Love & Mercy: God only knows

Love & Mercy (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.5.15

Brian Wilson’s life story is fascinating enough on its own merits, with enough drama, betrayal and crisis to fuel a lengthy and thoroughly fascinating TV miniseries.

During one of her first encounters with Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti, left), during a
seemingly benign afternoon barbecue, Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) is about to discover
just how cruel this celebrity psychotherapist can be toward Brian Wilson (John Cusack).

That said, director Bill Pohlad and scripters Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner deserve credit for the intriguing manner in which they’ve chosen to depict these events, in an engaging, economical two-hour film that charts the exuberant highs and heartbreaking lows of a musical genius who truly suffered for his art.

Rather than giving this tale an old-fashioned monaural spin, Pohlad and his writers have opted for a brighter, dual-track stereo treatment, with two actors playing Wilson during the strikingly distinct points of his life.

Paul Dano is spot-on as the cheerfully round-faced 1960s-era Brian, who married teenage sweetheart Marilyn Rovell and spearheaded the enormously popular pop/rock band that released an astonishing 10 albums in four short years. John Cusack, in turn, is equally compelling as the heartbreakingly subdued 1980s-era Brian, initially in thrall to control-freak celebrity psychotherapist Eugene Landy (a truly scary Paul Giamatti).

Artistically, this two-tone portrayal makes perfect sense; Brian became an entirely different person when, during the making of the albums “Pet Sounds” and “Smile,” he succumbed to artistic pressure, drug abuse and (probably) legitimate manic-depressive schizoaffective disorders. No surprise, then, that Pohlad should depict the musician’s before-and-after personas with different actors.

This gimmick isn’t new. Director Tim Fywell guided Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino through the pre- and post-fame guises of Marilyn Monroe, in 1996’s intriguing “Norma Jean & Marilyn.” Not to be outdone, director Todd Haynes employed half a dozen actors — the most intriguing of whom was Cate Blanchett — to depict various aspects of Bob Dylan’s soul, in 2007’s “I’m Not There.”

Stunt casting for its own sake can be an eye-rolling distraction, of course, but the result is entirely different when the project warrants such treatment. In this case, Pohlad’s finished film is by turns fascinating, informative, tender and distressing; I’ve no doubt he and editor Dino Jonsäter fretted over every frame, and the timing of every sequence, with the same care that Wilson brought to his later albums.

Pohlad cross-cuts between the parallel storylines, enhancing our fascination by bouncing skillfully to the other time stream each time we settle into a given chapter. That can be jarring, even unsettling, but it also mirrors the increasing chaos into which Brian’s life descends.

Hot Tub Time Machine: Merely lukewarm

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) • View trailer for Hot Tub Time Machine
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for pervasive crude and sexual humor, nudity, drug use, relentless profanity and brief gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.26.10
Buy DVD: Hot Tub Time Machine • Buy Blu-Ray: Hot Tub Time Machine (Unrated) [Blu-ray]


Right off the top, you'd expect that a film called Hot Tub Time Machine couldn't possibly live up to its title.

You'd be right.

The good news is that director Steve Pink's men-behaving-badly comedy isn't a complete train wreck; the casting is better than the material deserves, and some of the dialogue is pretty funny ... and occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Jacob (Clark Duke, far right) finds it weird enough to get into a hot tub with
three "old dudes" -- from left, Nick (Craig Robinson), Lou (Rob Corddry) and
Adam (John Cusack) -- even if one of them (Adam) is his uncle. But things
are about to turn much, much stranger, when a combination of unlikely events
whisks them all back a quarter-century in time.

Unfortunately, the script — credited to Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris — indulges overmuch in the filthy conversational style and tawdry poo-poo humor that has become de rigueur in this post-Judd Apatow world. It's hard to think kindly of a flick that opens as one of its main characters shoves a hand into a dog's fundament, in order to retrieve an excrement-covered set of car keys ... which then get tossed into some dweeb's open palm.

