The Devil Wears Prada 2: Still wickedly fun

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for sensuality

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

The delicious snark isn’t quite as evident, and a greater degree of sentimentality is present, but everything else about this long-awaited sequel is spot-on.

 

When a panicked Andy (Anne Hathaway) confesses that she has nothing appropriate
to wear for a weekend gathering at her boss' home in the Hamptons, Nigel (Stanley
Tucci) comes to her rescue.

No surprise, since the entire team returned: director David Frankel, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, and stars Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. It should be noted, however, that while the 2006 film was a reasonably faithful adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel, this sequel is an entirely original story that is — as the screen credit reads — “based upon characters created by Weisberger.”

This actually is a good thing, since it allows McKenna to lace her character-driven plot with thoughtful — and rather unsettling — issues that are relevant here and now (although fans who enjoyed Weisberger’s two subsequent novels might be disappointed).

 

The story audaciously opens on twin crises.

 

Andy Sachs (Hathaway), having followed through with her long-ago decision to leave Runway magazine in order to become a professional reporter, receives a prestigious journalism award for a particularly hard-hitting series of articles. Alas, seconds before her name is announced as the winner, Andy and all of her key New York Vanguard colleagues — everybody sitting at the same table — are fired. By text. Victims of “corporate restructuring.”

 

Over at Runway, imperious editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Streep) faces a catastrophe, having failed to properly research an article about a clothing brand that has been revealed to rely on sweatshop labor. Advertisers begin to panic, and social media lights up with outrage and demeaning memes; Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), owner of Runway’s parent company Elias-Clarke, is apoplectic.

 

Perhaps worse, Miranda cannot respond with the level of blistering waspishness that characterized her every interaction in the first film; a long series of HR complaints have left her verbally muzzled, forced to pivot to insufferable PC alternatives. One of the film’s funniest running gags involves Streep’s exasperated expression every time Miranda’s current assistant, Amari (Simone Ashley), quietly tut-tuts and forestalls an impending gaffe.

 

Seeking to hasten damage control, and made aware of Andy’s recent award, Irv figures she’d be the one to write an appropriately balanced and sincere mea culpa. He offers her a position as Runway’s features editor; astonished at this miraculous turn of events, she accepts.

A Haunting in Venice: Gothic nonsense

A Haunting in Venice (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong violence and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.15.23

Agatha Christie must be spinning in her grave.

 

I can’t fault Kenneth Branagh for wanting to play her famed Belgian detective again; it’s a great role, and Branagh fills Hercule Poirot’s patent leather shoes with a delightful blend of aristocratic condescension and shrewd, sharp-eyed deductive analysis. It’s always fun to watch Poirot’s narrow gaze scrutinize the comparative heights of his twin breakfast soft-boiled eggs.

 

Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) initially has no interest in the challenge offered by
longtime friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey). But his curiosity eventually is piqued, and
he agrees to tag along for what becomes a most unusual evening.

But must Branagh continue to work with scripter Michael Green?

Green’s repeated efforts to “improve upon” Christie’s meticulously crafted novels ran 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express off the rails, and his 2022 disembowelment of Death on the Nile went under not only for the third time, but also the fourth and fifth.

 

This time out, Green doesn’t even try to adapt Christie’s Hallowe’en Party. The only thing this film has in common with her 1969 novel is the presence of one character, and he treats her in a manner that will enrage the celebrated author’s fans.

 

Why adapt a famous author’s book, if you’re just going to ruin it?

 

Matters aren’t helped by the fact that Branagh — who also directs — and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos allowed their Gothic sensibilities to run amuck. Branagh’s third Poirot outing is a classic example of style over substance: cockeyed camera angels, darkened hallways, smash-cut close-ups of worried expressions, Hildur Guönadóttir’s shrieking score, and the repeated squawking distraction of a cockatoo that swoops into numerous scenes for no good reason … all of which do nothing to conceal Green’s clumsy plot.

