Music by John Williams: Rhapsodic

Music by John Williams (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG for brief violent film clips

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang

Full bias disclosure:

 

I’ve been a soundtrack nerd since junior high school, when I fell in love with John Barry’s jazz-oriented scores to the early James Bond films.

 

Since meeting in 1972, John Williams, left, and Steven Spielberg have collaborated on
29 feature films ... so far.

And let’s just say that didn’t sit well with my late 1960s, rock-oriented peers, when they caught me listening to soundtrack albums in our local public library. The scornful snickers always made me wince ... but did nothing to diminish my passion.

No surprise, then, that this new documentary was greeted with considerable anticipation.

 

It definitely delivers.

 

My soundtrack library expanded to include John Williams in the wake of 1975’s Jaws. Two years later, his score for Star Wars was a game-changer; it revived enthusiasm for classically hued orchestral soundtracks at a time when many films relied on “jukebox scores” of then-current pop tunes (a transitional detail covered in this documentary).

 

I mean, let’s get serious; who wasn’t blown away by that dynamic opening anthem, as the text crawl slid into the depths of space?

 

That film debuted May 25, 1977, but — unlike these days, when ancillary merchandise is coordinated for simultaneous release — the soundtrack didn’t show up for weeks. I haunted record stores almost daily, to the point that one shop owner simply shook his head when I peered inside the door.

 

But when it finally, finally, finally arrived — oh, my stars and garters — it was a double-album gatefold. Darn near unprecedented, for an orchestral film score. Like, wow.

 

Okay, enough of all that.

 

Director Laurent Bouzereau’s detailed profile of Williams covers an impressive degree of territory in 105 minutes, given that a multi-part miniseries would be necessary to do full justice to the composer’s career. The 92-year-old Williams was an enthusiastic participant, and his anecdotes, close encounters and sage observations are deftly blended with vintage photographs and home movies (both his own and, later, some shot by Steven Spielberg).

 

Bouzereau also employs the talking heads that have become obligatory in such films, but unlike far too many lesser documentaries, these aren’t obscure academics or fawning pop stars of the moment. The list here is meaty and meaningful: filmmakers Spielberg, Ron Howard, George Lucas, J.J. Abrams, Chris Columbus and James Mangold; fellow soundtrack composers Alan Silvestri, Thomas Newman and David Newman; and celebrated musicians Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gustavo Dudamel, Branford Marsalis and Anne-Sophie Mutter.

Inferno: Flickers and dies

Inferno (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence, dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

I’ve no idea why this series continues to be popular; each entry is sillier than the one before.

Dan Brown may be able to maintain reader credibility in a lengthy novel — Inferno runs a self-indulgent 609 pages — but director Ron Howard’s film adaptations are no more sensible than the old Perils of Pauline silent movie serial.

A series of arcane, art-related clues eventually lead Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and
Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) to the fabled "death mask" of Italian poet Dante
Alighieri. But what has this to do with a potential world-wide plague? And do we care?

David Koepp’s screenplay for Inferno reduces the plot to little more than a race-race-race against time, occasionally alleviated when famed university symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) pauses for breath in order to solve another arcane riddle locked within a famed piece of artwork.

On top of which, attempting to make sense of the conspiracy-laden supporting characters is beyond the ability of mere mortals. “Duplicitous” doesn’t begin to cover the crosses, double-crosses and triple-crosses in this ludicrous plot, which quickly devolves into a tiresome guessing game.

Lessee ... first they’re all bad guys. Then some of the bad guys become good guys. Oh, wait, no; that one was bad all along. And that one was good. Until turning bad again.

All with poor Langdon caught in the middle.

It quickly becomes impossible to believe — or care about — any of these people. All we can do is wait for the murk to clear, accompanied by tediously complicated explanations, so matters can build to a staggeringly inept climax, and we can go home.

Brown may have sold all this meandering nonsense to his readers — full disclosure prompts acknowledging that I’m not among the faithful — but Koepp can’t begin to distill it into a two-hour film. We can’t help wondering, as loyalties finally become apparent in the third act, why Certain Parties didn’t simply ask for Langdon’s help, rather than concocting such an elaborate means of “forcing” his assistance.

