The Room Next Door: Confronting the ultimate enemy

The Room Next Door (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for thematic content, sexual candor and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Greater love hath no friend...

 

Pedro Almodóvar traditionally makes films about women — often a pair of women — and they always talk a lot. It’s tempting to assume that he’d have been happier as a director of stage dramas, but that would overlook the beautifully composed cinematography that always highlights his productions — in this case, courtesy of Eduard Grau — and which almost becomes a character in itself.

 

During one of her better days, Martha (TIlda Swinton, left) and Ingrid (Julianne Moore)
visit a bookstore, where the former buys books she'll never have time to read.

This is writer/director Almodóvar’s first English-language film, and he’s equally adept with dialogue that feels and sounds just as authentic, at every moment.

Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) were close friends during their early, post-college years, when they worked together at the same magazine. Ingrid subsequently became a successful author of autobiographical fiction, with legions of adoring fans; Martha became a war correspondent energized by the adrenaline-charged buzz of being in a danger zone.

 

They lost touch, as the years passed. The film begins as the Manhattan-based Ingrid chances to learn, from a mutual acquaintance during a bookstore signing, that Martha has been hospitalized.

 

Ingrid visits immediately, and is stunned by the news that Martha has end-stage cervical cancer.

 

What follows is essentially a two-hander, which occasionally expands via flashbacks and Ingrid’s chats with close friend Damian (John Turturro), who — back in the day — was a lover to both women (sequentially, not simultaneously). There’s a comfort and familiarity to the ongoing conversations between Moore and Swinton; they look, sound and move like longtime best friends.

 

We’ve all experienced this dynamic. Reuniting with some long-unseen friends feels awkward and uncomfortable; you can’t wait to depart (probably permanently). But it’s different with friends who somehow remain fiercely close, despite distance and separation; you fall right back into the pattern of finishing each other’s sentences, and perhaps even continuing a conversation cut short, as if no time had passed.

 

Reminiscences and catching-up comes first, although Martha’s condition obviously hovers throughout.

Gloria Bell: A toneless ring

Gloria Bell (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for nudity, sexuality, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Director Alfred Hitchcock famously observed that “drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”

This film is nothing but life’s dull bits.

When Arnold (John Turturro) and Gloria (Julianne Moore) check into a fancy Las Vegas
hotel/casino, she expects they're about to enjoy a romantic weekend. She really should
know better, by this point in her own movie...

As therefore should be expected, it’s slow, tedious, monotonous and unrelentingly boring.

Director/co-scripter Sebastián Lelio’s approach is no-frills cinéma vérité: We essentially eavesdrop on a fiftysomething woman going about a longstanding routine involving work, family, down time and all the other minutia of a (more or less) average life. Singing to the car radio, while driving to and from work. Efficiently doing her job. Enduring an upstairs neighbor from hell. And so forth.

It feels very much like real life. Indeed, totally feels like real life. Which is rather silly, because most folks go to the movies to escape real life. Why spend money to endure 102 insufferable minutes of stuff that confronts us on a daily basis?

Nor does it help much, that our character — Gloria Bell — is portrayed by an actress as incandescent as Julianne Moore. The subtleties of her performance are sublime; numerous little moments convey a stunning wealth of emotions. Even so, it’s hard to do more than admire her talent and craft: “Wow, that’s a terrific bit of acting from Julianne Moore.”

We still don’t give a damn about Gloria Bell.

Particularly since this slice of her life — an American remake of Lelio’s 2013 Chilean film, Gloria — manipulates her in a manner that seems wholly inconsistent with how she’s introduced.

Gloria, 12 years divorced, lives alone in an apartment beneath the unit occupied by the landlady’s clearly unstable adult son, who shrieks incoherently at all hours of the day and night. (Nothing ever gets done about him.) Gloria occasionally returns home to find that a cat — always the same cat, of unknown origin — has somehow sneaked inside again. (We never learn how.)

She works as an insurance claims adjuster; her phone manner is calm, soothing and helpful. We imagine she gets terrific customer service ratings. She has a co-worker (Barbara Sukowa, as Melinda) who frets about their company’s meager retirement plan, and worries that she’ll have to work until she’s 80. Late in the film, Gloria helps Melinda exit the office. (Has she been fired? Departed of her own volition? We never know.)

