The Twits: An overcooked disappointment

The Twits (2025) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG, for rude humor and mild dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Roald Dahl has been treated remarkably well by filmmakers over the years, whether his charming children’s classics (Matilda, the various versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), his slightly grimmer kid-lit novels (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Witches) and even his sardonic, adult-oriented short stories (The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar and Three More).

 

Beesha and Bubsy are horrified to discover, via a television news broadcast, that they're
accused of stealing the blue-furred Muggle-Wumps ... when, in fact, the children freed
the creatures from inhumane captivity.

I therefore approached this one with enthusiasm, particularly since co-director Phil Johnston brought us the cleverly entertaining Zootopia and Wreck-It Ralph.

Sigh...

 

This adaptation of Dahl’s 1980 children’s novella is a mess: poor pacing, dumb songs (by David Byrne, no less), a cavalier approach to the source material, protracted filler sidebars, and the bewildering — and wholly inappropriate — insertion of a contemporary American political message, all of which make the film’s 98 minutes feel like an eternity.

 

On the positive side, the animation style definitely suits the material, and the voice talent is fine. Too bad Johnston and co-scripter Meg Favreau didn’t give the actors better dialogue. The inane butt jokes quickly wear thin.

 

The saga emerges as a bedtime story, told by mother bed bug Pippa (voiced by Emilia Clarke) to her young son, Jeremy (Sami Amber). The boy occasionally interrupts the narrative to ask a question, or express concern about what will happen next. It’s a cute framing device ... and, arguably, the film’s strongest asset.

 

Credenza S. Twit (Margo Martindale) and James T. Twit (Johnny Vegas), an ill-kempt, spiteful and mean-spirited married couple, are united in mutual hatred. They gleefully pull pranks on each other, such as hiding a frog in their bed, or making a spaghetti dinner with worms. They live in the otherwise bucolic community of Triperot, in a gadget-laden house (a shameless lift from Wallace & Gromit).

 

But the otherwise misanthropic couple share a devotion to their passion project: a theme park dubbed Twitlandia, laden with outrageously dangerous rides such as flying outhouses and a rickety Ferris Wheel. Everything is powered by the tears of three exotic, blue-furred simians known as Muggle-Wumps: magical creatures long ago captured from Loompaland, named Marty (Timothy Simmons), his wife Mary (Natalie Portman) and their young daughter Mandy (Israa Zainab).

 

When stressed — which is frequent — Marty barfs up ambulatory furry stress balls, known as Florbnorbles, which cause all manner of mischief.

 

Uncle Frank: One of the year's best

Uncle Frank (2020) • View trailer

4.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and drug use

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.27.20 

I haven’t been this nervous since Anne Hathaway reached for the microphone, in 2008’s Rachel Getting Married.

 

Although she has adored him her entire life, Beth (Sophia Lillis) begins to realize that
there's a lot more to her Uncle Frank (Paul Bettany) than he reveals to most people.

Writer/director Alan Ball’s Uncle Frank — an Amazon Prime original — is a deeply personal and sensitively handled character study, brought to life by an excellent ensemble cast headed by Paul Bettany, Sophia Lillis and Peter Macdissi. Ball deftly walks the razor’s edge that often separates comedy from tragedy, delicately developing circumstances that set up a third-act revelation/confrontation that raises our anxiety to the screaming level.

 

We know an emotional train wreck is coming.

 

A lengthy prologue — set in 1969, in tiny Creekville, S.C. — introduces the Bledsoe clan during a rowdy birthday party for elderly patriarch Daddy Mac (Stephen Root). Three generations are present: Daddy Mac, his wife Mammaw (Margo Martindale) and Aunt Butch (Lois Smith); adult children Frank (Bettany), Neva (Jane McNeill) and Mike (Steve Zahn); the latter two’s respective spouses, Beau (Burgess Jenkins) and Kitty (Judy Greer); and a rambunctious passel of grandkids.

 

Fourteen-year-old Beth (Lillis) stands out as a quiet observer, keenly attuned to the moods of others. Alas, she isn’t quick enough to prevent an irate Daddy Mac from explosively chewing out the younger kids: an eyebrow-raising moment that reveals a truly nasty temper.

 

We also don’t notice Frank right away; like Beth, he seems somehow removed from the noisy celebration. The exchange of gifts reveals a guarded dynamic between Frank and his unpleasant father. We assume it’s the former’s outsider status; unlike everybody else in the room, Frank long ago left Creekville for the Big Apple, where he has become a revered literature professor at New York University (NYU).

