Speak No Evil: See no movie

Speak No Evil (2024) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, profanity, sexual content and drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

A film of this nature requires an unspoken bond with the viewing audience:

 

We play along only if the story’s eventual victims remain credibly oblivious to impending danger ... because, let’s face it: We know where things are heading here, given that James McAvoy’s leering, sinister face looms from all the publicity artwork.

 

Ben (Scoot McNairy), Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler)
initially assume they'll be spending a fun West England weekend with friends met
during a vacation in Italy. Boy, have they got a nasty surprise coming...

(The trailer also gives away the entire film, but that’s a different complaint.)

At first blush, it appears that director/co-scripter James Watkins, along with fellow writers Christian and Mads Tafdrup, understand this bargain. They burden this story’s sacrificial lambs — Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy), wife Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and tween daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) — with plenty of distracting baggage: a frayed marriage, unhappy relocation to London, lost employment prospects, and an overly sensitive and anxious child.

 

A family vacation in Tuscany, although intended as a “do-over,” doesn’t entirely quell Ben’s feelings of emasculation and anger, over Louise’s recent infidelity; she, in turn, is exasperated by his sad-sack failure to re-launch, and his whiny unwillingness to move past her one-time transgression. And both argue how best to parent Agnes, who slides into meltdown whenever separated from her stuffed “comfort bunny,” Hoppy.

 

Their vacation package includes communal dining each evening, during which the Daltons fall into easy company with the gregarious Paddy (McAvoy), his surprisingly young wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their adolescent son Ant (Dan Hough). They’re mischievous and buoyant: just the tonic to lift Ben and Louise’s spirits.

 

Even so, Paddy’s charm seems a bit ... aggressive. But that’s probably Ben and Louise’s imagination.

 

All vacations come to an end, and the Daltons’ return to London revives old wounds. Cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones amplifies this atmospheric shift by replacing Italy’s soft light and warm tonalities with London’s dreary, harsher grays and muted colors.

 

A postcard from Paddy and Ciara repeats an invitation, first extended back in Italy: You really must spend some time with us, at our West England farm. Recalling the lift their company provided, Ben, Louise and Agnes impulsively make the long drive.

 

On their home turf, Paddy and Ciara are ... a bit different. His mischievous side becomes bolder, her flirtatious nature subtly threatening: both challenging Ben and Louise’s comfort zones. Paddy plays on Ben’s insecurities; Louise’s rising concerns are dismissed as unwarranted or even rude, leaving her feeling uncertain and embarrassed. Davis plays this aspect of her character very well, whereas McNairy’s over-the-top weenie behavior becomes insufferably tiresome.

 

It Chapter Two: Two much of a good thing

It Chapter Two (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, profanity, highly disturbing violent content and gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.6.19

This impressively creepy chiller delivers a relentless 100 minutes of gruesome, appalling, terrifying, look-between-your-fingers heart-stoppers.

Having made their way into the heart of Evil's lair, our heroes — from left, Bev (Jessica
Chastain), Mike (Isaiah Mustafa) and Ben (Jay Ryan) — are confronted by yet another
in an endless wave of ookie-spooky monstrosities.

Director Andy Muschietti and scripter Gary Dauberman leave no horror movie cliché neglected — no phobia unexploited — in their handsomely mounted, atmosphere-drenched conclusion to Stephen King’s 1986 best-seller.

Unfortunately, this film runs 169 minutes.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re discussing chocolate milk shakes or cinematic shocks; indulge too much, and the result simply becomes bland.

Which is ironic, because the best part of 2017’s It was the clever way in which Muschietti and his writers — Dauberman was assisted that time by Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga — stripped away the over-written dead flesh of King’s 1,138-page exercise in diminishing returns. With this second “half” of King’s saga, they’ve succumbed to the same self-indulgent excess.

Quite a pity. Particularly since the first two acts are — no question — macabre and terrifying at every turn.

