The Woman in Cabin 10: Mystery at sea

The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and violence

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang 

Although this engaging thriller’s core premise owes a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, the story — co-written by Emma Frost, Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse and director Simon Stone, loosely based on Ruth Ware’s best-selling 2016 novel — moves in an entirely different direction.

 

While scanning the many photos that Ben (David Ajala) has taken thus far during their
voyage, Laura (Keira Knightley) spots something unexpected.

Seasoned investigative journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock (Keira Knightley), traumatized by a previous assignment that ended horribly, is given a softball story by her editor: tag along during a cruise hosted by gazillionaire Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce) and his wife, Anne (Lisa Loven Kongsli), on their obscenely extravagant luxury superyacht, the Aurora Borealis.

It's something of a farewell trip, because the terminally ill Anne isn’t expected to live much longer. 

 

For the most part, the Bullmers’ guests are an insufferably privileged lot: notably condescending Heidi Heatherley (Hannah Waddingham) and her equally pompous husband, Thomas (David Morrissey); hard-partying Adam Sutherland (Daniel Ings); and long-ago rock star Danny Tyler (Paul Kaye). Even Anne’s physician (Art Malik, as Dr. Robert Mehta) and hovering security consultant (Sigrid Nilssen, as Amanda) are oddly chill.

 

Laura feels like an outsider, an uncomfortable position nobody attempts to correct.

 

She’s further irked when the on-board photographer turns out to be Ben Morgan (David Ajala), with whom she has uncomfortable personal history. Reflexively trying to avoid him, she accidentally backs into Cabin 10 — the one adjacent to hers — and sees a young woman with bright blond hair: a guest who wasn’t present during earlier gatherings.

 

Following dinner that evening, Laura is surprised — and intrigued — when Anne seeks a private audience, and explains that she and her husband have decided to donate their entire fortune to charity.

 

Later that night, Laura is awakened by what sounds like a noisy struggle in the adjacent cabin, followed by a splash. Rushing to her balcony, she sees a woman sinking beneath the waves. She alerts the crew; the yacht stops; Richard and the captain conduct a head-count.

 

Nobody is missing.

 

Worse yet, Richard and several crew members insist that Cabin 10 has been empty the entire time.

Lilo & Stitch: Maika'i loa!

Lilo & Stitch (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for mild dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

I’ve not been a fan of Disney’s live-action remakes of its animated classics, many of which feel like bloated cash grabs — March’s Snow White being Exhibit A — but this one is a happy exception.

 

Bringing her new "pet" to a fancy luau, where her older sister is working, proves to be a
disastrous idea ... which Lilo (Maia Kealoha) is about to discover, to her dismay.

Director Dean Fleischer Camp has retained the buoyant energy that made this new production’s 2002 predecessor so much fun, while writers Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes have enhanced the Hawaiian cultural element.

That said, this film’s super power is the sparkling performance by young star Maia Kealoha, graced with impressively natural acting chops. She owns this film ... and that’s no easy feat, given the competition from her manic, blue-furred, deer-eared co-star.

 

This displaced extraterrestrial is brought to amazing life via visual effects supervisor Craig Hammack’s team, and the finely tuned skills of puppeteer Seth Hays (whose work we’ve enjoyed, as one of Grogu’s puppeteers on The Mandalorian).

 

Granted, I miss the lush, hard-painted watercolor animation of the 2002 film, which enhanced the lyrical beauty of the story’s Hawaiian setting. But credit where due: Camp and production designer Todd Cherniawsky have carefully given this (mostly) live-action romp its own island vibe, which gets additional dazzle thanks to cinematographer Nigel Bluck.

 

Even the animal shelter — which plays a key role in this story — was “dressed” in one of the buildings within the lush 700+ acres of Fong’s Garden Planation, in Kaneohe, Oahu.

 

But the story actually begins far, far away, during a United Galactic Federation tribunal on the planet Turo, conducted by the imperious Grand Councilwoman (voiced by Hannah Waddingham). The accused: egotistical, villainous scientist Jumba (Zach Galifianakis), who has violated all manner of laws by creating a dangerous biological creature known only as Experiment 626, intending it to be the ultimate weapon.

