Dolemite Is My Name: Far out, man!

Dolemite Is My Name (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, and you'd better believe it, for nudity, crude sexual content and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.1.20

We love to learn about unlikely Hollywood success stories; they fuel Tinseltown’s image as the land of dreams and magic.

Writer/director Robert Rodriguez made his feature film debut, 1992’s El Mariachi, on a budget of only $7,000 (!) … half of which he raised via stipends earned as a participant in experimental clinical drug trials.

If clothes truly make the impersonation, Rudy Ray Moore (Eddie Murphy) must decide
whether his outfit is flashy enough to persuade a nightclub audience that he's a
streetwise pimp.

Steven Spielberg was only 17 when he began working as an unpaid clerical assistant in the Universal Studios editing department in the summer of 1964; four years later, his first professional short subject, Ambin’, impressed studio vice president Sidney Sheinberg enough to offer Spielberg a seven-year directing contract.

Rudy Ray Moore’s saga belongs in their company.

His unlikely career is profiled — more or less accurately — in Dolemite Is My Name, an unapologetically raucous and profane biographical comedy/drama from director Craig Brewer. The Netflix original boasts an impressively nuanced performance from star Eddie Murphy: an on-the-nose casting choice, given that — like Moore — he’s also an industry Comeback Kid, having risen from the ashes of his own imprudent career decisions.

Moore and his “Dolemite” persona are likely to be recognized or remembered only by cinema buffs who devoured 1970s blaxploitation flicks. As with the concurrent kung fu phase, many (most?) such films were made on microscopic budgets, and typified by shoddy special effects, clumsy scripting and atrocious acting. Fans couldn’t have cared less; such guerilla filmmaking inevitably came with an anti-establishment attitude and visceral degree of energy that made them, well, fun.

(If only in the sense of guilty pleasures.)

Scripters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski don’t shy from the eyebrow-raising coarseness of Moore’s personality, which is to be commended; there’s really no other way to depict his unlikely career with anything approaching authenticity. Murphy, in turn, radiates the charisma and unrelenting — often foolish — persistence with which Moore pursued his improbable dreams.

Murphy also isn’t afraid to embrace Moore’s physical limitations, including the pot belly that made him the world’s least likely film star.

But that comes later.

Alpha: A bit of a mutt

Alpha (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

This is a lovely notion for a story, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

Actually, I’m not certain it can be rendered successfully as a film. Director Albert Hughes and scripter Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt certainly put heart and soul into their effort, but the result is slow, occasionally lifeless and frequently — distractingly — contrived.

Separated from their respective companions, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and his unlikely
ally increasingly rely on each other, while attempting to survive prehistoric Europe's
dangerous environment.

At the risk of sounding like a killjoy, the very premise is flawed. While it’s romantic to consider the notion of a hyper-intelligent “first dog” that allowed itself to be fully domesticated some 20,000 years in our past, in truth it likely took many, many generations of (accidental?) wolf breeding before something approximating humanity’s best friend finally emerged.

But that wouldn’t be nearly as enticing during a studio story pitch.

Alpha belongs to the small but intriguing sub-genre of “protagonist(s) against the elements” films that are largely — or completely — bereft of dialogue. Its predecessors include 1981’s Quest for Fire, 1986’s adaptation of Clan of the Cave Bear and the pack’s stand-out classic, 1988’s The Bear. The latter’s director, Jean-Jacques Annaud — who also helmed Quest for Fire — has a strong artistic, visual and dramatic sense that keeps viewers breathlessly hooked.

Which Hughes can’t do, and no surprise; his résumé, working in tandem with brother Allen, focuses on grim, often socially conscious action thrillers such as Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, From Hell and The Book of Eli. He hasn’t the faintest idea how to handle something requiring the careful, delicate touch that Alpha demands. I kept lamenting how far superior this film would have been, in Annaud’s hands.

Hughes’ insecurity manifests immediately: He opens with a pointless flash-forward to one of the film’s most catastrophically suspenseful moments, freezes the climactic image, leaves us hanging (literally), then backs up to begin the story chronologically. One can’t help feeling that he worried about losing his audience, during a lengthy first act that (frankly) wastes a lot of time setting the stage.

Or perhaps that decision was thrust upon Hughes by nervous execs at Studio 8 (the production company) or Columbia Pictures (the distributor). Regardless, it’s an irritating cheat that bodes ill for the rest of the film.

We’re introduced to a small clan of Cro-Magnon tool-makers toward the end of Europe’s Mesolithic period. These are civilized people, with rituals, a language, primitive weapons, family hierarchies and an understanding that survival depends on working together, with everybody contributing. The tribe is led by Tau (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), stern and strong, and proud that his 17-year-old son, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee), has just come of age. 