Doesn’t matter what irrationally frightens or repulses you; Muschietti and Dauberman tap into it. Spiders? Claustrophobia? Disgusting flying bugs? Long, dark hallways? Slithery, worm-like nasties? Naked old people?

Clowns?

Clowns with massive, jaw-stretching, needle-sharp teeth? (The better to eat you with, my dear…)

There’s actually much to admire in this grim fantasy’s concluding installment, starting with an ensemble of well-cast actors who persuasively feel like grown-up versions of the first film’s adolescent heroes. Dauberman also manages the clever feat of integrating this sequel with its predecessor’s events, while simultaneously making it a coherent stand-alone experience for anybody unfamiliar with that 2017 entry. (Likely no more than one or two of you, but still…)

Dark Phoenix: Better than average

Dark Phoenix (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for considerable sci-fi violence, disturbing images and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Comic book writers are notorious for adjusting, revising, reworking or even completely undoing the mythic back-stories and details of long-established characters. 

The spooky, otherworldly Vuk (Jessica Chastain, right) insists that she can help the
confused and increasingly overwhelmed Jean (Sophie Turner) control cosmic powers
that are literally off the chart. Naturally, Vuk's motivations are far less than pure...

Nothing is sacrosanct: not even death. If so-and-so perished nobly while saving the universe, s/he can be resurrected five years later via some previously undisclosed loophole. (If all else fails, rely on time travel.)

Putting up with this is difficult enough with comic books, but at least such contrived and manipulative nonsense can be “justified” during multiple issues over the course of many months.

It’s a lot more disconcerting when the newest X-Men entry — Dark Phoenix — makes absolute hash of the continuity established in previous films … or so it seems. Apoplectic fans sputtering “But … but … but!” are advised to pay closer attention to what went down in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Which is how writer/direct Simon Kinberg gets away with the jaw-dropper that hits during this new film’s second act.

It also kinda/sorta justifies — albeit with an eyebrow lift — this film’s more-or-less replication of events already covered in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Both are based on the iconic Chris Claremont/Dave Cockrum/John Byrne “Dark Phoenix Saga,” which played out in comic book form from 1976 to ’80 (back when only one X-Men comic book hit the stands each month, and boy, those were simpler times).

At its core, this is a common superhero plot device: What happens when a good hero turns bad?

Having proven themselves heroic after events in 2016’s (thoroughly unsatisfying) X-Men: Apocalypse, Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his mutant students happily bask in the unaccustomed glow of public acclaim. Charles has a direct line to the U.S. president; children eagerly purchase dolls and other ephemera related to their favorite X-Man … or X-Woman, as the shape-shifting Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) tartly suggests should be the team’s actual designation, given how frequently the gals save the day.

That’s no mere idle comment. Female characters are front and center in this film, and it’s darn well about time.

Glass: Should be shattered

Glass (2019) • View trailer 
Turkey (zero stars). Rated PG-13, and much too generously, for gore, violence, dramatic intensity and profanity
By Derrick Bang

This may not be M. Night Shyamalan’s worst film — The Last Airbender will hold that trophy, forever and always — but damn, it runs a close second.

Restrained and shackled for a group interview, our three misfits — from left, Elijah Price
(Samuel L. Jackson), Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) and Davis Dunn
(Bruce Willis) — await their next encounter with specialist shrink Dr. Ellie Staple.

Mind you, this is amid considerable competition; Shyamalan also is responsible for bottom-of-the-barrel dreck such as The Visit, Lady in the Water and After Earth.

Nor do these statements tell the entire story. Airbender isn’t merely a Shyamalan stinker; it was by far the worst big-budget studio film of 2010. And even though we’re only halfway through January, I feel quite confident in dismissing Glass as the worst studio film of this year.

Shyamalan has become an insufferably arrogant and self-indulgent filmmaker: one who feels that his cinematic contributions are akin to Moses delivering unto us the 10 Commandments. The signs are obvious: the measured, portentous line readings, with individual words separated by pauses so pregnant they could deliver; the needlessly weird camera angles, which serve no purpose save to call attention to themselves; the protracted, silent close-ups on cast members, as if to suggest they’re always Thinking Weighty Thoughts; and a torturously lethargic pace — and deadly dull storyline — that could make watching paint dry the height of entertainment.