 

The setting is Venice in 1947, as Italy struggles to rebuild itself. Ten years have passed since the events in Death on the Nile, a decade has left Poirot disheartened by the fact that another generation found itself in a war even worse, in some respects, than the “Great War” he endured during his younger days. Poirot has retired and retreated behind the gates of a Venetian appartamento; he employs a bodyguard, Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio), to dissuade anybody wishing to engage his detective services.

 

Even so, Poirot tolerates a visit from longtime associate Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a mystery novelist who has based her series character on him. She offers a puzzle: a supposed medium, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), whose “performance” at a recent séance left her baffled. Ariadne, inclined to accept the notion of communication with the dead, believes that if Mrs. Reynolds can convince Poirot that she’s the “real deal,” then the result will be a certain best-seller about “the woman who stumped Hercule Poirot.”

 

(It must be mentioned that, in Christie’s canon, Ariadne is a friend who helps Poirot in seven novels, and would never, ever bait him so callously. But we move on…)

 

Clearly stung by the notion that he could be fooled by such an obvious charlatan, Poirot accepts the challenge. The setting for the next séance proves foreboding: the crumbling palazzo owned by retired opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly). The place is believed haunted by the ghosts of young orphans who met a terrible fate therein, decades earlier.

 

Worse yet, it’s also where Rowena’s beloved daughter Alicia died one year ago, having apparently jumped from her upstairs bedroom window and drowned in the canal below.

 

It also happens to be Halloween. A particularly stormy and wind-swept Halloween. What could be better?

Oppenheimer: Bravura filmmaking

Oppenheimer (2023) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, nudity and strong sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.21.23

This is, without question, one of the most ambitiously powerful films ever made.

 

Director/scripter Christopher Nolan’s attention to detail, and his flair for dramatic impact, are nothing short of awesome. Viewed on a giant IMAX screen, the result often is overwhelming.

 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers veteran Leslie Groves (Matt Damon, left), tasked with
running the Manhattan Project, is constantly vexed by the demands that come from
head scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy).

This deep dive into the tortured life of J. Robert Oppenheimer also boasts a panoply of well-sculpted characters: many familiar by reputation (or notoriety), others just as fascinating. All are played by an astonishing wealth of top-flight acting talent.

Best of all, Nolan’s adaptation of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer — published in 2005, and written over a period of 25 years — has the political complexity and narrative fascination that we’ve come to expect from Aaron Sorkin and William Goldman. Jennifer Lame’s pow-pow-pow editing also is terrific.

 

All that said, Nolan does himself no favors with a needlessly outré prologue that blends ostentatiously surreal imagery — representing the anxiety-laden guilt and terror that later plagued Oppenheimer — with Ludwig Göransson’s shrieking loud synth score. It’s much too intentionally weird and off-putting.

 

Göransson’s score and the film’s equally thunderous sound effects remain distracting during the first half-hour, obscuring dialogue while we struggle to absorb the initial character and information dump.

 

Nolan eventually settles comfortably into a multifaceted storytelling structure that cuts back and forth between Oppenheimer’s post-WWII security clearance hearing, held in the spring of 1954; and the June 1959 Senate hearings over whether former Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Lewis Strauss would be confirmed as President Eisenhower’s choice pick for U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

 

The former was a one-sided witch hunt deliberately kept out of the public eye, the latter a headline-generating circus very much in the public eye.

 

Oppenheimer, present throughout his 1954 hearing, reads a statement that opens the film’s third — and primary — narrative focus: his own life and career.

 

These sequences, as Oppenheimer’ history unfolds, are filmed in glorious 65mm color. (It remains true: Well-crafted film stock still is more satisfying — sharper, warmer, more vibrant — than digital.) 

 

The Strauss Senate hearings — an event beyond Oppenheimer’s control, in which he plays almost no role, although his presence is felt throughout — is shot in grainier black-and-white. The result feels more sinister and mysterious; first impressions of the key players ultimately prove misleading, as Nolan craftily moves his film into its third act.

 

But that comes much later.

Death on the Nile: Waterlogged

Death on the Nile (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence, bloody images and sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.11.22

Vanity, thy name is Kenneth Branagh.

 

Bad enough that he dishonors Agatha Christie by turning her shrewdly stoic, sharp-as-a-tack Hercule Poirot, he of the “little gray cells,” into a despondent, uncertain, weeping snowflake with no emotional control: somebody to be scorned, not admired.

