Superman: Up, up and away!

Superman (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for fantasy violence and action, and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.16.25

It’s damn well about time.

 

I had begun to worry that the current Warner Bros. regime didn’t have the faintest idea how to properly handle Big Blue.

 

Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo, center) and Clark Kent
(David Corenswet) are disturbed by the misleading spin that media talking heads have
put on Superman's recent activities.

Director Zack Snyder’s previous cycle — Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League, all with Henry Cavill donning the cape — was a dour, dreary, dull and depressing slog, without the faintest trace of the noble Kryptonian who battled for truth, justice and a better tomorrow.

(Yes, it used to be “...and the American way,” but there’s nothing wrong with making Superman’s pledge more universal.)

 

Writer/director James Gunn has swooped to the rescue, granting this adventure the same blend of world-threatening thrills and snarky character dynamics that made his first two Guardians of the Galaxy entries so much fun. (We’ll pretend the third one never happened.)

 

Gunn also pays affectionate tribute to many key elements from the Christopher Reeve series, starting right out of the gate, when this film’s rousing David Fleming/John Murphy score hits us with a few bars of John Williams’ iconic Superman theme.

 

Sharp-eyed viewers also will spot several members of Gunn’s repertory actors, albeit in very fleeting roles.

 

All that said, this definitely is a “darkest before the dawn” story, and “dark” dominates the entire first hour. Gunn kicks things off as a defeated Superman (David Corenswet), punched halfway around the world, crashes hard into Antarctic snow near his Fortress of Solitude. He’s in agony, suffering from broken ribs, a ruptured bladder and — given his labored breathing — fluid in his lungs.

 

(What? I hear you cry. Superman can be damaged? Goodness, yes; he’s tough, but not wholly invulnerable.)

 

The situation then becomes almost farcical — not in a good way — when he desperately whistles to Krypto. The clearly insufficiently trained super-pooch arrives quickly ... but only wants to play, completely oblivious to Supe’s distress.

 

This is a cheeky way to start: a totally James Gunn maneuver.

 

Once Superman recovers — thanks to a sustained blast of our yellow sun’s healing rays (Gunn knows his Superman lore) — and returns to Metropolis, we discover how dire things have become. 

 

Twisters: Prepare to be blown away!

Twisters (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action and peril, fleeting profanity, and disturbing images

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.21.24

Although this film leaves no doubt that it’s a summertime, popcorn-laden rollercoaster ride — and quite a suspenseful one — there’s no denying the cautionary message also embedded in Mark L. Smith and Joseph Kosinski’s storyline:

 

With an EF5 (Enhanced Fujita Scale) tornado about to blow into town, Kate (Daisy
Edger-Jones), Ravi (Anthony Ramos, center) and Tyler (Glen Powell) try to determine
the safest place to hunker down.

Climate change is real, and those who ignore Mother Nature’s increasingly catastrophic warnings, do so at their own peril.

Because, as this thriller distressingly depicts, there will come a time when the financial damage, and tragic loss of life, become too great to dismiss.

 

(I’d have thought this was blindingly obvious years ago ... but certain segments of humanity do have a distressing habit of burying their heads in the sand.)

 

Anyway...

 

This sequel’s power comes not merely from special effects supervisor Scott R. Fisher and visual effects supervisor Ben Snow’s awesome action sequences, but also the crucial attention paid to characters and their interactions. That’s no surprise; director Lee Isaac Chung earned two well-deserved Academy Awards nominations for 2020’s Minari — easily one of this decade’s most sensitively emotional dramas — and he also helmed a 2023 episode of television’s The Mandalorian, which likely served as a testing ground for this big-screen feature.

 

Let it be said: Chung and editor Terilyn A. Shropshire move things along at a breakneck pace.

 

But as always is the case with such films, the best ones succeed because we grow to admire and care about the people involved. That’s definitely true here, since the viewers at Tuesday evening’s sold-out preview screening were riveted, worried and at the edge of their seats, during this saga’s ferocious climax.

 

But that comes later.

 

A prologue finds Muskogee State University graduate student Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) heading into Oklahoma’s “Tornado Alley,” in order to test a theoretical chemical invention that she believes could squelch small twisters, before they become larger monsters. Their team includes Kate’s boyfriend, Jeb (Daryl McCormack), and students Addy (Kiernan Shipka) and Praveen (Nik Dodani, recognized from his supporting role on the Netflix series Atypical).

 

(In a nice touch of continuity, Muskogee State was the alma mater of the characters played by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, in 1996’s Twister. Indeed, that film’s writers — Anne-Marie Martin and the late Michael Crichton — are granted credits here.)

 

Alas, the experiment ends in tragedy.

The Greatest Hits: A most unusual love story

The Greatest Hits (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for drug use, sexual candor and fleeting profanity

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang

Writer/director Ned Benson’s beguiling little charmer expands upon a premise that’ll feel familiar to everybody: the power of a beloved song to take us back in time to where we were, and who with, the first time it was heard.

 

After a couple of chance encounters, sparks fly when Harriet (Lucy Boynton) and David
(Justin H. Min) playfully argue over who gets to purchase a rare, one-of-a-kind LP in
her favorite music store.

But in the case of Harriet (Lucy Boynton), the result isn’t merely a memory; she literally re-lives the few minutes when she first heard the tune with beloved boyfriend Max (David Corenswet).

This isn’t a happy ability. 

 

As revealed when this story begins — after Harriet, alone in her apartment, cues up The The’s aptly titled “This Is the Day,” on her fancy turntable — that tune was playing when she and Max were involved in a car accident. He died; she wound up in a coma for a week.

 

Upon wakening, she discovered — to her horror — that every tune she and Max ever heard, during their four years together, yanks her back to that particular moment of their relationship. Her past self’s awareness of this doesn’t help; we realize, from Harriet’s forlorn bearing, that she has tried many, many times to prevent the accident. And failed.

 

Two years have passed, during which Harriet has — as a means of self-preservation — cocooned herself into an isolated life. She has forsaken a once-budding career in music production, to work in the silence of a library. When not there, or at home, she wears noise-canceling headphones, in order to prevent accidentally overhearing a “trigger” song; if that happens, her present-day self goes into an unconscious trance ... which, obviously, could be dangerous.

 

Over time, she has catalogued scores of trigger songs that allow her, in the privacy of her apartment, to re-live happier moments with Max. But this is unhealthy, as it prevents her from processing grief; indeed, such sessions simply fuel her misery. Her only companion is the devoted little dog she “inherited” after the accident.

 

She always sits in an antique armchair, facing her system speakers, in a pose that cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung cheekily lifts from Maxell’s iconic 1980s “Blown-Away Guy” ads for audiocassettes. (I have to wonder how many of this film’s viewers will recognize the reference.)

 

Jamie XX’s “Loud Places” sends her back to the music festival when she and Max first met. Yellow Days’ “Gap in the Clouds” finds them during a romantic moment on an isolated beach. And so forth. (Benson’s film is wall-to-wall music; every song is carefully selected to add impact or irony to a given scene.)

 

It’s like a drug, and Harriet is hooked: “It’s so easy to be pulled back into the past.”