Mr. Harrigan's Phone: A flawed connection

Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasional profanity and fleeting drug content

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.14.22

We’ve moved into what Ray Bradbury dubbed “The October Country”: the time of year when the boundary thins, and all manner of phantoms, wraiths, apparitions and presences meddle in the affairs of mere mortals.

 

Although Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland, right) initially wants no part of an iPhone,
he quickly becomes seduced when Craig (Jaeden Martell) demonstrates some of the
gadget's many features.

Hollywood always responds appropriately.

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone hails from the gentler side of Stephen King, and director/scripter John Lee Hancock’s faithful adaptation is ideal for folks who prefer their cinema chills to be slow-burn unsettling, rather than in-our-face gory. Think The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption and The Body (which became Stand By Me on the big screen).

 

This is more of a mood piece. Indeed, the lengthy first act is a touching and completely “normal” character drama, of the sort that King always establishes so vividly in his fiction.

 

The year is 2003, in a fly-speck town in semi-rural Maine, where Craig (Jaeden Martell) lives with his father (Joe Tippett); both still grieve over the untimely loss of Craig’s mother. When Craig gives a reading during the weekly Sunday church service, it impresses reclusive local gazillionaire Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), who — with failing eyesight — hires the boy to read novels aloud to him.

 

The selections are broad: Dickens’ Dombey and Son, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, among others. Given that Craig is somewhat withdrawn himself, he isn’t bothered by Harrigan’s gruff, authoritarian demeanor.

 

Following a long career during which he made his money by ruthlessly buying and shredding other companies, Harrigan has reached his twilight years with no friends or family; his only companions are a tight-lipped housekeeper (Peggy J. Scott, appropriately prim) and somewhat surly gardener (Thomas Francis Murphy).

 

Craig always finds Harrigan in his favorite chair, in a book-laden study adjacent to a glass-walled conservatory filled with orchids.

 

Sutherland and Martell are marvelous in these early sequences. Sutherland sits in an imperiously regal pose: commanding quietly but firmly; gazing watchfully, as if Harrigan expects the boy to cower and bolt at any moment. But Craig doesn’t wilt under his host’s hawk-like gaze; if anything, the dynamic makes the boy more curious.

The Burnt Orange Heresy: Nothing but ash

The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019) • View trailer 

1.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, nudity, sexual content, drug use and violence

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.25.20 

Deliver us from filmmakers who cherish attitude and atmosphere over plot logic and credible characters.

 

James (Claes Bang, left) and Berenice (Elizabeth Debicki) are initially awed to be in
the presence of renowned art power-broker Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger), but they
become more wary when their host explains what he wants from them.

Director Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy — available via Amazon and other streaming services — drowns beneath pretentious monologues and arch behavior. It’s a confined four-hander: a tedious stage play with delusions of big-screen glory. Scripter Scott B. Smith makes absolute hash of celebrated crime writer Charles Willeford’s 1971 novel, pitting three condescending men — each an insufferable aristocratic sophisticate — against a lone woman who may as well have the word “victim” tattooed on her forehead.

 

Indeed, it’s painful to watch an actress of Elizabeth Debicki’s talent play such a relentlessly stupid and blindly reckless character.

 

If Capotondi wanted to emulate the gritty, neo-noir ambiance of Willeford’s prose — 1984’s Miami Blues remains a masterpiece of hard-boiled crime fiction — the director missed by a mile.

 

Danish actor Claes Bang (no relation, I assure you) rapidly becomes tedious as arrogant art critic James Figueras: fallen from his profession’s grace, and reduced to lecturing witless tourists in Milan, in hopes of selling more copies of his book, The Power of the Critic. (Was there ever a more pompous title?)

 

Not even five minutes into this film, you’ll seek escape.

 

This particular day is different; James’ oft-repeated presentation concludes with the appearance of the coquettish Berenice Hollis (Debicki). She has sought him out — for reasons Smith’s script never makes clear — and mutual lust slides them into bed.

 

Cue a gratuitously explicit sex scene that suggests we’re in for an erotic thriller: a genre Capotondi never comes close to delivering.