What makes Howard’s Dan Brown adaptations even more exasperating is their insistence on taking such stuff and nonsense so seriously. Robert Langdon’s profession and expertise make him a close cousin to Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones, but director Steven Spielberg wisely turns those chapter-play adventures into larkish thrill rides, with plenty of winking and nudging.

Brown’s style, on the other hand — reproduced here by Howard and Koepp — always collapses under the weight of its own pomposity.

In the Heart of the Sea: Waterlogged

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, startling violence and considerable peril
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.11.15

The ingredients are sure-fire: a fascinating, fact-based narrative; a plot that demands bravery and ghastly sacrifice by the men involved; a solid cast led by Chris Hemsworth, who makes ample use of his steely, blue-eyed resolve; and everything under the capable guidance of seasoned director Ron Howard.

Facing an undeniably vengeful attack by a massive white sperm whale, ship's first mate
Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth, foreground right) does his best to protect his men.
Unfortunately, even he won't be able to prevent what's about to happen...

And yet, In the Heart of the Sea somehow fails to resonate. Too many of the characters are defined solely by one-dimensional tics; the storyline is completely predictable; and the interpersonal squabbles are the stuff of trite cliché, particularly the sniping between Hemsworth’s first mate, Owen Chase, and their ship’s inexperienced and incompetent captain, George Pollard (Benjamin Walker).

On top of which, the thoroughly pointless 3D effects, added after the fact, do no favors to the otherwise exemplary work by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. The entire film is too dark and frequently looks washed out: the inevitable results of poor post-production 3D processing.

Howard’s film too often feels like a routine Boy’s Own Adventure Saga, albeit one granted a first-class budget. Everybody hits their marks like a pro, but the result just isn’t very involving: nowhere near as riveting as, say, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, several big-screen versions of Mutiny on the Bounty, or even the many British TV episodes of Horatio Hornblower.

Scripters Charles Leavitt, Rick Jaff and Amanda Silver also play fast and loose with historical accuracy, despite basing their screenplay on Nathaniel Philbrick’s meticulously researched 2000 book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, which in turn is based on two published accounts by men who survived the incident. The scripters cherry-picked some details, glossed over others, and most particularly “adjusted” both Chase and Pollard for melodramatic intensity.

Perhaps borrowing from a similar technique in 1997’s Titanic, the saga is recounted in flashback via a framing device that finds an aging Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), long ago the Essex cabin boy, recounting these events to a certain Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw).

It’s a cute touch — and Gleeson and Whishaw display more acting chemistry than can be found in the film’s primary storyline — but it’s totally bogus. Although these events definitely helped inspire the 1851 publication of Moby-Dick, Melville wouldn’t have needed to approach Nickerson for “the truth of the matter.” Chase’s own account of the tragedy was published in 1821, shortly after his rescue and return to his home in Nantucket.

Ah, well. Picky, picky, picky, right?

From Up on Poppy Hill: Young love and simpler times

From Up on Poppy Hill (2011) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

From its very first frame, From Up on Poppy Hill is breathtaking.

You’ll literally gasp at the hand-drawn watercolor lushness of the opening tableau, as the young heroine’s neighborhood is unveiled, her home set high on a hill that overlooks Japan’s Yokohama Port. Computer animation, for all its delights, never looks like this; one must go all the way back to the Walt Disney Studio’s early days, and Snow White or Bambi.

When Umi forgets some ingredients for the evening meal, her new friend Shun offers
to speed her down the hill, in order to reach the market as quickly as possible. The
resulting trip is exciting for its breakneck danger, and also for Umi's close proximity to
a young man she's beginning to care for quite deeply.

Or any of the recent offerings from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, of course, which deliver the same painstaking level of luxurious quality.

From Up on Poppy Hill — incidentally, Japan’s top-grossing 2011 film — marks the first feature collaboration between the legendary Miyazaki and his son, Gorō; Hayao wrote the screenplay with Keiko Niwa, while Gorō directed. The film is adapted from a 1980 manga series by Tetsurō Sayama (writer) and Chizuru Takahashi (artist); the story is a gentle and poignant coming-of-age saga about a teenage girl who can’t let go of a past tragedy.

Aside from the visual splendor, we’re immediately struck by the fact that this is a real-world period piece. For the most part, animated features are set in fantasy realms that involve magical creatures, talking animals or other mythological tropes. Exceptions, such as 2007’s Persepolis, tend to rely on grim political content.

