Palmer: A poignant ode to second chances

Palmer (2021) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexual content, brief nudity and violence

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.5.21

Films such as this one, are why I love my job.

 

Cheryl Guerriero’s sharply observed screenplay for this sweet character drama is matched by scrupulously persuasive performances throughout. That said, special mention must be made of stars Justin Timberlake — absolutely the finest, most heartfelt acting job he has turned in thus far — and newcomer Ryder Allen, all of 7 years old during production.

 

Attendance at Sunday morning church service is mandatory for anybody living with
Vivian (June Squibb, foreground right), which Palmer (Justin Timberlake, foreground
left) quickly learns. Young Sam (Ryder Allen), a semi-permanent house guest,
couldn't be happier.

Actor-turned-movie maker Fisher Stevens coaches superbly subtle work from both: a degree of directorial sensitivity that I never would have expected from his only two previous features: 2002’s Just a Kiss and 2012’s Stand Up Guys. Guerriero’s story is thoroughly engaging, but it’s also fun to sit back and watch all the little bits — the pauses, expressions and gestures — that make Timberlake and Allen’s characters so believable.

 

The premise is familiar, but — when the execution is this earnest — that’s no drawback.

 

Former high school football star Eddie Palmer (Timberlake), once a hometown hero who earned an athletic college scholarship, took a massively wrong turn and wound up serving 12 years in a state penitentiary. He did “good time”; he kept his nose clean and paid his debt to society.

 

The film opens as he returns to his small-town Louisiana roots, moving in with his grandmother Vivian (June Squibb), who raised him. The weather-beaten community feels time-locked; although smart phones and computers are present, they remain at the periphery. More than once, Palmer — as he prefers to be called — insists that he’s perfectly content with the rotary phone on the wall.

 

(Filming took place in Hammond — not too far from Baton Rouge and New Orleans — and production designer Happy Massee ensures that the ambiance is strongly mid-20th century Southern Americana.)

 

Palmer’s early efforts at “making the rounds” are acutely uncomfortable, Timberlake’s posture and gaze sliding between wariness and embarrassment. He’s greeted enthusiastically by old friends Daryl (Stephen Louis Grush) and Ned (Nicholas X. Parsons), both of whom are Obvious Bad News; we worry about this, although Palmer seems smart enough to steer clear.

 

His reception from another former friend, Coles (Jesse C. Boyd), is more guarded. Following in his father’s footsteps, Coles has become a cop; some sort of residual tension permeates this reunion, although Coles clearly is happy to see Palmer. The same can’t be said of Coles’ father (Dane Rhodes), the local top cop, who grimly expects to re-arrest Palmer in due course.

 

Wonder Wheel: Far from wonderful

Wonder Wheel (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang

Toward the conclusion of Woody Allen’s newest dive into the pool of mid-century nostalgia, Kate Winslet’s Ginny — having descended into full-blown Norma Desmond madness — responds to an accusation by petulantly whining, “Oh, God; spare me the bad drama.”

My feelings precisely.

As the summer progresses, Mickey (Justin Timberlake) begins to realize that Ginny
(Kate Winslet) is placing far too much emotional weight on their clandestine affair.

Wonder Wheel is Allen’s homage to shrill, over-the-top melodrama: a contrived piffle that seeks to outdo the likes of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sunset Boulevard, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and their ilk. On top of which, the story is told by a character who — having informed us that he’s a budding poet and playwright given to florid exaggeration — clearly is an unreliable narrator.

Even allowing for all that, Allen’s film wallows in a swamp of soggy excess that surpasses the worst afternoon television soaps.

Which is a shame, because there’s much to recommend Wonder Wheel, starting with Vittorio Storaro’s gorgeous cinematography and Santa Loquasto’s impeccable period production design, which deliver a level of visual opulence rarely seen since Douglas Sirk’s lavish 1950s melodramas (Magnificent Obsession, Imitation of Life and others).

Even though all these characters recognize that their Coney Island home is past its prime, things still look terrific, in a fading-glory sort of way. The film takes its title from the massive Ferris wheel always standing vigil in the background, like a silent Greek chorus.

Ginny, pushing 40 and prone to migraines, works a dead-end job as a waitress in the Boardwalk clam shack. She’s married to Humpty (Jim Belushi), a recovering alcoholic who manages the merry-go-round in the amusement arcade. They live in a ramshackle apartment directly above the shooting gallery, the incessant pop-pop-pops frequently aggravating her debilitating headaches.