 

It's indestructible, lightning-swift, ferociously smart and adaptable, and incredibly strong, despite its diminutive size. Alas, it’s too smart; sensing the nature of these proceedings, 626 escapes its escape-proof cage, hijacks a small spacecraft and — by chance — sets the heading for an insignificant distant planet known as “Eee-rth.”

 

The pragmatic Grand Councilwoman is in favor of vaporizing the planet, once 626 arrives, until she’s reminded that Eee-rth is the sole habitat of a protected galactic species: the mosquito.

 

She therefore orders Jumba to head to Eee-rth, in order to “clean up his mess.” He’ll be supervised by the overly enthusiastic Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), a mid-level Galactic Federation administrator with unrestrained fan-boy interest in otherworldly life and culture.

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning — An insufferable ego trip

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong violence, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.25.25

Vanity, thy name is Tom Cruise.

 

It has become increasingly obvious — ever since the Burj Khalifa climbing sequence in 2011’s masterfully entertaining Ghost Protocol revived the series — that Cruise’s increasingly flamboyant stunt sequences were becoming the tail that wagged the dog.

 

Upon reaching the entrance to a huge underground server farm, Ethan (Tom Cruise,
center) and his comrades — from left, Paris (Pom Klementief), Degas (Greg Tarzan
Davis), Benji (Simon Pegg) and Grace (Hayley Atwell) — find the place curiously quiet.

The Final Reckoning brings this trend to its inevitable, lamentable conclusion. 

All tail, and no dog.

 

This slog is overcooked and overlong, its incomprehensible, so-called “plot” no more than techno-babble dialogue interludes between Cruise’s determination to prove that he “can too still do this stuff” in his 60s, in an escalating series of laughably ludicrous action sequences that are leagues beyond any viewer’s willingness to accept.

 

The Christopher McQuarrie/Erik Jendresen narrative doesn’t merely stretch credibility beyond the breaking point; it makes no effort to feign any level of credibility.

 

“This new movie is a gargantuan accomplishment,” Cruise boasts, in the production notes. “Very elegant, very layered and incredibly epic.”

 

Elegant? In your dreams, Tommy.

 

This is what happens, when unchecked ego calls the shots.

 

I worried, when 2023’s Dead Reckoning concluded, that McQuarrie and Jendresen had written themselves into an irresolvable corner, with their all-powerful AI “Entity” poised to infiltrate and corrupt every aspect of world-wide civilized society.

 

As this film opens, that worst nightmare has come to pass. The Entity’s “deep fakes” have obliterated world-wide public trust in all news sources, politicians and government officials. People riot in the streets of every country’s major city; violence and anarchy are the order of the day.

 

Worse yet, The Entity has seized control of five of the world’s nine nuclear missile stockpiles, and is doing its best to break into the remaining four ... one of which is our good ol’ USofA, which it’s certain to absorb within three days.

 

(Why three days? Who could know such a thing, with such precision? Don’t ask.)

 

Impressionable, cultish “true believers” eagerly hope The Entity will destroy everything, in order to create some ill-conceived new world order. (Like there’s life after nuclear annihilation???)

 

There’s simply no coming back from the doomsday scenario depicted in this film’s first 10 minutes ... despite the fact that — somehow — Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his Impossible Missions Force team will save the world, because The Script Says So.

 

Ergo, Cruise and McQuarrie — who also directs this film, as he has the previous three — rely entirely on breakneck momentum, to lurch from one preposterous action sequence to the next, rather than even attempting to develop genuine suspense with a reasonably crafted linear narrative.

 

The result is an insufferably loud barrage of soulless visual cacophony: an unforgivably protracted, boring, senses-shattering 169 minutes of mayhem.

The Garfield Movie: Frantic feline frolic

The Garfield Movie (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for action/peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.26.24

I had doubts.

 

A few years after its 1978 syndicated debut, the Garfield newspaper strip quickly devolved into a coldly calculated product, tediously recycling the same dozen bland gags for the next half-century. And still does so.

 

Otto, far right, goes over the precise details of an extremely improbable infiltration plan,
while (from left) Vic, Garfield and Odie listen with a blend of disbelief, fear and respect.

Creator Jim Davis even admitted that Garfield was intended as a “marketable character.”

Point being, very little on which to hang a full-length feature film.

 

This became blatantly obviously when 2004’s Garfield: The Movie and 2006’s Garfield: A Tale of Two Kittiesdeservedly bombed. Bill Murray’s signature laid-back smugness may have been perfect as the voice of Garfield, but the scripts and direction were strictly from hunger.

