Don't Make Me Go: Revelatory road trip

Don't Make Me Go (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for graphic nudity, profanity, teen drinking and vulgar sexual candor

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

It’s every parent’s dilemma: How candid should one be with children, as they progress through the teenage years?

 

And does — should — that paradigm shift, if the stakes unexpectedly turn dire?

 

It's bad enough that Max (John Cho) bears the weight of two heavy secrets; attempting
to remain calm while his daughter Wally (Mia Isaac) is behind the wheel, is almost
more than he can stand.

Writer Vera Herbert has long demonstrated a superbly nuanced sense of relationship dynamics: most notably as a prime mover on the TV series This Is Us, which garnered well-deserved Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series during four of its six seasons. Her scripts speak from the heart, and this new film is particularly personal — and likely cathartic — because it was inspired by the bond with her father, who died unexpectedly when she was 18.

Coupled with Hannah Marks’ equally sensitive direction, the result is a warm, touching father/daughter drama that is by turns funny, frustrating, maddening, poignant and heartwarming.

 

And often messy, just like real life.

 

Max Park (John Cho) long ago gave up his dream of a career in music, when his wife abandoned him shortly after the birth of their daughter, Wally. He settled for a drone-like office job, in order to have the financial security necessary to create the life he thought was appropriate for a child.

 

But at 16, Wally (Mia Isaac) is no longer a child, and Max is finding it more difficult to handle the impetuous recklessness and unfiltered emotional outbursts of these teenage years. He worries that they’re drifting apart, and this makes him nervous and uneasy … which, because she’s so well tuned to her father’s moods, increases her anxiety.

 

Max also has been suffering from increasingly severe headaches. Visits to a doctor produce a shattering result: a malignant tumor at the base of his brain. Although surgical intervention could save his life, his chances of surviving the procedure are extremely low. Without the surgery, he can expect to live for about a year.

 

Max therefore opts to forgo the operation, and instead spend the year preparing Wally for his eventual absence.

 

He doesn’t tell her any of this. He confides only in his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Annie, whose subsequent reaction — once she has a chance to process the news — is agonizingly uncomfortable (and very well played, by Kaya Scodelario).

 

Not everybody has the emotional bandwidth to watch somebody slowly die.

Star Trek Into Darkness: Still voyaging boldly

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for intense sci-fi action and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.17.13

Director J.J. Abrams’ audacious 2009 re-boot of Star Trek was clever and wildly entertaining, a delight for both hard-core fans and newcomers. (Do the latter actually exist?)

This follow-up is just as successful ... and perhaps even more fun. While also being deadly serious.

Trapped on a hostile planet at the fringes of the Klingon empire, Kirk (Chris Pine, left),
Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) try to figure out whether a cloaked
and impressively powerful assassin is helping them ... or merely eliminating distractions
in order to kill them himself.

Which is an impressive balancing act.

Considerable credit goes to returning scripters Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, this time joined by Damon Lindelof, who understand that it’s all right to mess with Gene Roddenberry’s original template — here and there — if such adjustments are made respectfully. And if they make sense, both dramatically and in the greater context of established Trek lore.

Thus, Spock’s home planet Vulcan was destroyed in the 2009 film, signaling that the future of these fresh-faced “Young Trek” characters wouldn’t necessarily unfold according to the Holy Writ as laid down by Roddenberry and the various show-runners who augmented the mythos during the subsequent TV shows and films.

On the other hand, blue-eyed Chris Pine’s James T. Kirk remains an unapologetic babe-hound. Some things can't change.

Star Trek Into Darkness opens on the run — literally — as Kirk and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) flee from the enraged inhabitants of Nibiru, a Class M planet (i.e. one that’s Earth-like). Kirk has “liberated” a sacred object as a diversion, while Spock (Zachary Quinto), Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Sulu (John Cho) take a shuttle into a massive volcano, hoping to prevent a cataclysmic eruption that could wipe out the entire civilization.

Despite their efforts to accomplish this clandestinely, Kirk and his crew clearly are violating Starfleet’s sacred Prime Directive, which prohibits any “interference” with a developing culture. (Needless to say, William Shatner’s Kirk violated that directive almost every week, back in the day.)

Regardless of this mission’s outcome — and things definitely don’t go quite as Kirk planned — the brash young Enterprise captain gets a serious dressing-down from mentor Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), once back at Starfleet Command’s San Francisco headquarters. The unhappy result: a demotion and loss of his ship, with Spock assigned elsewhere and the rest of the Enterprise crew left to wonder who they’ll salute next.