 

Frank escaped the vicious cycle of high school pregnancies that trap Creekville 16-year-olds into a lifetime of drudge jobs: a fate he hopes Beth also can avoid. He’s her favorite adult: the only one who treats her like a person, and not a child, listening attentively to her every word. But she fears her limited options, given family circumstances.

 

Don’t settle for who people expect you to become, he advises; become who you want to be.

 

That sentiment caps an achingly sweet and poignant chat on the porch, an entire world removed from the noisy clan on the other side of the wall: staged by Ball with carefully nuanced sensitivity, and delivered with touching persuasiveness by Bettany and Lillis.

 

This film is bookended by an older Beth’s off-camera narration, much in the manner of the adult Scout, in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird. (A bit later, Ball cheekily has Beth admit that Harper Lee is one of her favorite authors.)

 

Blow the Man Down: Quietly suspenseful

Blow the Man Down (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, violence, sexual candor and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.1.20

Some stones are best left unturned.

Blow the Man Down — streaming via Amazon Prime — is an impressive feature debut by indie writer/directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, and a snarky slice of modern noir: Fargo transplanted to the similarly rugged Northeast.

Faced with the need to dispose of incriminating evidence, sisters Mary Beth (Morgan
Saylor, left) and Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) believe they've hit upon the perfect solution.
Alas, what the tide takes out, the lapping waves almost always bring back...

The setting is Easter Cove, a remote fishing village on Maine’s rocky coast, where (and I’m quoting the press notes here) “bonds run as deep as the ocean, and secrets are as thick as the morning fog.” Cole, Krudy and cinematographer Todd Banhazi deftly convey this setting’s isolation and bitter cold, and the location clearly is authentic (with Maine’s Harpswell, population just shy of 5,000, standing in for the fictitious Easter Cove).

Folks have kept themselves to themselves for generations; the notion of outsiders — or tourists — is incomprehensible. And while outwardly the community is kept alive by the tough and robust men who, every morning, take to the sea for the daily catch, appearances can be deceiving.

The story opens just after the passing of beloved town matriarch Mary Margaret Connolly. She leaves behind two young adult daughters: the elder Priscilla (Sophie Lowe), who kept the family fish shop going during their mother’s declining health; and the more restless Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor), who has long hoped for college and a life anywhere other than Easter Cove.

Ergo, Priscilla is the loyal and responsible daughter, while Mary Beth is more of an impulsive wild child. Priscilla’s obvious hope that, with their mother now gone, Mary Beth will step up and accept her share of the new responsibilities — bills and unpaid loans that have left them financially precarious — are dashed almost immediately.

Lowe’s features reflect the pinched, quietly anxious aura of one who has grown accustomed to living under constant stress; she persuasively conveys Priscilla’s visible disappointment, with a soupçon of resentment, at her younger sister’s selfishness. Saylor, in turn, is equally convincing as the spoiled and self-centered Mary Beth, who sees no reason to put on her big-girl pants.

But neither girl realizes the degree to which their mother maintained a delicate balance, behind the scenes, among the town’s true old-guard operators: discrete manipulators Susie Gallagher (June Squibb), Doreen Burke (Marceline Hugot), Gail Maguire (Annette O’Toole) and Enid Nora Devlin (the indomitable Margo Martindale). 

The latter has long run her bed & breakfast as the local brothel, an operation that was “protected” by Mary Margaret. But with that shield now absent, Susie, Doreen and Gail are (they believe) in a position to clamp down on Enid’s blatantly depraved operation, which also has been tolerated — with a wink-wink/nudge-nudge — by feckless Police Chief Coletti (Skipp Sudduth).

The Kitchen: Not much cooking

The Kitchen (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for considerable profanity and bloody violence
By Derrick Bang

Strong performances can’t compensate for a weak script, no matter how much this film hopes you’ll think otherwise.

Are you talkin' to us? Claire (Elisabeth Moss, left), Ruby (Tiffany Haddish, center) and
Kathy (Melissa McCarth) find little to admire in the so-called men left to run the
Irish Mob in Hell's Kitchen.

Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss act up a storm, and their characters are solid; they easily hold our attention (although it’s probably a stretch to suggest that we ever sympathize with them). But too many key supporting characters are woefully underdeveloped, even when it’s crucial to understand them better.

Others have ethics that float like leaves on a stiff breeze. The sudden shifts can induce viewer whiplash.

