Blitz: A powerful, WWII-era character study

Blitz (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence, occasional profanity and racism

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

Back in 1987, writer/director John Boorman’s semi-autobiographical Hope and Glory presented the London Blitz as something of a “boys’ own adventure,” focusing on children who were too young to understand what was happening, and viewed the chaos as oddly exciting.

 

Shortly after joining hundreds of similarly frightened Londoners seeking shelter from a
bomb raid, by fleeing into a subway, George (Elliott Heffernan) suddenly becomes
aware of something just as dangerous...

Writer/director Steve McQueen’s Blitz takes a decidedly different view.

The setting is London, September 1940; Hitler’s Germany has just begun the eight-month bombing campaign designed to terrify England into quick submission. (He sure got that wrong.) As one immediate result, Operation Pied Piper evacuated 800,000 children from urban centers to outlying rural communities, over the course of just three days.

 

McQueen’s film opens on a terrifying scene, as untrained and outmatched firefighters attempt to extinguish multiple blazes caused by the most recent attack. It’s noisy, chaotic and scary ... particular when the scene shifts skyward, as more bombs slowly spiral their way down. In a few brief minutes, McQueen and his filmmaking team sketch the horror of random death and destruction.

 

This prologue is replaced by brief random shots, concluding with a field of flowers, which slowly fades as piano music is heard. Working-class single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) readies her 9-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan), with a tattered suitcase. They live with her father, Gerald (Paul Weller), a doting man who radiates kindness and compassion; he’s the piano player. Fleeting flashbacks establish the tight bond between these three, and the deep love that Rita and George share.

 

She’s shattered. Ronan’s stricken expression is heartbreaking, her eyes clenched, in order to prevent tears.

 

George, on the other hand, is furious. He absolutely doesn’t want to leave, refuses to understand why he should, and feels betrayed when his mother resolutely hustles him to the train station.

 

“I hate you!” he snaps, pain in his face, as he breaks from her and runs into a train car. When she spies him through a window, as the train pulls away, he refuses to meet her gaze as she implores him to say a proper goodbye.

 

What follows is powered by two phenomenal performances, from Ronan and young Heffernan, both so solidly “in character” that we soon forget we’re watching actors; they become Rita and George.

 

As the train proceeds, McQueen hits us with the jolt we’ve been dreading ... because George is a mixed-race child. Two loutish boys in the seat behind lean over; one runs his fingers through George’s “unusual” hair. Heeding his grandfather’s advice about bullies, George stands up to them ... and they retreat in embarrassed silence.

 

“All mouth, and no trousers,” George scoffs, recalling his grandfather’s words.

 

(Love that expression!)

See How They Run: A whimsical delight

See How They Run (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for mild violence and fleeting sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This is way too much fun.

 

Director Tom George’s mischievous period “whodunit within a whodunit” is a valentine to Agatha Christie — and her fans — and a cheeky send-up of theatrical storytelling conventions.

 

Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and his fresh-faced associate, Constable Stalker
(Saoirse Ronan), are surprised by the care with which a murder victim has been
placed on a theater stage couch.

Mark Chappell’s tongue-firmly-in-cheek script misses no targets. This is the sort of romp where, if a character laments the “awkwardness” of flashbacks as a plot contrivance, you can bet that the next scene will be a flashback.

Most of the humor is slow-burn: witty, not farcical, in the manner that is uniquely British.

 

Chappell also did his homework. A surprising amount of his narrative’s core details are based on historical fact (and I’ve no doubt viewers will rush to the Internet to determine fact from fiction, after watching this retro charmer).

 

The setting is early 1953, at West End London’s Theatre Royal, as the cast and crew of Christie’s new murder mystery play, The Mousetrap, celebrates its 100th performance. Essential details are supplied by an unseen narrator who, in a nod to 1950’s Sunset Blvd., speaks from beyond the grave.

 

The festivities are cut short both by the drunken antics of boorish, blacklisted American screenwriter Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody), and — a bit later — the distressing discovery that one of these folks has been murdered. For real.

 

Cue the arrival of world-weary Scotland Yard Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and his eager-beaver rookie, Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan). They find the body propped on the couch of the play’s single-room theater setting.

 

“Staged, so to speak,” Stalker impishly observes.

 

Chappell’s script is full of similarly playful one-liners.

 

The corpus delicti is none other than Köpernick, who — as flashbacks reveal — managed to irritate, annoy, belittle or blackmail just about everybody else. In true Agatha Christie fashion, there’s no shortage of suspects.

Little Women: Hugely entertaining

Little Women (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.20.19

Little Women has hit the big screen seven previous times, starting with silent versions in 1917 and ’18. Director Greta Gerwig’s new handling is by far the most sumptuously realized: a passionately heartfelt adaptation that honors author Louisa May Alcott as much as her celebrated 1868 novel.