For the first time, Keda will join the men on their dangerous trek to locate the massive herds of steppe bison that populate very distant grasslands: an annual hunt required to supply the food that will get the clan through the subsequent harsh winter.

X-Men: Apocalypse — Thud and blunder

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and quite generously, for gratuitously fleeting profanity and distasteful, soul-crushing violence
By Derrick Bang

Enough, already.

Things were bad enough last summer, when Avengers: Age of Ultron gave us characters capable of re-shaping reality, along with a celestial scheme to return Earth to its Ice Age. Hollywood’s apparent need for superhero movies that forever increase the sense of scale — like a junkie craving ever-stronger fixes — was plain outta control.

When Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, center) is alerted to the presence of an ultra-
powerful mutant, he and his comrades — from left, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), Moira
Mactaggert (Rose Byrne), Alex Summers (Lucas Till) and Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) —
try to determine how best to find this entity.

This newest X-Men entry is even worse, with a villain who literally can re-shape the planet according to whim: a level of power so off the chart that the very notion of this guy being stopped by anybody, let alone young and largely untested mutant heroes, is simply ludicrous.

What, I wonder, could be next? A baddie who’ll pull the Moon out of its orbit? Destroy Saturn and her rings? Extinguish our sun? Annihilate entire galaxies?

It’s impossible to care about any of this film’s sturm und drang, because its screenplay — credited to Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris and director Bryan Singer — doesn’t spend enough time with character development. Worse yet, the little we do get is needlessly grim and mean-spirited: the same problem of tone that infected Batman V Superman a few months back.

The early X-Men films were entertaining by virtue of the wary ensemble dynamic that united such radically different characters into a team, and for the way that everybody’s strange and weird powers were blended into a cohesive fighting unit. That camaraderie is all but lost in this smash-fest, which instead revels in an arrogantly callous level of civilization-snuffing carnage that I’ve not seen since the distasteful 2012, which depicted mass death with all the gravitas of a pinball machine.

Singer’s tone is about the same here, with John Ottman’s bombastic score adding even more portentous fury. And just to seal that atmospheric deal, Ottman’s original themes are augmented, at (ahem) apocalyptic moments, by the equally dour second movement (“Allegretto”) of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

Not much fun to be had, all told, in this 143-minute endurance test.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: A parable for our era

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense sci-fi violence and action, and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.11.14

Given the long list of entries on the Hollywood odds-makers’ tote boards, the chances of a second cycle of Apes movies must’ve been the darkest of horses.

Malcolm (Jason Clarke, foreground) tries to forge an uneasy alliance with, from left, Caesar
(motion-capture performance by Andy Serkis), Koba (Toby Kebbell) and Maurice (Karin
Konoval), none of whom have much reason to trust humans.

And yet here we are, four decades later, three films into another incarnation of Pierre Boulle’s seminal sci-fi novel, re-shaped for a new global order.

If the original five films — from 1968’s Planet of the Apes to 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes — felt like a thinly disguised commentary on the American civil rights struggle, this new series clearly speaks to the sadly intransient warfare between Israel and Palestine, or Shiite and Sunni, or any of half a dozen other sectarian-driven hot spots throughout the world.

And, as often is true of parables, there’s little comfort to be derived from this fantasy-laden depiction of such conflict. Some battles seem doomed to continue for eternity, despite the best efforts of noble heroes on both sides.

Tim Burton probably didn’t have such high-falutin’ notions in mind, when he remade the original Planet of the Apes in 2001. No doubt that’s why 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes adopted a fresh approach, with director Rypert Wyatt and scripters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver telling a thoughtful story about the desperate — and foolish — measures that can be prompted by grief. (One hopes the impetuous scientist given a template in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein remains mostly a figure of cautionary fable, lest we foolish mortals get ourselves into even more serious trouble.)

Jaffa and Silver have returned for this sequel (threequel?), with a scripting assist from Mark Bomback, while Matt Reeves takes over the director’s chair. The result isn’t quite as relentlessly heartbreaking as was the case with Rise, nor does this new film play the human-beings-are-cruel-thugs card quite as often (for which I’m grateful).

That said, matters have moved in the grim direction foretold by the previous film’s cliffhanger conclusion, with a highly contagious (and woefully misnamed) “simian flu” wiping out all but a few scattered remnants of humanity. The ape colony founded in Northern California’s Muir Woods by Caesar, the previous film’s chimpanzee hero, has thrived; the hyper-intelligent chimps, gorillas and orangutans have built a vibrant community devoted to the democratic notion that all apes are to be cherished as equals.

