East of Wall: Interesting, but under-developed

East of Wall (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Writer/director Kate Beecroft’s feature debut, although heartfelt and at times achingly poignant, nonetheless is challenging on several levels.

 

Porshia (Porshia Zimiga, left) considers her future, during an uncharacteristically calm
moment, while housemates Leanna (Leanna Shumpert, center) and Brynn
(Brynn Darling) provide quiet company.

Austin Shelton’s alternately lush and gritty cinematography often shares space with a distracting barrage of cell phone images and TikTok videos. Granted, this heightens the sense of verisimilitude via faux “found footage” and invasively intimate closeups, which feel as if we’re eavesdropping on actual people. 

No surprise, since leads Tabatha and Porshia Zimiga essentially play themselves; Beecroft lived with them for three years, while assembling her film.

 

The result very strongly belongs in the company of similarly probing, naturalistic dramas such as Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven and Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland.

 

Unfortunately, Beecroft’s script doesn’t sufficiently flesh out the large cluster of supporting characters. We too often wonder where our attention should be directed, and why.

 

Matters also aren’t helped by the fact that Tabatha, although ethical and trying to “do the right thing” as best she can, is such a strikingly unpalatable individual: heavily tattooed and pierced, with her blond hair half-sheared in a warrior’s buzz cut. She’s also short-tempered, impatient and relentlessly profane.

 

Ah, but Tabatha has a special talent. She’s a gifted horse-whisperer, and has kept food on the table by training animals either captured in the wild, or rescued from kill pens. She’s also able to sense and diagnose what’s wrong with an ailing animal.

 

Tabatha and her teenage daughter Porshia live on a 3,000-acre, broken-down ranch adjacent to South Dakota’s Badlands, east of the flyspeck community of Wall (population 699, as of the 2020 census). They share their home with an ever-changing gaggle of teenagers who’ve run away; been abandoned by parents impoverished, incarcerated or dead; or simply left to fend for themselves.

 

It becomes clear that the women in this hard-scrabble community are particularly challenged: often the abused punching bags of husbands, boyfriends and fathers who — frustrated by their inability to find work — lash out at the nearest target.

She Said: Impressively inspiring

She Said (2022) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and explicit sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.18.22

We assume, when one of the victims finally agrees to share her story with New York Times investigative journalists Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), that this will be the most harrowing moment of director Maria Schrader’s richly compelling and superbly acted drama.

 

Investigative journalists Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan, far left) and Megan Twohey (Carey
Mulligan), along with assistant managing editor Rebecca Corbett (Patricia Clarkson,
far right), listen with admiration and delight as executive editor Dean Baquet
(Andre Braugher) crisply puts an irate phone caller in his place.

The speaker: nervous, soft-spoken, embarrassed and ashamed, the words emerging haltingly amid tears and choked-off syllables, as she so vividly recalls what happened to her in the privacy of Harvey Weinstein’s hotel suite.

The listener: appalled, silent, eyes growing wider by the second.

 

We viewers: equally stone-silent, sickened and enraged.

 

The story moves on; we exhale shakily, thinking OK, the worst is over.

 

But no: Twohey and Kantor soon reach another victim, sit quietly as another — mercilessly similar — confession emerges, this time made even more intense by the performances, and the way Schrader cuts back and forth between framed one-shots of the two actresses.

 

And then another. Even more awful, in part because of the repetition, the familiarity, the by-now recognized patterns of an apex sexual predator.

 

This is smart and savvy filmmaking. She Said deserves place of pride alongside its all-time best cousins: All the President’s Men and Spotlight.

 

When done persuasively — and Schrader’s film is very persuasive — nothing beats a well-constructed investigative journalism drama. They’re part mystery (just how deep and widespread IS this story?), part puzzle (how does one finesse details, acknowledgments and confessions from people unwilling or unable to talk?) and part building suspense and rage-fueled anticipation (what will it take to nail this bastard?).

 

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s sharp script is based on Twohey, Kantor and Rebecca Corbett’s months-long New York Times investigation into the shocking behavior of Weinstein — and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge Hollywood attitude that tolerated and even conspired to maintain it — and their subsequent 2019 book, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.

 

This film is rigorously authentic: Names are named — to an often surprising degree — dialogue is lifted from transcripts, progress unfolds as it occurred (if, perhaps, accelerated a bit to accommodate a two-hour film).

Fifty Shades of Grey: Colorless

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for strong sexual content, profanity and considerable nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.13.15

While it’s certainly true that this film is better than the atrociously written book on which it’s based, that’s damning with very faint praise.

Because this film still is a stinker.

Hunky gazillionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) makes Anastasia (Dakota Johnson) an
offer she absolutely should refuse: to become his "submissive" during a brief "relationship"
that he promises won't include love. Hey, it's every girl's dream, right?

Dakota Johnson is reasonably persuasive as Anastasia Steele, the naïve, freshly minted college graduate who enters a web of sexual sin with a blend of curiosity, wariness and endearing, flirty innocence. Kelly Marcel’s screenplay also makes Ana smarter and spunkier than the dim-bulb imbecile of E.L. James’ so-called novel, who constantly talked and behaved as if she were 21 going on 12.

But Jamie Dornan is a total joke as billionaire, super-stud businessman Christian Grey. Dornan couldn’t act his way out of a snowball in hell; he actually makes Keanu Reeves look talented. Dornan is as uncomfortable in this role as his Grey is in his impeccably tailored clothes: stiff, awkward and wholly unconvincing.