At a time when "economic necessity" grants women little choice but to marry, the March
sisters — from left, Meg (Emma Watson), Amy (Florence Pugh), Jo (Saoirse Ronan)
and Beth (Eliza Scanlen) — yearn for more satisfying destinies. Can any such dreams
be realized?

Gerwig’s thoughtful script faithfully acknowledges all of the book’s major plot points, but not slavishly; she employs split timelines to heighten key revelations while adding a bit of suspense, and cheekily massages the conclusion to add a bit of Alcott’s own life to the semi-autobiographical finale that embraces her beloved March sisters.

That latter touch is audacious, given how deeply invested so many readers are, in these iconic characters — well over a century later! — but Gerwig pulls it off: as neat an act of eating her cake, and having it too, as has been seen on the big screen for quite awhile.

It’s also noteworthy that this saga feels family-next-door sincere, rather than the stuff of contrived melodrama. Credit goes to Gerwig’s finely tuned ear for authentic conversation and emotions, and the care with which she lifted dialog right off the page, and (significantly) Alcott’s forward-thinking concern with female equality, long before such things became even acknowledged, let alone acted upon.

But even the most carefully crafted dialog relies upon its delivery system. Gerwig scores here as well, having drawn uniformly strong performances from a talented cast headed by Saoirse Ronan (Jo), Emma Watson (Meg), Florence Pugh (Amy) and Eliza Scanlen (Beth). 

The film opens as Jo, an aspiring author, successfully places a short story with publisher Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts) … but only after succumbing to editing demands that gut the little tale. She’s living in a boarding house in New York City, and has caught the eye of young literature professor Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel).

Believing him a kindred spirit, she shares some of her work … and is dismayed when he judges her stories inconsequential little trifles. Ronan plays Jo’s reaction just right; she’s angry, embarrassed, humiliated and defiant … all while stubbornly overlooking Friedrich’s quiet insistence that she can do better.

Lady Bird: Truly soars

Lady Bird (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Well into writer/director Greta Gerwig’s accomplished filmmaking debut, the story’s protagonist is complimented — by her high school counselor — on the depth of feeling she expresses, in a college application essay, for the city in which she has grown up: a city from which she’s eager to escape.

As the high school senior prom approaches, Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan, left) brings her
mother (Laurie Metcalf) along when she tries out a series of dresses: an excursion that
takes place amid the organized clutter of Sacramento's massive Thrift Town store.

The city is Sacramento, where Gerwig herself grew up, and her film exhibits the same reverence. Indeed, I doubt Sacramento ever again will be the subject of such a heartfelt cinematic valentine.

Lady Bird can’t help feeling semi-autobiographical; Gerwig’s characteristic personality shines throughout, easily recognized from her starring roles in quirky indie dramedies such as Lola Versus, Frances Ha and Mistress America. Her filmmaking debut is both an engaging and painfully raw coming-of-age saga, and a respectful appreciation for the environment that shaped her as an artist.

A kiss on Sacramento’s cheek, and an earnest Thank You.

But that’s merely the narrative portion of Gerwig’s film. She also deserves credit for coaxing persuasively intimate performances from her stars: most notably Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, who deliver one of the most tempestuous, complicated and deeply loving mother/daughter relationships ever depicted on camera.

The year is 2002, as the United States enters a new national mindset in the wake of 9/11. We meet Ronan’s Christine McPherson on the eve of her senior year in high school, which she’s horrified to discover will be spent at a Catholic school. She’s a rebellious young adult, with strikingly dyed hair and an insistence that everybody — even family members — refer to her as “Lady Bird”: a name she has given herself, as opposed to the one that was thrust upon her.

She has little use for her post-college brother Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues) and his girlfriend Shelly (Marielle Scott), both of whom share the small, cramped house which is all that Lady Bird’s parents — Marion (Laurie Metcalf) and Larry (Tracy Letts) — can afford. Lady Bird is deeply ashamed of living on “the wrong side of the tracks”; it’s one of the innumerable “slights” that she takes personally, and for which she — unjustly, and immaturely — blames her parents.

She’s a teenager, in every horrific sense of the term: stubborn, selfish, shallow, spiteful and short-tempered.

Brooklyn: Endearing coming-of-age drama

Brooklyn (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for brief sensuality
By Derrick Bang

There’s a moment in this film when Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) pauses at the top of the stairs in her home in tiny Enniscorthy, Ireland.

Director John Crowley holds on this hushed and wordless tableau, as Eilis thoroughly scans her bedroom, and the room immediately adjoining. Ronan’s expression is intent and focused, her carefully composed gaze a blend of determination and regret.