Blame easily is assigned to first-time director Andrea Berloff, who also supplied a clumsy screenplay based on the eight-part 2015 comic book series by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle. In her haste to mount a female-oriented crime thriller appropriately timed to the #MeToo movement, Berloff has forgotten the first rule of cinema: It’s always the story, stupid.

The setting is 1978 New York City, in the 20 blocks of pawn shops, porn palaces and dive bars squatting between Eighth Avenue and the Hudson River: aptly known as Hell’s Kitchen, and ruled by the Irish Mafia. The story hits the ground running, as gangsters Jimmy (Brian d’Arcy James), Kevin (James Badge Dale) and Rob (Jeremy Bobb) stage a hold-up, only to be interrupted by police and the FBI.

The result: three years in prison.

They leave families behind. Jimmy’s wife, Kathy (McCarthy), wonders how she’ll feed their two adolescent children. Kevin’s wife, Ruby (Haddish), is left in the company of her hateful mother-in-law, Helen (Margo Martindale), a spiteful-tongued shrew and neighborhood matriarch, who calls the shots behind the scenes. Rob’s battered wife, Claire (Moss), is grateful for his absence.

The Mob falls under the half-assed rule of Little Jackie (Myk Watford), whose promise to take care of the three women — because “we’re family” — proves woefully insufficient. Taking note of the general neighborhood dissatisfaction with Little Jackie, who demands protection money without offering protecting, Kathy and her friends decide to take matters into their own hands.

They’re initially nervous and unschooled in the ways of violence, but they learn quickly.

Wilson: Unwatchable

Wilson (2017) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for sexuality and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang

Some films are so relentlessly unpleasant, that it’s impossible to imagine what the folks involved were thinking.

Take Wilson. (Please.)

Determined to compensate for 17 years of absent fatherhood, Wilson (Woody Harrelson)
takes ex-wife Pippi (Laura Dern, right) and their adopted-out daughter Claire
(Isabella Amara) to a kiddyland play-park. Interesting choice.

Is it supposed to be enlightening? Instructive? Philosophical? Emblematic of the human condition? A statement of where we are, at this point in time?

Director Craig Johnson and scripter Daniel Clowes must’ve had something high-falutin’ in mind, because the result certainly isn’t anything as basic as entertaining. Or amusing. Or witty, poignant, endearing or any of scores of other experiences we anticipate, when plonking down hard-earned cash for a night at the movies.

Ironically, I suspect that Johnson and Clowes genuinely believe that what they’ve wrought is a little bit of all those things.

Hardly. In baseball terms, Wilson is a whiffout. It’s clumsy, tedious and deadly-dull boring, with generous dollops of misanthropy, casual cruelty and contrived so-called tragedy. It is also interminable.

Honestly, I thought it’d never end. Entire generations were born, matured and died, during the time it took to endure this sad excuse for a movie.

Building a storyline around a thoroughly obnoxious curmudgeon is a delicate and precise art: On some level, we’ve gotta love the guy, or at least be amused by his antics. It’s not just a matter of screenplay finesse; the actor in question must be endearing, in spite of himself. Think Billy Bob Thornton, in Bad Santa; or Bill Murray, in St. Vincent. We forgive their mean-spirited behavior, because they’re so darn ... well ... irresistible.

Woody Harrelson’s Wilson is resistible. He’s boorish, confrontational, obnoxious, profane and spiteful, and never in a good way. He’s a neurotic loner with a deeply rooted loathing of civilized society, and a malicious craving to ruin everybody else’s day. He’s the sort of guy who, upon boarding a bus with only one other passenger, will sit right next to that innocent victim, just to annoy her.

And then, when said individual politely requests some space, Wilson reacts in high dudgeon, unable to believe the degree to which he has just been offended.

Five minutes with this guy, and we’re desperately scanning for the theater exits.

The Hollars: Love and (dis)harmony

The Hollars (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Family dysfunction is a longtime cinema staple, and for obvious reasons: We feel much better about our own lives, while vicariously experiencing the calamities others inflict upon themselves.

John (John Krasinski), seeking a way to re-connect with his mother, Sally (Margo
Martindale), impulsively sneaks a contraband breakfast into her hospital room one
morning: pretzels and ice cream.

But walking the fine line between reasonable character flaws and exaggerated burlesque is a fine art; the personalities in question must remain credible — at least to some degree — if we’re to sympathize, and therefore consent to any lessons the writer may have concealed within the anguish.

Scripter Jim Strouse manages pretty well, with The Hollars. His chaotic family study is both sweetly amusing and, at times, embarrassingly intimate. The latter derives from the fine work, all around, delivered by a top-notch ensemble cast led by the indomitable Margo Martindale.