Hands of Stone: Packs a punch

Hands of Stone (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, nudity, sexual content and strong sports violence
By Derrick Bang

Some sports champions, talent notwithstanding, make themselves very difficult to admire.

Ryan Lochte immediately comes to mind. And Dennis Rodman. And, sadly, more than a few others.

Although Roberto Durán (Edgar Ramírez, right) would rather charge into the ring and
bludgeon his opponent into submission, veteran trainer Ray Arcel (Robert De Niro)
cautions patience, and emphasizes the need for strategy.

Writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Hands of Stone profiles another such individual: Roberto Durán, widely acknowledged as one of the world’s all-time greatest boxers. As Jakubowicz’s script suggests, Durán’s skills in the ring couldn’t entirely offset an aggressive, unpleasantly confrontational personality that resulted from a chip on his shoulder the size of Pennsylvania.

Certainly he had cause, growing up in Panama in the 1950s and early ’60s, at a time when U.S./Panamanian tensions over ownership of the Canal Zone resulted in rioting, military intervention and nasty international squabbling. Abandoned by his father — an American marine who had an affair with a local girl — and essentially raised on the streets, Durán couldn’t help hating the Americans whom he perceived as thuggish invaders.

All of which makes his eventual alliance with legendary American trainer Ray Arcel even more fascinating.

Jakubowicz’s film is an engaging sports drama anchored by two strong starring performances. The narrative is fairly predictable — insofar as anything about Durán was predictable — and Jakubowicz’s handling is solid, if unremarkable. The fight choreography, however, is stunning. Paula Fairfield’s sound design is particularly effective; rarely have cinematic punches been staged so persuasively, or sounded so brutal.

On a much lighter note, we can’t help smiling over the serendipitous casting. Robert De Niro has come full circle: After winning an Academy Award for his portrayal of boxer Jake La Motta, in 1981’s Raging Bull, he’ll very likely garner an Oscar nod for this performance as Arcel.

Jakubowicz cleverly sets up a bit of parallel structure between Durán (Edgar Ramírez) and Arcel, since both men had to overcome dangerous challenges. Durán’s mere survival during childhood was a major accomplishment, along with the luck that propelled him into a talented neighborhood trainer’s hands.

Transformers 3: How 'bout changing into something decent?

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (2011) • View trailer for Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon
Two stars. Rating: PG-13, for prolonged action violence, mayhem and destruction, and for occasional profanity and fleeting sensuality
By Derrick Bang


Michael Bay doesn’t make movies; he assembles big-screen video games.

His characters don’t even have the depth of those found in 1960s Saturday morning cartoon shows. An average episode of Scooby-Doo generated more suspense and emotional impact.

After climbing a high-rise office building in order to get a better shot at a
complex beam-generator thingie, Sam (Shia LaBeouf) and his soldier buddies
find their plan derailed when a nasty, coiling Decepticon pushes over the
entire top half of the building. Boy, the good guys just can't catch a break!

His Transformers series makes the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise look like high art.

Bay, obviously operating under the assumption that more is more, clutters his action scenes with so much stuff that it’s impossible to focus on any single person or set of characters. Impossible to separate our heroes from half a dozen nameless hangers-on who have such wafer-thin character depth that they’d vanish, if turned sideways.

A typical Michael Bay good guy is introduced simply by striking a macho pose and growling something unintelligible. Rarely do we get names or even one-note distinguishing references (the fat one, the nasty one, etc.). We’re apparently supposed to be impressed simply because cinematographer Amir M. Mokri properly centers the guy in the frame. Then this gung-ho warrior joins other similarly anonymous combatants, and we wonder: Are we supposed to care about any of these guys?

Apparently not, since Ehren Kruger’s so-called script doesn’t bother with character depth, emotional resonance or sensible narrative structure. It’s just one big battle scene after another, most involving the destruction of as much real estate as possible. (Say farewell to the entire city of Chicago.) At close to three hours, it all becomes numbing: more endurance test than vicarious thrill ride.

I keep reminding myself that Kruger had us gnawing fingernails with his slick 1999 big-screen scripting debut, Arlington Road. Now, that was a nifty flick. Heck, I even liked his script for 2000’s Reindeer Games: not as good by a long shot, but still a slickly paced B-thriller.

