Space Sweepers: A hoot 'n' a holler

Space Sweepers (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated TV-MA, for profanity and sci-fi violence

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.12.21

This South Korean sci-fi epic — the country’s first “space blockbuster,” and an import for Netflix — is absolutely dog-nuts.

 

It’s also a lot of fun.

 

Tae-ho (Song Joong-Ki, left), Jang (Kim Tae-ri, right) and the robot Bubs find something
extremely unusual in their latest haul of space salvage.

Scripters Yoon Seung-min, Yoo-kang Seo-ae and Jo Sung-hee “borrow” from a variety of predecessors — Silent Running, Blade Runner and Elysium immediately come to mind — and overlay those familiar elements with a cheeky original premise. Director Sung-hee Jo’s handling is somewhat chaotic, which befits the rather “messy” future inhabited by a quartet of misfit heroes.

 

The year is 2092. Earth has become an environmental nightmare, with fading sunlight and increasingly acidic soil contributing to the spread of deserts, and the destruction of forests. Thanks to a technological “miracle” orchestrated by the UTS Corp., the wealthy and “connected” enjoy luxurious living in a massive, verdant and enclosed habitat orbiting Earth, reachable via a geosynchronous “space elevator” (long one of my favorite sci-fi concepts, and one that actually might be practical on lower-gravity worlds such as Mars and our Moon).

 

The rest of humanity is stuck on the planet’s poisonous surface.

 

Ah, but all is not lost. UTS head James Sullivan (Richard Armitage) — doctor, physicist, aerospace engineer, historian and the world’s richest and oldest man (at a spry 152) — has ambitious plans to terraform Mars, transforming it into the forested paradise that Earth used to be. 

 

Meanwhile…

 

Thanks to more than a century of orbital development, the region above Earth has become its own nightmare, as satellites fail and other floating debris turns hazardous. This has created a new business model for rag-tag independents, who earn a meager living as orbital garbage collectors: “catching” and then salvaging space junk.

 

It’s a ruthlessly competitive, wholly unregulated industry, and the champs staff a nuts-and-bolts spaceship dubbed Victory. Its four-person crew comprises genius pilot Tae-ho (Song Joong-Ki); the somewhat mysterious, ex-space pirate Capt. Jang (Kim Tae-ri); resourceful and heavily tattooed engineer Tiger Park (Jim Sun-kyu); and a reprogrammed military robot named Bubs (Yoo Hai-jin).

 

The latter is impressively adept with a cable-fed harpoon, which — being a robot — it can hurl while standing atop the Victory’s exterior.

Ocean's 8: Larkish ladies of larceny

Ocean's 8 (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for brief profanity, fleeting drug use and mild suggestive content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.8.18

As long as reasonable care is taken — sharp script, skilled direction, a competent cast — light-hearted caper thrillers can’t miss.

That’s definitely the case with Ocean’s 8.

With their compatriots "on assignment" at Cartier headquarters, the bulk of the team —
from left, Debbie (Sandra Bullock), Tammy (Sarah Paulson), Nine Ball (Rihanna),
Lou (Cate Blancett) and Constance (Awkwafina) — tracks progress via a computer monitor.

If this new film pales slightly when compared to 2001’s sparkling remake of Ocean’s Eleven, it’s mostly because the formula has lost some luster via repetition. Still, the well-designed gender switch compensates for such familiarity, and there’s no question that director Gary Ross — who also scripted this re-boot, with Olivia Milch — assembles the pieces with élan, and then guides them through a devious chess game laden with twists ... at least one of which likely will be a surprise.

Mostly, Ross delivers the necessary level of fun, which was so crucial to the 2001 predecessor’s success. We always had a sense that George Clooney & Co. were playing themselves, as much as their characters — which was absolutely true of the 1960 Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin original — and that added effervescent bonhomie to the action. These were guys with whom we wanted to share war stories over cocktails; the same is true of this Girls Just Want To Have Fun reworking.

And yes — just to be clear — this gender switch is far better, in every possible way, than 2016’s conceptually similar but otherwise misguided remake of Ghostbusters.

