Twisters: Prepare to be blown away!

Twisters (2024) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.21.24

Although this film leaves no doubt that it’s a summertime, popcorn-laden rollercoaster ride — and quite a suspenseful one — there’s no denying the cautionary message also embedded in Mark L. Smith and Joseph Kosinski’s storyline:

 

With an EF5 (Enhanced Fujita Scale) tornado about to blow into town, Kate (Daisy
Edger-Jones), Ravi (Anthony Ramos, center) and Tyler (Glen Powell) try to determine
the safest place to hunker down.

Climate change is real, and those who ignore Mother Nature’s increasingly catastrophic warnings, do so at their own peril.

Because, as this thriller distressingly depicts, there will come a time when the financial damage, and tragic loss of life, become too great to dismiss.

 

(I’d have thought this was blindingly obvious years ago ... but certain segments of humanity do have a distressing habit of burying their heads in the sand.)

 

Anyway...

 

This sequel’s power comes not merely from special effects supervisor Scott R. Fisher and visual effects supervisor Ben Snow’s awesome action sequences, but also the crucial attention paid to characters and their interactions. That’s no surprise; director Lee Isaac Chung earned two well-deserved Academy Awards nominations for 2020’s Minari — easily one of this decade’s most sensitively emotional dramas — and he also helmed a 2023 episode of television’s The Mandalorian, which likely served as a testing ground for this big-screen feature.

 

Let it be said: Chung and editor Terilyn A. Shropshire move things along at a breakneck pace.

 

But as always is the case with such films, the best ones succeed because we grow to admire and care about the people involved. That’s definitely true here, since the viewers at Tuesday evening’s sold-out preview screening were riveted, worried and at the edge of their seats, during this saga’s ferocious climax.

 

But that comes later.

 

A prologue finds Muskogee State University graduate student Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos) heading into Oklahoma’s “Tornado Alley,” in order to test a theoretical chemical invention that she believes could squelch small twisters, before they become larger monsters. Their team includes Kate’s boyfriend, Jeb (Daryl McCormack), and students Addy (Kiernan Shipka) and Praveen (Nik Dodani, recognized from his supporting role on the Netflix series Atypical).

 

(In a nice touch of continuity, Muskogee State was the alma mater of the characters played by Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, in 1996’s Twister. Indeed, that film’s writers — Anne-Marie Martin and the late Michael Crichton — are granted credits here.)

 

Alas, the experiment ends in tragedy.

Beautiful Boy: Descent into drug hell

Beautiful Boy (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and graphic drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.26.18

This film is highlighted by quiet, extraordinarily powerful little moments.

Director Felix Van Groeningen often is wise enough to simply hold his camera on stars Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell, and they never disappoint. Chalamet, in particular, is a fascinating study, his character’s intelligent glow gradually dimming as this morose story proceeds.

Having already watched his son Nic (Timothée Chalamet, left) relapse repeatedly,
despite numerous stints in detox and rehab, David Sheff (Steve Carell) wonders
if things will be any different this time.

Unfortunately, the film as a whole disappoints.

Stories that trace the downward spiral of drug addiction are of a type, and it’s hard to bring any freshness to a narrative with beats that are both inevitable and familiar: the initial descent and personality shift; the attempt at recovery and subsequent relapse; the attempt at recovery and subsequent relapse. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Van Groeningen and co-scripter Luke Davies deserve credit for trying to adjust the recipe, and it’s somewhat novel to view so much of this saga from the viewpoint of those who represent collateral damage: which is to say, the helpless family members. On the other hand, the constant flashbacks become irritating, even confusing. While it makes sense for David Sheff (Carell) to remember the cheerful, jovial kid his son Nic once was, at times it’s difficult to know whether a given scene — with Nicolas (Chalamet) as a young adult — is in the “present,” or the not-quite-present.