But while From Up on Poppy Hill certainly has its solemn moments, they result from family secrets and unexpected revelations, rather than complex issues playing out on a broader national or global stage.

The year is 1963, a time of great excitement in Japan, as ambitious plans are made to showcase the country during the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. References to construction and renewal allude to Japan’s emergence from the still-recent horrors of World War II, but the script never calls undo attention to this sobering element.

Nor do the upcoming Olympics have any impact on Umi Matsuzaki (voiced in this American release by Sarah Bolger). The 16-year-old lives in Coquelicot Manor, a boarding house she essentially runs, while caring for her grandmother and two younger siblings, Sora (Izabelle Fuhrman) and Riku (Alex Wolff). Their mother, Ryoko, is studying abroad in the United States; their father was killed in the Korean War.

Every morning before school, Umi rises early to handle various chores and prepare an elaborate breakfast for her family and the manor’s residents. She does the same with each day’s evening meal. We immediately realize that this dutiful young woman maintains an exhausting schedule from before dawn to late at night, while diligently keeping up with her studies.

Her final ritual each morning, before walking to school, is to raise a set of signal flags on the manor flagpole that her (now deceased) grandfather built for her long ago.

The flags’ message: “I pray for safe voyages.”

Cowboys & Aliens: When genres collide

Cowboys & Aliens (2011) • View trailer for Cowboys & Aliens
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, and rather generously, for intense sci-fi action and violence, brief partial nudity and a fleeting crude reference
By Derrick Bang

Scientist and sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke once observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Scott Mitchell Rosenberg had plenty of fun with that concept, in the 2006 graphic novel he created and chaperoned with artist Luciano Lima and writers Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley. The basic premise is so beguiling, that it's amazing nobody else thought of it first: What if, instead of repeatedly bothering post-WWII Earth, extraterrestrials had arrived 100 years earlier?

Having tracked an unknown whatzis to its rather unusual lair, cattle baron
Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford, left) and wanted train robber Jake
Lonergan (Daniel Craig) ponder their next move ... while both men wonder if
the strange gadget on Jake's left wrist will prove helpful.

Surely the average citizens of our Wild West would have believed themselves beset by demons who wielded magic beyond their comprehension.

Director Jon Favreau's big-screen adaptation of Cowboys & Aliens takes numerous liberties with that original graphic novel; a press-gang of six (!) credited writers has shaped this rootin', tootin' saga around its two big-name stars, while also moving the core plot in different directions. But the story's foundation remains the same: How would 19th century folks have reacted to such a threat?

While Favreau sends up hoary film western conventions with a few chuckles here and there — the sort of levity he also brought to his two Iron Man films — Cowboys & Aliens is, at all times, a much grimmer saga (grim enough to test the boundaries of its PG-13 rating). We're quite removed from the cute, inquisitive outer-space visitors of Steven Spielberg's E.T.; the aliens in this tale are brutish, nasty and Up To No Good. They think nothing of kidnapping hapless Earthers and then studying them at great length.

And you can forget about the eyebrow-raising rectal probes discussed with such insistence by obsessed modern "victims" of alien abduction; these extra-terrestrials go straight to vivisection and cellular disintegration. Not nice folks. At all.

But that's getting ahead of things. Favreau's film opens as a man with neither memory nor name (Daniel Craig) wakens one morning, in the sun-blasted land just outside the small New Mexico town of Absolution. It's 1875, and our protagonist hasn't the faintest idea how he got there, or how he wound up with such a peculiar bracelet-type gadget around his left wrist.

The latter won't come off, and its purpose remains hidden.

Shortly after wandering into Absolution — following a brief encounter with three would-be bounty hunters — our stranger learns that he's Jake Lonergan, and that he's wanted for all sorts of crimes. He encounters a young woman — Olivia Wilde, as Ella — who seems unusually interested in him; he also realizes that the entire town is in thrall to local cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), whose ne'er-do-well son, Percy (Paul Dano), is an untouchable thorn in everybody's side.

Until Jake touches him, anyway. Quite a solid touch, at that.

The Dilemma: Lousy choice

The Dilemma (2011) • View trailer for The Dilemma
Two stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for vulgar humor and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.14.11


Don’t be deceived.