I long ago grew suspicious of any film that opens in the office of a psychiatrist or psychologist; with very few exceptions, they’re inevitably bombs. And while it’s true Glass doesn’t do so, we spend an unbearable amount of time listening to shrink Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) prattle away, often with cinematographer Mike Gioulakis’ camera just this side of being jammed up her nostrils.

On top of which, poor Paulson spends most of the film buried beneath enough make-up to satisfy every member of the Radio City Rockettes. Honestly, she looks like an embalmed corpse, newly risen from the grave.

Is all this pancake, rouge and eye shadow somehow intended to be Significant? Who knows? Who cares?

Shyamalan would have us believe that Glass is the final installment in his so-called “Eastrail 177 Trilogy,” supposedly gestating ever since 2000’s Unbreakable. To borrow the phrase that has become the rallying cry of Florida’s Parkland teen activists, I call bullshit. Shyamalan’s merely re-writing history to grant his newest film even more cachet, when it deserves none at all.

Atomic Blonde: A noisy bomb

Atomic Blonde (2017) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for strong violence, nudity, sexuality and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.28.17

British author Antony Johnston obviously grew up reading John Le Carré, because his 2012 graphic novel — The Coldest City, with moody art by Sam Hart — is laden with the sort of spycraft that George Smiley would have recognized: bleak cynicism, operatives known only by code names, squabbling between Intelligence Agency factions, cut-outs, traitors and double-crosses.

It's just another day in the office for Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), as she tries
to prevent KGB thugs from reaching — and killing — the defecting East German
intelligence officer under her protection.

The story takes place in Berlin in November 1989, immediately before and after East and West are unified. An undercover MI6 agent is killed trying to bring invaluable information back to the British: a list believed to identify every espionage agent working on both sides of the wall. Veteran undercover operative Lorraine Broughton is sent to Berlin, to retrieve the list and identify her colleague’s killer; her task is complicated by the chaos of mass demonstrations calling for unification, while KGB loyalists resist with increasing viciousness.

Definitely a hook on which to hang a slick, thoughtful espionage saga.

Too bad director David Leitch and scripter Kurt Johnstad didn’t see it that way.

They’ve essentially re-cast 2014’s loathsomely violent John Wick with a female lead, and the briefest of nods to genre spycraft. (No surprise there, since Leitch was an uncredited co-director on the first Wick.) The distinction is immediately obvious with a name change — Atomic Blonde — that more accurately reflects star Charlize Theron’s luminously white hairstyle, and the luxuriously wild outfits that she wears so well: most of them also vibrant white, with striking black accoutrements. Costume designer Cindy Evans, take a bow.

The Berlin setting is persuasively reproduced by production designer David Scheunemann; cinematographer Jonathan Sela deserves equal credit for gritty street scenes, strobe-lit nightclubs and shadow-laden noir tableaus. No question: This film looks terrific, and feels like the ideal backdrop for cloak-and-dagger subterfuge.

But Leitch has no finer sensibilities. His film is flashy trash: violent, tawdry and depressingly nihilistic. Midway through this two-hour exercise in brutality, it becomes impossible to keep track of who’s good, bad or in between; Johnstad’s script keeps changing its mind, seemingly on every other page.

Split: This uneven thriller should do just that

Split (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, and rather generously, for dramatic intensity, violence and gruesome behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.20.17

Color me surprised.

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s newest little shocker truly is a cut (or chomp) above his other recent efforts.

While Marcia (Jessica Sula, left) and Claire (Haley Lu Richardson) watch nervously in the
background, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) attempts to persuade their captor's (James McAvoy)
youngest personality to help them escape from his other, more vicious selves.