 

Ad Astra: Voyage to nowhere

Ad Astra (2019) • View trailer 
No stars (turkey). Rated PG-13, for violence, brief dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.20.19

Put the ballots away; the contest for 2019’s worst big-budget Hollywood production has concluded.

Doesn’t matter what emerges between now and Dec. 31; nothing will be poorer than Ad Astra.

Having reached the Mars outpost, Major Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is warned by Helen
Lantos (Ruth Negga), superintendent of the American sector, that his military superiors
have been less than candid with him.

This portentous, deadly dull and hopelessly self-indulgent train wreck is the most outrageously overblown sci-fi misfire since 2000’s Battlefield Earth. And that’s woeful company to keep.

Ad Astra is what happens when directors get too full of themselves. History is littered with similar studio miscalculations: Michael Cimino, and Heaven’s Gate; Steven Spielberg, and 1941; Warren Beatty, and Ishtar; Barry Levinson, and Toys. Mega-budget stinkers, every one of them.

James Gray — who co-scripted with Ethan Gross — and star/co-producer Brad Pitt have topped them all.

As I’ve observed before, when science-fiction goes bad, it goes very bad.

Rarely have 122 minutes passed with such agonizing sluggishness. This is the film for folks who thought 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey wasn’t slow enough.

It’s also the film to watch, for those who can’t get enough of Pitt. You’ll never again see so many tight close-ups and relentlessly slow takes on his face; cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema lingers on every dimple, blemish and wrinkle with the adoration of a reverential acolyte.

Nor is it a happy face. Ever. Pitt spends the entire film in mostly silent remorse and (supposedly) thoughtful brooding. His line deliveries are quiet, flat and emotionless: completely in contrast to his character’s hilariously overblown off-camera narration, where each sentence is separated by pauses so pregnant they could deliver. You’d think Gray and Gross believed their text had been lifted from Moses’ stone tablets.

I despise preachy, pompous science fiction. It’s the first refuge of so-called storytellers who believe that a futuristic setting is the only way they can impart Wisdom Relevant To Our Contemporary Lives. The result is invariably condescending and insufferably patronizing.

Beyond all that — aside from the relentless pomposity — Gray and Gross fail on the most primary level: They don’t tell a good story. The journey isn’t interesting, and the “resolution” leaves far too many key questions and issues unresolved … after which, we get a bewildering epilog that feels as though it has been yanked in from some other film.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 — Fails to catch fire

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 (2014) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, disturbing action and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.21.14

As was true of its two predecessors, this newest big-screen installment in the Hunger Games franchise follows its source quite closely.

Which, in this case, isn’t a good thing.

When Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence, foreground right) agrees to check on the injured civilians
in a District 8 hospital, she's joined by, from left, Commander Paylor (Patina Miller) Gale
(Liam Hemsworth), Boggs (Mahershala Ali) and Pollux (Elden Henson).

Suzanne Collins’ third novel is gawdawful: a complete betrayal of her characters, and of her readers. I can’t imagine what the author was smoking when she wrote it, but this much is obvious: Her heart wasn’t in it, and — in hindsight — she should have quit after the first one.

My sympathies therefore lie with scripters Peter Craig and Danny Strong, tasked with making a cinematic silk purse out of this sow’s ear of a book. With credits such as The Town, Game Change and Lee Daniels’ The Butler, they seem an odd choice to craft a post-apocalyptic narrative that spends so much time inside the head of a strong and resourceful young woman, which may explain why Katniss Everdeen is such a mess in this film.

Not even Jennifer Lawrence, who aside from her considerable talent certainly knows this character by now, can persuasively deliver the frankly ludicrous emotional arcs demanded by this storyline.

On top of which, this film suffers the problem that plagued the penultimate Harry Potter film. Both J.K. Rowling’s The Deathly Hallows and Collins’ Mockingjay save most of their action for the second half, limiting the first portions to sidebar exposition and increasingly melodramatic angst.

If Hollywood, in its cynical desire to wring as much money as possible from these franchises, chops each final book in half, we’re therefore tormented with a two-hour film “teaser” that accomplishes ... almost nothing. Harry Potter 7.1 was a yawn: a time-filler that should have been subtitled Harry and Hermione Go Camping.

Hunger Games 3.1, in turn, should be dubbed Katniss Has a Good Cry. Repeatedly.

