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.

Orion and The Dark: Joyously illuminating

Orion and The Dark (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated TV-Y7, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

As he introduces himself, at the beginning of this delightful animated film, Orion claims to be “a kid just like you.”

 

But that isn’t quite true.

 

Orion is understandably apprehensive when his late-night bedroom is invaded by a
partially shapeless, ink-black apparition that introduces himself as Dark.

All kids fret about this or that, but Orion’s fears are on an entirely different level. To quote Charlie Brown, his anxieties have anxieties.

As Orion soon confesses, he worries about...

 

• Murderous gutter clowns;

 

• Cancer-causing cell phone waves;

 

• Mosquito bites getting infected, causing a limb to wither and drop off;

 

• Falling off a skyscraper;

 

• Being responsible for his team losing;

 

• Being rejected by Sally, the girl he worships from afar;

 

• School locker rooms, particularly when local bully Richie Panici is present; and

 

• Bees, dogs, the ocean, haircuts and monsters.

 

All of this is depicted in a colorful, crayon-style animated rush lifted from the artwork in Orion’s personal journal: a style distinct from the more traditional animation work in this DreamWorks charmer from director Sean Charmatz, making an impressive big-screen feature debut.

 

Most of all, though, Orion is afraid of the dark. He insists on sleeping with night lights, and his bedroom door open. His tolerant parents haven’t quite given up on him, but they’re running out of ideas; he blatantly rejects their insistence that much of what he professes to fear would be fun, if he simply yielded to the moment.

 

“Fun?” he retorts. “Fun is just a word people made up, to make danger sound more appealing!”

 

Orion and The Dark is adapted from British author Emma Yarlett’s captivating 2014 children’s picture book ... although “adapted” isn’t quite the right word. Her book actually is a jumping-off point for a pleasantly mind-boggling script by Charlie Kaufman, who previously perplexed our brains with Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (the latter earning him a well-deserved Academy Award).

 

Trust Kaufman to weave a singularly unique, existentialist storytelling style into a children’s fantasy, while smoothly blending this with Yarlett’s gentle wisdoms.

Elvis & Nixon: Double Trouble

Elvis & Nixon (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang

Kevin Spacey’s marvelous impersonation of Richard Nixon, by itself, is worth the price of admission.

That said, everything about director Liza Johnson’s cheeky little comedy is thoroughly delightful.

To their mutual surprise, Elvis Presley (Michael Shannon, left) and President Richard M.
Nixon (Kevin Spacey) discover that they have a lot in common ... including a fondness for
Dr. Pepper.

It’s also based on an actual incident that deserves prominent placement in the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction file: an event that scripters Joel Sagal, Hanala Sagal and Cary Elwes have built into a droll ensemble piece that also would work as an amusing stage play, particularly if staffed as well as Johnson and casting directors Kerry Barden and Paul Schnee have done here.

Johnson’s film expands upon the unlikely White House encounter between Elvis Presley and President Nixon, which took place shortly after noon on Dec. 21, 1970. Presley orchestrated the meeting, mostly because he wanted to augment his collection of official police badges with one from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Nixon, in turn, was encouraged to approve this unexpected guest as a means of enhancing his “one of the people” cred, and for the killer photo op. The latter scheme backfired somewhat, when Presley requested that the meeting be kept secret ... which it was, but only for about a year, at which point columnist Jack Anderson published what he had learned.

Which, as it happens, wasn’t as much as one might think. Elvis’ visit took place before Nixon had the Oval Office wired for continuous taping, and our only record of their actual conversation is based on notes taken by Nixon aide Egil “Bud” Krogh.

Which conveniently gives this film’s scripters plenty of room for, ah, embellishment. And they’ve done this with deliciously understated subtlety, matched by Johnson’s equally delicate touch with her cast.

The story begins a few days earlier, as a bored Presley (Michael Shannon), dismayed by the images of civil unrest emanating from the multiple TV sets in his Graceland lounge, impulsively decides that he can do something about this. He flies to Los Angeles to collect longtime friend and handler Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer), who has left Presley’s employ in an effort to carve out his own career.

This is the first of the film’s strong character dynamics. Presley clearly misses Schilling, in great part because Jerry is one of the few people who likes Elvis for what he is, rather than the superficial wealth and celebrity. Despite that, Presley clumsily tries to “buy” Schilling’s return with offers of expensive gifts: a wistfully ironic touch that Shannon delivers with an endearing, gruff awkwardness.

The Great Buck Howard: Not so great

The Great Buck Howard (2008) • View trailer for The Great Buck Howard
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for mild profanity and a fleeting drug reference
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.20.09
Buy DVD: The Great Buck Howard • Buy Blu-Ray: The Great Buck Howard [Blu-ray]

Indie films come in a wild variety of flavors; that's what makes them so interesting. You simply never know what to expect.