They bicker, snipe, squabble and quarrel in the manner of Ralph and Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners — also very 1950s — but with very little mitigating affection. It’s the second marriage for both, and we sense they’ve remained together mostly due to weary resignation.

They do a poor job of managing her bratty adolescent son, Richie (Jack Gore), a bad-seed monster and budding pyromaniac who loves setting fires below the wooden boardwalk. Everything concerning this little twerp seems to have migrated in from an entirely different film; his presence adds nothing to the core narrative, and his dangerous “hobby” is just sorta cast adrift during the third act ... rather sloppy, even for Allen.

Trolls: Hair today, gone tomorrow

Trolls (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, and needlessly
By Derrick Bang

Occasional successes such as The Lego Movie notwithstanding, Hollywood’s track record with respect to designing films from toys has been spotty, at best.

After several of their friends are kidnapped by the evil, Troll-chomping Bergen chef, the
eternally cheerful Poppy, left, tries to persuade the eternally gloomy Branch to join her
on a rescue mission.

Anybody out there remember GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords? Or Bratz: The Movie? Kit Kittredge: An American Girl? Clue? Battleship? Jem and the Holograms? Or — God help us all — The Garbage Pail Kids?

Contrary to what is assumed by far too many of today’s Tinseltown deal makers, good movies rarely spring from 15-word concept pitches, regardless of the source material. At the beginning, middle and end of the day, it always comes down to story, story, story.

Which is the ingredient most sorely lacking in DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls.

To be sure, the film’s “fuzzy immersion” look is fabulous, with everything given a luxurious, yarn-like quality. The color palette is equally pleasing: bright pastel hues that favor rich blues, greens, pinks and purples. No question: It’s a razzle-dazzle delight, populated by adorable animated characters that are certain to please very young viewers.

Anybody over the age of 6 or 7 ... not so much.

Adults ... not at all.

The derivative, threadbare script aside — Erica Rivinoja, Glenn Berger and Jonathan Aibel couldn’t have spent much time on it — this film’s insufferable, gooey-sweet tone is guaranteed to send diabetics into sugar shock. It’s syrupy overkill on par with the slushy, mushy movies based on the Care Bears, Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony.

Ya gotta worry about a movie that promises to help viewers Find Their Happy Place.

So. This vividly multihued realm is inhabited by fuzzy, barefooted Trolls of various shades (and a few unusual sizes). All possess the ability to expand and manipulate their hair, with the skill of Spider-Man and his web-shooters. By and large, though, the forever cheerful Trolls are much too busy with “hug attacks” every 30 minutes, and their tendency to burst into song at random moments.

Alas, the Trolls share this kingdom with the much larger, uglier and nastier Bergens: dour, pessimistic creatures who look much more like the actual trolls of ancient myth, than the little Trolls themselves. The Bergens yearn to be happy, and learned long ago that the only way to achieve such bliss ... was by devouring Trolls. Baked, fried, sautéed, fricasseed or simply popped into the mouth and chomped, like a gumball.

Even if the Troll is still alive and protesting.

(Like, seriously? That’s a rather grim concept for such a family-friendly endeavor.)

Inside Llewyn Davis: Sour notes

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang 

To borrow shamelessly from a mordant holiday song, the only thing you’ll find inside Llewyn Davis is a heart that’s full of unwashed socks, and a soul that’s full of gunk. His brain is full of spiders; he’s as cuddly as a cactus and as charming as an eel.

He really is a heel.

Llewyn (Oscar Isaac, left) is undeniably talented, as he demonstrates when effortlessly
filling in for a session musician during the recording of a novelty tune in honor of
astronaut John Glenn. The song is penned by Llewyn's friend Jim (Justin
Timberlake, center), with a comic vocal assist from Al (Adam Driver)

None of which is the slightest bit amusing or entertaining, as was the case with the green-skinned Grinch. Llewyn Davis is simply a self-centered jerk: a struggling Greenwich Village folk singer attempting to make it in a business he neither understands nor admires, and who bitterly stomps on the feelings of anybody daft enough to extend a gesture of kindness.

We are, once again, spending nearly two hours in the presence of a thoroughly unlikable boor, and to no purpose. Llewyn doesn’t learn anything; neither does he mature or experience anything close to an epiphany. He has no spiritual side, and family ties are (ahem) mangled up in tangled-up knots.

He simply uses people without gratitude or a thought of compensation; the words “thanks” probably would choke him to death.

And yet all these personality failings aren’t the most irritating part of Inside Llewyn Davis. No, the biggest disappointment comes from the knowledge that this is a Joel and Ethan Coen film, and we wait in vain for any trace of the clever allegory, scathing character analysis or deliciously dark humor that has invigorated previous films such as Fargo and No Country for Old Men.