Universal’s marketing campaign paints The Dilemma as a light-hearted, giggly farce that matches big-screen funnymen Vince Vaughn and Kevin James against an ethical “problem” supposedly ripe with comic possibilities.

"The Dilemma" turns on a loaded question: How well do we really know our
best friends? Ronny (Vince Vaughn, far right) finds himself in an awkward
position after learning that Geneva (Winona Ryder, far left) is cheating on his
best friend -- and her husband -- Nick (Kevin James). Aside from wondering
whether to share what he knows, the whole mess makes Ronny second-guess
his plans to propose to longtime girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Connelly). Let the
laughter begin ... not.

Ah ... no.

This is a nasty, mean-spirited, tawdry little flick that attempts to milk humor from genuine pain. The laughs quickly become as desperate as the increasingly contrived plot elements that screenwriter Allan Loeb tosses into his inane storyline.

Director Ron Howard, wholly out of his comfort zone, seems to be trying for a modern update on the WWII-era screwball comedies that revolved around relationship ethics. To say that he misses would be grotesque understatement.

1940’s My Favorite Wife comes to mind: It finds Irene Dunne, long ago given up for dead in a shipwreck, returning to civilization after seven years to discover that former husband Cary Grant has remarried Gail Patrick. Things get more complicated when Grant, still deeply in love with Dunne, learns that she spent those seven years on a deserted island in the sole company of fellow survivor Randolph Scott.

Did they ... or didn’t they? And how can an increasingly frazzled Grant extricate himself from marriage No. 2 ... and does he really want to?

Hilarity ensues.

It worked, back in the day, because the characters in director Garson Kanin’s farce couldn’t be mistaken for real people; they were walking one-liner delivery systems. Feelings may have gotten bruised, but they weren’t battered, and the whole thing had the air of a well-executed drawing-room stage play.

Not so with The Dilemma.

Angels & Demons: Pope-a-dope

Angels & Demons (2009) • View trailer for Angels & Demons
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.15.09
Buy DVD: Angels & Demons • Buy Blu-Ray: Angels & Demons [Blu-ray]


In Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep — most famously adapted for the big screen in 1946, with Humphrey Bogart playing Philip Marlowe — the author rather sloppily left one of the killings unexplained. Owen Taylor, played by Dan Wallace in the movie, is found murdered in a car that has been pushed into the bay.

Chandler was embarrassed to admit, after the fact, that even he had no idea who killed poor Taylor; the film adaptation also fails to clarify this little detail.

And you think you had a bad day? Having arrived just a little too late, historian
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and physicist Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) look
up in horror as they discover the body of one of four kidnapped cardinals. But
this sick form of "cardinal roulette" is just the prologue to the evening's biggest
threat: the pending annihilation of Vatican City.

About midway through director Ron Howard's adaptation of novelist Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, a rather convoluted attempt is made to snuff Tom Hanks' Robert Langdon. You'll eventually realize, during the story's hyperactive third-act wrap-up, that you have no idea who might have been responsible for that murder attempt.

And that's just one of the many problems plaguing this laughable follow-up to the 2006 film adaptation of Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

In fairness, most of this new film's flaws can be attributed to Brown himself, and his overwrought, thunderously unreadable prose and hackneyed narrative. He's a truly terrible writer, and the success of his books — and the 2006 film version of Da Vinci — derives more from the public's fascination with arcane Catholic Church-themed conspiracy theories, and less from Brown's skill as a storyteller.

Angels and Demons — actually published prior to Da Vinci Code, but treated cinematically as a sequel to that subsequent book — is even more ludicrous than Brown's other best-selling potboiler.

Unacceptably ludicrous, as it turns out.

The willing suspension of disbelief is a delicate thing. Despite the White Queen's insistence, in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, that she can believe in "as many as six impossible things before breakfast," wise writers understand the need to make readers — or viewers — accept no more than one massively impossible concept at a time.

Start then with the Illuminati: the ultra-secret society tagged by Brown as the threat driving the action in Angels and Demons. Fair enough; members of the mysterious Illuminati have been so used by numerous authors, and in all sorts of ways.

Unfortunately, the additional gimmick that propels this film's action also makes it collapse: the fact that everything takes place in a single evening.