But then Kruger sold his soul and got sucked into the increasingly tedious American remakes of Japan’s Ring horror entries, after which he was scooped up by Bay for the Transformers series. I guess we shouldn’t expect much from a big-screen franchise stitched together from a line of toys, but still; wouldn’t a little effort be warranted?

Thirteen people — 13! — are credited as producers on this mess, from Bay and Steven Spielberg (two of the four executive producers) to “3D producer” Michelle McGonagle. Golly, with all those producers, you’d sure think they’d ... well ... produce something.

Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen: Monster mash

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) • View trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Two stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for smutty dialogue and relentless action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.25.09
Buy DVD: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen • Buy Blu-Ray: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]


While certainly no classic of American cinema, 2007's Transformers at least took itself fairly seriously ... or as seriously as any movie about two warring factions of shape-changing extraterrestrial robots could take itself.

The just-released Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, in stark contrast, injects so much numbnuts slapstick — devolves to such a clumsy, desperate parody of itself — that the result is neither exciting nor funny. To put it in the story's own terms, it's neither battle-bot nor muscle car.

Sam (Shia LaBeouf) and Mikaela (Megan Fox) spend a lot of time in this film
running ... running from giant robots, running from explosions, running from
each other. One hopes they were paid by the mile, because they sure don't earn
their paychecks with any sort of acting talent.

Frankly, this film is a mess ... and, at a stultifying 149 minutes, a very long mess.

Back in the day, every time Universal Pictures wanted to squeeze one more entry out of a sagging monster franchise, Abbott and Costello would put a comedy stake through the undead remnants: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, and so forth.

Well, this flick feels like Transformers Meets the Three Stooges.

Bad enough that the utterly incomprehensible script — blame Ehren Kruger, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, although I've no doubt countless uncredited hands helped spoil this soup — stitches together unrelated scenes and half-baked sci-fi clichés so poorly, that the resulting film feels cobbled together from at least half a dozen disparate projects.

Bad enough that these same writers also inject the smarmy humor and coarse dialogue that also plagued the first film in this series, apparently in an effort to secure the more marketable PG-13 rating, and to please the arrested adolescent males who represent the target audience.

I mean, really, aren't scenes of humping dogs — eventually followed by a scene of a little robot humping Megan Fox's leg — the stuff of bad Will Ferrell comedies? This is the height of humor?

What's truly lamentable, though — and what really turns this flick into a brain-paralyzing endurance test — is that director Michael Bay and his editors (no fewer than four of them!) have done sloppy work. The continuity between scenes frequently is absent, as often is the case with the continuity within scenes. Characters shown to be sitting suddenly are standing when the camera angle shifts; characters hiding from bad robots in this spot suddenly are running away from that spot when camera two takes over.

Worse yet, the very soul and essence of the Transformers universe has been subverted by the tiresome insistence on gag humor. Suddenly Bumblebee, Optimus Prime and all the other noble robots have been saddled with comic cut-up robots that spout one-liners as if they're auditioning for a Saturday Night Live stand-up routine.

What Just Happened: Nothing much

What Just Happened (2008) • View trailer for What Just Happened
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, brief (but shocking) violence, fleeting nudity and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.31.08
Buy DVD: What Just Happened • Buy Blu-Ray: What Just Happened? [Blu-ray]


I'm not sure it's possible for a film to satirize Hollywood at this late date.

Back in the days of Sunset Boulevard and The Bad and the Beautiful, Tinseltown was a largely mysterious dream factory that hypnotized Midwestern ingenues, discarded most of them, but nurtured a chosen few and made them stars who truly were, at the time, much larger than life.

While Ben (Robert De Niro, center) and the nebbishy Dick (John Turturro, right)
watch apprehensively, Bruce Willis (left, playing himself) places the first spade
full of dirt on the coffin of a Hollywood agent who unexpectedly took his life.

Scathing cinema indictments about the film industry therefore were greeted with curiosity and considerable interest, particularly when such pictures cut close enough to the bone to raise the wrath of studio bigwigs who worried that a composite character looked a little too familiar.

But we now live in a media fishbowl: an era of TV gossip shows such as Entertainment Tonight, where celebrity misbehavior and studio venality are as commonplace as beer and pretzels. Nothing about the process is secret or even mysterious any more; Terry Gilliam's heroic battle with Universal Pictures, over the integrity of his script for Brazil, has become the stuff of legend. Similar tales fill every issue of magazines such as Entertainment Weekly.

