Avatar: Fire and Ash — Smoke and murk

Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for action violence, bloody images, profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.21.25

James, James, James.

 

Why give editing credits to five people — not including you, as the sixth — if you won’t let them do their jobs?

 

Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and Jake (Sam Worthington) realize that their sky-faring Na'vi
clan may not be enough to combat the newest assault by Earth's Resources
Development Administration forces.

Calling this film tedious, at a butt-numbing 195 minutes, isn’t sufficient. This slog also is repetitive, insufferably boring and — as we ultimately approach the climax — completely predictable.

Meaning, no dramatic tension.

 

As was the case with 2022’s second film in this ongoing series, director/co-scripter James Cameron spends far too much time on tight close-ups of slow, thoughtful takes; and half-baked lines delivered with artificially measured, melodramatic pauses and intensity.

 

Granted, the production design and SFX work continue to be jaw-droppingly amazing; this truly is a marvelous example of imaginative world-building, down to the tiniest detail of flora and fauna. 

 

The underlying environmental message also continues to be welcome, and increasingly timely. It’s impossible to watch Pandora’s massive, ocean-going tulkun — pursued and killed by rapacious Earthers, in order to harvest amrita, a substance in the creature’s brain with the medical power to halt human aging — and not think about how our own Earth’s whale population has been hunted to near-extinction.

 

Events resume where the previous film concluded, with Jake (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) and their family — Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), young Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and adopted mysterious daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) — now fully embraced by the ocean-going Metkayina clan headed by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his wife Ronal (Kate Winslet), the Shamanic Matriarch.

 

Lo’ak is haunted by the recent death of his older brother Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), who perished during the previous film’s climactic melee. In typical teenage fashion, Lo’ak disobeys his father’s orders, chafes at often being left behind, and also has distanced himself from Tonowari and Ronal’s daughter, Tsireya (Bailey Bass), much to her sorrow.

 

The latter is a shame, since the developing relationship between Lo’ak and Tsireya was one of the previous film’s high points.

 

Ted 2: Insufficiently stuffed

Ted 2 (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for drug use, crude and sexual content, and pervasive profanity
By Derrick Bang

Let’s cut to the chase.

Films like this are critic-proof. If you enjoyed Ted — if the notion of a foul-mouthed, substance-abusing stuffed bear hit your sweet spot — then you’ll certainly enjoy this sequel just as much. Perhaps even more so.

En route to New York, in hopes of getting some desperately needed legal assistance,
John (Mark Wahlberg), Ted and Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) playfully bicker about who
gets to drive next. Naturally, Ted wants his turn behind the wheel...

But if equal-opportunity race-, gender- and religion-baiting profanity and vulgarity are apt to send you into a froth, prompting letters to your Congressperson regarding the dangerous decline of Western civilization ... better steer clear.

Hey, I thought 2012’s Ted was a giggle. At times. The same is true of this one. That said, both films suffer from the malady that often afflicted Monty Python’s big-screen efforts: the tendency to exploit a joke that’s amusing the first time, by beating it to death. Most potty humor does not become funnier through repeated exposure.

At 106 minutes, Ted was at least half an hour too long. At 115 minutes, this sequel is at least 45 minutes too long.

It’s simply impossible to shake the feeling — in both cases — that an admittedly hilarious Saturday Night Live sketch has been stretched way beyond its ability to amuse.

Still, creator/director/co-scripter Seth MacFarlane deserves credit for fitful attempts to stretch the envelope. This new film’s Busby Berkeley-style opening credits are quite a surprise, well deserving the special credit given First Assistant Director David Sardi. (I suspect, however, that those who show up for Ted’s profanity-laced tirades will be bored by these credits, despite their choreographed opulence.)

A few surprise guest stars are cleverly used, notably Jay Leno and Liam Neeson, both of whom obviously have a healthy sense of humor. Michael Dorn does some very cute stuff with his longtime Star Trek persona. Sam Jones also returns, playing himself and still capitalizing on his long-ago stint as Flash Gordon. Always a funny bit.

And — wait, could it really be true? — the script actually flirts with honest-to-God social relevance. MacFarlane and co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild paint with awfully broad strokes, but they definitely score a few provocative jabs at discrimination issues. That’s unexpected, given the delivery system’s overall tone.

On top of which, I never tire of visual effects supervisor Blair Clark’s impressive work. It’s one thing to fabricate imaginary creatures on distant planets or alternate-universe fantasy realms: quite something else to so seamlessly integrate an 18-inch stuffed bear into our own workaday world. Hey, I’ll buy into the premise: Ted is real.

He simply isn’t somebody with whom I wish to spend so much time.

