Hitchcock: Not an entirely good eve-ning

Hitchcock (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for violent images, sexual content and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.7.12

2012 has been a banner year for Alfred Hitchcock.

The London Symphony Orchestra debuted composer Nitin Sawhney’s innovative score for a sparkling new print of 1926’s silent suspenser, The Lodger — regarded as the first true “Hitchcock thriller” — at London’s Barbican Center on July 21. 

Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins, left) guides Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) and
Anthony Perkins (James D'Arcy) through an early scene in Psycho, as Marion Crane
and Norman Bates have a mildly flirtatious conversation that will trigger the awful
events to come.

1924’s The White Shadow — a silent melodrama long thought lost, on which Hitchcock served as scripter, assistant director, editor and art director — was found (mostly intact!) in mislabeled film canisters by a researcher at the New Zealand Film Archive, and has been lovingly restored and posted online, for all to enjoy.

And the past month has seen not one, but two quasi-biopics set during Hitchcock’s prime in the late 1950s and early ’60s.

That sort of attention can be a mixed blessing, particularly when the first of these projects — The Girl, which debuted Oct. 20 on HBO — was little more than character assassination. Toby Jones may have been persuasive as Hitch, but Gweyneth Hughes’ tawdry script plumbed truly deplorable depths, while clearly overstating the degree to which the director’s infatuation with Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) became unhealthy and sadistic during the making of The Birds.

Happily, the newly released Hitchcock is a more palatable brew. Scripter John J. McLaughlin — working from Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho — doesn’t have any axes to grind, and he also benefits from the genuinely fascinating, behind-the-scenes back story.

Psycho was a landmark production in all sorts of respects, from the shrewdness with which Hitchcock outmaneuvered the censorious Hays Office — one of the early artistic assaults that illuminated the growing irrelevance of that body of ultra-conservative bluenoses — to the film’s brilliant marketing campaign, which kept people out of their showers for weeks, just as Jaws would keep them away from the ocean in 1975.

Hitchcock benefits from several great performances, starting with Anthony Hopkins’ dignified depiction of the Master of Suspense, and Helen Mirren’s feisty reading of his wife and longtime creative collaborator, Alma.

They’re merely the tip of the iceberg. James D’Arcy’s portrayal of Anthony Perkins, who starred as Norman Bates in Psycho, is so authentic that it’s startling; at times, D’Arcy seems more like Perkins than Perkins himself. Scarlett Johansson is similarly striking as Janet Leigh, who winds up taking that fateful shower in a scene that has been imitated and spoofed countless times. Johansson doesn’t try for mimicry as much as D’Arcy, but she definitely conveys the way Leigh walked, acted and struck a pose; close your eyes slightly, to silhouette D’Arcy and Johansson, and it genuinely looks and sounds like Perkins and Leigh rehearsing a scene.

Playing for Keeps: Toss it back

Playing for Keeps (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Former soccer star George Dryer, stalled in the well-worn rut of an arrested adolescent, can’t figure out what to be when he grows up.

The same can be said of this film.

An echo of happier times: Young Lewis (Noah Lomax, center) is delighted to see that
his divorced parents, Stacie (Jessica Biel) and George (Gerard Butler), still seem to
enjoy each other's company. And, yes, George definitely is trying to woo Stacie
back ... although she insists that would be a waste of time. 

Rarely have so many top-flight supporting actors been handed such poorly defined roles, and given nothing to do with them. Robbie Fox’s screenplay is a mess; even when the dialogue occasionally sparkles, and genuine chemistry ignites as it should in a romantic comedy, a moment’s thought reveals that logic and continuity are all over the map, if not absent entirely.

We probably shouldn’t expect more; Fox made his Hollywood rep in the early 1990s with low-low-lowbrow Mike Myers and Pauly Shore comedies such as So I Married an Axe Murderer and In the Army Now. Following the latter, Fox went off the grid for almost two decades until reappearing with Playing for Keeps.

Perhaps he should have waited longer, to further refine his craft.

In fairness, though, Fox can shoulder only part of the blame. Director Gabriele Muccino is equally at fault, bringing little to this party beyond some solid father/son scenes between Gerard Butler and Noah Lomax.

After establishing a solid reputation in his native Italy, with well-received rom-coms such as 2001’s The Last Kiss, Muccino made a splash in the States when he teamed with Will Smith for 2006’s The Pursuit of Happyness. Their next project, however, was a ghastly miscalculation; Seven Pounds was the coal in 2008’s Christmas stocking, with its unsettling blend of fairy tale and real-world angst, all building to a thoroughly unpleasant conclusion that was intended to be uplifting.

Playing for Keeps has similar problems. We want to like these characters, and we’re clearly intended to ... but damn, it sure is difficult. Once again, Muccino’s desire for a sparkling holiday cracker — he seems to like releasing his films in December — has fizzled.

Total Recall: Thanks for the memories

Total Recall (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, and quite generously, for intense, relentless violence and action, brief nudity, sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Whatever else may be true, this sucker moves.

Ultimately, a bit too much.

Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) thinks he is about to experience a
harmless, James Bond-ian fantasy that he'll retain as a pleasant
memory. Alas, reality is about to trump fantasy, when Quaid discovers
that his life as a blue-collar factory worker isn't quite as "real" as he
has been led to believe.

Director Len Wiseman’s remake of Total Recall starts well and has much to recommend it, most notably plenty of striking production design and not one, not two, but three imaginative, cleverly filmed and all-stops-out chase scenes.

Unfortunately, the frantic pace grows tiresome after that third pursuit, particularly since we’re only halfway through the film by then. Wiseman and a veritable gaggle of scripters — Kurt Wimmer, Mark Bomback, Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon and Jon Povill — simply don’t know when to let up.

This film suffers from the same problem that derailed the second Indiana Jones epic (Temple of Doom): all chases and furious activity, with almost no respite. The characters never get a chance to catch their breath, and neither do we. Successful action flicks alternate between pell-mell activity and quieter moments: the latter for reflection, plot advancement and perhaps some tension-easing quips.

Wiseman’s update of Total Recall is almost without humor, grim or otherwise. While it’s true that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s outsized presence and personality overwhelmed the 1990 version, at least he cracked wise now and again. This remake’s Colin Farrell barely gets a chance to smile.

Let it be said, as well, that this new version doesn’t stray any closer to the Philip K. Dick story — “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” — on which both films are (very) loosely based. The reality-bending premise is present, as is the notion that our hero’s “false” memories might be genuine (or not) (or not not). Beyond that, Wimmer & Co. have grafted an entirely new narrative atop this mind-twisting concept.

Not a bad thing, to be sure, and this new version takes far greater pains to establish its credible future dystopia: all the more reason to be annoyed when the frenzied melees prevent our being better immersed in what seem to be fascinating background details.

The time is a century or so in the future, after chemical warfare has poisoned the majority of our planet. Only two nation-states have survived: the upscale United Federation of Britain, and the blue-collar “Colony” — formerly Australia — on the opposite end of the globe. Colony resident Douglas Quaid (Farrell) commutes daily to a grinding factory job in Britain, where he helps build robotic policeman on an assembly line.

New Year's Eve: Classic Hollywood froth

New Year's Eve (2011) • View trailer for New Year's Eve
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for fleeting profanity and some sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.9.11


New Year’s Eve is a lighthearted throwback to classic Hollywood ensemble dramas such as 1932’s Grand Hotel, with star-laden casts that played isolated clusters of characters involved with their own little dramas.

Trying to get a conventional cab on New Year's Eve is impossible, so when
Tess (Jessica Biel) suddenly must get to the hospital right now, lest she deliver
her baby on the sidewalk, husband Griffin (Seth Meyers) does the best he can,
and flags down a pedal-cab.

Additionally, New Year’s Eve is very much like last year’s Valentine’s Day, also directed by Garry Marshall and co-written by Katherine Fugate, who assumes solo scripting chores this time.

And, as was the case with Valentine’s Day, Marshall’s newest effort will be embraced as a fun date flick by folks with romantic souls, and loudly dissed by cinematic snobs who can’t get beyond the calculated pretense and contrived star turns.

A pox on the latter’s houses, and may they be alone on New Year’s Eve.

Sometimes a movie is just a movie, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Marshall knows how to craft slick Hollywood product, and Fugate deftly sketches a dozen or so mini-dramas, adding just enough backstory — in most cases — to involve us with each set of characters.

And we can’t help being impressed by a cast that includes three Oscar-winning best actors, a couple more Oscar nominees and several dozen familiar faces from both television and the big screen. A few are notorious scene-stealers, but Marshall maintains a steady hand and somehow grants everybody equal time.

That’s an impressive accomplishment with a cast this large, and a set of stories this diverse. Which only matters in an abstract sense, because our sole obligation with a film such as New Year’s Eve is to sit back and have a good time.

As the title suggests, the events take place during a single day in and around New York’s Times Square, as a massive cluster of humanity jams the streets in order to watch the big ball drop at the stroke of midnight. This year’s annual ceremony is being supervised by Claire (Hilary Swank), the newly promoted vice president of the Times Square Alliance.

She arrives early, with plenty of time to test the ball. Which — horrors! —gets stuck halfway up the massive pole, with only a few of its many lights flashing.

Valentine's Day: Rather sweet

Valentine's Day (2010) • View trailer for Valentine's Day
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.12.10
Buy DVD: Valentine's Day • Buy Blu-Ray: Valentine's Day [Blu-ray]


Interconnected stories and all-star casts have been a Hollywood staple ever since 1932's Grand Hotel, a best picture Academy Award winner that tossed Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery — and numerous other big names of the day — into a richly melodramatic and romantic stew that took place at a plush Berlin hotel "where nothing ever happens."

The technique also has been exploited for tension-fueled drama in recent hits such as Crash and Babel.

Ten-year-old Edison (Bryce Robinson, right) thinks nothing of the fact that he
has insufficient funds for an expensive flower transaction, and assumes that
Reed (Ashton Kutcher) will stand him the difference. Their negotiation is one
of many aw-shucks moments in Valentine's Day.