But since we’re talking about the guy responsible for Lady in the Water (unrelentingly silly), After Earth (jaw-droppingly awful), The Visit (utterly repulsive) and The Last Airbender (quite possibly the worst mainstream fantasy ever made) ... that’s damning with very faint praise.

It must be difficult to hit a stadium-clearing home run the first time at bat — as with, say, Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) and John Carpenter (Halloween) — and then spend the rest of a steadily declining career trying to top, or even match, that first triumph. Pursuing that rainbow destroyed Welles, and has turned Carpenter into a pathetic remnant of his former self. (Anybody remember Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Prince of Darkness or Ghosts of Mars?)

Thus, pity poor Shyamalan, forever toiling in the shadow of The Sixth Sense.

Since then, he has demonstrated an unerring knack for concocting an intriguing premise, failing to exploit it credibly, and then flushing away any marginal good will during a bonkers-ludicrous third act.

Split follows that pattern; its modestly saving graces are a better-than-usual starting point, and a bravura performance from his leading man. (Or should I say performances?)

Shyamalan wastes no time, opening with a frighteningly credible kidnap scenario that leaves high school teenagers Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), Marcia (Jessica Sula) and Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) at the mercy of an eerily calm guy (James McAvoy) with a shaved head and military bearing. The girls wake up in a basement cell, albeit one appointed with an unexpectedly clean and polished bathroom.

Claire and Marcia, best buds, are among the most popular girls at school; Casey is the quiet outcast everybody whispers about. Thus, the savage separation of status prevents the trio from bonding into a proper team (a shrewd psychological handicap).

Their captor’s various tics include an obsessive/compulsive fixation on neatness; he’s also a sexual deviant, as evidenced by a brief but distasteful encounter with Marcia (mercifully left off-camera).

X-Men: Apocalypse — Thud and blunder

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and quite generously, for gratuitously fleeting profanity and distasteful, soul-crushing violence
By Derrick Bang

Enough, already.

Things were bad enough last summer, when Avengers: Age of Ultron gave us characters capable of re-shaping reality, along with a celestial scheme to return Earth to its Ice Age. Hollywood’s apparent need for superhero movies that forever increase the sense of scale — like a junkie craving ever-stronger fixes — was plain outta control.

When Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, center) is alerted to the presence of an ultra-
powerful mutant, he and his comrades — from left, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), Moira
Mactaggert (Rose Byrne), Alex Summers (Lucas Till) and Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) —
try to determine how best to find this entity.

This newest X-Men entry is even worse, with a villain who literally can re-shape the planet according to whim: a level of power so off the chart that the very notion of this guy being stopped by anybody, let alone young and largely untested mutant heroes, is simply ludicrous.

What, I wonder, could be next? A baddie who’ll pull the Moon out of its orbit? Destroy Saturn and her rings? Extinguish our sun? Annihilate entire galaxies?

It’s impossible to care about any of this film’s sturm und drang, because its screenplay — credited to Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris and director Bryan Singer — doesn’t spend enough time with character development. Worse yet, the little we do get is needlessly grim and mean-spirited: the same problem of tone that infected Batman V Superman a few months back.

The early X-Men films were entertaining by virtue of the wary ensemble dynamic that united such radically different characters into a team, and for the way that everybody’s strange and weird powers were blended into a cohesive fighting unit. That camaraderie is all but lost in this smash-fest, which instead revels in an arrogantly callous level of civilization-snuffing carnage that I’ve not seen since the distasteful 2012, which depicted mass death with all the gravitas of a pinball machine.

Singer’s tone is about the same here, with John Ottman’s bombastic score adding even more portentous fury. And just to seal that atmospheric deal, Ottman’s original themes are augmented, at (ahem) apocalyptic moments, by the equally dour second movement (“Allegretto”) of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

Not much fun to be had, all told, in this 143-minute endurance test.

X-Men: Days of Future Past — One for the ages

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for nonstop action violence, considerable grim content and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.23.14

This one cooks.