We meet Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) — the equally larcenous sister of Clooney’s Danny Ocean — immediately following a prison stretch of five years, eight months and 12 days. Rather than accept this sentence as a lesson learned, Debbie spent the entire time devising, refining and perfecting what she now believes will be the perfect crime: the theft of the Toussaint, a unique diamond necklace valued at $150 million, which stays locked in an impenetrable vault in the bowels of the Cartier mansion.

All she needs is a crew.

Bullock’s Debbie is perky, poised and polished: utterly unflappable, and generally sporting a mildly self-confident smirk that potential marks immediately find disarming. This contrasts nicely with the wary and somewhat hardened Lou (Cate Blanchett), Debbie’s former partner in crime, who is less than enthusiastic when given the opportunity to resume their illicit ways.

Debbie mocks; Lou challenges. Bullock and Blanchett make an excellent team, and the script teases us with the possibility that their relationship might run deeper than mere professional camaraderie.

The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies: At long last, the grand finale!

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense fantasy action violence and some truly scary monsters
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.19.14

Peter Jackson certainly knows how to stage a spectacle.

He’d have had a great time during Hollywood’s Golden Age, choreographing the fabled casts of thousands.

As a massive battle between elves, dwarves, humans and nasty orcs rages about them,
Gandalf (Ian McKellen, left) and Bard (Luke Evans) realize that the ghastly orc armies are
being directed by the orc lord Azog the Defiler, standing on a nearby hilltop. Clearly, he
must be stopped ... but how?

That said, he has become a poor judge of narrative structure. Although this final installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit builds to a rousing, suspenseful, crowd-pleasing climax, this cinematic saga definitely didn’t deserve the three-part presentation that seems to have been dictated entirely by commerce.

Consider the irony: We couldn’t get enough of Jackson’s three-part adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and fans eagerly snapped up the extended-edition DVDs, to savor all the additional scenes left on the cutting-room floor. That adulation was entirely warranted, because those three books are extremely dense.

But The Hobbit lacks that complexity; it’s a shorter, single book, and — more significantly — is aimed at a much younger audience. Granted, Jackson and his fellow scripters — Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and horror maestro Guillermo del Toro — drew from the 125 pages of notes and appendices included with modern editions of The Lord of the Ring ... but, even so, this newest trilogy has suffered from bloat since its first installment. (I still haven’t recovered from the slapstick, Disney-esque dwarf songs in Bilbo’s dining room.)

Although the major plot points have been impressively realized, there’s a definite sense of treading water along the way, and extraneous characters we’d be better off without. Notable case in point: the Master of Laketown (Stephen Fry) and his weaselly aide (Mikael Persbrandt), who popped up in the middle installment and return here. They’re no more than stunt casting, particularly in Fry’s case, and their characters seem to have wandered in from a Blackadder installment. Very poor judgment, on Jackson’s part.

More disappointing, though, is the fact that — in this third and final installment — Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins has become a bystander in his own story. That’s a shame on all sorts of levels, not the least of which is the lessened degree to which we’re able to enjoy Freeman’s marvelously subtle performance. I just love the way he twitches his nose, or starts to say something, checks himself, and then decides that silence is the better part of wisdom.

Freeman gets more mileage out of Bilbo’s double-take decisions not to speak, than many of these supporting characters deliver via pages of dialogue.

The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug: More Middle-Earth magic

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for intense fantasy action violence and frightening images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.13.13

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way.

Yes, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas makes a vibrant return during this second chapter in director Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, under circumstances that will raise the eyebrows of J.R.R. Tolkien purists. No matter; It’s hard to complain when Jackson and co-scripters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro integrate this fan-favorite character with such verve.

As Thorin (Richard Armitage, right) explains what Bilbo (Martin Freeman, left) is to do,
once he gets inside the Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, the little hobbit finally, truly realizes
the danger involved. How in the world will he be able to find a single magical gem, amid
a veritable mountain of treasure, without disturbing the ferocious dragon rumored to
sleep beneath all that gold?

We’ve not seen swash so well buckled since the 1987 adaptation of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride.

