A House of Dynamite: A chilling nail-biter

A House of Dynamite (2025) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.02.25

This is our generation’s Dr. Strangelove ... but it’s deadly serious.

 

Director Kathryn Bigelow is right at home with intense, white-knuckle geo-political thrillers, having kept us glued to seats with 2008’s The Hurt Locker and 2012’s Zero  Dark Thirty. Even so, I suspect most viewers won’t be prepared for the deeply unsettling events of this disturbingly probable scenario.

 

Even as matters grow increasingly dire, and the atmosphere in the White House Situation
Room becomes more tense, Capt. Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) calmly
orchestrates and oversees all the necessary procedures.

As some of the film’s posters warn, “Not if ... when.”

Noah Oppenheim’s clever script is divided into three chapters, each of which concludes at a screaming point ... whereupon the clock rolls back, and we witness the same events through the eyes of different key players: folks at the other end of telephones, in situation rooms elsewhere, scrambling to replace somebody missing at a meeting. In each case, the second and third go-rounds expand upon details, amplify the tension, and minimize reasonable options.

 

The time is a reasonable extrapolation of our near future. Despite inroads made back in 1969, thanks to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks and subsequent Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, nuclear proliferation once again has ramped up (as it already is, in our real world).

 

Part One, titled “Inclination Is Flattening,” focuses primarily on two sets of characters: the personnel at the White House Situation Room, supervised on this particular morning by Capt. Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson); and the 49th Missile Defense Battalion at Fort Greely, Alaska, under the command of Maj. Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos).

 

Walker is informed of potentially troublesome recent events, notably an uptick in chatter between Iran and its proxies, and uncharacteristic silence from the DRPK (North Korea), following a ballistic missile test.

 

Then, suddenly, an sea-based early warning X-band radar station detects an unidentified intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch: not at point of origin — as should have been the case, thanks to orbiting Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites — but in mid-flight over the northwest Pacific Ocean. The initial assumption is that it’s simply another of the many DRPK test flights that’ll terminate in the Sea of Japan...

 

...but then the ICBM’s trajectory enters low orbit, with an updated strike target of Chicago.

 

In 19 minutes.

 

Hastily assembled phone and videoconferencing is established between the Situation Room, the Pentagon, various armed forces commands, and the President. Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris) initiates the continuity of governance protocol, which alerts armed soldiers to scoop up numerous “designated evacuees,” — willing or not — including Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official Cathy Rogers (Moses Ingram).

 

Forced calm prevails, thanks to Walker’s steady hand at the tiller; we’re prepared for this sort of thing. Gonzalez and his team launch a pair of ground-based interceptors (GBIs), specifically designed to knock ICBMs out of the sky.

 

The countdown advances ... and advances...

Juror #2: Motion to find this drama engaging!

Juror #2 (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and occasional profanity

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

Twisty courtroom thrillers have been scarce lately, and this one’s a corker.

 

Jonathan A. Abrams’ sharp script — an impressive screenwriting debut — is well matched with director Clint Eastwood’s capably measured approach. The first half hour sets up expectations of a feisty battle between prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Toni Collette) and defense attorney Eric Resnick (Chris Messina), possibly moving into 12 Angry Men territory, involving a lone hold-out during jury deliberations.

 

Justin (Nicholas Hoult, second from left in the front row) soon realizes that he likely knows
more than the rest of his fellow jurors. They include Harold (J.K. Simmons, two seats to
Justin's left.)

But no. Abrams’ plot is more twisty ... and while he does include a nod to that famous 1954 Reginald Rose stage play-turned-film, things move in unexpected directions.

The setting is Savannah, Georgia. Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a recovering alcoholic four years sober, writes for a regional lifestyle magazine. He’s married to Allison (Zoey Deutch), nine months into a high-risk pregnancy, after previous efforts failed. She’s understandably anxious and clinging, and the last thing she wants is for Justin to get tagged after showing up for a jury summons.

 

Their initial dynamic feels brittle, which Hoult and Deutch handle persuasively. She’s a fragile mess, and he’s patient and solicitous to an exaggerated degree. It becomes clear that, just as Allison doesn’t want to do anything to screw up her pregnancy, Justin doesn’t want to betray the second chance that she gave him, four years earlier.

 

Justin does indeed get selected, after an amusing exchange with Judge Thelma Hollub (Amy Aquino, always solid). It’s a murder trial, with James Michael Sythe (Gabriel Basso) accused of killing his girlfriend, Kendall Carter (Francesca Eastwood), after a nasty spat at The Hideaway, their favorite bar. 

 

As recounted in flashback — by several witnesses — a few details change, Rashomon-style. Even so, the core events seem solid: Sythe and Carter argued, and he broke a bottle; they continued to yell at each other outside, in the pouring rain; she left in a huff, walking down the darkened road; after a brief pause, he got into his car and followed her.

 

A hiker found Carter’s body the next morning, in a creek channel beneath a bridge along the same road.

 

Killebrew builds a solid case, based primarily on Sythe’s sketchy history and longtime aggressive behavior. But as Resnick subsequently points out, nobody saw his client kill Carter; the evidence is entirely circumstantial. As a sidebar, Killebrew has tied this case to her election campaign for district attorney; she can’t lose. This adds an unsavory note to Collette’s performance, as we wonder whether Killebrew’s judgment is compromised.

Hillbilly Elegy: Survival of the fittest

Hillbilly Elegy (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, violence and drug use

By Derrick Bang 

Family ties, even when the dynamic is volatile, can be intractably strong.

 

It’s biological: We’re conditioned to love our parents, even when doing so is self-destructive.