The X-Men film series has earned high marks from its debut back in 2000, notwithstanding the frustrating rival studio issues that prevent these characters from operating within the larger tapestry of the “Marvel Universe” project that includes Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the Avengers.

After learning that black-ops types plan to conduct dangerous — even lethal — medical
experiments on some helpless mutants, a furious Raven (Jennifer Lawrence, second
from right) gets quite irate with the goons responsible, while helping the others escape.

Director Bryan Singer got Marvel’s “merry mutants” off to an excellent start with the first two films, and he returns here, batteries fully charged, for a rip-snortin’ adventure that satisfies on every level.

Longtime comic book fans, who’ve followed these characters since their debut back in September 1963, can point to three periods of writer/artist genius during the series’ half-century history. Old-timers still cite the Roy Thomas/Neal Adams run, despite its brevity, as the highlight of 1969 and early ’70. The subsequent generation scoffs at that choice, pointing instead to the bravura Chris Claremont/Jim Lee run from 1989 through ’91.

In between, though, we enjoyed four years of greatness from late 1977 through early ’81, thanks to Claremont’s imaginative stories and artist/co-author John Byrne’s artwork. And that run produced a two-parter, “Days of Future Past,” which remains one of the all-time best comic book stories, anywhere ... not to mention one of the most ingenious time-travel narratives ever concocted (and cited as such in a recent issue of the British pop culture magazine SFX).

Fan reaction was guarded, when word broke that this new X-Men film would adapt that classic tale. Doing it justice would be difficult enough; carefully sliding it into the big-screen mythos already established by the first three films and 2011’s X-Men: First Class, even harder. Screenwriters Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn therefore deserve considerable credit, because they pulled it off. And then some.

Failing to give Claremont and Byrne a “story by” acknowledgment, however, is utterly indefensible. And I rather doubt that Claremont was mollified by his eyeblink cameo.

To a degree, this film also has been shaped by the wattage of its primary stars, most notably Jennifer Lawrence, who has become huge since first playing the shape-shifting Raven/Mystique in First Class. Hugh Jackman’s ultra-cool Wolverine also is front and center, as are James McAvoy’s angst-ridden Charlie Xavier and Michael Fassbender’s smoothly malevolent Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto.

But wait, I hear you cry. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen also appear in this adventure ... and aren’t they also Xavier and Magneto?

Well, yes ... and that’s the nature of time-travel stories. Done properly, we get to eat our cake, and have it, too. And this is one tasty treat.

Trance: A puzzle that isn't worth solving

Trance (2013) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rating: R, for graphic nudity, sexual content, profanity, torture, violence and grisly images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.12.13

Everybody wants to write the next House of Games or Usual Suspects.

Very few writers are as clever as David Mamet and Christopher McQuarrie.

When Simon (James McAvoy, center) loses his memory and can't recall a really, really,
really important detail, the ruthless Franck (Vincent Cassel) insists on securing the
services of hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson), who quickly starts
playing both ends against the middle. Or maybe not...

Joe Ahearne and John Hodge, who’ve co-scripted Trance, don’t even come close. With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe, their irritating little thriller is a dream within a dream ... within a dream. And probably within another dream. I’m reminded of the more irritating aspects of Christopher Nolan’s Inception, another drama that tried much too hard to be crafty.

But whereas it was possible to trace all the threads within Inception, and maintain their continuity and interior logic — if only with an Excel spreadsheet — you’ll have no such luck with Trance. The premise invites mistrust right off the bat, and the subsequent behavior of its six primary characters is too daft to be taken at face value.

Which seems to make sense, at times, because we gradually learn that we’re not necessarily supposed to take things at face value. Except, apparently, when we are.

Frankly, I think Ahearne and Hodge just like to jerk us around.

Because Trance is directed by Danny Boyle — the superbly skilled master of both intimate character studies (127 Hours) and riveting ensemble dramas (Slumdog Millionaire) — it is assembled provocatively, from a production standpoint. The various London settings are visually exotic; cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle moves the camera in a manner guaranteed to unsettle and disorient.