Solace comes there none. This new film is just a dreary slog.

The story follows Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) during what we can imagine is a typical few weeks in the winter of 1961/62, as he struggles to hustle up gigs while spending nights on the couches of the few people still willing to tolerate him. He’s a story-song purist: an angry young man determined to succeed on his own terms, and not yet aware that his brand of poetic, soul-baring angst is about to be buried beneath the hook-laden folk of Bob Dylan and the more melodic, listener-friendly music of (for example) Peter, Paul and Mary.

Not to mention the even more pernicious influence of bubble-gum pop songs.

As always is the case with a Coen brothers film, this one boasts a killer soundtrack. All the music is engaging and illuminating, not to mention a perfect depiction of the era. Isaac is persuasively credible behind a microphone, a guitar held in two capable hands; his music emerges from somewhere deep within, and for a brief moment we can imagine that he actually has something important to say.

Runner Runner: A fouled hand

Runner Runner (2013) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity and occasional blunt sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Some movies defiantly wear their movie-ness like an ill-advised badge of honor.

The premise is so contrived, the characters so ill-defined, their behavior so random, that all we can do is shake our heads in resignation, thinking, What can we expect? It’s only a movie.

It's every teenage boy's dream come true: Richie (Justin Timberlake, left) couldn't be
happier when Internet gambling tycoon Ivan Block (Ben Affleck) accepts him as a
protégé. Of course, Richie fails to heed the slightest trace of common sense, branding
himself as the biggest sucker of all time: an attitude without which we wouldn't have
this film. Which might have been a good thing.

Runner, Runner fits that bill.

The script, credited to Brian Koppelman and David Levien, is absolutely ludicrous. It opens with a behavioral howler and just gets worse, its central character — our de facto hero — ignoring common sense to a degree that makes it impossible to sympathize with him. Frankly, he fully deserves the consequences that he eventually struggles so hard to escape.

Let him hang, and move on.

But no, that would defy the revenge scenario that Koppelman and Levien so clumsily stitch together, from one bewildering moment to the next. Director Brad Furman, perhaps recognizing the weak hand he has been dealt, does his best to dazzle us with Costa Rican scenery and the wretched excess of an opulent casino gaming community.

Indeed, cinematographer Mauro Fiore lingers so long on such a setting, when our young hero initially enters this hedonistic realm, that I began to wonder if Furman had forgotten what to do next.

Runner, Runner, set in the world of Internet gambling, is an echo for Koppelman and Levien. They made their bones back in 1998 with Rounders, a slick suspense thriller also involving high-stakes poker and a protagonist — in that case, Matt Damon — who gets in over his head. Clearly obsessed with gamblers and intricate stings, Koppelman and Levien subsequently created the short-lived TV series Tilt and brought the Danny Ocean series to a satisfying conclusion with Ocean’s Thirteen.

Things since then haven’t been nearly as satisfying, with two failures — The Girlfriend Experience and Solitary Man, both in 2009 — that were outside their comfort zone. No doubt Koppelman and Levien viewed Runner, Runner as a means of returning to what they know best.

Well guys, they say you can’t go home again ... and that’s certainly the case here.

Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake), a Wall Street up-and-comer who lost everything when the market crashed, has started over as a Princeton grad student. Lacking a respectable means to fund his education, he has been earning a commission as a shill for Midnight Black, an enormously successful Internet gambling site.

Alas, Princeton’s dean (a small but well-played role by Bob Gunton) thinks little of Richie’s clandestine operation, and orders it shut down. With no other means of earning tuition money, Richie goes “all in” one night by yielding to the very temptation that he has professed, during his smart-alecky narration, to be smart enough to avoid: playing online poker at Midnight Black. Naturally, he loses everything.

But suspiciously.

Trouble with the Curve: Just about out of the park

Trouble with the Curve (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for occasional profanity and some sexual references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.21.12

Even the most familiar material will become vibrant in the hands of seasoned pros.

Randy Brown’s impressive debut script for Trouble with the Curve turns this film into a quiet little charmer that focuses on both sports and the angst-laden trauma of a long-estranged father and daughter. Along the way, Brown also scores perceptive points about loyalty, workaholics, the ageist contempt of youth, and the soul-grinding aggravation of growing old.

Veteran baseball scout Gus (Clint Eastwood) is having trouble with his vision, but he
dares not acknowledge this, lest he lose his job. Enter Mickey (Amy Adams), his
long-estranged and only child, who reluctantly serves as her father's eyes while
attempting to re-kindle a bond once characterized by love and a shared devotion
to their favorite sport.