Some are ultra-low-budget guerrilla productions, fueled by little more than raw determination and funded by maxed-out credit cards; El Mariachi and The Blair Witch Project would fit into this group. Regardless of the quality of the finished product, you can't help admiring the audacity of all involved, and the fact that their films got made and released at all.

Troy (Colin Hanks, center left) watches with interest as fading stage mentalist
Buck Howard (John Malkovich, center) checks his TV coverage with his agent,
Gil (Ricky Jay), to see whether he might have a chance to claw his way back
into the big time.

Others, at the opposite end of the spectrum, possess the better funding and A-list stars that we'd often expect from a Hollywood studio production. The only real difference seems to be the comparative modesty of the project itself: a generally quiet script and concept that lack the juice liable to attract enough attention in the cinema marketplace.

The Great Buck Howard belongs to the latter group. Once upon a time, this would have been a B-film perched at the bottom half of a double-feature: an opportunity for name talent to try something a little different.

Sean McGinly's little film is impressively mounted, with top-drawer production values. The opening credits sequence is extremely clever: an early indication that a lot of care and love went into what we're about to watch.

Unfortunately, despite its poignant premise, McGinly's film is very, very slow, his directorial hand so gently employed that he risks putting audiences to sleep just as effectively as the title character's hypnotism act. Even when people get annoyed with each other here, they do so placidly, as if everybody had popped a few Valiums before hitting the set each day.

Our young protagonist, Troy Gable (Colin Hanks), is introduced as he bolts from law school, finally compelled to act on the conviction that he'd never be happy as a lawyer. With vague ideas of becoming a writer, but aware of the need for a steady paycheck in the meanwhile, Troy accepts the obviously questionable position of dogsbody for fading mentalist Buck Howard (John Malkovich).

Although something of a celebrity back in the day — Buck repeatedly boasts that he appeared 61 times on TV's The Tonight Show, when Johnny Carson was host — the limelight has dimmed. These days, Buck is reduced to playing dilapidated theaters in cities such as Bakersfield and Akron, Ohio: the stage mentalism equivalent of old-time stand-up comics who once prowled the Borscht Belt.

Oddly enough, though, Buck doesn't seem to mind. He genuinely enjoys interacting with a sparse audience primarily composed of post-retirement fans; they, in turn, tolerate the sidebar portions of his act, as when he sits at the piano, every evening, to croon a wincingly awful rendition of "What the World Needs Now Is Love."

Untraceable: Unwatchable

Untraceable (2008) • View trailer
No stars (turkey). Rating: R, for profanity and excruciating, exploitative violence and torture
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.31.08

The trouble with culturing a disease is that the little buggers inevitably escape the petri dish.

Horror films are designed to be outrageous; they cater to a specific viewership that worships at the alter of torture-porn slime such as the Hostel and Saw series.

FBI cybercrime special agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane, center) and Portland
police detective Eric Box (Billy Burke, far right) watch in horror, along with
the rest of Marsh's colleagues, as another poor victim is tortured to death on a
Web site run by a tech-savvy Internet predator.

Indeed, it could be argued that horror films — like any other aspect of youth culture — aren't doing their job unless they offend and otherwise dismay mainstream society.

It's an entirely different matter, however, when such reprehensible garbage oozes from the fringe element and emerges with a deceptive outer layer of respectable clothing, designed specifically to entice the unwary.

In the case of Untraceable, the respectable clothing is worn by star Diane Lane, a veteran actress with a long list of credits stretching back to The Outsiders and The Cotton Club, who more recently copped an Oscar nomination for Unfaithful and indulged her romantic side in Under the Tuscan Sun.

Her presence here adds bogus legitimacy to an otherwise worthless piece of trash from a director — Gregory Hoblit — determined to rub our noses in precisely the sort of ghastly, grisly mayhem that has become de rigueur in horror flicks such as those cited above.

To call Untraceable tasteless is the worst of understatements.

Mainstream cop thrillers should be able to survive on tension and character development, and in fairness scripter Robert Fyvolent tries to get some juice going between FBI cybercrime special agent Jennifer Marsh (Lane) and police detective Eric Box (Billy Burke, wholly unmemorable). But Lane and Burke have zero chemistry ... or maybe it's just that Hoblit couldn't be bothered to encourage them to create any.

The story is a sadistic blend of cyber wizardry and old-fashioned mechanical torture. A deranged wing nut — Joseph Cross, as Owen Reilly — sets up a Web site with streaming video of an escalating series of murders-in-progress.

He starts with a kitten but quickly escalates to people, and the gimmick is that the various death traps are controlled by the number of viewers who log into the site: The more lookie-loos, the faster the victim dies.