 

Newlyweds Simon (Armie Hammer) and Linnet (Gal Gadot) happily tour an Egyptian
bazaar, little realizing that the stalker they've hoped to elude, isn't very far away...

Worse yet, Michael Green’s laughably overcooked and overwrought script makes absolutely hash of Christie’s celebrated 1937 novel, and his efforts at dialogue are remarkably unpersuasive.

At one point, having just acknowledged dropping a massive chunk of stone onto an unwary victim below, one suspect then wails “But I never would have killed her,” despite having just admitted attempting to do that very thing: a statement that goes unchallenged by Poirot and everybody else, which makes them look like fools.

 

That’s probably the worst howler in this egregiously stupid script, but it has plenty of company.

 

And as if all this isn’t enough, Branagh — who also directs — tolerates (encourages?) overacting to such a ludicrous degree, that he telegraphs the plot’s most surprising twist.

 

This may well be the worst big-screen Christie adaptation ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public … and I’m quite mindful of 1965’s dreadful Alphabet Murders — Tony Randall being an equally appalling Poirot — while making this claim.

 

Dame Agatha must be spinning in her grave.

 

This brings us to the issue of assigning early 21st century attitudes on characters who inhabit the 1930s: an “enhancement” that must be handled with care, lest the disconnect become distracting. There certainly isn’t anything wrong — as a positive example — with making two of these suspects lesbian lovers; even if Christie never specifically addressed such a relationship, they certainly existed.

 

But completely changing numerous supporting characters — in name and behavior — is both unnecessary and irritating. 

 

This film also opens with a nightclub display of Miley Cyrus-style “dirty dancing” that is impressively salacious by today’s standards, let alone those of nearly a century ago: a sequence that Branagh allows to go on, and on — and on — long past the point of … well … having made its point.

 

And that’s far from the only sequence that feels wholly out of place.

 

Clearly, since 2017’s similarly “modified” Murder on the Orient Express was such a box office success — grossing more than $350 million worldwide — Branagh’s reprisal of Poirot was inevitable.

 

But good grief … couldn’t all concerned have tried a little harder?

 

Sigh.

Murder on the Orient Express: A misdemeanor offense

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for brief violence and mild dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Many actors long to play Hamlet.

Others look forward to taking a crack at Hercule Poirot.

When an avalanche delays the London-bound Orient Express, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth
Branagh) is in the perfect position to solve a heinous murder ... because the killer still
must be somewhere on the train.

Kenneth Branagh is a marvelous Poirot. He nails Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian private detective: from the meticulous OCD tendencies — stroking his perfectly coifed mustache, sizing up the comparative height of his twin breakfast soft-boiled eggs — to the narrowed gaze and waspish tone that indicate crime scene analysis undertaken by his “little grey cells.”

Branagh definitely deserves placement alongside David Suchet and Albert Finney, as cinema’s greatest Poirots.

Alas, the same cannot be said for the vehicle in which Branagh’s Poirot inhabits. Screenwriter Michael Green’s attempt to turn Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express “relevant” for modern viewers makes a shambles of her ingeniously plotted 1934 novel. His adaptation commits the cardinal sin of telegraphing the twist so early, that he gives away the game before we’re even halfway through the film.

Green was an odd choice for this assignment. He’s into excess and exploitation: a sci-fi/horror guy whose credits include Green Lantern, Logan, Alien: Covenant and television’s Gotham and American Gods. He obviously lacks the subtlety and sly British wit required of a Christie mystery, which demands the touch of somebody like Peter Morgan (The Queen, television’s The Crown) or Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey and his own marvelous Christie pastiche, 2001’s Gosford Park).

Green struggles mightily to transform this story into an action-oriented adventure akin to director Guy Ritchie’s recent re-boots of Sherlock Holmes, and it simply doesn’t work. Murder on the Orient Express is a mostly tranquil drawing-room mystery ... except that it takes place aboard a train.