The film is something of a personal project for John Krasinski, who directs, co-produced and also co-stars. It’s easy to see what drew him to this material, as Strouse includes some perceptive truths — and uncomfortably accurate interpersonal dynamics — amid this serio-comic study of a family in distress.

John Hollar (Krasinski) left his middle-American small town years ago, to seek his fortune in New York City. He lucked into a devoted — if somewhat insecure — girlfriend, Rebecca (Anna Kendrick); they’re expecting a baby, but remain unmarried. This failure to commit apparently derives from John’s dissatisfaction with a drone-like job endured while he attempts to establish a career as a writer/artist of graphic novels: a dream that just ... isn’t ... happening.

He’s summoned back home by the news that his mother, Sally (Martindale), has been hospitalized with a particularly nasty brain tumor. We get a sense that John, although inherently kind and sensitive, has semi-estranged himself from a tempestuous family environment; he returns to find that the flawed dynamic has blossomed into full-blown crisis and chaos.

His father, Don (Richard Jenkins), is inches away from losing the business he spent a lifetime building, his entire staff unwilling to continue until they’re paid several weeks’ back wages. Don also is hit the hardest by this medical crisis, literally crumbling before everybody’s eyes.

Mother's Day: Holiday fatigue

Mother's Day (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and rather pointlessly, for fleeting profanity and mildly suggestive content
By Derrick Bang

Veteran director Garry Marshall began what could be termed his “holiday merry-go-round” series with 2010’s Valentine’s Day, which blended an impressively diverse ensemble cast with a reasonably clever series of interlocking stories from scripters Katherine Fugate, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein.

When Sandy (Jennifer Aniston, left) brings her sons (Caleb Brown and Brandon Spink)
for their regularly scheduled weekend with their father Henry (Timothy Olyphant), she's
dismayed by his new young wife Tina's (Shay Mitchell) barely there clothing, and by the
lengths she has gone to curry favor with the boys.

It was popular enough to generate a sequel, 2011’s New Year’s Eve, which included a few casting carryovers and a script credited solely to Fugate. Alas, the result wasn’t nearly as satisfying; the intertwining stories weren’t as clever, their outcomes far more predictable.

Despite this, Marshall has gone to the well a third time, with further diminishing returns. Perhaps hoping that new blood would invigorate the premise, Marshall turned this time to scripters Tom Hines, Lily Hollander, Anya Kochoff and Matthew Walker. Frankly, it feels like they worked independently, rather than collaboratively; the episodic narratives link up clumsily, if at all, and Mother’s Day too frequently feels like an average episode of TV’s Love Boat or Fantasy Island.

Which isn’t necessarily bad, I suppose, although that sets the bar rather low.

Yes, some of the arch one-liners will elicit giggles, and it’s still fun to see so many familiar faces in a single project. But the slapstick elements are TV-sitcom stupid, and the core storyline involving racist, insensitive parents churns out a candy-coated happy resolution with ludicrous swiftness (hence the Fantasy Island reference).

So, get your scorecards out...

Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) and Henry (Timothy Olyphant), amicably divorced, have been sharing custody of two young sons (Caleb Brown and Brandon Spink). But the situation’s harmony is shattered when Henry announces his surprise marriage to a much younger hotsy-totsy named Tina (Shay Mitchell). Cutting remarks about cradle-robbing aside, Sandy fears that she’ll be downgraded to “other mother” status: of particular concern, with the impending arrival of Mother’s Day.

At the same time, Sandy hopes to enhance her career as a clothing and set designer by landing an interview with TV shopping network diva Miranda Collins (Julia Roberts), represented by longtime agent and friend Lance Wallace (Marshall perennial Hector Elizondo).

August: Osage County — A blistering summer

August: Osage County (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for frequent profanity and earthy dialogue, and occasional drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.24.14

Some children dream, worshipfully, of growing up to become just like their parents.

Other children have nightmares about that same possibility.

As Violet (Meryl Streep, left) grows increasingly annoyed by a clumsy before-meal
prayer that stumbles its way from awkward to tedious, daughters Ivy (Julianne
Nicholson, center) and Karen (Juliette Lewis) close their eyes and wait for the
inevitable explosion.

August: Osage County, adapted by Tracy Letts from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, charts the highs (very few) and lows (too many to tabulate) of the extended Weston family, brought by unexpected tragedy to the Northern Oklahoma town that several of them fled, years ago, in self-defense.

