West Side Story: Totally captivating

West Side Story (2021) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and rather generously, for strong violence, strong profanity, attempted rape and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.10.21

The initial few seconds are crucial.

 

Any faithful presentation of West Side Story must begin with a dark stage or screen, as we hear the call-and-response pair of whistled triplets … followed by a brief pause, and then the vibrant opening bars of Leonard Bernstein’s overture, as the Jets assemble for the first electrifying dance number.

 

This can't end well: Although the school gym is supposed to be neutral territory, the white
kids (left) and Puerto Ricans clearly aren't sizing up each other's dance moves ... even
though this sequence quickly explodes into one of the film's many amazing
production numbers.

Director Steven Spielberg nails it, with this pulsating, big-screen adaptation: honorably faithful to the 1961 film, while also demonstrating its own, equally dynamic personality.

Actually, everybody nails it.

 

Screenwriter Tony Kushner — who earned Oscar nominations for his two previous collaborations with Spielberg, 2005’s Munich and 2012’s Lincoln — retains the essential late 1950s/early ’60s setting, while adding focus to the “urban renewal” (i.e. slum clearance) that puts additional pressure on the Jets and their rivals, the Puerto Rican Sharks. No wonder they jockey ever more furiously for control of their rapidly shrinking turf.

 

Indeed, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski opens the film with slow, sweeping pans past huge wrecking balls that hover over the demolished remnants of several city blocks that now look like a war zone: a deliberately grim reminder that neighborhoods of color invariably are targeted for such development.

 

(In a rather droll touch, Kaminski’s camera also slides past a large sign that heralds the impending creation of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.)

 

The opening “call to arms” is led by Riff (Mike Faist), who propels the expanding cadre of Jets toward an equally large gathering of the Sharks, led by Bernardo (David Alvarez). The unison dance moves are feral, taunting and gracefully balletic; choreographer Justin Peck, of New York City Ballet, clearly quotes Jerome Robbins’ original dances, albeit with even more intensity.

 

Peck’s staging of subsequent numbers, as the story proceeds, is audaciously clever. The show-stopping “America,” always a highlight, has been moved from a nighttime rooftop to the San Juan Hill’s daytime streets, where it explodes into a massive neighborhood block party of store merchants and passersby, in addition to our main characters. It’s a breathtaking sequence that gets progressively bold and colorful, the moves ranging from Robbins-esque ballet to Caribbean pachanga.

 

“I Feel Pretty” is given an ironic twist, as Maria (Rachel Zegler) and the many female members of her late-night cleaning crew cavort amid the mannequins on the ground floor of Gimbels … where all the clothing and accessories are aimed at white patrons. “Cool,” a straight dance piece in the 1961 film, has been transformed into an increasingly angry confrontation between Riff and Tony (Ansel Elgort), as they wrestle for control of a gun while trying to evade the gaping holes on a rotting pier at the edge of the city.

 

It’s a ferociously tense sequence, Spielberg deliberately playing on our fear that the damn thing’s gonna go off at any moment.

The Many Saints of Newark: Far from celestial

The Many Saints of Newark (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, pervasive profanity, sexual content and nudity

Available via: HBO Max and movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

I’ve never before seen a bait-and-switch movie.

 

Fans approaching this film anticipating the origin and molding of Tony Soprano — a quite reasonable expectation, given the way The Many Saints of Newark has been marketed — are certain to be disappointed.

 

When his father returns home after a four-year prison stretch, teenage Tony
(Michael Gandolfini, left) — uncertain what to say or do — must be encouraged by
his "uncle" Dickie (Alessandro Nivola) to go with his heart.

This is, instead, a years-long study of a slowly building turf war between New Jersey’s Italian Mafiosi — which, yes, includes numerous individuals who will, in time, become the running characters on the six-season HBO series — and competitors spawned by the rising Black power movement. The young Tony Soprano is, at best, a very minor character in these events … and, more crucially, the David Chase/Lawrence Konner script gives absolutely no indication of what will trigger the kid’s eventual rise to power.

