Strange World: Very strange film

Strange World (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG, and too generously, for dramatic intensity and relentless peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This film’s title couldn’t be more apt.

 

Writer/co-director Qui Nguyen must’ve been smoking the good stuff when he concocted this psychedelic fever dream of an animated fantasy, and I’m amazed Disney was willing to release it. The chaotic, so-called story is a random mess that demands far too much patience from viewers, before finally sorta-kinda delivering a mildly clever ecological message.

 

Jaeger (far left), his son Searcher (center) and grandson Ethan, attempt to bond over
an elaborate card game, while faithful pooch Legend and the blobby blue Splat
participate in their own way.

Getting there, however, is a tedious assault on the senses.

One must be careful, particularly with fantasy, to establish a firm set of rules … and then follow them. If reality — as we know it — is to be warped, events must emerge in a manner that remains comprehensible.

 

But Nguyen and co-director Don Hall throw far too much stuff on the screen, and their core character story element — the often fractious relationship that results, when fathers expect too much of their sons — gets lost in this cacophonous assault on the senses.

 

We get tired of all the stuff and nonsense, long before the (supposedly) happy ending.

 

In an effort to make sense of the senseless…

 

Brawny, laugh-in-the-face-of-danger Jaeger Clade (voiced by Dennis Quaid) has long been an exploratory hero in the hamlet of Avalonia, a pre-industrial community surrounded on all sides by an extremely tall mountain range. His previous exploits notwithstanding, Jaeger is determined to discover what’s beyond those mountains.

 

All of his death-defying expeditions have been made alongside his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), a teenager when we first meet him. Alas, Jaeger is blind to the fact that Searcher is a reluctant companion at best. The story begins with Jaeger’s latest effort to summit the mountains, which goes awry when Searcher is distracted by an odd, lime-green plant with small spherical “fruit pods” that give off an electric charge when touched.

 

Searcher wants to return to Avalonia with this plant, believing it could become an important power source. Jaeger stubbornly insists on pushing ahead … by himself.

 

Flash-forward 25 years.

 

Searcher has become a successful farmer of pando, the name he has given to the plant that now covers massive acres of his land. He has a wife, Meridian (Gabrielle Union); they have a 16-year-old son, Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White).

 

Jaeger has been missing the entire time: presumed dead, and honored with a statue in the town square.

 

Breaking In: Well-crafted suspense

Breaking In (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, dramatic intensity, sexual references and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Modest thrillers can be quite entertaining, because they don’t come with the “baggage” associated with major studio productions. The stars and filmmakers are content to deliver a solid story in straightforward fashion.

Having temporarily evaded the lethal thugs searching each room, Shaun (Gabrielle Union,
right) assures her daughter Jasmine (Ajiona Alexus) that they absolutely will survive this
nightmare. The girl isn't so sure...

2002’s Panic Room and 2005’s Red Eye come to mind; intriguingly, both feature strong female protagonists battling against insidious male opponents, and against seemingly overwhelming odds.

Director James McTeigue’s Breaking In belongs in their company: an equally clever premise and execution from scripter Ryan Engle; and a rousing, hard-charging performance from star Gabrielle Union. She’s absolutely believable as a mother bear determined to persevere — willing to do whatever it takes — in order to protect her children.

The fact that she’s also smart and resourceful, is the even more satisfying cherry on top.

McTeigue and Engle also understand the most important rule of storytelling: They know when to get off the stage. Their film runs an economical 88 minutes, which feels just right. No wasted footage, no extraneous nonsense.

Events begin with an unusual prologue involving a lone jogger: an event left unexplained until it dovetails nicely with subsequent events. Meanwhile, Shaun Russell (Union) has reluctantly sacrificed a weekend and brought her children along — teenage Jasmine (Ajiona Alexus) and adolescent Glover (Seth Carr) — in order to prepare her late father’s isolated ranch estate for sale.

The immense house is nestled amid acres of surrounding forest; the equally massive grounds include empty horse barns and various outbuildings. Shaun, long estranged from her father, and from a childhood laden with unhappy memories, hasn’t seen the place for years. She and her children are surprised to discover that the house is a high-tech fortress, complete with surveillance cameras, impenetrable window shutters and a computer monitoring system worthy of a Las Vegas casino.

What was her father hiding from?

More to the point — for our purposes — why does cinematographer Toby Oliver keep following our trio, as they split up to explore the place, with unsettling tracking shots that elevate the hairs on the back of our necks?