Branagh also directs, and succumbs overmuch to long tracking shots and other visual flourishes, which further diminish the story at hand. One sequence, inexplicably shot from above the characters’ heads as they enter a train compartment, is incredibly distracting.

Branagh seems to love the camera trickery made possible by contemporary CGI effects, and misses no opportunity for stunning vistas of the eponymous train, as it navigates the mountainous regions from Here to There: undeniably gorgeous, as is Haris Zambarloukos’ cinematography ... but rather beside the point.

The story takes place in 1934. Green opens the film with a droll prologue that hasn’t a thing to do with Christie, but nonetheless deftly establishes everything we need to know about Poirot. A last-minute change of plans interrupts an intended vacation in Istanbul, and prompts him to board the lavish Orient Express en route to London via Italy, Switzerland and France.

Dunkirk: An intense, masterful drama

Dunkirk (2017) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG-13, for intense war violence and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.21.17

Christopher Nolan doesn’t merely spin a crackling good yarn; he tells it in a provocative, wildly imaginative manner.

Thousands of Allied soldiers wait anxiously on the "mole" — a narrow, kilometer-long,
wood-boarded breakwater that pokes precariously out into the cold waters of the
English Channel — while praying they'll be able to board a rescue ship before being
strafed by Luftwaffe Messerschmitts.

His fascination with nonlinear storytelling began with Following and Memento — the latter ingeniously unfolding both forwards and backwards — and ultimately became too much in Inception (a dream within a fantasy within a head trip within a nod to Orson Welles ... quite overcooked, but audacious nonetheless).

Dunkirk does not succumb to such excess, although some viewers may be perplexed by how its three parallel storylines intersect ... until the penny drops, resulting in a richly satisfying — dare I say exhilarating — A-ha! moment.

This film is a masterpiece: a compelling, ingeniously conceived and choreographed slice of suspenseful, nail-biting history transformed into a thoroughly absorbing drama. Everything connects here, starting with the superlative work turned in by a huge ensemble cast composed primarily of unfamiliar faces and a few high-profile character actors.

Nolan both wrote and directed this stunning slice of edge-of-the-seat cinema, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he also came up with the attention-grabbing tag line: “When 400,000 men couldn’t get home ... home came for them.”

Remember being riveted, in 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, by Steven Spielberg’s 20-minute handling of the Normandy Beach landing sequence?

Nolan ups that ante. Dunkirk maintains that level of suspense and peek-between-your-fingers anxiety for its full 106 minutes. You literally dare not blink during his ticking-clock handling of simultaneous narratives that come together brilliantly, in time for a climax that’s no less triumphant, for our prior knowledge of how the story concludes.

The drama comes from the skillfully sketched, ground-level characters, whose fates we most definitely don’t know, history notwithstanding.

This is a snapshot of a seminal event during the early days of World War II: an incident that began with a ghastly military disaster, but concluded with an amazing miracle that demonstrated anew — here’s a lesson worth repeating — how individual civilians absolutely can make a massive, heroic difference.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit — Engaging spy hijinks

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for action violence and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

This is the most fun I’ve had with a spy thriller since 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy ... and possibly since 1975’s Three Days of the Condor.

Jack Ryan (Chris Pine, left) doesn't miss much, so he's not surprised when Thomas
Harper (Kevin Costner), having monitored the younger man's hospital convalescence,
formally introduces himself and makes a tantalizing offer: Would Ryan like to join the
CIA? Needless to say, there'd be no movie if Ryan declined...

Actually, the Condor comparison may be more apt, since this re-boot of Tom Clancy’s intrepid CIA analyst — played in previous films by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck — places a greater emphasis on Ryan’s analytical skills, while making him a reluctant secret agent. The resulting action dynamic evokes fond memories of Robert Redford’s similarly desperate efforts, in Condor, to make the most of a set of circumstances far outside his comfort zone.

Not that star Chris Pine’s fresh take on Jack Ryan is wholly inexperienced when it comes to field work, as was the case with Redford’s character. As seems obligatory these days, with “rookie” covert operatives, this re-imagined Ryan is a former Marine with plenty of hoo-rah grit and hand-to-hand combat skills, in addition to his university book-learnin’.