Selma: The march resonates anew

Selma (2014) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG-13, laudably but a bit generously, despite considerable grim violence, dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.9.15

The images are sickening, their motivation heinous.

Having led a group of peaceful protestors during a voting rights march that concludes in
front of the Selma County courthouse steps, Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo, center
rear) and his followers wait to see what will happen next. It won't be pretty...

Only two decades removed from the post-WWII revelations of how atrociously German-based Jewish citizens had been treated by their own countrymen — up to brutal slaughter — the United States was turning an equally blind eye toward the similarly appalling behavior of Alabama cops who, protected by the imprimatur of authority, assaulted and killed their black neighbors with the gleeful enthusiasm of jack-booted Nazi thugs.

If that isn’t sufficient irony, consider this: Much of America first learned of these contemptible circumstances on March 7, 1965 — remembered, to this day, as our own “Bloody Sunday” — when ABC interrupted an evening movie to show live footage of peaceful black citizens being tear-gassed and beaten by state and local cops in Selma, Ala. The film in question? The television premiere of Judgment at Nuremberg.

The source of all this white-cracker rage?

The audacity of these black citizens, who insisted on exercising their right to vote. The situation was particularly pernicious in Alabama, and notably in Selma, where only 130 of its roughly 15,000 black residents had successfully become voters. Most had been foiled by local registrars who routinely demanded answers to absurdly difficult civics questions.

Director Ava DuVernay opens her riveting new film, Selma, with just such an encounter. A quietly dignified Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey) makes what we realize is the most recent of many such trips to the county registrar’s office, only to be thwarted anew by a sneering white clerk who, irritated by her correct answers to his first two questions, responds with an impossible third.

It’s a brilliantly clever prologue by DuVernay and scripter Paul Webb, and not merely for the unsettling calm with which the scene is staged: the immediate implication that this is disenfranchised business as usual. DuVernay also secures calmly understated performances from both actors: the determined but wearily pragmatic Winfrey on one side, the pugnacious Clay Chappell on the other.

It’s a landmark cinematic moment: a scene destined to be memorialized, and oft resurrected, for decades to come.

And it succinctly depicts the fetid racist swamp into which Martin Luther King Jr. waded in early 1965, fresh from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and having been named “Man of the Year” by Time Magazine, which dubbed him “the American Gandhi.”

Gangster Squad: Cheeky, audacious portrait of 1950s Los Angeles

Gangster Squad (2013) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for nonstop violence, gore and profanity
By Derrick Bang

It’s a can’t-miss formula that goes back to the days of vintage Hollywood Westerns: the few against the many, particularly in a righteous cause.

Electronics nerd Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi, center) overhears some delectable
information from the bug he planted in mobster Mickey Cohen's home, while squad
members John O'Mara (Josh Brolin, left) and Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) determine
how best to use this revelation.

This already engaging dynamic was enhanced by turning the underdog heroes into rag-tag misfits, with the genre expanding to include war and crime (or the war on crime). Some of the best examples have become cinema classics, such as The Magnificent Seven — and its forbearer, The Seven Samurai — and The Dirty Dozen. My own list of personal favorites includes Where Eagles Dare.

Director Brian De Palma upgraded an early 1960s TV show and brought Sean Connery an Academy Award as the moral center of 1987’s The Untouchables. A decade later, that film’s 1930s Chicago setting shifted to 1950s Los Angeles with director Lee Tamahori’s stylish handling of Mulholland Falls. Even post-WWII crime thrillers weren’t quite this noir.

All of which brings us to director Ruben Fleischer’s energetic Gangster Squad, based on Paul Lieberman’s book of the same title, and adapted with snap by Will Beall, who employs the same crisp sparkle he has brought to several episodes of television’s Castle. The dialogue sizzles, the dames are delectable, the actors chew their lines with the snarling fury of a hungry lion tearing into a steak, and the action has the rat-a-tat ferocity of the Tommy guns wielded on both sides.

Although Lieberman brought veteran journalistic skills to his well-researched account of gangster Mickey Cohen’s attempt to seize control of Los Angeles during the 1950s, this film probably bears no more relation to actual history than Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Some of the names will be recognized, but the execution here feels more like Mission: Impossible and L.A. Confidential, with a soupçon of 21st century sass.

And — sad to say — plenty of violence and some unnecessary gore. The story may demand a vicious streak, but must we really watch a man torn in half after being chained to two cars accelerating in opposite directions? Surely that image could have been left to our imaginations, rather than splattered across the screen ... along with the yummy glimpse of wild dogs tearing into the remains.

But then, Fleischer also is the gleeful maniac who upped the snark count in walking dead flicks, with 2009’s Zombieland, so I guess it’s in his genes. And, in fairness, everything that follows the aforementioned dismemberment — a prologue, of sorts, to set the mood — involves somewhat more palatable gunplay. And a few knives. And some acid. And ... well, you get the idea.