 

Lindsay (Haley Bennett, left), J.D. (Owen Asztalos) and their grandmother (Glenn Close)
watch helplessly as events spiral out of control, thanks to an increasing police presence.

As a child, James David (“J.D.”) Vance was an unlikely candidate for escaping his working-class origins, while shuttling between small-town Ohio and the grimly struggling Appalachian environment of his grandparents; that challenge alone would have seemed insurmountable to most.

 

Toss a toxic mother into the mix, and the boy should have been doomed.

 

But he didn’t merely survive; he thrived, eventually graduating from Ohio State and obtaining a Yale Law School degree. He depicted this journey in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy; the book became a best-seller and a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, embraced as a revealing glimpse of the white working class.

 

Under the sensitive guidance of director Ron Howard and scripter Vanessa Taylor — Oscar-nominated for co-writing 2017’s The Shape of Water — Vance’s saga has become an absorbing and frequently gut-wrenching Netflix original film. The narrative glides smoothly between two time periods: J.D.’s realization, as a young teen (Owen Asztalos), that his mother has serious problems; and his reluctant decision, while at Yale (now played by Gabriel Basso), to return to the home he has tried to forget, in order to navigate a fresh family crisis.

 

The film is dominated by two powerhouse performances: Amy Adams, as J.D.’s unstable, unkempt and vicious-tempered mother Bev; and Glenn Close as her mother Mamaw, who becomes J.D.’s surrogate parent. Both actresses chew up the scenery in grand style, but never to a degree that feels exaggerated or baroque. 

 

The story’s power comes from the persuasive depictions of both women: Bev, most frequently unpleasant, but with unexpected bursts of motherly kindness; Mamaw, most often caring, in a tough-love manner, but quite capable of unleashing her own demons.

 

At first blush, though — as we meet young J.D., visiting his grandparents with his mother and older sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett)  — the overall dynamic seems protectively loyal. The occasion of an extended family photo gives Howard an opportunity to flash through a series of similar photographic portraits, stretching back generations: a clear message that this Appalachian clan has long been proud, defiant and caring of its own.

 

But this is the final day of a summer vacation under the watchful gaze of Mamaw and Papaw (Bo Hopkins). When Bev drives her two children back home to Middletown, Ohio, the dynamic shifts. Lindsay decamps to the company of her boyfriend — and soon to be husband — Kevin (Jono Mitchell), leaving J.D. in the sole company of his mother.

 

Along with her revolving door of male companions (apparently an ongoing thing, since the boy got his last name — Vance — from husband No. 3).

The Kings of Summer: This film rules!

The Kings of Summer (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, and rather harshly, for occasional profanity and teen drinking
By Derrick Bang

This is why I love my job.

The Kings of Summer marks an impressive feature debut for director Joran Vogt-Roberts and writer Chris Galletta, the latter with nothing more to his credit than a brief 2005 stint as a production staff member for The Late Show with David Letterman. Vogt-Roberts’ résumé includes several shorts and a lot of TV series work, the latter suggesting the hilariously snarky mind set on ample display in this film.

Having more or less completed their new home away from home, our three young
renegades — from left, Joe (Nick Robinson), Patrick (Gabriel Basso) and Biaggio (Moises
Arias) — contemplate the next challenge: putting food on the table. That'll prove far
more difficult than anticipated, since they've no experience with traps, lures, bare-handed
fishing or any other woodsian skills.

Actually, calling this picture “impressive” isn’t nearly strong enough. It’s a sure-fire audience pleaser: one of those so-called “little films” — like Little Miss Sunshine or Juno — guaranteed to take off like a rocket, once word gets out. This year’s enthusiastic Sundance Festival audience certainly thought so, granting a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize (not won, alas).

As a collaborative team, Vogt-Roberts and Galletta demonstrate a striking degree of creative synch; the latter’s dialogue sounds just right coming from the naturalistic ensemble cast, granting a level of verisimilitude that makes these characters feel like the folks next door.

Allowing, that is, for a left-of-center gaggle of eccentrics commonly found in films by Wes Anderson or the Coen Brothers. But I mean that in the gentlest way: However funny the lines, however warped some of the emotional behavior by sidebar adults, this is — first and foremost — an intimate coming-of-age saga.

In the truest sense of the old cliché, we laugh with our young protagonists, not at them.

The contemporary setting is a smallish town in Northeast Ohio, the sort of all-American community that typifies such narratives. Best friends Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso) are strongly bonded, in part, by their inability to cope with utterly impossible parents.

Joe’s father, Frank (Nick Offerman), hasn’t yet recovered from his wife’s untimely death, years earlier. He has become bitter, condescending and imperious: a combination that doesn’t blend well with a teenage son’s instinctive rebelliousness. Joe’s favorite method of revenge, when sufficiently annoyed, is to summon the local law — personified by the competent Capt. Davis (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and her absolutely useless rookie companion (Thomas Middleditch) — on some trumped-up accusation.

Frank responds to such hijinks the way he deals with everybody: angry sarcasm delivered by Offerman with a relentlessly straight face ... which, of course, makes every bile-fueled line that much funnier. (And they’re pretty funny to begin with.)

Joe’s older sister, Heather (Alison Brie), fled the tension-laced home awhile back, although she still visits. That speaks well of the young woman; her choice of male companions, however, does not. Colin (Eugene Cordero) is a misfit who’s as oblivious to social cues, as he is to the fact that Frank constantly winds him up.

In this case, we can hardly blame Frank; Colin’s much too easy a target. Which Heather is aware of, and Brie’s face is an amusing study in conflict: clearly annoyed by her loutish father, but equally embarrassed by her clueless boyfriend.