Indeed, we’re introduced to a college-age Ryan attending classes at the London School of Economics, on the fateful day when terrorists take out New York’s Twin Towers. Galvanized into serving his country, Ryan becomes a Marine and nearly loses his life. Convalescence and subsequent physical therapy bring two people into his orbit: flirty, kind-hearted med student Cathy Muller (Keira Knightley), and stoic man of mystery Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner).

The former, we can be sure, will become this story’s obligatory love interest; the latter, armed with Costner’s devilish smile, is the CIA recruiter who brings Ryan into the fold. But not, Harper insists, until the younger man returns to school and obtains his degree. The CIA wants Ryan to be Wall Street-savvy, the better to ferret out nasty back-room dealings that might endanger the U.S. economy.

Flash-forward to the present day, with Ryan comfortably ensconced at a high-profile Wall Street firm where nobody knows of his actual career. “Nobody” includes Cathy, now a main squeeze of many years’ standing, who has become a pediatric eye surgeon. Thus far, Cathy hasn’t had any reason to wonder about her lover’s candor — Ryan has taken the CIA secrecy pledge very seriously — but, naturally, that’s about to change.

I’m not sure that plot contrivance works in this day and age; it seems highly unlikely that Ryan could have concealed his shadowy activities for so long. People who live together generally know each other’s movements better than that, and the resulting “trouble” caused by this secret seems a mite silly ... even when Pine does his best to sell the notion with his unabashed charm and Boy Scout enthusiasm.

But it’s not a major problem, and the subterfuge does prompt several cute exchanges between Pine and Knightley, both of whom deliver plenty of captivating star wattage.

Valkyrie: Oh, so close...

Valkyrie (2008) • View trailer for Valkyrie
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.26.08
Buy DVD: Valkyrie • Buy Blu-Ray: Valkyrie [Blu-ray]

After numerous delays, amid speculation that the picture was snake-bit, and with his artistic credibility on the line — not to mention the fate of his still-fresh ownership of United Artists — Tom Cruise finally has gotten Valkyrie into theaters.

Soon after recovering from injuries sustained in North Africa, and because he
has made no secret of his distaste for the direction Hitler's war has taken, Col.
Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise, standing left) is approached by Maj. Gen.
Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh, standing right) and asked to join
an ambitious plot to assassinate Der Fuehrer.

The good news is that the film is a crackling drama, its fascinating depiction of dissension within Hitler's elite a reassuring reminder that numerous high-ranking German politicians and military officers were quite unhappy with the madman leading their country.

The bad news — for Cruise, anyway — is that he's completely miscast in this project, his all-American good looks and blatantly American accent at odds with the German officer he's playing. More critically, he's blown off the screen by a veritable wealth of supporting players, many of them British, all of them vastly superior actors.

Despite being the center of these events, Cruise's Col. Claus von Stauffenberg is the least interesting — and most shallowly realized — character in the film.

All stories of this nature, where suspense must be built from actual historical events with known outcomes, succeed or fail on the basis of how deeply involved we get with either the characters or the situation. Despite knowing (for example) that the astronauts of Apollo 13 made it back safely, we nonetheless were at the edge of our chairs during director Ron Howard's absorbing film.

In terms of political thrillers, the benchmark was set with 1973's Day of the Jackal, director Fred Zinnemann's brilliant adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's dynamite best-seller, which detailed a plot to assassinate Charles De Gaulle. Notwithstanding the obvious fact that De Gaulle never was assassinated, we actually began to worry, as professional killer Edward Fox went through all his meticulous preparations, that we might have misremembered history.

The scheme, it appeared, couldn't possibly go wrong!

Valkyrie takes a somewhat different approach in its depiction of the so-called "July 20th Plot" to kill Hitler and replace the entire Nazi government. As this screenplay — credited to Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander — begins in 1943 and builds to its climax during the summer of 1944, it's almost immediately obvious that well-laid plans will go awry, and that these dedicated and well-meaning conspirators will be caught; the only questions are when, and how.

This almost inevitable failure is even referenced by one particularly mordant line of dialogue: "It's a military operation. Of course something will go wrong."