, Smokin’ Aces and 2018’s remake of Death Wish, among others).

Carnahan got an assist from co-writers Peter Craig and Chris Bremner, and the result — the very late-arriving threequel to 1995’s Bad Boys — delivers precisely what this series’ fans expect. I’ve no doubt they’ll all go home satisfied.

That said, this bloated cop thriller would be a slog without the mirthful banter between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, returning as forever bickering “bad boys” Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett. Except that they’re no longer “boys, as their much younger colleagues frequently point out. They’ve become the cop equivalent of creaky old-timers, and the story has fun with this dynamic.

Marcus, a newly minted grandfather, is more than ready to call it a day. Mike, lacking his partner’s family ties, stubbornly hangs onto his bad-ass rep … while clandestinely dying his signature goatee, in order to conceal the grey. He believes the rep is all he has, despite Marcus’ insistence to the contrary.

Bad Boys for Life — something of a surprise, given the space between it and 2003’s Bad Boys II — is fueled by a classic “one last rodeo” plot. It’s laden with nonstop mayhem: gun battles; sniper assassinations; landscape-pummeling vehicular pursuits in cars, motorcycles, sidecars and helicopters; and several gratuitously gory deaths. Scores of assault gun-wielding thugs are dispatched bloodily, like swatted flies.

It’s all quite over the top; at a self-indulgent 123 minutes, this film definitely wears out its welcome. It also stretches credibility way past the breaking point, starting when Mike unexpectedly takes four to the chest from a semi-automatic assault weapon. And survives.

Seriously?

Catching one bullet would be sufficient for story purposes; four is an early indication of the absurd excess favored by Moroccan-born co-directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (who built their résumé with the Belgian crime dramas Image, Black and Gangsta). 

And no; that’s not really a spoiler, since this intended assassination takes place scant minutes into the film. 

The Sun Is Also a Star: Shines sweetly

The Sun Is Also a Star (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for suggestive content and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

It’s refreshing to see a young adult romance that doesn’t involve people who are white and wealthy.

And aren’t suffering from some exotic, debilitating or fatal disease.

Despite her analytical cynicism, Natasha (Yara Shahidi) finds it hard to resist the charm
assault that Daniel (Charles Melton) mounts so effectively.

Director Ry Russo-Young’s The Sun Is Also a Star is a sweet little charmer, graced with the comfortable chemistry between stars Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton. Scripter Tracy Oliver hits the essential plot beats of Nicola Yoon’s best-selling 2016 novel, although the faith-oriented content is absent (likely viewed as one subtext too many, in a film already laden with considerable emotional baggage).

Russo-Young and cinematographer Autumn Durald also deliver a dreamy portrait of New York City at the bustling height of its melting-pot boisterousness: a vibrant, richly diverse cacophony of cultures, languages, colorful storefronts and wonderfully bizarre public art. It’s a side of the city far removed from Manhattan’s chic opulence, and much more exciting for this absence of aristocratic hauteur.

Jamaica-born Natasha Kingsley (Shahidi) is in a panic, desperately trying to reverse a deportation order mandating her family’s immediate return to their native country. Her father brought them to the States illegally almost a decade earlier, hoping for the better life of an American dream; a random ICE sweep now threatens to rip 17-year-old Natasha from the city she loves, and the educational opportunities that mean so much.

It’s literally the last day before they must return to Jamaica. Natasha leaves their apartment, hoping to get an early morning appointment with a U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) case handler.

Elsewhere, first-generation Korean-American Daniel Bae (Melton), college-bound and carrying the weight of family expectation, heads off for a crucial final interview that could determine his entry to Dartmouth. His doting parents (Keong Sim and Cathy Shim) have long desired that he become a doctor — a plan emphasized via Korean ritual, when Daniel was but an infant — but he’d far rather be a poet.

Natasha is pragmatic to the point of cynicism, believing solely in reason, science and logic; if it can’t be quantified and/or manipulated, it doesn’t exist. Daniel is creative, passionate and open to the mysterious, mischievous vagaries of fate, destiny and dreams. He firmly accepts the caprice of deus ex machina improbability (and when’s the last time a film made an ongoing metaphor of that literary phrase?).