It’s not that Katniss doesn’t deserve an emotional collapse; goodness knows, she has been through a lot during the year-plus covered by the first two books (and films). But it’s distressing to see a character who initially impressed us as a resourceful fighter, suddenly transformed into a near-helpless victim who gets acted upon.

Granted, Katniss is destined to regain her spunk as things continue, but that’s a discussion for next year’s Hunger Games 3.2.

Meanwhile, we’re stuck with this one.

The Eagle: Can't fly

The Eagle (2011) • View trailer for The Eagle
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for rather restrained battle sequences and disturbing images
By Derrick Bang


Great films are easy to admire; terrible films are fun to rake over the coals. Both tend to resonate for a long time, either as fond memories or water-cooler topics of scorn.

Much of Tinseltown’s output, however, is blandly ordinary: flicks that don’t make much of a ripple upon release, and also sink like a stone during home-viewing afterlife. We must remember that the classics we cherish so fondly from Hollywood’s Golden Age represent perhaps 10 percent of the studio output from that era; much of the other 90 percent, never really worth anybody’s time or attention, is forever lost to memory.

When Marcus (Channing Tatum, right) and Esca (Jamie Bell, center) are
intercepted by the vicious Seal People, their prince (Tahar Rahim) relishes the
thought of beheading a lone Roman centurion who has ventured far into
dangerous lands.

The Eagle is likely to join them.

Director Kevin Macdonald’s sword-and-sandal saga isn’t really a bad film; it’s simply not distinguished in any manner. It’s also one of Hollywood’s cursed genres – gladiator action flicks, like Westerns, don’t attract viewer interest absent the involvement of a Russell Crowe or a Clint Eastwood – and therefore doomed to box office under-performance anyway.

That said, the premise is reasonably engaging. Jeremy Brock’s script, drawn from Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel The Eagle of the Ninth, concerns a tantalizing bit of historical fancy: the notion that Rome’s Ninth Legion, stationed for several years in Eburacum – present-day York, in modern England – suddenly vanished in 120 AD. Nobody knows whether all these men marched to an unexpected fate in Scotland, starved to death at their own outpost, or simply were assimilated by neighboring tribes; the mystery made Sutcliff’s book enormously popular and led to both a radio dramatization and a six-part 1977 BBC serial.

And now we have a big-screen movie that, despite this tantalizing notion, emerges as a curiously flat and uninvolving drama. Part of the blame belongs to star Channing Tatum, a stiff actor who never inspires viewer empathy, but in fairness he’s also hampered by Macdonald’s rather lifeless guidance. These characters simply aren’t very interesting, and the various actors never look, sound or feel like denizens of the second century; they’re all modern folks play-acting – and not very convincingly – in togas and gladiator armor.

More disappointingly, Macdonald hasn’t the faintest notion how to stage a battle scene; he and editor Justine Wright cut their melees with such fury that it’s difficult to follow who’s hacking away at whom. Then, too, small Roman squads twice face an overwhelming onslaught of enemies in far greater numbers, during the course of this story, and quite improbably emerge victorious in both cases. That outcome is difficult to swallow the first time, and utterly absurd the second time.

That’s just sloppy scripting, since a detail of this nature would be very, very easy to repair, to help with credibility. It’s not as if Macdonald and Brock were attempting a documentary, and adhering to established historical fact. After all, nobody was on site with a cam-corder.

The Mechanic: Reasonably well tuned

The Mechanic (2011) • View trailer for The Mechanic
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, nudity, sexual content and relentless brutal violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.28.11


As William Goldman explained so well in his fascinating 1983 study of the Hollywood scene, Adventures in the Screen Trade, the presence of a star affects the core dynamic of a motion picture, while also influencing our expectations upon seeing it.

A movie fashioned for Brad Pitt will, of necessity, undergo serious changes if he leaves and subsequently is replaced by Hugh Grant. And our anticipation, when entering the theater – knowing what Grant is likely to bring to the project, as opposed to what Pitt would have brought – changes accordingly.

When a clockwork-smooth assignment suddenly goes sour, once again due to
clumsy behavior by Steve (Ben Foster, left), he and Bishop (Jason Statham)
are stranded on a hotel roof, with plenty of gun-toting thugs swiftly surrounding
their position. The only solution? Plenty of blood-spurting carnage, of course!

