Don't Look Up: Profoundly unsettling, despite trying too hard

Don't Look Up (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for frequent profanity, sexual candor, graphic nudity and drug use

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.7.22

Ouch.

 

This is about as scathing an indictment of modern American behavior as can be imagined.

 

Hoping to share their dire and tremendously important discovery on national television,
Randall (Leonardo DiCaprio, center right) and Kate (Jennifer Lawrence, far right) little
realize they're about to be trivialized by hosts Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry).

Back in 2015, writer/director Adam McKay stunned us with The Big Short, a wildly entertaining and ferociously mocking blend of drama, quasi-documentary and break-the-fourth-wall cinéma vérité, in service of an economic crash course that brilliantly explained the upper-echelon machinations that drove our country off a financial cliff in 2007.

This time, McKay and co-scripter David Sirota set their sights much higher: the cognitive dissonance and blind stupidity that prompt so many Americans to deny the existence of climate change, safe covid vaccines, the results of the 2020 election, and a great deal more.

 

Willful ignorance runs rampant these days, which gives McKay and Sirota plenty to scream about. While quite a few of this film’s sarcastic bombs hit their target, Don’t Look Up isn’t as artistically tight as The Big Short, and I also miss that earlier film’s inventively cheeky directorial flourishes. Sarcasm and snark once again are in abundance, but McKay’s approach here is more dramatically conventional.

 

Perhaps that’s because the operative metaphor — and its real-world counterpart — are too sobering, too horrifying, for gleeful frivolity.

 

The Big Short was fun, whereas this one is deeply unsettling: mad-as-hell, take-no-prisoners storytelling.

 

Events kick off quietly, as university astronomy professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discover a new comet orbiting our solar system. Their initial excitement dwindles when Kate and a gaggle of fellow grad students watch Randall compute the comet’s trajectory on a white board, to determine whether it’ll be visible when it passes Earth.

 

The film’s most grimly impactful wallop occurs right here, as Randall — fully absorbed by complex mathematical equations — initially fails to register the implication of the zero he has just written on the board. DiCaprio sells this moment: Randall hesitates, starts to shake his head, knows he hasn’t made a mistake … but nonetheless erases the zero and empties the room. Except for Kate.

 

Computing the dimensions of the comet is similarly easy. It’s the size of Mount Everest … and if — when — it strikes Earth, in just over six months, it’ll be a planetary extinction event.

 

Well.

 

Greyhound: A suspenseful sprint

Greyhound (2020) • View trailer 

Four stars. Rated PG-13, for war-related action, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.14.20

It’s a shame grim, real-world events kept this film from traditional theatrical release, because it would’ve been a breath-held, edge-of-the-seat nail-biter.

Krause (Tom Hanks) constantly worries that his inexperience as a wartime
 commander may not be up to the challenge of safeguarding the 37 convoy ships
 under his care.

Although certainly just as suspenseful when viewed at home — via its sole release on Apple TV — director Aaron Schneider’s Greyhound definitely isn’t as intense. Agitated viewers might even hit “pause” on occasion, to quell racing hearts, and you certainly can’t get such relief in a movie theater (which is as it should be).

 

Schneider’s approach is a clever blend of old-school “dire odds” war drama — in the mold of 1961’s The Guns of Navarone and 1968’s Where Eagles Dare — augmented by up-to-the-minute CGI effects. The pacing is taut; Schneider and editors Mark Czyzewski and Sidney Wolinsky don’t waste a second of this crisp 91-minute thriller, which gets the job done and then gets off the stage.

 

Schneider, a veteran cinematographer-turned-director, also has an unerring sense of camera placement, and the careful use of tight close-ups to heighten the drama. Star Tom Hanks has long been adept at taking advantage of such moments; he’s far better than most, at the nuance of wordless concern, flashes of doubt, and grim resolve.

 

Hanks also chooses his projects with care; he’s even more prudent with the ones he elects to script. This is only his third feature writing credit — after 1996’s That Thing You Do and 2011’s Larry Crowne — and his first adaptation. Greyhound is based on popular nautical author C.S. Forester’s 1955 naval thriller, The Good Shepherd, and Hanks’ approach is quite faithful (if unable to match, in such condensed form, the character depth found within the 322-page novel).

 

At the risk of stating the obvious, Forester’s title is far superior — and symbolically apt — than Greyhound. I cannot imagine what Hanks and Sony were thinking.