The performances are compelling (to a point), the dialogue taut and laced with both latent menace and implied subterfuge (to an excessive point). The story’s prologue, detailing an auction house art heist, has all the adrenalin-surging snap of high-tone caper films such as The Thomas Crown Affair. Rick Smith’s jazz-inflected score builds on the tension.

For a time, we admire the ride and crave more of the same. Sadly, things go pear-shaped all too quickly.

Arthur Christmas: Plenty of Christmas spirit

Arthur Christmas (2011) • View trailer for Arthur Christmas
Five stars. Rating: PG, and quite pointlessly, for very mild rude humor
By Derrick Bang


My list of favorite holiday movies just got amended.

Arthur Christmas is a treasure: a heartfelt, joyous romp with plenty of action, hilariously snarky dialogue, dollops of poignance and oodles of yuletide spirit. Not to mention plenty of Christmas magic, all lovingly gift-wrapped and topped with the most perfect bow.

Arthur (right), terrified of heights, isn't wild about Grandsanta's risky plan to
use his old sleigh for a Christmas Eve "rescue mission" designed to bring an
overlooked present to a little girl who otherwise won't find a gift from Santa
beneath her Christmas tree. But Arthur also realizes that he has no other
options ... and, after all, he's the one who insists that every child should
waken to a share of holiday magic.

Indeed, yes: As Bryony — an Elf Wrapping Operative, Grade Three — repeatedly insists, there’s always time for a bow.

Director/co-writer Sarah Smith and fellow scribe Peter Baynham deserve the largest possible round of applause. Working from a question every child has asked for centuries — how does Santa deliver all those presents in one night? — Smith and Baynham have crafted a clever Christmas fantasy that explores every facet of Santa’s ingenious North Pole operation.

The story involves five well-crafted characters, not to mention a massive cast of supporting elves, flying reindeer and Gwen, a trusting little girl who lives at 23 Mimosa Lane in Trelew, Cornwall, England, whose Christmas morning is about to be ruined.

Like countless other children around the world, Gwen has sent a letter to Santa Claus: a missive laced with the usual impressionable curiosity and hope, along with a request for a pink bicycle. Her note — complete with crayoned illustration — is routed to a staff member in Santa’s massive Letters Department: the gangly, accident-prone, overly enthusiastic Arthur.

In the noble Kris Kringle lineage, poor Arthur (voiced by James McAvoy) is little more than a subordinate clause. Christmas has become an ultra-efficient, high-tech delivery operation, and Santa’s younger son has been designated a spare part. The boy is allergic to snow, and suffers from a fear of heights, reindeer and high-speed travel.

But he loves, loves, loves Christmas — every enchanting aspect of it — and his tiny office is a chaotic mess of snow globes, pictures of Santa, and Arthur’s favorite letters from children. Indeed, Arthur reads every single letter that comes to the North Pole, and answers each with an astute precision that preserves the child’s most crucial trait: belief.

Arthur is the ultimate Christmas fanboy, although his giddy enthusiasm prompts tolerant smiles from the hundreds of elves who certainly like the boy, but nonetheless make mildly condescending remarks behind his back.

Arthur’s older brother, Steve (Hugh Laurie), the hereditary heir to the Claus reign, has made the annual Christmas Eve operation a masterpiece of military precision. The centerpiece of this high-tech procedure is the S-1: a mile-wide sleighship with stealth cloaking technology and a veritable army of elves who descend in precision teams of three, taking no more than a carefully calculated 18.14 seconds per home.

The Conspirator: Rule of panic

The Conspirator (2011) • View trailer for The Conspirator
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and much too harshly, for brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.15.11


Trust Robert Redford to find a historical courtroom drama that shrewdly echoes current events.

The Conspirator, set in the aftermath of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, focuses on what many view as a moral imperative: the need to adhere to the rules of American law, even — and most particularly — during times of national crisis. Vengeance, bloodlust and perceived expediency cannot be allowed to dictate our behavior, lest we sink to the level of those we presume to judge.

