La La Land: (Mostly) breathtaking magic

La La Land (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.16.16

Ten minutes into this film, giddy with excitement, I couldn’t wait to see it again.

Ninety minutes in ... the enthusiasm had waned.

When Mia (Emma Stone) insists that she doesn't care for jazz, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling)
takes her to his favorite club, in order to demonstrate why true jazz can't just be heard,
but must be seen emanating from those who perform it.

At its best, La La Land sparkles with true magic. Writer/director Damien Chazelle’s romantic, music-laden fantasy is a true “sense of wonder” movie akin to Moulin Rouge! or Hugo: a dazzling tour de force that takes full advantage of the medium’s many elements.

It’s also an exhilarating throwback to classic American and French movie musicals, particularly Gene Kelly’s athletically graceful dance spectaculars: Singing in the Rain, An American in Paris, The Band Wagon and (most particularly) the sort of terpsichorean legerdemain he wove into a creaking floorboard and a stray section of newspaper, in Summer Stock.

Coupled with the luxuriously romantic atmosphere of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Chazelle obviously loves all of these classics, just as he includes more than a few nods to Bob Fosse’s aggressively gymnastic choreography. Chazelle also understands music’s ability to transport us to ethereal elsewheres, and he lives and breathes the toe-tapping, finger-snapping intensity of jazz; he demonstrated that with his mesmerizing directorial breakout, in 2014’s Whiplash.

That film was a grinding endurance test for its young protagonist, as he clashed with a brutal mentor en route to becoming a master drummer. La La Land is a much gentler saga of dreams and dreamers: of young people drawn to Southern California in pursuit of fame and/or artistic satisfaction (not necessarily in that order).

The simple core story is told with the heady, tongue-tickling sparkle and fizz of expensive champagne, Chazelle masterminding a squadron of associates who operate on full throttle: from Linus Sandgren’s opulent cinematography to David Wasco’s enchanting production design, from Tom Cross’ whip-cracking editing to Mary Zophres’ retro-stylish costume design, and Mandy Moore’s breathtaking choreography.

Promised Land: Rock-solid advocacy cinema

Promised Land (2012) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.9.13


Matt Damon hasn’t written many scripts since 1997’s Good Will Hunting, his Academy Award-winning debut effort with Ben Affleck. His prudence is understandable; where does one go, from up?

Hoping to undo the doubts raised by a local farmer who warns that fracking is anything
but a safe means of obtaining "clean" natural gas, Steve Butler (Matt Damon) takes
the microphone during a McKinley town meeting. Unfortunately, his usual smooth
patter will fail him a bit here, leading to a divided community ... and displeasure on the
part of Steve's corporate bosses.

Good Will Hunting was directed by Gus Van Sant; no surprise, then, that they collaborated on Damon’s next script, 2002’s little-seen (with good cause) Gerry.

Perhaps chastened by that experience, Damon put his word processor in the closet for a decade, while crafting an impressive acting career as both action hero — the Bourne series — and overall international film star.

But writers never quit; telling stories is in their blood. No doubt Damon was waiting for just the right property, and he certainly got it with Promised Land. Once again under Van Sant’s capable guidance, this captivating drama gets its juice from well-crafted characters, tart dialogue, a solid ensemble cast and a hot-button scenario ripped from real-world headlines.

Damon shares scripting duties with John Krasinski, a rising film star making good on the promise he has shown for so many years, on television’s The Office. Krasinski isn’t known as a writer — unless once includes 2009’s best-forgotten Brief Interviews with Hideous Men — but he certainly rises to the occasion here. He and Damon have deftly adapted a story by Dave Eggers, who burst on the scene a few years ago, with scripts for Away We Go and Where the Wild Things Are.

Good screenplays get their power from many elements. It’s not enough to craft piquant one-liners; they must be true to a well constructed plot. (They also must be delivered well by actors who understand how to maximize the impact of crisply timed dialogue, and that’s where we credit Van Sant.) The characters themselves must be interesting, efficiently sketched and cleverly integrated with all the other players on stage. We must care about them, either as good guys or bad guys.

Most of all, they must change — mature, regress, whatever — as a result of what happens to them.

A tall order all around.

Factor in a desire to be relevant — to indict a topic of the day — and most writers fail to juggle all those fragile eggs.

Damon and Krasinski, in welcome contrast, never err. Even casual exchanges of dialogue have consequences; watch for the payoff on a passing reference to a little girl selling lemonade outside a high school gymnasium. Goodness, it could be argued that she carries the moral weight of the entire film. That is sharp scripting.

The Watch: You definitely don't want to

The Watch (2012) • View trailer
One star. Rating: R, for pervasive profanity, vulgar sexual content, violence and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

This misbegotten train wreck represents the triumph of a pithy high-concept pitch over common sense, plot logic and artistic integrity.