Star Clint Eastwood continues to be at the top of his game, delivering another riff on the “crusty ol’ coot” persona that has served him well in projects ranging from the light-hearted Space Cowboys to the far more serious Gran Torino. His work here slides between those two extremes; Gus Lobel has become too cranky to be actually likable — the ravages of old age merely amplifying his less pleasant qualities — but we sympathize with him nonetheless.

Gus is an old-style baseball scout, long employed by the Atlanta Braves, who loves hunkering in the bleachers and bathing in the magic of the sport’s “true, sweet sound.” He’ll never accept computer-driven stats as a replacement for his devotion to poring over newspapers and tip sheets, and then watching the players, in order to draw his own conclusions.

He is, in short, a dinosaur: an object of ridicule to number-crunching Braves associate scouting director Phillip Sanderson (Matthew Lillard), who insists that computers can do it faster and far more accurately. Pete Klein (John Goodman), chief of scouts and also Gus’ longtime best friend, is finding it harder and harder to defend the “old ways” to Braves General Manager Vince Freeman (Robert Patrick).

At this crucial moment, with Gus’ contract due to expire in three months, things get even worse as his eyesight begins to fail; an expanding circle in the center of his vision has grown blurry. A reluctant trip to his optometrist confirms the worst: glaucoma and macular degeneration.

The timing couldn’t be worse, because Gus’ next assignment involves a trip to North Carolina, to observe hot Swannanoa High School prospect Bo Gentry (Joe Massingill). The Braves really, really want this kid, and Sanderson is leading that charge; Gus, not to be rushed, wants to reach his own conclusions ... but that’ll be difficult, if he can’t see how Bo handles a pitch.

Enter Gus’ long-estranged daughter, Mickey (Amy Adams), a tightly wound associate at a high-powered Atlanta law firm, who has sacrificed everything to sprint along the fast track toward partnership. Mickey essentially has no life outside the office, but this is less a function of ambition, and more a self-defensive coping mechanism.

Once upon a time, long ago, Mickey and her father were inseparable, of necessity; her mother died when she was 6. Gus subsequently hauled his only child along on all his scouting assignments, and she grew to love the male-dominated atmosphere of swearing, joshing and drinking straight whisky. She also adores baseball to every possible degree, having reluctantly sublimated her talent for player stats in favor of torts and legal precedents.

In Time: Fast-paced sci-fi thriller

In Time (2011) • View trailer for In Time
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for violence, sexuality, fleeting nudity and profanity
By Derrick Bang


Andrew Niccol has quite an imagination.

The New Zealand-born writer/director landed with a splash in 1997 with Gattaca, an intriguing sci-fi thriller that has aged well. Then Niccol really caught my attention with his Oscar-nominated script for The Truman Show, the following year: truly a work of genius.

Will (Justin Timberlake, center), out of his element in fancy dress, and
surrounded by wealthy people who instinctively realize that he doesn't belong,
nonetheless catches the eye of the headstrong Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried),
daughter of corporate titan Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser).

The Truman Show anticipated the realty TV craze that subsequently infested the world; Niccol’s next film, S1m0ne, explored the ethical parameters likely to emerge if computer-enhanced substitutes replace actual film and television stars (an issue that subsequently hit the headlines when advertising companies began to use dead celebrities such as John Wayne and Fred Astaire, shilling for — respectively — Coors Light and Dirt Devil).

All of which brings us to In Time, Niccol’s intriguing sci-fi spin on our real world’s increasingly deplorable divide of wealth between the have-nots and the have-everythings. Such social commentary notwithstanding, though, the approach here is more exploitative than contemplative; this is a B-thriller in fancy dress.

Nothing wrong with that, of course; plenty of gritty — and quite entertaining — action flicks have made excellent use of sci-fi elements, from 1973’s Soylent Green to 2009’s Echelon Conspiracy.

Here, in Nichol’s rather disturbing view of the future, immortality has been achieved: Everybody ages normally to 25, and then never looks a day older. One’s mother, sister and daughter become de facto physical peers ... which leads to some amusingly disorienting issues.

But the world’s resources are finite, and the entire population cannot be allowed to live forever. Ergo, time has become money ... literally. Somehow, everybody is born with a body clock embedded within the lower left arm. (We cannot ask how this occurs, or was allowed to happen; reasonable questions have no role in this scenario.) On a person’s 25th birthday, an inner clock starts ticking downward for one final year of life.