Having won his client, Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the privilege of some fresh
air and sunshine after having been confined to a dingy, straw-filled cell, attorney
Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) accepts an invitation to sit with her. Much to
his surprise, he's beginning to see this woman less as a "heinous Confederate,"
and more as a human being.

One cannot imagine a better project for Redford, who has based his recent directing career on politically charged content. While not nearly as shrill as 2007’s Lions for Lambs, this film is just as likely to divide viewers along predictable party lines, and that’s a shame; the message here is equally crucial for those on either side of the partisan divide.

For if nobody is safe from the possibility of a witch hunt dressed up to resemble a court of law, then we’re all vulnerable ... depending only on who’s in charge, or shouts the loudest, at any given moment.

That’s ... unsettling.

We tend to forget, all these years later, that Lincoln wasn’t the only target that fateful night of April 14, 1865; the assassins who shot him while the president enjoyed an evening of theater also attempted to kill Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. The goal was nothing less than a complete overthrow of government, arranged by ultra-loyalist Southerners inflamed by the outcome of the Civil War, just five days after Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

The man responsible for killing Johnson succumbed to nerves and never made the attempt. Seward, recovering from a nasty fall a few weeks earlier, probably survived his attack thanks to the neck brace that deflected his would-be assassin’s numerous knife blows.

Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. the following day. This film’s distributor, Roadside Attractions, deserves credit for cleverly releasing The Conspirator on April 15.

Historians generally agree that the plot was orchestrated by popular stage actor John Wilkes Booth, who was killed during the subsequent manhunt. Numerous other conspirators were rounded up, some of whom made no attempt to conceal their actions.

This film’s storyline, thoughtfully scripted by James D. Solomon and Gregory Bernstein, focuses on one alleged conspirator whose involvement seemed open to doubt: Mary Surratt, who ran the boarding house where Booth and his cronies frequently met to discuss their plans. Initially, Surratt was but one of scores of people arrested and imprisoned solely because they may have known or come into casual contact with Booth and his fellow plotters. But the suspects eventually were narrowed down to the eight people brought before a military tribunal that began May 1; Mary Surratt was the lone woman among the eight.

All were civilians, and all were tried not by a jury of their peers, but in front of a military court of nine officers who needed only reach a simple majority for conviction, and a two-thirds majority for a death sentence.

Gnomeo and Juliet: All the garden's a stage

Gnomeo and Juliet (2011) • View trailer for Gnomeo and Juliet
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: G, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang


Shakespeare and garden gnomes?

Surely, you think, nothing good can come from such a combination.

Keep an open mind. Timeless stories endure no matter what form they take, and that includes this hilariously bent take on Romeo and Juliet. Director Kelly Asbury and a veritable army of writers – working from a screenplay by Rob Sprackling and John Smith – fine-tuned this droll animated fantasy until it purred. The result is clever, engaging and well integrated with a score that recycles a dozen Elton John tunes (in a few cases, with whimsically modified lyrics) and tosses in a few new ones.

When Gnomeo and Juliet consider ignoring their deepening feelings because of
the silly blue/red feud that has kept their respective clans apart for years, the
much wiser Featherstone, a yard flamingo in a neighboring garden, brings the
two lovebirds back together as only he can.

I’m all about little details, and Gnomeo and Juliet is laden with amusing touches. The film is introduced by a tiny “red goon gnome” who doesn’t get too far through a voluminous text scroll before being removed from the stage; the curtain then opens on two adjacent homes – one of a blue décor, the other red – on Verona Drive. Old lady Montague lives at 2B, while cranky Mr. Capulet’s identical address has been slashed out, Ghostbusters-style (in other words, “not 2B”).

Right away, I was charmed.