 

Expectations for this new Garfield Movie therefore weren’t high.

 

Happily, director Mark Dindal and his three writers — Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgrove and David Reynolds — have gone in an entirely different direction, by re-inventing the sarcastic orange feline’s tone and world. Granted, this Garfield still hates Mondays, is insufferably snide, and eats 75 times his body weight in lasagna, pizza and spaghetti. Every day. (And somehow doesn’t gain a pound.)

 

But Dindal and his writers have adjusted the character dynamics — a vast improvement — while delivering a hilariously frantic adventure paced more like a 101-minute Road Runner cartoon, complete with clever animation, snarky one-liners, well-timed reaction shots and all manner of droll pop-culture references and inside jokes.

 

The best transformation: Garfield’s yellow canine buddy Odie, no longer the dumb and hapless victim of the cat’s nasty pranks, has morphed into a wise, resourceful and impressively ingenious sidekick. And, unlike all the other characters in this wild romp, Odie remains Buster Keaton-style silent, often with a tolerantly stoic gaze that screams, “See what I have to put up with?!?”

 

After a prologue that introduces Garfield (enthusiastically voiced by Chris Pratt), Odie and their hapless owner, Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult), the saga gets underway with the unexpected appearance of Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), our feline hero’s long-estranged father.

 

This prompts a flashback sequence that reveals how Garfield, as an adorably cute kitten — who could resist those saucer-size eyes? — is adopted by Jon, after being abandoned by Vic.

 

The Fall Guy: Rip-snortin' mayhem

The Fall Guy (2024) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.17.24

This is way too much fun.

 

Director David Leitch and scripter Drew Pearce dumped their stars into a frothy, tongue-in-cheek action epic that never takes itself seriously ... while simultaneously delivering a heartfelt indictment of Hollywood’s shameful refusal to properly acknowledge the brave, hard-working stuntmen and women — and their support teams — who’ve operated in the shadows since the dawn of cinema.

 

With everything to lose, Cole (Ryan Gosling) makes a last-ditch effort to solve the weird
mystery that plagues his ex's film shoot.

A few have been appropriately recognized, over time: the utterly amazing Yakima Canutt, gender-breaking pioneers Helen Gibson and Evelyn Finley, stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, and acrobatic stars such as Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan.

Most, though, remain anonymous ... thanks in great part to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ ongoing refusal to honor them with an Oscar category.

 

(They’re about to add one for casting directors ... but still not for stunt workers? Shameful.)

 

But I digress.

 

Pearce’s balls-to-the-wall plot, very loosely based on the 1981-86 Lee Majors TV series of the same name, opens as well-respected stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) successfully completes a drop-shot as a stand-in for insufferably self-centered movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The latter, egged on by producer/manager Gail Meyer (the hilariously overblown Hannah Waddingham, late of TV’s Ted Lasso), demands a retake; too much of Colt’s face is visible in the shot, spoiling the illusion that Ryder does his own stunts.

 

(This arrogant PR nonsense, notorious among far too many of Hollywood’s insecure “action heroes,” is woefully tolerated even to this day.)

 

The retake ... goes badly.

 

In a sickening sequence that draws horrified gasps even though Leitch keeps it off-camera — and is a disturbing echo of the real-world accident that crippled Daniel Radcliffe’s longtime stunt double, Davis Holmes (sensitively addressed in a poignant 2023 documentary — Colt breaks his back.

 

Flash-forward a year and change. Colt has withdrawn from life and the career he loved so much ... and from the woman, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), who also meant so much to him. He now works a dead-end job as a parking attendant; she has parlayed her behind-the-scenes film set responsibilities into a first-time directing assignment on an overblown sci-fi epic dubbed “Metalstorm.” It stars Ryder, of course, with Gail as executive producer.

 

But there’s trouble on the set. Unknown to Jody, Ryder has mysteriously vanished; worse yet, so has his stunt double, Kevin (Ben Gerrard). Gail, knowing that she can stall for a few days by suggesting that Jody focus on second-unit action scenes, reaches out and begs Cole to step in.

 

“Jody wants you,” Gail insists. “She needs you.”

 

Although plagued by doubt and guilt over how he abandoned Jody, Colt cannot resist this plea; could it mean that she has forgiven him?