Eilis (Saoirse Ronan, second from right) listens warily as Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters, center
rear) responds to some thinly veiled gibes from Patty (Emily Bett Rickards, far left) and
Diana (Eve Macklin, second from left). Given half a chance, Eilis knows, Patty and Diana
will make fun of her.

And we understand that she’s memorizing these rooms — this childhood haven where she grew up — certain in the knowledge that she’ll never return. The realization is heartbreaking: one of the most poignant leave-takings I’ve ever seen on the big screen.

Brooklyn is filled with emotionally powerful moments, most given additional heft by Ronan’s exquisitely sensitive performance. She has the added benefit of excellent material; Colm Tóibín’s acclaimed 2009 novel of the same title has been deftly adapted by Nick Hornby, an excellent novelist and screenwriter (About a Boy, An Education) with a strong sense of dialogue and interpersonal dynamics.

This is a gentle, simple tale: also an ironically timely one, given the current national — and international — furor regarding immigrants. Crowley and Hornby couldn’t have anticipated such real-world turbulence during production, and therefore cannot be credited (or blamed) for deliberately creating subtle advocacy cinema.

At the same time, it’s nice to be reminded of the American values that have made our “land of the free, home of the brave” such a cherished destination for so many people from throughout the world, and for so long.

Occasional cultural references pinpoint this story in 1952 and ’53. Eilis has spent her entire life in Enniscorthy; we meet her during a final shift at a local all-purpose shop run by Miss “Nettles” Kelly (Brid Brennan), a condescending harridan who clearly enjoys embarrassing her less refined customers.

Work is scarce throughout Ireland, and under ordinary circumstances Eilis’ prospects would be extremely limited. But she’s lucky; her older sister Rose (Fiona Glascott), with assistance from Catholic priests on both sides of the Atlantic, has arranged for Eilis to emigrate to Brooklyn, New York.

Departure is bittersweet at best; although Eilis is excited, the bond with her sister is strong, as is a shared concern for their somewhat frail and lonely mother (Jane Brennan), who never fully recovered from her husband’s death.

The ocean journey, though not without incident, is cleverly condensed by Hornby; it also sets up a “passing it forward” encounter that comes to fruition, quite poignantly, toward the end of the film.

The Grand Budapest Hotel: Grandly chaotic

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.21.14

This one’s hard to categorize.

On the one hand, and perhaps most visibly, Wes Anderson’s newest opus is a madcap farce populated by eccentric and oddly polite characters who hearken back to those found within West London’s famed Ealing Studios comedies, during the late 1940s and early ’50s.

With the police hot on their heels, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes, left) and his faithful
junior lobby boy, Zero (Tony Revolori), frantically try to figure out where to hide a
priceless Renaissance painting that they have, ah, liberated.

On the other hand, it’s a droll send-up of Agatha Christie mysteries, with suspicious butlers, nosy maids and assorted other shady and avaricious characters, all of them anxious about the contents of a will that keeps throwing up codicils, riders, supplements, postscripts and assorted other appendices, possibly even superseded by the second copy of a second will.

On the third hand, it’s an affectionate ode to an era of more civilized behavior, when traveling strangers regaled each other with fascinating tall tales while enjoying a sumptuous meal; and when courting lovers exchanged passionate letters.

Then, too, there’s an affectionate nod to Inception, with its nested narratives.

And, last but certainly not least, however we choose to define this unapologetically zany melodrama, it most certainly could have come only from the eccentric imagination of director Wes Anderson ... and perhaps that’s the only explanation that matters.

Anderson’s films take place within a fanciful universe of his creation: one slightly off-center from our own, with occasionally familiar cultural landmarks that merely add to the gently bizarre atmosphere, laced with characters who deliver crucial soliloquies and peculiar non-sequitors with equal aplomb, and always with resolutely straight faces.

No character ever laughs at something said by another; at best, the speaker might get a raised eyebrow that Signifies A Great Deal.

In short, Anderson’s films are strange. Very strange, and definitely an acquired taste. I generally swing toward admiration, but not always; his previous outing, Moonrise Kingdom, is a thorough delight ... but I almost couldn’t make it through The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

This one falls somewhere in between, leaning more heavily toward the wacky delights of Moonrise Kingdom. Anderson has concocted the script with co-conspirator Hugo Guinness, claiming inspiration from pre-code 1930s Hollywood comedies and the stories and memoirs of Viennese author Stefan Zweig (!).

Avid film fans with a fondness for old-style filmmaking technique likely will have a ball. Mainstream viewers who casually wander into the theater will be convinced, after only 15 minutes, that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

And, to be fair, they won’t be wrong.