Having learned that a newly discovered silver sphere is a powerful
alien weapon, our numbnuts heroes — from left, Jamarcus (Richard
Ayoade), Bob (Vince Vaughn), Evan (Ben Stiller) and Franklin (Jonah
Hill) — proceed to blow up all sorts of stuff, accompanied by much
raucous laughter. Sadly, they can't laugh hard enough to make us
viewers believe that any of this dreck is the slightest bit amusing.

The Watch may not wind up as the worst big-studio effort of 2012, but it’ll do until that one comes along.

Words simply fail me. I can’t believe this mess ever started as an actual script; it feels like so-called writers Jared Stern, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg got stoned one evening, jotted wild ’n’ crazy ideas onto pieces of paper, threw them in the air, assembled them randomly and then handed the stack to director Akiva Schaffer, who apparently saw no reason to argue.

Schaffer, it should be noted, was a longtime writer and director — of digital shorts — on TV’s Saturday Night Live. He paused long enough, during that tenure, to direct Andy Samberg in one of 2007’s limpest comedies, Hot Rod. Haven’t ever heard of it? That’s to your advantage; don’t go looking.

At the risk of repeating an old cliché, on the basis of that film and his “work” here on The Watch, Schaffer ain’t fit to direct traffic. Nor would I let him direct me to a market half a block away; he’d undoubtedly get it wrong.

Failed comedies can be egregiously awful, and this one certainly qualifies. The dialogue sounds under-rehearsed; the characters lack continuity or credibility; the plot sorta/kinda stumbles from one scene to the next. As is typical of too many numbnuts “doofus projects” these days, profanity and vulgarity are tossed about like spent condoms — actually one of the many running gags — in the vain hope that such elements can draw laughter. Not because any of the lines are actually funny, but ... just because.

Random dialogue exchanges are reflexively homophobic, racist, sexist and all other –ists that come to mind; about the best that can be said, is that these guys are equal-opportunity offenders.

And as bad as the limp-noodle efforts at slapstick humor are, things get even worse when Christophe Beck’s soundtrack swells with what’s intended to be feigned emotion, for a scene Schaffer apparently hopes will be heartwarming. Gaaahhh...

Rachel Getting Married: Toxic guest

Rachel Getting Married (2008) • View trailer for Rachel Getting Married
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, dramatic intensity, brief sensuality and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.08
Buy DVD: Rachel Getting Married • Buy Blu-Ray: Rachel Getting Married [Blu-ray]


I survived Robert Mitchum's psychopathic preacher from Night of the Hunter, albeit while peeking between my 9-year-old fingers.

I made it through the final scene in Carrie, back in the day before "gotcha epilogues" became a cliché. I marched into the night on wobbly legs after John Carpenter's first Halloween, but nonetheless moved under my own power. I weathered both the first Alien and Anthony Hopkins' debut performance as Hannibal Lecter, in Silence of the Lambs.

As the tumultuous weekend proceeds, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt, right)
becomes increasingly irritated by the behavior of her dysfunctional sister, Kym
(Anne Hathaway), who can't seem to survive without being the center of
attention. Rarely has sibling rivalry been more pregnant with unspoken
complaints and buried hostility ... and this is merely the beginning.

I also recall, at a young age when my parents should have known better, cowering behind an armchair as a giant spider — no doubt so hokey that I'd laugh at it today — menaced the jungle lord in one of Johnny Weissmuller's numerous grade-Z Tarzan entries. (Indiana Jones doesn't do snakes. I don't do spiders.)

But nothing has ever, ever scared me as much as Anne Hathaway's fumble for the microphone during the rehearsal dinner scene in Rachel Getting Married.

I didn't just want to crawl under the chair; I wanted to flee the county. Anything to prevent having to endure the slow emotional explosion about to erupt on the screen.

Director Jonathan Demme's new film, graced with a raw and sharply observant script from Jenny Lumet — daughter of director Sidney Lumet — is a painfully intimate examination of a dysfunctional family brought together for a wedding ceremony that takes place over one tumultuous weekend.

It's a fascinating, cleverly assembled film, and profoundly difficult to watch. On the one hand, I can't imagine recommending it as a good time at the movies; on the other hand, Hathaway delivers a starring performance that's as fearless, blunt and exposed as anything you're likely to see this year ... or next.

I'm generally not a fan of video verité; thus far, the gimmick has been employed mostly to conceal the weak, logically bankrupt storytelling in low-rent horror quickies like The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield and the just-released Quarantine.

But just as it took a director with Alfred Hitchcock's chops to show how 3D cinematography really should be used — back in the 1950s, with Dial M for Murder — Demme and cinematographer Declan Quinn have exploited high-def video in a way that not only makes perfect sense, but forcefully complements the story being told.

Indeed, about halfway through the film, I stopped noticing the jiggly camerawork and often under- or overexposed lighting, and felt like I had become part of the newly extended Buchman family celebration ... which, of course, was precisely Demme's intent.