Ted: Not cuddly enough

Ted (2012) • View trailer
2.5 stars. Rating: R, for crude and sexual content, pervasive profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang

This is a one-note Saturday Night Live sketch stretched way beyond its limits.

John (Mark Wahlberg) should be at work; he also should be paying
more attention to his long-suffering girlfriend. But John seems quite
content to get stoned with his stuffed companion, Ted: a pattern
that this film beats far beyond the point of endurance.

Granted, the technology employed to animate this short, stuffed teddy bear is amazing. I particularly admire the attention to little details, such as the way his fur bristles during moments of stress, or the little shadow that falls on the ground — at the proper angle to the sun — as he walks along a park pathway.

But Ted wastes far too much time hammering the same tired joke: potty-mouthed teddy bear who likes to get stoned, and loves to dally with disreputable ladies. The novelty of that gag wears thin almost immediately, and yet this film’s script — credited to Alec Sulkin, Wellesley Wild and director Seth MacFarlane — keeps ringing that same bell.

Look how funny this is, MacFarlane repeatedly insists. A teddy bear who cusses like a dockworker!

Yeah, yeah, yeah ... we get it, we get it. Now get on with something else.

Alas, “something else” is a long time coming.

Ted begins with a lengthy flashback, narrated gravely — and quite drolly — by Patrick Stewart, which centers on John Bennett, a lonely little boy with no friends. After receiving a cuddly stuffed teddy bear on Christmas Day, John makes A Big Wish. The following morning, to his delight, Ted has come to life.

Ted becomes an overnight celebrity: darling of news reports, honored guest on Johnny Carson’s late-night talk show (nice bit of revisionist clip-editing, there). Initially a sweet, angelic companion just right for a little boy, Ted “matures” into a slacker dope fiend as John grows older (now played by Mark Wahlberg).

The point, a bit long in coming, is that Ted’s presence has kept John in an arrested adolescent state: not good for a 35-year-old guy.

Despite this, John has won the heart of Lori Collins (Mila Kunis), a professional woman with a real job. John, in contrast, has a dead-end position at a car-rental agency, where — at the slightest provocation — he’ll blow off work to sneak home and get stoned with Ted.

Contraband: Slick, smarmy and suspenseful

Contraband (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for violence, pervasive profanity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang


Goodness, this is a sordid little piece.

Scandinavian crime thrillers have been on the rise of late, thanks in great part to the Stateside interest in Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy and Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series, the latter recently brought to these shores via actor Kenneth Branagh’s sterling TV adaptations.

Chris (Mark Wahlberg, left) thoroughly hates the idea of "rescuing" his stupid
brother-in-law by embarking on a fresh smuggling heist, but circumstances
have left him no other options. Fortunately, Chris has the underworld savvy
of best friend Sebastian (Ben Foster) to help grease the wheels.

Longtime readers of European thrillers are wondering what the heck took the rest of us so long, of course, since they’ve known about such writers since the arrival of Swedish novelists Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, whose “Martin Beck” series generated some heat here in the 1960s and ’70s. The fourth book, The Laughing Policeman, was made into an American film vehicle for Walter Matthau in 1973; the adaptation was loose, but certainly engaging.

Icelandic novelists belong to this club as well, with Arnaldur Indriðason and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir leading the charge. All of which serves to introduce Contraband, an American adaptation of 2008’s Reykjavik-Rotterdam, which was Iceland’s official submission for the Academy Awards’ foreign language category in 2010.

This American remake’s pedigree is even more interesting. The Icelandic original, co-written by Indriðason and Óskar Jónasson (the latter also directed), starred Baltasar Kormákur as a former smuggler forced by circumstance to re-embrace his larcenous past; Mark Wahlberg has taken this role in the new version, which is directed by Kormákur.

I can’t think of any other cases where the star of a foreign film — rather than the director or writer — went on to direct an American remake.

Point being, Kormákur certainly understands the atmosphere required by this grim and thoroughly tawdry story. So does first-time scripter Aaron Guzikowski, a former New York ad agency employee who popped up on Hollywood’s radar a few years ago, thanks to a spec script that drew Wahlberg’s attention. And since Wahlberg also is one of the many producers attached to Contraband, we can deduce that he liked Guzikowski’s writing chops.

So do I. Contraband certainly won’t win any awards, but it delivers plenty of tension and a veritable rogue’s gallery of dodgy characters. These are all bad folks, in one form or another; the trick is to make at least one of them a “hero” who deserves our trust and sympathy. In that, Kormákur and Guzikowski succeed quite well, and Wahlberg inhabits that fellow quite credibly.