Even the subtler elements of filmmaking have become tabloid fodder, as when soundtrack composer Gabriel Yared broke the code of silence and orchestrated a public meltdown when his score for Troy was summarily dismissed and replaced by hackwork from James Horner. Such musical substitutions no longer are carefully guarded studio secrets; we now know all about Henry Mancini's rejected score for Hitchcock's Frenzy, or Alex North's rejected score for 2001: A Space Odyssey. Goodness, you can buy the latter score, and compare it to what Stanley Kubrick used instead.

All of which explains why What Just Happened, despite quite engaging performances from star Robert De Niro and several key supporting players, just isn't very interesting. Despite its wholly authentic pedigree — adapted by actual Hollywood producer Art Linson (The Untouchables, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Fight Club and last year's Into the Wild, among many others) from his wonderfully salacious memoir, What Just Happened: Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line — what emerges in director Barry Levinson's film is just a lot of been there, done that.

Let's see...

• A protagonist too married to his job to sustain any actual relationships: check.

• The obligatory poke at laughably stupid sessions with a shrink: check.

• An on-set tantrum by an overpaid star: check.

• The agent too cowed by his clients to rein in their narcissistic behavior: check.

• The nubile young cuties willing to sleep their way into a career: check.

• The devastated indie filmmaker who feels betrayed when ordered to re-cut the ending of his "challenging" film: check.

I'm actually tempted to read Linson's book, because I'm sure it's much more aggressively and hilariously outrageous than what he and Levinson have chosen to adapt here.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan: A true mess

You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008) • View trailer for You Don't Mess with the Zohan
Zero stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, which is a total crock, for nudity, profanity and unrelenting sexual vulgarity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.5.08
Buy DVD: You Don't Mess with the Zohan • Buy Blu-Ray: You Don't Mess With the Zohan (Unrated + BD Live) [Blu-ray]

Goodness, such a wealth of options...

In his race to the bottom, Adam Sandler has done what I wouldn't have believed conceivable: He has bested Eddie Murphy, Rob Schneider and Will Ferrell.

Having abandoned his career as an Israeli Mossad commando, Zohan Dvir (Adam
Sandler) winds up in New York, embracing his secret passion to become a hair
stylist. Needless to say, his past catches up with him.

Or...

Impossible as it sounds, Sandler actually has made the most wretched film of his career. It's almost as if he indulged in a contest with himself, to unleash something even more unspeakably dreadful than Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds.

Or...

I should have known that any movie with a substantial speaking appearance by Mariah Carey would be a dog.

Or...

You Don't Mess with the Zohan may not be the year's worst movie ... but it'll do until that one comes along.

Let's go with No. 4.

I have no pity for Sandler's fans, who at least know what to expect. But the notion of unwary mainstream patrons across these great United States — even one unsuspecting naïf — innocently paying good money with the expectation of enjoying some goofy slapstick, is enough to make me cringe.

Demanding their money back won't be sufficient compensation. Hell, they should get Columbia pictures to pay them ... and on a sliding scale: an exponentially larger payoff for every additional minute spent enduring this train wreck.

I'd like to think it could be possible to center a comedy around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict; humor has a way of bridging even the most entrenched cultural divide. But Zohan is so poisonously tasteless, so unrelentingly vulgar and racist, that I can see it becoming one of the bullet-points in the next peace talks. ("You execute Adam Sandler, and burn every copy of that Godforsaken movie, or we don't even come to the table!")

Its status as an unredeemable turkey aside, Zohan also has the distinction of proving, once and for all, that the idiots who work for the MPAA are just messing with us. I've long felt their ratings were arbitrary and temperamental, but this is ridiculous. They really do indulge big-studio productions while unfairly reserving their "real" scrutiny for indie pictures.

Granted, this tawdry flick doesn't contain any F-bombs or bare breasts — plenty of naked male butts, though — but otherwise it's the most mercilessly vulgar production I've seen in quite awhile ... and yes, I'm even comparing it to what the Farrelly brothers unleash. The notion that this crude trash could skate by with a PG-13 is simply insane. It's not just wincingly awful; it's lose-your-lunch awful.