Except that it’s far less than a year, because everything in this world — food, clothes, lodging, entertainment — also costs time: an hour for a bus ride, several hours for a meal. This “price” is withdrawn electronically from one’s inner time-meter; should that meter drop to zero, heart failure and instant death follow.

The rich and powerful never need to worry about time; they control its use — and frequently misuse — in the manner of rapacious Wall Street brokers. Working-class citizens are a different story; they rarely have more than 24 hours on their body clocks, and must toil every day, in factories, to earn another day of precious life. Many fail.

Bad Teacher: Flunks out

Bad Teacher (2011) • View trailer for Bad Teacher
1.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, nudity, sexual candor and drug use
By Derrick Bang


Lest you’ve wondered recently, let me remove all doubt: America truly is the land of opportunity.

Nowhere else could Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg have been paid — and quite well, by the standards of us ordinary working stiffs — for their script to this dreadful excuse for a movie.

While showing support for the faculty band's performance at a local bar, the
bored Elizabeth (Cameron Diaz, center), present only because she's hot for one
of the musicians, rather cruelly encourages the timid Lynn (Phyllis Smith) to
pick up a guy across the room, as Russell (Jason Segel) expresses silent but
obvious disapproval.

Nowhere else could a major film studio — Columbia, fercryinoutloud! — have believed, even for a moment, that this misbegotten project was worth green-lighting. What are those people smoking down there?

Nowhere else could director Jake Kasdan have drawn an even larger salary for making absolutely no effort to cajole convincing performances from his cast members. Indeed, one gets the impression that Kasdan spent the entire production shoot much like this flick’s title character: eyes closed and totally zonked, having stayed up too late the previous evening, and now paying not the slightest bit of attention to what happens each day in front of the camera.

Really, it doesn’t look like he even tried. The actors here move stiffly and awkwardly from one scene to the next — most of which have no continuity — and deliver their lines flatly and without the slightest trace of emotional connection, while standing uncomfortably about, as if waiting for a school bus.

With few exceptions, their “performances” look and sound like cold line-readings. And since we’ve seen most of these people do much better work elsewhere, the blame falls squarely on Kasdan’s shoulders.

I probably shouldn’t be surprised, since Kasdan most recently brought us the 2007 train wreck, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. He’s yet another member of the Judd Apatow repertory company, having served his apprenticeship on television’s Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, followed by a reasonably respectable big-screen debut with 2002’s Orange County. But Kasdan never fulfilled those early suggestions of promise; if his next feature — 2006’s The TV Set — even achieved big-screen release, I never heard about it.

Being part of the Apatow crew, even a lesser part, means larding one’s films with requisite dollops of vulgarity and crude, boorish behavior. And profanity: plenty of profanity. But that style only works — which is to say, only becomes funny — when starting with a competent script that delivers characters whose behavior is somehow shaped or defined by their exaggerated impropriety.

Under no circumstances could Stupnitsky and Eisenberg’s random typing here be called a script, let alone competent.

The Social Network: Brave 'Face'

The Social Network (2010) • View trailer for The Social Network

4.5 stars (out of five). • Rating: PG-13 for considerable raunchy behavior, sexual content, drug use and profanity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.01.10

Admire the art, abhor the artist.

Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg, left), bored and irritated
by depositions he is forced to attend, behaves as if he
couldn't care less whether millions of dollars are at stake
in such proceedings. And it's true: He doesn't care. Nothing
matters except his single-minded goal to completely
transform the Internet landscape ... and social rules
regarding personal privacy.

You've gotta be impressed by a film that holds us near breathless, despite spending so much time with a protagonist we loathe.

Director David Fincher's mesmerizing depiction of the tempestuous events that led to Facebook's creation is can't-miss cinema: a bravura blend of dead-on casting, engaging performances, slick pacing and captivating writing.

Particularly the latter. Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, adapted from Ben Mezrich's nonfiction book The Accidental Billionaires, is a masterpiece of clever composition and rat-a-tat dialogue. It'll be adored by film buffs who admire the machine-gun verbal byplay in (for example) classic Howard Hawks comedies such as 1940's His Girl Friday.

Fincher's film is both stylistically retro and blindingly contemporary, a true-life fable that proves, once and for all, that truth really is stranger than fiction. It's also a shrewd and perceptive statement of our narcissistic times: an indictment as unerringly — and uneasily — accurate as last year's Up in the Air.

And, not least, this film is something of a magic trick, taking a subject as potentially dull and obtuse as computer coding, and transforming it into a fascinating study of talent, greed, betrayal, misunderstanding and rage-fueled vengeance. The drama here is positively Shakespearean.