Hanna: Revenge served hot

Hanna (2011) • View trailer for Hanna
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and much too generously, for profanity, sensuality and relentless (often grim) violence
By Derrick Bang


Goodness, what a bizarre, unpalatable and clumsy mess.

I cannot imagine what drew director Joe Wright to this project.

On the run from yet another collection of vicious thugs, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan)
leads them on a merry chase through a dock yard filled with stacked containers.
It's a well-executed sequence, delivered with slick cinematography and clever
editing, but the flash merely serves to conceal this film's bankrupt script.

Wright is the talented filmmaker who delivered such sumptuous, intelligent and inventively photographed adaptations of the books Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and The Soloist. All three are engaging dramas, impeccably acted by superb ensemble casts; all three stir our emotions and showcase a craftsman who understands how best to use every nuanced element of the collaborative motion picture art form.

Hanna, in great, staggering contrast, is a nasty, lumbering oaf of a project: a misbegotten collection of scattered, individual scenes that barely count as a “plot” at all. Seth Lochhead’s story — given additional espionage-style juice by David Farr, a veteran of the British TV series MI5 — couldn’t ever have looked good: not on paper, and certainly not once the damage was up on the screen. It’s as if Wright suddenly forgot everything he ever knew about constructing a coherent film.

Bad scripts can be awful for all sorts of reasons, but one of the greatest sins is a failure to remain true to the rules established from the beginning. If we’re to be a real-world thriller, that demands certain levels of consistency; we don’t suddenly detour into sequences that would have felt more at home in Tim Burton’s handling of Alice in Wonderland.

I’m not certain it’s possible to describe enough of this chaotic, scattershot story in order to properly illustrate its many flaws, but here goes:

We open in a barren, snowbound forest, where Erik Heller (Eric Bana) apparently has been teaching survival skills to his teenage daughter, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan, who earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Atonement), ever since she was a little girl. As a result, Hanna has become a lean, mean fighting machine: an ambulatory weapon trained for some dire mission.

These early sequences, and the mysterious build-up behind them, feel like a real-world spin on the character of Hit-Girl in Kick Ass, who similarly was transformed into a slicing, dicing assassin by her father. Fair enough; it’s an intriguing concept.

Believing herself ready, Hanna insists that it’s time she return to civilization, in order to fulfill her mission. Thanks to a homing beacon that Erik allows the girl to trigger, they don’t need to wait long; their isolated cabin soon is surrounded by gun-toting paramilitary types. Erik already has vanished, promising to re-unite with the girl in Berlin; Hanna, meanwhile, demonstrates her skills by taking out a few soldiers before quietly allowing the rest to bring her ... elsewhere.

The Lovely Bones: Broken

The Lovely Bones (2009) • View trailer for The Lovely Bones
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity and a very grim storyline
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.21.10
Buy DVD: The Lovely Bones • Buy Blu-Ray: The Lovely Bones (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Likening herself to a snapshot — a moment frozen in time — young Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), during her concluding voice-over in The Lovely Bones, laments that she was here but for a moment ... and then gone.

If only the same could be said of the film itself.

Susie (Saoirse Ronan) enjoys helping her father (Mark Wahlberg) with his
hobby of building ships in bottles, even as she playfully teases him about it;
he describes the way in which such a painstaking hobby instills the discipline
of seeing things through, and -- waving a hand vaguely toward shelves filled
with bottled tiny ships -- promises that "One day, all this will be yours."
His daughter, with a horrified glance, can't be sure it's a promise or a threat...

Director Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's grim novel — which Jackson scripted with longtime collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens — is a dull, dreary and dispiriting slog. It feels like a self-indulgent vanity project that got entirely out of hand. Jackson obviously wanted to make portentous statements about death and the despair of a human soul left with no means to take care of unfinished business ... but all this gets lost amid leaden pacing, irritating plot points and monotonous, hippy-trippy images of the afterlife.

Seeing this film immediately on the heels of Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus made for an interesting comparison. Both films are a mess, in different ways, but Gilliam's chaotic dreamscapes at least have the benefit of being relevant to his storyline. The luxurious realms in which Susie finds herself trapped, in great contrast, pointlessly interrupt the flow of a (potentially) more interesting narrative.

I'm reminded of old-style movie musicals, where the actors would break away from a dramatic moment, often quite jarringly, in order to launch into a song. You'll get just as irritated here, each time Jackson cuts to Susie's fixation with the same damned gazebo.

And it's a shame, because The Lovely Bones begins well. We're fully involved with these characters up to the moment Susie's life is snuffed, and quite horribly; things fall apart only later — and this is the bulk of the overlong 135-minute film — when the girl refuses to "move on," preferring instead to find out to what degree she can, or should, hang around and attempt to influence matters back in the mortal world.