Matilda the Musical: Slightly off-key

Matilda the Musical (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for exaggerated bullying and mild profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.6.23

Harold Gray’s popular newspaper comic strip, Little Orphan Annie, became a joyous stage musical back in 1977, with a subsequently enjoyable transition to the big screen in 1982: fueled both by engaging performances and a bevy of delightful musical numbers, including the never-to-be-forgotten power anthem, “Tomorrow.”

 

While her school mates cower in silent terror, Matilda (Alisa Weir, right) defiantly
stands up to imperious headmistress Miss Trunchbull (Emma Thompson).

Annie and Matilda feel like thematic cousins, with similar plot and character elements, although the latter also boasts author Roald Dahl’s darker, snarkier sense of humor. I’d love to say that his 1988 children’s book enjoys the same musical success … but no. 

Despite Alisha Weir’s terrific performance in the lead role, David Hindle and Christian Huband’s wildly imaginative production design, and choreographer Ellen Kane’s effervescent work with a bevy of talented young singers and dancers, this film version of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2010 musical adaptation is an occasionally awkward beast. You’ll find very few hummable tunes here, most of which fall into the narrative “patter song” category; several are shoved rather clumsily into the storyline.

 

Even so, Dennis Kelly’s screenplay is rigorously faithful to the book, and its many fans will delight in all of the essential plot elements. (Kelly and Tim Minchin wrote the 2010 stage version.)

 

Matilda Wormwood (Weir) is born to parents who never, ever wanted a daughter. Her mother (Andrea Riseborough) and father (Stephen Graham) are outrageously self-centered burlesques, who banish the little girl to an attic bedroom, and miss no opportunity for emotional abuse.

 

Graham and Riseborough are hilariously grotesque in these way-over-the-top roles: vulgar, uncouth and forever garbed in costume designer Rob Howell’s opulently awful outfits. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood believe themselves superior to the rest of the world, when in fact they’re the worst sort of ignorant buffoons.

 

Ah, but Matilda is amazingly, preternaturally smart, devouring books such as Great Expectations and Jane Eyre from a very young age, and displaying a facility for STEM topics that would make university teachers swoon. None of this means a thing to her parents, who refuse to acknowledge their daughter’s talents. 

 

Matilda’s kinder, gentler nature notwithstanding, she’s not above exacting revenge: her blustering father the most frequent target. Weir’s impishly crafty expression, at such moments, is delicious.

 

Relief comes during Matilda’s frequent visits with mobile library lady Mrs. Phelps (Sindhu Vee), whom the girl entrances with the slowly developing fantasy saga of two circus performers, swooningly in love, and forced to perform The World’s Most Dangerous Act. This enchanting bit of kid-level imagination — Matilda’s colorful re-invention of her own life — becomes an ongoing story within the story, with Mrs. Phelps hanging onto each dire setback.

No Time to Die: A gilt-edged Bond

No Time to Die (2021) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence, disturbing images and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters (where it belongs!)

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.08.21

It’s bloody well about time.

 

Back in 1969, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was jeered by critics and the public because a) George Lazenby wasn’t Sean Connery; and b) the script had the audacity to present a James Bond with genuine feelings for the woman with whom he’d fallen in love.

 

While James Bond (Daniel Craig, left) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) nervously
wait, Q (Ben Whishaw) struggles to crack the security on a computer network that may
reveal crucial information about the mysterious "Heracles" project.

History has validated what some of us knew all along: Lazenby held his own just fine, and those very story elements — the injection of authentic emotion — cemented its status as one of the all-time best Bonds.

Over the course of Daniel Craig’s five-film arc, his Bond has been defined by loss: the loss of Vesper, in Casino Royale, and M, in Skyfall; and the dismissal of his profession, in Spectre. He has endured along the way, battered and bruised, becoming as recognizably human as one could hope for, in such an action franchise.

 

It’s certainly no accident, mere minutes into this new epic, when Hans Zimmer’s score injects an echo of “We Have All the Time in the World,” the poignant anthem from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. One has to smile.

 

Indeed, No Time to Die is laden with similar echoes of the past: from a title credits sequence that opens with the colored polka dots employed in the credits of Dr. No, to Vic Flick’s unmistakable heavy guitar twang — elsewhere in this film’s score — in John Barry’s classic arrangement of “The James Bond Theme.”

 

The impressively ambitious script — by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and director Cary Joji Fukunaga — even works in a hitherto-untapped bit of Ian Fleming: Dr. Guntram Shatterhand’s “Garden of Death,” from the novel You Only Live Twice.

 

But that comes later. No Time to Die — a much harsher affair than most Bonds — opens on a flashback involving a terrified adolescent girl and a kabuki-masked assassin. The encounter proceeds in several surprising directions, concluding as a shuddery memory for Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), emerging from the sea as an astute Bond notices her uneasy mood.

 

They’re enjoying the carefree life chosen when they walked away from Bond’s career, at the previous film’s conclusion. But despite their mutual devotion, these are two people with secrets; we know Bond’s, from previous adventures, and we’re about to discover Madeleine’s.

 

It proves … complicated.

 

But that, too, comes later. We’re first blown away by the longest pre-credits sequence in the entire series, which climaxes with an audacious car chase through the tight corners and narrow, labyrinthine streets of Matera, in Southern Italy. Although plenty more action is yet to come, this opener is the film’s most audacious, edge-of-the-seat sequence.

Captain Marvel: Well titled!

Captain Marvel (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for sci-fi action and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.8.19

Carol Danvers has endured more trauma, conflicting origin stories, alternate identities and just plain mean-spirited punishment than any other Marvel Comics character, likely because several generations’ worth of (mostly male) writers didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with a heroine who’d been created in the mid-1970s, as little more than a sop to the feminist movement.

Having traveled to Louisiana in search of Maria (Lashana Lynch, left), the friend who believed
her long dead, Vers (Brie Larson) finally begins to stitch jumbled memories into a coherent past.

All that finally changed in 2012, with the arrival of writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, who alongside artist Dexter Soy orchestrated a new series that firmly established Danvers’ Captain Marvel as a worthy figure in the Marvel universe.

And as an individual who can hold her own against heavyweight colleagues such as Thor and the Hulk.

That Carol Danvers has been granted similar respect by co-writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck in the newest — and thoroughly enjoyable — entry in the meticulously crafted Marvel film universe. Captain Marvel manages the delicate balance of interpersonal angst, kick-ass action and whimsical snark, without succumbing to either slapstick self-parody or tedious cataclysmic excess (the latter a serious problem in many superhero films).

Credit also goes to Brie Larson, for her thoroughly engaging portrayal of a character who is equal parts pluck, resolve, intelligence, humor and (so it would seem) reckless stubbornness.

The result is just as entertaining as 2017’s Wonder Woman, which proves anew how much more satisfying the result can be — dare I say it? — with a woman playing a key role in the filmmaking process.

(Boden and Fleck have worked together since the turn of this century, initially on short subjects and documentaries, and later on features such as Half Nelson and Sugar.)

Panicked viewers who choked on their popcorn, while watching so many of their beloved heroes vanish in puffs of smoke at the conclusion of last year’s Avengers: Infinity War, may have wondered about that gadget Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury activated before he, too, faded away. This film answers that question, while also bringing two long-established sets of Marvel’s cosmic players — the Kree and Skrulls — into the film franchise.

This is an origin story with multiple interwoven layers, thanks to a cleverly structured plot by Boden, Fleck and co-writers Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider) and Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy). They keep us guessing during a complicated narrative that never becomes hard to follow, despite several unexpected twists.