I’ll take that a step further: As clumsily played by Michael Gandolfini — the late James Gandolfini’s son, in a bit of stunt casting that bespeaks sentimentality rather than common sense — there’s no way this pasty, sullen, self-centered mope ever could become the adult Tony Soprano that we loved and loathed. Fuhgeddaboudit.

 

What we’re left with, instead, is a mildly absorbing, Godfather-esque crime saga centered on the complex private and professional relationships between the Soprano and Moltisanti families. Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) is the Al Pacino-esque central character who, during his more rational moments, attempts to maintain unity while tending to his end of the “family business.”

 

Sadly, Dickie — very well played by Nivola — is prone to explosive bursts of temper, with dire results.

 

This saga is occasionally narrated — in a cheeky bit of storytelling — by Michael Imperioli’s Christopher Moltisanti, speaking from beyond the grave. (We recall, from the series, that Tony Soprano ultimately killed him.) Christopher therefore establishes the groundwork for a chronicle that begins before he was born.

 

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes obvious that writers Chase and Konner have laid out far more than this single two-hour film can resolve, with any degree of satisfaction. Too many sidebar events get short shrift, or no shrift at all; this overly ambitious narrative screams for the long-form episodic treatment enjoyed by the HBO series.

 

Matters aren’t helped by the fact that the Italians share the stage with Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), a childhood friend of Dickie’s who now — on his behalf — oversees the numbers racket in the Central Ward, Newark’s predominantly Black neighborhood. Odom’s performance is thoughtful and multi-layered; Harold is intelligent, ambitious and angered by the circumstance of skin color that thwarts a desire for his own piece of the action.

 

Frankly, Harold deserves his own separate movie.

First Man: A troubled landing

First Man (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.12.18

Director Damien Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer jump into their film with an edge-of-the-seat sequence: the highest of solo pilot Neil Armstrong’s numerous test flights in the X-15 rocket airplane.

While Janet Armstrong (Claire Foy) putters in the kitchen, her husband Neil (Ryan Gosling)
and their elder son Rick (Gavin Warren) work on a jigsaw puzzle during a rare moment
of family bonding, unaware that a phone call is about to bring disturbing news.

It’s a savagely cut cacophony of images: the shuddering and jouncing aircraft; the roar of the rocket engines that blast Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) up to 207,500 feet; similarly jittery close-ups on his determined expression.

And then utter silence, as the engines switch off (intentionally) ,and Armstrong gets a panoramic view of the blue globe below, against the dark-night contrast at the edge of space.

Totally, amazingly breathtaking.

But that’s just the preamble. Armstrong’s return to Earth goes awry when the X-15 begins to “bounce” off the upper atmosphere, sending him even higher into the mesosphere above. Utter chaos, as he tries to compensate while mentally plotting a new landing spot, having zoomed past the planned touchdown at Edwards Air Force Base.

Like, wow.

First Man is laden with sequences even superior to this one, given a degree of verisimilitude — by visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert — wholly on par with the we-are-there reality viewers experienced while watching 2013’s Gravity. It becomes clear that Armstrong had more lives than a cat, and also possessed seat-of-the-pants math and physics calculating skills that made him just this side of a walking computer. (A good thing, too, given the limitations of 1960s mainframes.)

If only this film’s quieter moments were handled as well.

Singer’s script is adapted from James R. Hansen’s 2005 best-seller, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, the pilot/astronaut’s only official biography. The film’s intimate “family” element takes place in between stunning piloting events that could be considered myth, were the details not so well known: the aforementioned 1962 X-15 flight, the 1966 Gemini 8 crisis, the 1968 mishap with one of the Earthbound Lunar Lander Research Vehicles, and — the reason for this film’s existence — the 1969 Apollo 11 mission.

Considerable time is spent with Armstrong’s home life, particularly early on, as he and his wife Janet (Claire Foy) agonize over the final months of their 2-year-old daughter, Karen, who died while being treated for a malignant tumor at the base of her brain stem. This is a lot to take in, so quickly, and explanations are minimal. 