And they’ve wondered, as numerous winters have passed, if human beings have wiped themselves out completely.

ParaNorman: Whimsical horror with a clever twist

ParaNorman (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Norman Babcock sees dead people. Constantly.

And he cheerfully chats with them.

Meet the Babcock family: from left, Grandma, Mom, Dad, Norman and
his teenage sister Courtney. You'll likely notice that Grandma seems
somewhat ghostly; that's because she has been dead for years ...
although this hasn't stopped her loving relationship with Norman.
Nobody else in the family appreciates the boy's, ah, unusual gift.

This unlikely talent has prompted nothing but derision, dismay and the unwanted attention of the booger-picking school bully. “Weird” kids always get singled out for abuse, and Norman is much weirder than most.

He’s also the hero of ParaNorman, the newest stop-motion treat from animator Travis Knight’s Oregon-based LAIKA Inc., which rose from the ashes of the financially strapped studio founded by claymation pioneer Will Vinton. Although LAIKA had a hand in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, the new company’s first wholly in-house feature was its awesome 2009 adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

ParaNorman is LAIKA’s second big-screen film, and the first written as an original concept by Chris Butler, who worked on storyboards for both Corpse Bride and Coraline. Butler shares directorial duties on this new movie with Sam Fell, whose previous credits include co-helming Flushed Away and The Tale of Despereaux.

The story is funny, snarky, occasionally scary — perhaps too much so for very young viewers — and unexpectedly poignant at times. The voice casting is delicious, and the 93-minute film moves along at a lively, suspenseful pace.

And the animation is simply smashing. Stop-motion is such a labor-intensive process; the mere completion of such an ambitious project deserves applause. That it turned out so well is icing on the cake.

The random bits of production data are staggering. ParaNorman took two years to make, involving more than 320 designers, artists, animators and technicians. At any given time, these people worked on 52 separate shooting units, representing the various settings of this droll, macabre little tale. An entire week would be spent, carefully manipulating these little puppets, to get between one and two minutes of footage.

None of which would matter a jot, of course, if we weren’t engaged by both the story and its characters.

We meet Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) as he enjoys a televised horror movie in the company of his beloved grandmother (Elaine Stritch). Only one problem here: Grandma has been dead for years, a fact that exasperates Norman’s father (Jeff Garlin), deeply concerns his mother (Leslie Mann), and flat-out disgusts his self-absorbed older sister, Courtney (Anna Kendrick).

The Road: Futile journey

The Road (2009) • View trailer for The Road
Two stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, torture, cannibalism, nudity and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.27.09
Buy DVD: The Road • Buy Blu-Ray: The Road [Blu-ray]

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a story for folks who felt that his No Country for Old Men was too cheerful and uplifting.

Director John Hillcoat's film adaptation is designed for viewers seeking a reason to return home and slit their wrists.

The man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) must keep
a wary eye on their surroundings while traveling by day; encounters with other
human beings are likely to be deadly ... or worse.

I cannot, in good conscience, imagine any set of circumstances that would prompt me to recommend this movie. To anybody.

Granted, McCarthy's harrowing novel took the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for literature; the author's mesmerizing prose — and much richer characterizations — are spellbinding in their intensity. Although driven by a ghastly premise and heartbreaking plot, McCarthy is too skilled a writer — too adept a wordsmith — for his book to be ignored, should one pick it up.

But that doesn't make the experience worthwhile.

I've long been a fan of Dan Simmons' works, which as yet haven't been adapted to the large or small screen. Simmons is well known in the fantasy and sci-fi community, where his long and dense books are deservedly celebrated. I eagerly anticipated diving into The Terror, one of his recent historical novels, which blends chilling fantasy with the fact-based account of a doomed 19th century attempt to find the mythical ocean passage just below the North Pole.

Simmons' blend of gripping prose and meticulous research made the 992-page book a compelling read. But the story's conclusion proved so infuriating that I deeply resented what I now regard as utterly wasted time. I wanted — still want, nearly a year later — those many, many hours of my life back.

Viewers of Hillcoat's adaptation of The Road are apt to feel the same way, and it's only 113 minutes long.

Readers who were able to extract weighty philosophical issues and great moral truths from McCarthy's novel won't find them in this unrelentingly bleak and soul-deadening film adaptation. McCarthy's view of mankind never has been that optimistic to begin with, and his indictment of human behavior is particularly stern in The Road.

Screenwriter Joe Penhall gets that much right, but he overlooks the essential inner musings that McCarthy employed to make his primary characters at least somewhat palatable. Penhall and Hillcoat have done nothing but prove that some books simply defy visual translation; The Road cannot work as a movie, because the form demands that it become no more than an interminably depressing trivialization of its source.