On a lighter, more playfully romantic note, the recent benchmark remains 2003's Love Actually, one of the most sparkling ensemble romps ever made.

Director Garry Marshall and a trio of screenwriters — Katherine Fugate, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein — seem to have fashioned Valentine's Day as an American response to Love Actually, and to a degree they've succeeded. Marshall's film, although uneven, hits many of the same whimsical high notes; the large ensemble cast is well used in a series of stories connected in ways that are both mildly contrived and extremely clever.

Indeed, the final few surprises — saved for the film's very end — can't help making you smile.

The varied events and encounters take place during a single day — Valentine's Day — throughout various portions of Los Angeles. We begin with three different couples waking in each other's arms: flower shop vendor Reed (Ashton Kutcher), who springs a ring and pops the question to girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba); grade school teacher Julia (Jennifer Garner), deliriously in love with new boyfriend Harrison (Patrick Dempsey); and agent-in-training Jason (Topher Grace), in the early stages of dating agency receptionist Liz (Anne Hathaway).

Elsewhere, teen bubblehead Felicia (pop music sensation Taylor Swift) receives a huge stuffed white teddy bear from boyfriend Willy (Taylor Lautner). Felicia's good friend Grace (Emma Roberts) and her longtime boyfriend Alex (Carter Jenkins) have decided to "take their relationship to the next level" with a clandestine lunchtime bedroom rendezvous at her home, when she knows both parents will be out.

Grace babysits 10-year-old Edison (Bryce Robinson), who lives with his grandparents (Shirley MacLaine, Hector Elizondo) and is a star pupil in Julia's class. Edison, secretly sweet on somebody in his classroom, has grandiose plans for this particular Valentine's Day.

But not everybody is swooningly, deliriously perky over the prospect of this annual holiday for lovers. TV sports reporter Kelvin (Jamie Foxx) resents being stuck with a day of "lovers in the street" puff pieces, when he'd much rather pursue a story involving the future of star football quarterback Sean Jackson (Eric Dane).

Easy Virtue: Let's misbehave!

Easy Virtue (2008) • View trailer for Easy Virtue
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.18.09
Buy DVD: Easy Virtue • Buy Blu-Ray: Easy Virtue [Blu-ray]


Stephan Elliott, the sassy Aussie filmmaker long absent from the screen — and still fondly remembered for his breakout hit, 1994's The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert — has returned with a project perfectly suited to his talents: a bubbly re-imagining of Noel Coward's Easy Virtue.

Although the characters and primary plot elements are retained from the play Coward wrote back in 1924, the tone and various relationship dynamics — not to mention Elliott's directorial approach — owe much more to Robert Altman's Gosford Park, the delightful 2001 blend of Agatha Christie and TV's Upstairs, Downstairs.

While trying to build a rapoort with her new mother-in-law, Larita (Jessica
Biel, right) unwittingly gives yet another opening to Mrs. Whittaker (Kristin
Scott Thomas) during their chat in the family's greenhouse ... at which point
the older woman learns that her son's new wife is allergic to flowers. Mrs.
Whittaker's weak spot, in turn, is her dog...

Elliott's take on Easy Virtue has a similar brew of arch one-liners, devastating putdowns and biting observations about condescending British aristocrats who wield their birthrights like blunt instruments. This atmospheric shift — Elliott co-wrote the screenplay with Sheridan Jobbins — results in a film that's more breezily entertaining than Coward's play, which, despite its deliciously scathing social commentary, audiences at the time found as cold and foreboding as Wuthering Heights.

Indeed, the austere play's only previous trip to the big screen came courtesy of no less a talent than Alfred Hitchcock, who made a faithful silent adaptation in 1927. The famed director remained unsatisfied with this film for the rest of his career, no doubt because the absence of sound made it nearly impossible to do justice to Coward's rapier wit and felicity of language. (But since Hitchcock was forced to compensate, he still left several strong impressions with his largely silent scene constructions.)

Elliott gives us modern viewers a heroine to admire in Larita (Jessica Biel), a sexy and avant-garde American introduced as she scandalizes 1930s Britain by winning the race at Monte Carlo, only to be disqualified because she concealed her gender. But all is not lost at that finish line, as she attracts the eye of young John Whittaker (Ben Barnes, appropriately callow); the result is love at first sight, and the two quickly wed.

Her adventurous spirit and scandal-hued lifestyle not-withstanding, Larita recoils from her next test: meeting John's family — and, she hopes, being accepted by them — at their quintessential British ancestral mansion and estate.

John does his best to warn her, and Larita always is up for a challenge ... but even she wilts beneath the contemptuous hauteur of John's mother, the imperious Mrs. Whittaker (Kristin Scott Thomas).

(Considering Hitchcock's fondness for vicious, domineering mother figures in films such as Rebecca, Notorious, Psycho and Marnie, one can see why he'd have been intrigued by Noel Coward's Mrs. Whittaker.)