 

The year is early 1942, a few months after the United States has officially entered World War II. Allied UK forces and the Soviet Union are in constant need of supplies, which must be delivered by sea convoys via the Atlantic Ocean. But the route is patrolled constantly by German U-boats; the most dangerous region is the mid-Atlantic gap dubbed the “black pit,” where ships are out of range of protective air cover.

 

The Photograph: Nicely developed

The Photograph (2020) • View trailer 
Four stars. PG-13, for sensuality and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.14.20

It has been so long between gentle, sensitively constructed relationship dramas, that it took a minor act of will to get back into their rhythm.

While trying to satisfy his curiosity regarding a famous photographer with humble
Louisiana roots, Michael (LaKeith Stanfield) encounters Mae (Issa Rae), currently
curating an exhibit of the woman's work.

Writer/director Stella Meghie’s thoughtful little film shares its charms without bombast. No car chases or explosions. No gun battles. No ironic catastrophes. No unexpected, life-altering freak accidents. No natural disasters or other indications of Mother Nature’s displeasure. (Well, OK; there is a hurricane. But it serves mostly as a backdrop that heightens the developing intensity between two characters.)

This is just an uncomplicated set of cleverly intertwined love stories between characters separated by time but linked by behavior.

How utterly refreshing.

Meghie has an unerring ear for naturalistic dialog — whether flirty or contemplative — all of which is delivered with persuasive sincerity by her well-sculpted characters. It’s always fun to watch such people fall in love; movies have excelled at that since the medium’s conception (but not so much lately, sad to say).

It’s equally engaging to fret over conflicted, angst-riddled individuals who put head above heart: to wonder whether they’ll see the light and take the offered shot at romance. Or, indeed, if instead we must acknowledge that some folks are destined for a path that doesn’t include the stability (confinement?) of conventional togetherness.

And whether they’ll come to regret such a decision.

Journalist Michael Block (LaKeith Stanfield), a rising star at a New York-based magazine, heads down to Louisiana for a feature piece on how coastal communities are recovering, post-Katrina and Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (Answer: Not well.) His local contact is crab fisherman Isaac Jefferson (Rob Morgan, nicely understated), a modest, easygoing fellow who never felt compelled to abandon the environment in which he grew up.

During an otherwise routine interview, Michael’s attention is drawn to a series of striking, black-and-white photographs, including one of the photographer herself: Christina Eames, a native daughter who broke Isaac’s heart a generation ago, when she left to seek fame and fortune in New York.

Mudbound: Superb character study

Mudbound (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, disturbing violence, profanity and nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.12.18

This film likely hasn’t been on most folks’ radar, given its unconventional distribution.

That needs to change.

As their friendship develops, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund, right) insists that Ronsel
(Jason Mitchell) ride alongside in the front of his truck, rather than — as local custom
demands — back in the bed. This "familiarity" will not go unnoticed.

Director/co-scripter Dee Rees’ compelling adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s Mudbound boasts impeccable acting and a narrative too infrequently addressed these days: humble people just trying to get by. Rees’ film shares these sensibilities with classics such as the 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and the 1941 adaptation of Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley (both directed by John Ford).

The all-important distinction is that Jordan’s saga gets additional dramatic heft from its depiction of the wary, prickly dynamic that passed for “race relations” in the post-WWII Deep South. Recent films addressing issues of race — 12 Years a Slave, Selma and Birth of a Nation immediately spring to mind — have concentrated on momentous individuals and/or points in history; it’s refreshing to experience a much more intimate, carefully sculpted depiction of jes’ plain folks.

Some of whom, it must be noted, are capable of unspeakable behavior.

Rees and co-scripter Virgil Williams adopt Jordan’s alternating narrative voices while introducing us to two families: the McAllans and Jacksons, both struggling on a remote, hard-scrabble cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta. It’s the winter of 1946, with flashbacks filling in crucial pre-war details.

Monsoon-like rains occasionally turn the entire farm into a dispiriting swamp of mud.

We meet Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke) and his younger brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) as they dig a grave for their recently deceased father, trying to complete this task ahead of another impending storm. Subsequently easing the plain wooden coffin into the grave proves too much for the two men; Henry requests help from their tenant farmers, the Jacksons, as their wagon ambles along the nearby road.

This request elicits palpable tension; we’ve no idea why.

Answers emerge via lengthy flashbacks.