The presentation of this chapter establishes the style Chazelle and cinematographer Linus Sandgren use throughout the film: lots of tight close-ups and jiggle-cam tracking shots, like one would expect from home movies. This suggests documentary-style authenticity — which Chazelle likely intended — but it also assumes considerable pre-existing knowledge of the part of the viewer, and repeatedly leaves questions unanswered.

I got a sense, heightened as the film continued, that this 141-minute drama has been distilled from a longer director’s edit. Details are left unexplained; scenes cut abruptly to unrelated events.

Gold: 18 karat at best

Gold (2017) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for sexuality, nudity and considerable profanity
By Derrick Bang

This story has more ups and downs than a merry-go-round ... and, like such amusement park attractions, any semblance of an actual destination is mere illusion.

On the triumphant day that his company is admitted to the New York Stock Exchange,
Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey, fist raised) jubilantly kicks off the morning trading,
accompanied by girlfriend Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard) and partner Mike Acosta (Edgar
Ramírez, far left).

Gold is inspired, and quite accurately, by the 1997 Bre-X Minerals Ltd. mining and stock fraud, which — in the wake of the company’s collapse — became (and remains) one of Canada’s largest and most embarrassing stock frauds, and history’s largest-ever mining scandal.

And all because “gold fever” blinded far too many people to the most obvious set of checks and balances.

Scripters Patrick Massett and John Zinman have changed names and moved the primary players from Canada to the States. Even so, they follow events closely enough to raise eyebrows over their failure to acknowledge two published accounts of the catastrophe — The Bre-X Fraud and Fool’s Gold: The Making of a Global Market Fraud — that must have served as primary sources.

Matthew McConaughey stars as Kenny Wells, the third-generation face of Washoe Mining, a family business based in Reno, Nev. A prospector at heart, Kenny believes strongly in lineage, and loves to wax eloquent about the grandfather who founded the company with hard work and dirt under his fingers. But the story inevitably sounds rehearsed and greased with a layer of snake oil, particularly when he’s trying to charm investors.

Kenny also supplies occasional off-camera narration to us viewers, to bridge time-shifts and plot gaps, but McConaughey’s voice has the distinct aroma of self-justification. It’s clear, pretty quickly, that Kenny probably isn’t a reliable narrator; he may relate details accurately, but his complicity is open to serious question.

We meet him during a comfortable period, as primary hustler for the company that his father still runs. Daytime work is dominated by telephone pitches and the careful scrutiny of geological surveys; hard-drinking evenings take place in the tavern where Kenny’s longtime girlfriend, Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard), works as a waitress.

They’re an unlikely but comfortably matched couple. She loves him unconditionally, having made peace with his almost religious pursuit of dreams. He, in turn, relies on her stability and support; she grounds him. Decked out in 1980s-style big hair, and poured into the tight outfits with which waitresses have long enhanced their tips, Howard is the pluperfect working gal who adores her man.

The glow in her eyes is palpable, whenever Kenny is around: We hope that he’ll never abuse her loyalty.

Café Society: Order off the menu

Café Society (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for suggestive content, occasional violence and a fleeting drug reference
By Derrick Bang

Once or twice each year, I come across a film whose mere existence is baffling.

They’re not bad, at least not overtly; they’re simply bewildering. We endure them for somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes, and then the lights come up, and we frown at each other with the same unspoken question: Is that it? Seriously?

It's love at first sight, at least for Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg), when Vonnie (Kristen Stewart)
agrees to show him all the wonders of Hollywood's film colony. Alas, the course of true
love never is steady in a Woody Allen film.

And why, precisely? What was the point?

Woody Allen’s newest is just such a film.

The package is attractively wrapped: Production designer Santo Loquasto transports us back to 1930s New York and Hollywood with an opulent level of verisimilitude. The actors are luxuriously garbed by costume designer Suzy Benzinger, every member of the large ensemble cast well selected for each part.