Charles Bronson hadn’t yet become a household name when he made The Mechanic back in 1972; that level of fame wouldn’t arrive until 1975’s Death Wish. If people recognized him at all, it was from long-running roles in television’s Have Gun, Will Travel and supporting performances in films such as The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen. Even though Bronson was appearing in up to five Westerns and exploitation flicks per year, by the late 1960s, most weren’t doing anything for his mainstream cred.

The Mechanic, along with The Valachi Papers and one or two others, began to turn that around.

Tautly directed by Michael Winner, from a slick and intelligent script by Lewis John Carlino, The Mechanic proved a perfect fit for Bronson’s laconic bearing and weather-beaten features. And since Bronson wasn’t yet a star, and thus didn’t present viewers with any expectations, Carlino’s clever and well-calculated storyline could move in unpredictable directions.

Jason Statham, in great contrast, is a well-established action star. His films may not be top-drawer – indeed, sometimes are pretty bad (Crank 2, anybody?) – but he remains popular nonetheless. And fans know what to expect: plenty of mayhem, lots of martial arts-style beat-downs and plenty of ’tude.

Particularly the latter. Statham is cool. Way-cool, in the same way Steve McQueen was cool during his younger years.

So while Statham is a solid choice for director Simon West’s muscular remake/update of The Mechanic, the story’s essence has been altered, and quite seriously. We never knew what was coming from Bronson’s Arthur Bishop; he was utterly unpredictable. Statham, on the other hand, is completely predictable ... as is our suspicion of where this film will go, when it hits the third act.

Fool's Gold: 18-karat fun

Fool's Gold (2008) • View trailer
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence, profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.14.08

Giddy lunacy isn't as easy to pull off as you might think; the slightest mistake, and the whole thing collapses into dull, dumb, mind-numbing tedium.

Eager to start a day of treasure-hunting, our heroes — from left, Tess (Kate
Hudson), Finn (Matthew McConaughey), Nigel (Donald Sutherland), Gemma
(Alexis Dziena) and Alfonz (Ewan Bremmer) — are dismayed to discover
that another boat and crew have beaten them to the punch.

Hollywood produced an impressive number of successful screwball comedies in the late 1930s and early '40s, and scores of writers and directors have frustrated themselves — and annoyed audiences — trying to reproduce the formula.

Director Andy Tennant, working from a script he wrote with John Claflin and Daniel Zelman, gets the mix just about right in Fool's Gold. The result is a rip-roarin' ocean adventure: relentlessly silly at times, but good-natured enough that you're unlikely to care. The project also has been molded to Matthew McConaughey's easygoing manly charm, and he's surrounded by an ensemble cast of engaging characters, all well played.

Additionally, the film re-unites McConaughey with Kate Hudson, his co-star from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. McConaughey and Hudson work reasonably well together: Their flirty banter is lively and delivered with well-timed precision, and the carnal chemistry positively smolders.

It's hard not to be impressed by McConaughey's savvy; his romantic comedies may be insubstantial trifles, but they're also quite popular. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days made more than $100 million, and the more recent Failure to Launch came close to the same threshold.

In each case, McConaughey allows himself to be cast as a slacker (to varying degrees) in what seems, at first blush, to be the secondary role behind a stronger female lead ... but in truth he easily commands the screen, and the story, in each case.

His role in Fool's Gold is no different: Ben "Finn" Finnegan, a single-minded beach-bum treasure hunter quite happily living an adolescent fantasy. Carelessness, slovenly behavior and a tendency to lie his way to a desired goal have cost him everything; he has no money, no material possessions and — as this film begins — no wife. Tess (Hudson), finally fed up with the guy, has just divorced him.

Finn can't understand it. He recognizes and acknowledges his many faults; in his mind, that should be good enough. And when such protests are delivered with that fetching sparkle in McConaughey's eyes, he's hard to resist. Even Tess agrees: She still loves the guy, but can't live with him.

Trouble is, she also can't live without him ... and this sort of fractured marital dynamic is at the heart of every successful screwball comedy going back to classics such as 1937's The Awful Truth.