Although Oklahoma isn’t technically a southern state — nor is it one of the plains states, despite an early comment by one of these characters — the tone here is very much in the dysfunctional Southern gothic tradition of Tennessee Williams, Beth Henley and numerous other playwrights who regard this classic American setting as less a geographical place, and more a regional attitude.

Southern families argue in a style all their own, tempers often as high as the mercury-shattering thermometers. And they don’t merely bicker; they dig at each other with rapacious delight, unerringly targeting each victim’s soft underbelly. Characters in such settings turn sniping into an art form, perhaps even an Olympic sport.

It’s impossible to imagine Northern California families quarrelling in such a fashion, no matter how strained the relations. The cadence, rhythm and circumstances are quintessentially rooted south of the Mason-Dixon line. Or thereabouts.

Be advised, then: Despite its mesmerizing script and bravura performances, August: Osage County is an endurance test in the manner of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It’s not easy to watch people eviscerate each other for two hours, no matter how crisp the dialogue, or how striking the acting.

Most of the slicing and dicing emanates from family matriarch Violet Weston (Meryl Streep), an embittered, waspish harridan embracing old age with no grace whatsoever. Demonstrating that God does indeed possess a mordant sense of humor, Violet has just been diagnosed with mouth cancer, which has exacerbated her tendency to be a prescription junkie.

But the cancer hasn’t muted Violet’s bark, nor has it diminished her nicotine habit. Nothing is more ghastly — or darkly amusing, in a gallows humor sort of way — than watching Streep gently poke a cigarette into the less painful left corner of her mouth, and then fire it up so she can puff away.

Win Win: Quiet triumph

Win Win (2011) • View trailer for Win Win
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity and teenage smoking
By Derrick Bang


Actor turned writer/director Tom McCarthy concocts marvelous little ensemble pieces that are populated by disparate characters trying to connect with each other. They might be lonely, frustrated or somehow incomplete, but they’re always familiar and engaging: the sort of folks who could live next door, possibly as good friends in need of an emotional lift.

With bills piling up and his career circling the drain, Mike (Paul Giamatti, left)
yields to an ill-advised impulse ... and suddenly, weirdly, finds that things
start to go right in his life. But the knowledge of his misdeed eats away at his
soul, threatening all the new joy in his daily routine ... including a delicate
but genuinely loving bond with a lonely teenager, Kyle (Alex Shaffer).

McCarthy came to our attention back in 2003, with The Station Agent, a whimsical saga about a man (Peter Dinklage) who moves to rural New Jersey to mourn the loss of a friend, and winds up having to deal with an equally lonely woman (Patricia Clarkson) and an uncommonly chatty hot dog vendor (Bobby Cannavale). You can’t watch this charming film without smiling repeatedly; at the same time, McCarthy demonstrates an unerring sense of the way people reach out for each other, even while insisting they’re doing no such thing.

McCarthy’s next film, 2007’s The Visitor, upped the ante in terms of content and dramatic heft. Richard Jenkins garnered a well-deserved Academy Award nomination as a bereft college professor who, still missing the wife who died young, discovers that his New York City apartment has been, ah, “occupied” by squatters. But this young man and woman aren’t low-lifes; they’ve been tricked into believing the apartment genuinely was available. The subsequent narrative puts a human (and refreshingly nonjudgmental) face on the plight of illegal immigrants, while demonstrating how helping others can teach us how to help ourselves.

All of which brings us to Win Win, which nestles somewhere between McCarthy’s first two films, with respect to tone. Although not as charged as illegal immigration, this story’s underlying premise — the tantalizing lure of situational ethics — still prompts us to confront our own behavior. As is so blindingly true in the real world — more so than ever these days, it seems — mistakes themselves aren’t necessarily the end of one’s relationship, career, whatever; we’re judged by what we do after the lapse in judgment.

Disheartened elder care attorney Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) has watched his one-man business slide deeper into financial crisis for some time now. He seems genuinely drawn to his trusting clients, but lacks enough of them to make ends meet. He shares an office — actually a converted house — with Stephen Vigman (Jeffrey Tambor), a CPA similarly stressed by economic woes. Both men have been reduced to their own ill-equipped handyman repairs, whether dealing with a blocked toilet or a basement boiler/water heater that sounds like it’s auditioning for a role in Stephen King’s The Shining ... and is, in the words of a plumber, “ready to blow” at any moment.

Mike also moonlights as a high school wrestling coach; Stephen is his assistant. Their team is a hapless, listless, dispirited bunch; they’ve have to dig up to reach the cellar. In other words, Mike also derives no joy from this extra-curricular activity.