Allen supplies narration throughout the film, often with the same passionate, poetic devotion that he displayed for the Big Apple in 1979’s Manhattan. The various characters seem reasonably interesting, the story’s unusual romantic triangle an intriguing hook on which to hang what we expect will be an homage to Golden Age cinematic classics.

Doesn’t work out that way.

Café Society is a textbook case of a movie being all dressed up, with nowhere to go. I’ve no idea what Allen intended us to gather from his bizarrely random script, unless it’s the oft-stated cliché that people are remarkably adept at screwing up their own lives. But even that doesn’t seem quite right, because several of these characters do get their heart’s desire.

With an oeuvre as lengthy and varied as Allen’s, we tend to categorize each new film on the basis of its many predecessors; this one feels like a clumsy blend of Crime and Misdemeanors and Radio Days, if the latter’s young protagonist were half a generation older. That’s a rather unholy mash-up, to say the least, and Allen doesn’t do anything remotely interesting with it.

Café Society also is burdened with far too many sidebar characters, many of whom don’t get the attention they deserve. Their various side issues don’t integrate well with the core narrative, leaving us to wonder why they were included in the first place.

The storyline, more or less:

Bronx-born Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg), not satisfied with joining his father’s jewelry business, decamps for the much more exciting life he imagines awaits on the opposite coast, in Hollywood. Bobby has an entry of sorts: his uncle Phil (Steve Carell), a high-powered agent who drops famous names, like adjectives, into every spoken sentence.

At first blush, Phil seems a superficial, puffed-up phony who merely talks a great show, but no; turns out he really does know and represent everybody from Errol Flynn to Judy Garland. Even so, he’s too self-obsessed to waste much time with a nephew, and so hires Bobby as a glorified gopher and assigns his secretary/assistant, Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), to look after the kid.

Black Mass: Nightmarish deal with the devil

Black Mass (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for brutal violence, profanity, sexual candor and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.18.15

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

The saga of gangster James “Whitey” Bulger was far from complete when Boston Globe reporters Gerard O’Neill and Dick Lehr — the former a Pulitzer winner, the latter a Pulitzer finalist — published their true-crime saga Black Mass in 2000. With his criminal empire having been crushed during the previous decade; Whitey already was six years a fugitive.

It may seem like a quiet meal, but the atmosphere is far from benign ... particularly when
mob enforcer Stephen Flemmi (Rory Cochrane, far left) decides that FBI agent John Morris
(David Harbour, far right) has insulted him. Suddenly, even Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp,
center left) and fellow FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) are sure what'll happen...

He remained on the run until June 22, 2011, when he was arrested quietly in Santa Monica, Calif. Two courtroom trials later, jaw-dropping for their sordid detail, Whitey — then 83 years old — was sentenced to two consecutive life terms (plus five years, for good measure). He’s now a permanent resident at a Florida federal penitentiary.

Whitey’s vicious career, and the scandalous FBI incompetence that allowed it to flourish, have been brought to the big screen by director Scott Cooper, whose two previous films — Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace — demonstrated an impressive flair for character drama. Cooper doesn’t disappoint here either; armed with a taut and densely layered script adaptation by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, the director delivers a horrific portrait of unrestrained evil and corruption.

The film is anchored further by star Johnny Depp’s chilling depiction of Whitey: as far from the comic antics of Capt. Jack Sparrow as could possibly be imagined.

Depp obviously has an affinity for true crime, having previously played John Dillinger in director Michael Mann’s slick and sordid Public Enemies. Awful as Depp’s Dillinger was, though, a bit of the actor’s charm occasionally leaked around the edges, Mann and co-scripters Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman perhaps trying to suggest a soupçon of “honor among thieves” camaraderie.

You won’t find any such quasi-ethical respite here; Depp’s Whitey is the stuff of nightmares, his tightly compressed lips and stone-cold stare as unnerving as his flat, detached manner of speaking. The only thing worse than Whitey’s reluctance to smile, is an occasion that does prompt a death’s-head grin: a certain signal of looming brutality.

Folks will talk about this performance for quite some time.

