The Sea Beast: Monstrously entertaining

The Sea Beast (2022) • View trailer

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

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.15.22

Shrewdly thoughtful parables don’t get much better — or more enjoyable — than this one.

 

Director/co-scripter Chris Williams’ cunningly crafted “whale of a tale” deftly laces its gorgeously animated adventure saga with underlying themes of loyalty, inclusiveness, environmental awareness and — this is the biggie — the folly of blindly placing one’s faith in “accepted tradition.”

 

Despite his best efforts, Jacob always seems to get into trouble when Maisie is involved.

That’s a boatload of messaging, but the genius of Williams and Nell Benjamin’s script is that their film never feels like it’s preaching; such elements are an organic part of a thoroughly enjoyable story.

The setting is a somewhat familiar world, at a time akin to our late 17th century era of coastal towns and cities supported by sailing vessels. But these waters are laden with enormous sea beasts that prey on defenseless cargo ships, which has led to generations of heroic monster hunters who set sail in tall ships in order to attack these underwater giants.

 

It’s dangerous work, and the town orphanage is filled with children whose parents have perished in battle.

 

No ship is more respected than The Inevitable, helmed by the legendary Capt. Crow (voiced by Jared Harris) and his stalwart crew, most notably surrogate son Jacob Holland (Karl Urban). They’ve long defeated such monsters, at constant risk to life and limb, always returning to port with proof of kill — a tusk, a tail spike, a claw — for the King (Jim Carter), Queen (Doon Mackichan) and grateful townsfolk.

 

The film opens with a rip-snortin’ clash between The Inevitable and a Brickleback: an impressively nasty, hard-shelled behemoth with massive, ship-shredding tentacles. This is an exciting, tautly edited sequence — Joyce Arrastia, take a bow — that establishes the characters of Crow, Jacob, Lt. Sarah Sharpe (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and taskmaster Ms. Merino (Helen Sadler).

 

Nobody admires them more than little Maisie Brumble (Zaris-Angel Hator), an orphan who has long dreamed of becoming a monster hunter: in part to avenge her parents, who went down with The Monarch. Maisie has devoured the many books that have mythologized Captain Crow, Jacob, The Inevitable and all their predecessors.

 

She’s also quite precocious and outspoken, with a tendency to “escape” from the orphanage — and then get dragged back — each time a monster-hunting ship returns to port. Needless to say, she’s not about to miss the Inevitable’s arrival.

 

But what should be a celebratory occasion is blunted by the King’s decision to decommission all monster-hunting vessels, and their crews. The task instead will be assigned to the Royal Navy, which has just developed a heavily armed battle ship: The Imperator, helmed by the vainglorious Adm. Hornagold (Dan Stevens).

 

In part, the King pompously adds, because Crow and The Inevitable never have been able to chase down the most fearsome of all sea beasts: the massive Red Bluster.

Allied: Does love bind?

Allied (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity, fleeting nudity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.25.16

At first blush, this feels like an old-style WWII espionage drama of the sort whose absence is lamented by longtime moviegoers — such as my parents — who often grouse that They Don’t Make ’Em Like This Anymore.

Shortly after adopting his cover identity as the devoted husband of Marianne (Marion
Cotillard), Max (Brad Pitt) fears that he may have been recognized by a Nazi officer: a
potential catastrophe that requires a quick solution...

Given the French Moroccan setting, stars with the wattage of Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, and a swooningly romantic script that even name-checks Casablanca, one almost expects Bogie and Bacall to come strolling in from the surrounding desert.

Steven Knight is a terrific screenwriter, with solid experience in the crime and espionage genres; his highlights include 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things and 2007’s Eastern Promises. No surprise, then: He delivers a corker of a first act for Allied, and then swings the plot into an unexpected direction that cranks up the suspense.

Unfortunately, things get messy during an contrived third act, which piles eye-rolling coincidence atop unrealistic behavior, the latter from characters who’ve previously been depicted as far too intelligent, to suddenly turn brainless. Cut to a positively eye-rolling epilogue, and the film squanders the considerable good will that it has built.

Seriously, Steven ... what were you thinking?

In fairness, such climactic, over-the-top melodrama also is old-school, so Knight and director Robert Zemeckis obviously knew precisely what they were doing. I’m simply not sure that today’s savvier viewers will be as willing to forgive such theatrical excess, as was the case back in the 1940s and ’50s.

And it’s a shame, because the first 90 minutes are thoroughly compelling, and — yes — luxuriously atmospheric.

The year is 1942, and the film opens as Canadian airman Max Vatan (Pitt) parachutes into the desert outside of Casablanca. His emergency mission, orchestrated by the British Special Operations Executive (BSOE): to assassinate Germany’s visiting ambassador. The groundwork for this mission has been established by undercover French resistance fighter Marianne Beauséjour (Cotillard), who has spent weeks among her Nazi “friends,” waxing eloquent about the beloved husband soon to visit from Paris.

The handsome and affable Max looks and sounds the part ... to a point. As Marianne immediately notices, his carefully rehearsed accent is more Québécois than Parisian, which is a problem: French Moroccans wouldn’t know the difference, but he’d never fool Nazi officials who had spent any time in France.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows — Nothing elementary about this sequel!

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, and rather generously, for intense action and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.16.11

Mention Sherlock Holmes, Prof. James Moriarty and Switzerland’s Reichenbach Falls in the same breath, and even the most casual fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed consulting detective will have certain expectations.

With certain death via gunfire and even cannon fire hurrying their flight, Holmes
(Robert Downey Jr., center) and Watson (Jude Law) try to lead Simza (Noomi
Rapace) to the safety of a dense forest, as trees, shrubs and even rocks
explode around them.

Director Guy Ritchie delivers on those expectations, albeit in a roundabout, cheeky and visually exhilarating manner. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is much more audaciously stylized than its 2009 predecessor, which is to say it’s a throwback to the gleefully demented Ritchie who brought us 2000’s Snatch.

This outing with the analytical super-sleuth feels more like an unholy mash-up of Quentin Tarantino and classic Jackie Chan movies, with just enough vintage Holmes — I’m thinking Basil Rathbone’s era — to satisfy Baker Street Irregulars wanting to hear at least some of Doyle’s immortal prose.

Indeed, it’s difficult to repress a shiver of delight when, after Holmes’ unsatisfying face-to-face encounter with Moriarty (Jared Harris) — and the elliptical conversation it contains — the detective eyes his demonic counterpart and says, with the utmost solemnity Robert Downey Jr. can bring to bear, “If I were assured of the former, I would cheerfully accept the latter.”

And if that line doesn’t resonate, then hie thee hence to the nearest copy of Doyle’s “The Final Problem,” in order to best appreciate the phrase’s pregnant implications.

But that suspensefully charged meeting comes well into Ritchie’s film, by which point we’ve already had a great deal of fun.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows opens with an extended prologue that reunites Holmes (Downey) with the larcenous Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams, also returning from the first film), the only woman whose intellect ever impressed the master detective. Adler has fallen in with ill-advised companions; one nasty skirmish later, Holmes possesses a bit more information regarding the criminal mastermind pulling the strings connected to a series of recent calamities.

London — indeed, the entire Western European continent — has been plagued with a series of bombings and other acts of sedition, reflexively blamed on vaguely defined “anarchists” supposedly hoping to topple governments. But Holmes suspects a more sinister plot behind these various attacks, and believes that everything can be traced to a brilliant mathematics professor whose reputation is so spotless that he counts the British prime minister among his closest confidants.

Absent physical evidence, Moriarty can’t be touched ... and, certain as he is, Holmes lacks proof.