We viewers are well trained in cinema technique; we know it’s because They’re Being Watched.

The Birth of a Nation: Strong delivery

The Birth of a Nation (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for violence, cruelty, rape and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.7.16

It’s telling — likely for all the wrong reasons — that the Nat Turner slave rebellion hadn’t yet been dramatized in an American film.

Having viewed a solar eclipse as a sign — of a black man's hand reaching to obscure the
sun — Nat Turnet (Nate Parker, foreground) gathers an increasingly large band of
equally enraged slaves, in order to begin a movement that he hopes will gather strength
and build, from county to city to state.

Aside from earning a chapter in the 1977 TV miniseries Roots — which got a few key details wrong — the event has gone unacknowledged by mainstream visual media.

Until now.

Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation was the darling of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, taking both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize; without doubt, its arrival is timely. But tapping into the current combustible zeitgeist is ephemeral; relying on that sort of serendipity has consigned many films (and books, and plays) into the basement of forgotten relics.

The question is whether Parker has made a truly good film: an honorable, balanced and historically truthful document that will stand the test of time, and resonate with future viewers. On balance, the answer is yes: This shattering drama falls somewhat short of the bar set by 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, but it’s worthy competition. Thanks to these and other recent entries such as Selma and Fruitville Station, we’re experiencing an alternate — and equally valid — depiction of events which, in some cases, have remained shamefully overlooked.

ALL drama is compelling, particularly when experienced from differing viewpoints. Variety — as ever — is the spice of life.

Granted, Parker’s Birth of a Nation occasionally is guilty of grandiloquent excess. (The angel imagery is a particular overreach, as is his tendency toward unnecessary close-ups.) The indiscriminate butchery fomented by Turner is glossed over; no matter how justified the rage, it’s difficult to condone the slaughter of children (a detail Parker simply disregards).

Top Five: My walk with Andre

Top Five (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for strong sexual content, drug use, nudity, crude humor and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.12.14

Caught an interesting film the other day.

Concerns a disillusioned movie star who, having turned his back on a crowd-pleasing and profitable pop-culture franchise, attempts to re-invent himself as a serious actor by writing, directing and starring in a highly unlikely vanity project. And, to make things more intriguing, this film’s approach and directorial style are self-referential to the point where real life and reel life blur before our eyes.

Much as he hates to play along, Andre (Chris Rock) agrees to smile for the ubiquitous
cameras on behalf of his fiancée, Erica (Gabrielle Union), a realty TV star who insists that
her entire life take place in full view of her devoted fans.

No, I’m not talking about Birdman. As it happens, I’m referring to Chris Rock’s Top Five.

Yes, Virginia; it would appear that these Hollywood types have been reading each other’s mail again.

I mean, seriously, how does this happen? How many forlorn, anguished twentysomething women attempted to find themselves via thousand-mile solo treks through wilderness in the late 20th century? And within months of each other, we get biographical movies about both of them?

The celluloid gods do work in mysterious ways.

But I digress.

Although Top Five doesn’t have the ambition or directorial pizzazz of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, the similarities are strong ... as is Rock’s savage indictment of today’s vanity-laden, social media-obsessed excuse for popular entertainment. And, much the way Iñárritu employed cinematic legerdemain to add visual snap to his narrative, Rock employs the rat-a-tat delivery of stand-up comedy to tell the story of New York City-based comedian-turned-film star Andre Allen’s effort to re-cast his career in a manner that fans aren’t about to embrace.

The results are uneven, with some of Andre’s sidebar detours plunging too far into wince-inducing vulgarity, but there’s no denying the shrewd, insightful analysis of how we tend to devour our celebrities these days. We must remember that Rock masterminded four hilarious and sharply savvy seasons of TV’s Everybody Loves Chris, which unerringly skewered school- and family-induced teen angst while simultaneously being quite funny.

Andre (played by Rock), as far as his fans are concerned, hasn’t been funny for a long time. He abandoned stand-up years ago, seeking success in Hollywood; he found it in a series of slapstick Hammy the Bear action comedies where only his voice could be recognized beneath his fur-laden costume. Needless to say, the artistic returns have been limited. (Imagine if Tim Allen, having graduated from the improv stage, achieved fame solely as the voice of Buzz Lightyear in Pixar’s Toy Story franchise.)