Ant-Man: A huge disappointment

Ant-Man (2015) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence and some rather nasty peril
By Derrick Bang

Well, it was inevitable: Mighty Marvel finally stumbled.

This film’s problems are numerous, but the largest issue is one of tone; director Peyton Reed, apparently adopting 1989’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids as his template, has emphasized slapstick sight gags and comic relief supporting characters to a point that pretty well destroys any of this story’s potential drama.

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd, center) listens attentively as Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) explains
the many hazards likely to be encountered during a clandestine assault on his own
company's research labs. For these reasons and many others, Hank's daughter, Hope
(Evangeline Lilly), believes Scott wholly wrong for the task.

The nadir is a climactic duel to the death between miniscule characters, which takes place within a child’s tabletop train set: a sequence that absolutely, positively doesn’t work on any level. And then, just to make a bad idea even worse, Reed punctuates this clash with an unexpectedly gigantic Thomas the Tank Engine, its enormous plastic eyes bouncing back and forth in dismay.

Just as mine were doing.

Reed’s sledge-hammer efforts at comedy are bothersome, but — in fairness — he can’t be blamed for trying to make the best of a bad situation. Ant-Man has been a troubled production for years, during a lengthy gestation in the hands of British writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, among others), whose sly, subversive brand of humor certainly would have been better than what we wound up with here.

But the project was ripped from his hands at the last moment, the script subsequently re-written by Adam McKay and star Paul Rudd. McKay is responsible for numerous Will Ferrell projects, notably Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and its sequel, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and this year’s Get Hard. I submit that Ferrell’s favorite scripter can’t, by definition, be right for anything taking place in Marvel’s ambitious film universe.

So: What were Marvel and Disney thinking?

Rudd’s meddlesome hand is equally evident. The star clearly shaped the script to fit the insufferable smugness that has become his go-to screen persona, rather than — as always should be the case — modulating his performance to suit the character’s needs. But the latter undoubtedly would require a level of acting beyond Rudd’s capabilities, and thus we’re stuck with his usual lackadaisical swanning from one scene to the next.

Rudd simply doesn’t seem to care about this character, or indeed the entire film. Ergo, why should we?

The core story follows the broad strokes established during several decades in the Marvel comic book universe, with genius scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) having perfected a process that allows him to shrink to ant-size, while maintaining his molecular density in order to (among other things) deliver full-strength punches. Along the way, he also developed the means to communicate with ants, and thus can command massive insect armies to help take out nefarious villains in his guise as Ant-Man.

But all that was years ago. Wary of the military applications contemplated by Howard Stark (John Slattery) and his weasel corporate associate Mitchell Carson (Martin Donovan, suitably smarmy), Pym retreats into seclusion. And since Ant-Man’s brief “career” remained under the public radar, the very notion of such a superhero has become little more than an urban myth.

This Is Where I Leave You: Too much left behind

This Is Where I Leave You (2014) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for sexual candor, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Family dynamics can be messy, even disastrous ... which undoubtedly explains the popularity of stories with dysfunctional kinfolk.

It’s comforting to think that we’re not the only ones with a loser younger sibling, or a daft uncle, or a waspish parent.

When Hilary (Jane Fonda, center) reveals that her just-departed husband's final wish was
for his entire family to sit Shiva for a week, this comes as ghastly news to her estranged
children: from left, Wendy (Tina Fey), Paul (Corey Stoll), Judd (Jason Bateman) and
Phillip (Adam Driver).

Even more comforting, after a moment’s reflection, to realize that such situations must be quite common, if they wind up as popular books and movies that feel familiar to so many different people.

Novelist Jonathan Tropper has made a career of scathingly hilarious novels about hapless protagonists buffeted by crises involving careers, parents, siblings, spouses and other elements forever beyond their ability to control. Indeed, “control” — or the lack thereof — is Tropper’s go-to plotline: His classic protagonist is a guy who assumes he's got his act together, only to discover that catastrophe waits just around the corner.