The story definitely gets additional dramatic heft from its real-world origins. Sheff is a widely celebrated journalist and author whose résumé includes work for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Fortune and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Van Groeningen and Davies’ script is adapted from Sheff’s best-selling 2008 memoir of the same title: a painfully raw account of dealing with Nic’s addiction to methamphetamine.

The script also draws from Nic’s version of events, in his book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.

Difficult as it is, to watch this film at times, Van Groeningen and Davies chose not to include some of the books’ even bleaker events. Which probably is just as well.

Although Chalamet has the “showier” role, Carell’s David is the story’s focus. His is the more challenging acting job, since David most frequently reacts in response to Nic’s behavior. Carell’s face is a constant study in pain: haunted gaze and slumped posture, burdened by weary desperation. Rarely has the phrase “carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders” seemed more apt.

It’s natural to expect that if this saga includes a life-changing epiphany, it’ll belong to Nic; after all, the options are sharply etched. Either he kicks the habit, or he dies. But the crucial moment of dawning realization — a genuinely heartbreaking scene — actually belongs to David: when he finally, reluctantly, despondently realizes that he can’t fix this.

We’re reminded of the “three Cs” during an Al-Anon meeting that takes place toward the end of the film: You didn’t cause it; you can’t control it; you can’t cure it. Impossibly difficult to accept, for a parent accustomed to being a child’s full-time protector.

Semi-Pro: Pro-foundly awful

Semi-Pro (2008) • View trailer for Semi-Pro
One star (out of five). Rating: R, for relentless profanity and sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.6.08
Buy DVD: Semi-Pro • Buy Blu-Ray: Semi-Pro [Blu-ray]


Five minutes into Semi-Pro, I became convinced that this film had been a victim of the writers strike, and that the cast had been told to improvise every line.

And had done spectacularly poorly.

While rehearsing for his team's next deranged half-time performance, owner
Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell, right) is surprised and disappointed to discover
that newcomer Ed Monix (Woody Harrelson) has been "promoted" to head
coach by all the other players.

But no: Scot Armstrong (Old School) was paid real money to "write" this un-script, as relentless — and pointless — a barrage of profanity and potty humor as we've seen since Matt Stone and Trey Parker unleashed the nonstop raunch of 2004's Team America: World Police.

Is Hollywood the land of opportunity, or what?

I struggle to believe that maybe, somehow, dismaying garbage such as this qualifies as male bonding humor for arrested adolescents swilling beer in frat houses. After all, plenty of people seem to be entertained by "reality" TV train-wrecks such as Big Brother; Semi-Pro is just as fascinating from the standpoint of being jaw-droppingly dreadful.

But even by the already low standards set by Will Ferrell's earlier moron comedies — Talladega Nights and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy come to mind — this one's pretty thin gruel. Like Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence before him, Ferrell has come to believe that his fans will watch anything, so there's no need to try very hard.

One hopes the fans in question will rebel — and soon — just as they did with Murphy and Lawrence.

Semi-Pro takes its almost-plot from a thin veneer of sports fact. Not all that long ago, two basketball leagues existed in these grand United States: the NBA we still know and love, and the renegade American Basketball Association, which lasted nine seasons from 1967 through 1976. The ABA was the colorful rogue league, known for its red, white and blue basketballs and P.T. Barnum-esque promotions. Anything that could get more fans into seats was considered fair game.

League rivalry got pretty bitter, and the situation finally was resolved when four ABA teams — the New York Nets, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs — were folded into the NBA. The remaining ABA teams were disbanded, along with the league itself.

So much for the history lesson.

Ferrell stars here as Jackie Moon, a one-song musical wonder who parlayed the money made from his sultry hit, "Love Me Sexy," into ownership of the ABA Tropics, based in Michael Moore's beloved Flint, Mich. When not inflicting audiences with his song — a spoof of the sensuous ballads made famous by Barry White and his Love Unlimited Orchestra — Jackie takes the hands-on approach to team ownership; he's also coach and star power forward.