Yes, sir: the veritable height of hilarity.

But that's not entirely fair. After a rocky prologue, Hot Tub Time Machine settles into a groove that'll certainly be appreciated by fans of Wedding Crashers and The Hangover, and particularly the latter. If watching grown men debase and humiliate themselves is your idea of a good time, then this 'Hot Tub' should provide 93 minutes of utter joy.

Our protagonists are one-time best buds who've grown apart over the years, and have reached a mid-life crisis prompted by a failure to amount to anything. Adam (John Cusack) seems reasonably savvy but is an emotional wreck, having been dumped by his most recent girlfriend; Nick (Craig Robinson) chafes at a dead-end job worlds removed from the music star he once hoped to become.

Unabashed hedonist Lou (Rob Corddry), having descended to the depths of loser-dom, makes a half-hearted attempt to end it all. This becomes a wake-up call to Adam and Nick, who brightly propose a road trip to the last place they all had a good time together: a ski resort in Kodiak Valley (actually Fernie, British Columbia), where everything still seemed possible back in the day, when they were poised on the brink of manhood.

2012: End of days

2012 (2009) • View trailer for 2012
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity, considerable carnage and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.13.09
Buy DVD: 2012 • Buy Blu-Ray: 2012 (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Goodness, it's déja vu all over again!

Its modern CGI effects aside, director/co-scripter Roland Emmerich's 2012 is a throwback to the cornball disaster flicks of the early 1970s — think Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, along with a nod to The Poseidon Adventure — and their rigid formulas: stalwart good guys, women and children in peril, grim fates for the sexually adventurous, and B-list actors introduced solely so they can perish after exchanging noble sentiments with each other. ("I've had a good run, son; don't you worry about me.")

This could be the computer-screen from a particularly difficult air-flight-
simulator game, but no: It's actually a rip-snortin' action sequence that finds
five of our central characters -- in the plane -- trying to dodge and climb above
the crumbling Los Angeles high-rises that rather peskily keep threatening to
hit them, during an early sequence in this film.

Bowing to our 21st century demand for bigger and noisier, of course, Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser couldn't be satisfied with demolishing a single building or even all of Los Angeles; no, they've got to take out Earth itself.

One wonders what could possibly come next. The destruction of all eight-and-a-half planets in our solar system, along with their various complements of moons?

Familiarity aside, Emmerich orchestrates this mayhem with considerable panache, and 2012 never flags during its bloated 158 minutes. That's pretty impressive, when the explosive money sequences start after a brief introductory half-hour. You'd think it unwise for a film of this nature to lead off with the sinking of California — all together now: "It's San Andreas' fault!" — but Emmerich has plenty of equally bombastic cards left up his sleeve.

Indeed, once beyond the obligatory mayhem and mass destruction, this film evolves into a strong echo of 1951's When Worlds Collide, the solid adaptation of Edwin Balmer's sci-fi novel that wonders how the people of Earth would behave, after learning of the impending arrival of a massive celestial body that will strike and destroy our planet.

Both When Worlds Collide and 2012 subscribe to the hail-fellow-well-met view of humanity: that we will (for the most part) behave virtuously and pull together for the common good, in an effort to save as many people — and as much of our way of life — as possible.

This may be naively optimistic, but it's a helluva lot more entertaining and gratifying than the bleak, every-cannibal-for-himself attitude on display in the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

2012 takes its premise from the pseudo-scientific twaddle currently making the rounds, about how the Mayans supposedly predicted a massive celestial event — an alignment of planets and our sun that takes place only once every hundreds of thousands of years — that will destroy life as we know it on Earth.

Translations being what they are, calmer heads tend to believe (if they address this nonsense at all) that the Mayans simply recognized that, as of 2012, it would be time to flip the page and start a new calendar. But hey, that would take all the fun away from the conspiracy wingnuts who stand on street corners and carry those cardboard signs proclaiming that "The end of the world is near" ... a phenomenon that this film acknowledges with a good laugh.