No surprise, then, that one of Tropper’s books — This Is Where I Leave You — has migrated to the big screen, albeit with mixed results. Tropper adapted the novel himself, so we can assume he made a point of retaining key character arcs, comedic encounters and snarky one-liners. He also has the benefit of a large and talented ensemble cast: a collection of potential scene-stealers forever in danger of upstaging each other, much the way large and boisterous families frequently spin out of control.

But I’m not sure Shawn Levy’s overly broad, slapstick sensibilities make him the best director for this project. Subtlety isn’t in Levy’s vocabulary, as proven by uneven, overblown farces such as Date Night, the Steve Martin Pink Panther remake, and the ongoing Night at the Museum franchise. Tropper’s books resonate because of their unerring blend of comedy, pathos and redemptive self-awareness; Levy’s shrill, shrieking approach to humor tends to overwhelm everything else.

Which is a shame, because a dozen richly flawed characters wander throughout this often chaotic narrative, and we can’t help feeling that some of their best interactions got left behind. Instead, we’re treated far too often to (for example) a toddler who drags his potty chair from room to room, plunking onto the seat whenever the urge strikes, and then proudly displaying the results to everybody at hand. Us included.

Which, naturally, includes an episode of poop flung onto an unprepared adult.

When that sort of material emerges within the first 10 minutes of a film, we can't help expecting an overall tone that will undercut the gentler, redemptive moments to be found within Tropper’s script.

Non-Stop: Well-executed terror in the air

Non-Stop (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for action, intense suspense, mild profanity, fleeting sensuality and drug content
By Derrick Bang

This is a taut, tidy and thoroughly engrossing little thriller ... although it won’t do a thing for people already nervous about flying.

The resourceful Bill (Liam Neeson) thinks up several quite clever ways to expose the
identity of the indivisual who keeps sending threatening text messages ... but the
unknown tormentor/terrorist eludes our hero at every turn. Eventually, even Jen
(Julianne Moore) begins to wonder if the situation is beyond Bill's ability to solve.

John W. Richardson, Christopher Roach and Ryan Engle have concocted a twisty, danger-laden mystery that Agatha Christie would have admired: a whodunit and howzithappening that makes clever use of the claustrophobic setting and modern smart phone technology. Granted, the premise is preposterous, and interior details don’t withstand much scrutiny, but director Jaume Collet-Serra and editor Jim May move things quickly enough to obscure the logical lapses.

I also applaud the casting and sidebar character development, elements usually overlooked in lesser action thrillers. Although this is Liam Neeson’s show, and he commands the stage quite ably, we also get solid work from a dozen or so supporting players.

Neeson and Collet-Serra also worked together on 2011’s Unknown, although that initially suspenseful thriller was undone by its sloppy script. If the improved work here on Non-Stop reflects learning from that earlier mistake, then it’s nice to know all concerned paid attention.

The premise is simple: Veteran air marshal Bill Marks (Neeson) boards a routine flight from New York City to London, and starts receiving cryptic text messages from some unknown sender who demands the transfer of $150 million into a numbered account ... or passengers on the flight will start to die, at 20-minute intervals. It’s immediately obvious, from what the sender knows, that s/he is on the plane.

Bill’s major issue is credibility: How can he possibly take such a crazy ultimatum seriously? And when evidence eventually suggest that this unknown terrorist truly has the means to carry out such threats, how can Bill get anybody to believe him?

Character back-story muddies the water, of course. Bill is a man under a cloud: an alcoholic carrying a heavy personal burden — details of which emerge slowly — and therefore a less than reliable judge of any given situation, in the eyes of his colleagues and superiors. Even his fellow on-flight air marshal, Jack Hammond (Anson Mount), finds it difficult to accept Bill’s story at face value.

Bill does everything by the book; he immediately confides in the plane’s captain (Linus Roache) and veteran flight attendant, Nancy (Michelle Dockery). Keeping the situation concealed from the passengers is essential, but that becomes progressively more difficult, as Bill’s invisible cat-and-mouse tormentor escalates the stakes.