On the other hand, there’s nary a glimmer of the brooding, owl-eyed Gollum, not even a whispered “My precious” in the soundtrack. The gnarly, nasty little goblin is sorely missed, but — again — it’s hard to complain when his place has been taken by the largest, most impressive fire-breathing dragon ever brought to the big screen. (That would be Smaug.)

Jackson’s Tolkien films never do things in a small way, and that continues to be true here. You’ll once again be amazed by the size and scope of these many settings, whether the forest community of the Wood-elves, or the immense underground Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, deep within Lonely Mountain.

Production designer Dan Hennah continues to have a field day with details large and small, aided and abetted by visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri and the army of talented artists at Weta Digital. The finished work is seamless; it’s truly impossible to determine where physical set design leaves off, and the computer-enhanced magic takes over.

We truly live in an age of cinematic wonder, to see a book this vividly, imaginatively rich brought so successfully to the big screen.

Acting verisimilitude also plays a major role, of course, and Martin Freeman remains the pluperfect hobbit: His Bilbo Baggins experiences (endures?) one of the best character arcs in fantasy fiction. No longer frightened by his own shadow, Bilbo has found his courage but also carries an increasingly dangerous secret: the powerful golden ring that grants its wearer invisibility, while inexorably sucking the soul from that same owner.

Freeman’s Bilbo spends much of this story at war with himself: all too aware of the psychic damage he’s enduring, and yet forced — by increasingly dangerous circumstances — to don the ring again, and again, and again.

Alternatively, Freeman is equally precise with comic timing, as with Bilbo’s fiddly hands and suddenly stricken expression, having engineered a perfect getaway plan for his dwarf friends, when he realizes that he has no means of escape. Despite the scene’s tension, we can’t help but laugh. That’s clever writing, deft direction and subtle acting.

The Hobbit: An impressive journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) • View trailer
4.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for considerable violence, action and relentless dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.14.12

A decade after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and its stunning — but definitely well-deserved — 11 Academy Awards, director Peter Jackson has lost none of his ability to amaze and delight.

Bilbo (Martin Freeman, center) can't imagine why so many dwarves — including, from
left, Bifur (William Kircher), Dwalin (Graham McTavish), Bofur (James Nesbitt) and Oin
(John Callen) — have decided to join him for dinner on this otherwise average evening.
The poor hobbit is about to find out, which won't ease his mind any.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is breathtaking in every sense of the word: a glorious return to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, with its heroic little folk, their unlikely and often quarrelsome allies, and a host of dire and deadly creatures, each more ghastly than the last.

Jackson and his numerous production teams certainly had nothing to prove, when it comes to world-building; their Lord of the Rings trilogy delivered the true “sense of wonder” that made 21st century filmgoers appreciate what it must have been like, a century ago, when audiences first glimpsed the moving images of primitive one-reelers. We can only lament that Tolkien himself never had the opportunity to witness the grand and glorious means by which Jackson brought his imaginative prose to the big screen.

And yet, amazingly, Jackson has upped the ante again with this first installment of The Hobbit (with two more to follow, in successive Decembers, as before). All the realms of Middle Earth are back, as if we’d never left them; one imagines that some massive chunk of Jackson’s New Zealand simply has remained, wholly transformed, for all this time.

All this said, questions have been raised.

Turning Lord of the Rings into three expansive films made sense: one for each book. But The Hobbit is a single, much slimmer volume, with a kid-friendly story that (by design) lacks the narrative complexity of Tolkien’s heftier trilogy. Pundits have wondered whether the decision to turn THIS saga into a nine-hour experience might be more than a little self-indulgent.

Ah, but Jackson and his co-scripters — veteran Middle Earth colleagues Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, along with newcomer Guillermo del Toro, a masterful fantasist in his own right — had a secret weapon. We tend to forget that Tolkien concluded his Lord of the Rings trilogy with 125 pages of notes and appendices that also added considerable back-story to The Hobbit: more than enough to justify this unexpectedly ambitious big-screen adaptation.

Additionally, as James Cameron did with Avatar, Jackson has taken advantage of technological advancements to deliver a whole-immersion experience that’s almost too real at times ... and definitely will startle folks (about which, more in a moment).