Dornan’s line readings are the stuff of acting workshop nightmares ... although, in fairness, I’m not sure anybody could breathe credible life into this wooden dialogue.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson has precisely two tricks up her sleeve, and she uses both to wretched excess: constant tight-tight-tight close-ups on her two stars, and instructions that they deliver every word with breathy, clipped, arched-eyebrow hesitation. Both affectations are the stuff of turgid afternoon TV soap operas, a level to which this film constantly sinks.

An over-reliance on tight close-ups minimizes a story’s sense of time and place; it’s also boring. Most significantly, it denotes a director who doesn’t trust her cast, the theory being that (for example) it’s easier for Dornan to emote if cinematographer Seamus McGarvey moves his camera close enough for us to count the pores on Christian Grey’s cheeks.

That’s the trouble with theories: Not all of them turn out to be true.

Taylor-Johnson has only one previous feature film to her credit: Nowhere Boy, 2009’s thoughtful biography of John Lennon’s early years. It’s leagues better than this dull, turgid, over-hyped and under-delivering mess.

Robocop: Just a frail tin man

Robocop (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for constant and intense violence, brief profanity and some drug use
By Derrick Bang

The general rule is fundamental: A remake should surpass or, at the very least, equal its predecessor in all essential respects.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

When Alex (Joel Kinnaman, left) finally regains consciousness after the horrific attack
that left very little of his actual body, he's horrified to discover just how little remains.
Dr. Dennett (Gary Oldman) chooses his words carefully; the next few minutes will
determine how well — or badly — Alex adapts to this transformation.

Director José Padilha’s update of Robocop seems motivated more by the smell of money — Sony Pictures’ desire to revive an iconic character, in the hopes of creating a fresh franchise — than any artistic imperative. And while this film’s primary fault lies more with first-time writer Joshua Zetumer’s sloppy script than Padilha’s direction, the result is inescapable: This new Robocop doesn’t come close to matching Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 original for verve, suspense or clever political satire.

Indeed, Zetumer’s vicious, hammer-handed swipes at “heartless American imperialism” are this film’s least successful element: shrill, über-liberal bleats that keep getting in the way of what should be, at its core, a thoughtful parable on the nature of humanity. Granted, this sci-fi drama’s political subtext invites debate, but Zetumer stacks the deck laughably, most visibly in the form of Samuel L. Jackson’s Pat Novak, a foaming-at-the-mouth, right-wing TV provocateur in the mold of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

Jackson’s Novak also is the first defense of a poor screenwriter: a hackneyed device who pops up every so often, to “instruct” or “remind” us poor viewers precisely how we’re supposed to react to on-screen events. Which suggests that Zetumer and Padilha don’t have much faith in their audience.

And I sure can’t figure out why they choose to conclude their film with yet another rant from Novak: a clumsy coda that makes little sense and does nothing but dilute the story’s mildly satisfying outcome.

People don’t like to be yelled at. Not in person, and certainly not at the movies.

All that aside...

The year is 2028. Uneasy military stability is maintained in Afghanistan and other terrorist-laden hot spots by the ground-level U.S. presence of EM-208 robot soldiers and larger, hyper-aggressive ED-209 sentry units. The primary goal, to avoid the loss of American lives, appears to have been achieved.

Zero Dark Thirty: The ultimate manhunt

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) • View trailer
4.5 stars. Rating: R, for considerable violence, torture and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.11.13

Osama bin Laden was executed on May 2, 2011. Given the realities of Hollywood development time, production and post-production work, this film’s arrival in the waning days of 2012 is nothing short of remarkable.

When the SEAL mission finally comes together, Maya (Jessica Chastain) scarcely can
believe it. All her years of research, and of trying to persuade CIA superiors that she
really might have a lead on Osama bin Laden's location ... and now her work may
bear fruit. Or has she been pursuing a useless lead all this time?

That the result is this riveting, is icing on the cake.

It’s easy to understand why director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal would select this project as a follow-up to their Oscar-laden triumph with 2009’s The Hurt Locker. Although lacking that film’s nail-biting intensity, Zero Dark Thirty carries the same suspenseful atmosphere of docu-drama verisimilitude. Given the topic, American audiences also can’t help experiencing more than a little cathartic exhilaration.

Unseemly or not, it’s hard to resist the impulse for an exultant “Hell, yeah!” as we hit the story’s payoff.

Despite the perception that fact-based, politics-laden “procedural thrillers” (for want of a better term) are box-office poison, we’ve recently been gifted with two crackling efforts: this one and Argo. Both manage the impressive feat of generating tension and building to exciting climaxes, despite our knowing the respective stories’ outcomes long before entering the theater.

That’s no small thing. Scripter William Goldman’s handling of 1976’s All the President’s Men remains the superlative template for depicting dull-as-dirt research work in a manner that becomes not just fascinating, but downright compelling; Boal obviously took its lessons to heart. Zero Dark Thirty spends a great deal of time watching a lone CIA analyst beat her head against a vague investigative wall, yet these efforts never seem dull or repetitive.

In part, that’s because we know the stakes involved from recent history, and we’re genuinely curious to learn more about what went into this impressively successful covert operation: how the key pieces of information were determined and then properly analyzed. And if Boal takes some dramatic license along the way, well, that’s fine; cinema places its own unique requirements on narrative flow, not the least of which is building our emotional involvement with these characters.

Which brings us to the best weapon in Bigelow’s capable filmmaking arsenal: star Jessica Chastain. As the CIA analyst in question, she drives this story with — by turns — calm intelligence and righteous fury. She’s never less than wholly persuasive, whether cycling grimly through surveillance footage or standing up to overly cautious superiors too concerned about their political reputations.

Even Chastain’s quiet moments are laden with emotional depth, when she sinks, exhausted, into the austere quarters that have become “home.” We understand that this woman has no true home: no family, no friends, no lovers. Nothing but The Mission.