Aside from their ongoing squabbling feud of unknown origin, the human characters don’t really factor into this story, which instead concerns the ceramic fixtures in their respective gardens: mostly gnomes of all sizes and shapes, but also the occasional ornamental frog, fish and toadstool. Just like the assorted stars of Toy Story, these garden creatures come to life whenever they’re not being observed; when people unexpectedly arrive on the scene, the little figures freeze back into immobility ... no matter where they might be. That, by itself, leads to very amusing consequences at times.

The animation style – different yet again from anything done by Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks or Blue Sky (the Ice Age series) – is ingenious. All these figures have the worn, paint-faded, often slightly chipped appearances of weathered ceramic; they make contact with each other – whether gently or aggressively – with the easily recognized chink of porcelain bumping into porcelain. The 3-D cinematography gives them a rounded dimensionality, and we very quickly accept the notion that these figurines have their own clandestine societies.

They are limited by original design, however, and that’s also played for frequent laughs. A ceramic fish can neither float nor swim, and two gnomes who share a single ceramic base can’t ever “quit each other.”

And yes, that nod to the famous signature remark from Brokeback Mountain is typical of the occasional snarky one-liners. Although family-friendly and certain to appeal to youngsters, who’ll be enchanted by these colorful heroes and villains, the script frequently nudges and winks at adults who’ve been savvy enough to give this charmer a try.

Wanted: Not so much

Wanted (2008) • View trailer for Wanted
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity and relentless violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.26.08
Buy DVD: Wanted • Buy Blu-Ray: Wanted [Blu-ray]

The good news: As hoped, coupling Timur Bekmambetov's adrenalin-fueled, hyper-stylized flourishes with a reasonably linear script results in a movie that's somewhat more approachable than the Russian director's absurdly over-praised Night Watch and its sequel, Day Watch.

While Fox (Angelina Jolie) watches impassively, Wesley (James McAvoy, left)
accepts a pistol from The Gunsmith (Common) and tries to believe — to really,
truly believe — that he can make bullets "bend" around obstructing objects
after having been fired.

The bad news: Wanted ain't that much better.

Fans of The Matrix and its mystical, too-cool-for-the-room characters probably will devour this stuff and nonsense, and fairness demands that I acknowledge having found portions of Wanted amusing and occasionally clever. But the physics- defying CGI stuntwork and perpetual gunplay become tiresome, as do Bekmambetov's crazy-quilt visuals.

This guy makes movies for people who find MTV's smash-cut editing a bit too leisurely.

The other potential problem concerns the fact that screenwriters Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan have screwed around with the plotline as presented in the Mark Millar/J.G. Jones graphic novel on which this film is based, and not to the property's improvement. Arrogant scripters who insist on leaving their own leaden footprints do so at their own risk: Chances are, the original writer(s) did just fine on their own, thank you very much.

And by so drastically mutating the character dynamic, Brandt & Co. have completely compromised our ability to identify with some (all? none?) of the players in this highly warped fantasy.

The result, therefore, is more comic book than the original comic book. Bekmambetov does pretty well with sheer momentum — he's particularly adept at that — but the vehicle sputters and eventually sinks beneath the weight of its own metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.

None of which can be blamed on the cast members, who give it their all. Star James McAvoy, in particular, holds things together far longer than the film deserves; he's a perfect nebbish who blossoms into a fully credible reluctant assassin.

Angelina Jolie is similarly ideal as one of McAvoy's mysterious mentors; she has the smirky, amused superiority that this film desperately needs ... a sense that she knows this is all over-revved nonsense, but she's game for a good time, and we should do no less.

And, for awhile, the invitation is tantalizing.

McAvoy stars as Wesley, a cubicle-dwelling drone who pushes papers in some insignificant office, where he's harassed on a regular basis by a tyrannical boss (Lorna Scott, wonderfully dreadful) who throws her considerable weight about while terrorizing everybody under her command. Wes gets little relief at home, where his skanky girlfriend seizes every opportunity to do the nasty with our hero's office mate and supposed best friend.

Wes' life, in short, is an unrelenting nightmare of brow-beaten insignificance.