Mickey 17: One heckuva ride!

Mickey 17 (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for gruesome violence, profanity, sexual content and drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.9.25

This is science-fiction cinema at its finest.

 

Director/scripter Bong Joon Ho’s mesmerizing adaptation of Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel has it all: a fascinating premise, solid characters, a persuasively chilling future, a tone that veers from brutally horrifying to macabre, and scathing social commentary.

 

One Mickey too many? Two "expendables" (both Robert Pattinson) are sent on a suicide
mission, in an effort to do something about the inhospitable elements on the faraway
planet of Niflheim.

That is, after all, science-fiction’s primary mission: to employ a high-tech backdrop as a means of calling out contemporary society’s failings.

And goodness, but we’ve been failing a lot lately.

 

Ho’s film hits the ground running, as the hapless Mickey (Robert Pattinson) struggles to awareness after having fallen into a deep, icy cavern. His stream-of-consciousness ramblings sound defeated and resigned.

 

Then, the overhead roar of engines; a figure appears atop the fissure. Timo (Steven Yeun) peers over the edge ... but instead of assisting, he rappels down just far enough to retrieve Mickey’s futuristic weapon, and then returns to his ship. This leaves Mickey to a fate that becomes even more dire, when weird, many-legged beasties burst into the cavern.

 

Okay, this isn’t Earth.

 

While praying for a fast death, rather than being devoured bit by bit, Mickey recalls what brought him to this fate.

 

We flash back four years and change. The year is 2054. Mickey and Timo have unwisely crossed a nasty loan shark; they’re given four days to replay the loan ... or else.

 

Mickey — a forlorn nebbish who has resigned himself to loser status — impulsively decides to leave the planet; Timo does the same.

 

That proves possible, thanks to a mission being mounted by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a former congressman and failed two-time presidential candidate. Earth has become increasingly inhospitable, and — with the financial backing of a right-wing religious order — Marshall has become the public face of a voyage to the distant planet Niflheim, where a “righteous” new colony will be established.

 

Naïve, wide-eyed true believers line up by the hundreds, most sporting logo caps and flashing uniform salutes. Mickey fills out a form, and — not realizing the significance of this detail — signs up to become an “expendable.”

 

“Are you sure?” the receptionist asks, warily.

 

Why not? It’s not as if Mickey has amounted to anything up to this point.

 

Nope: My sentiments precisely

Nope (2022) • View trailer

No stars (turkey). Rated R, for bloody violence and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.22.22

Jordan Peele, who won a well-deserved writing Oscar for his breakthrough hit — 2018’s Get Out — has succumbed to the M. Night Shyamalan curse.

 

Each new film tries harder, yet achieves less.

 

Having learned enough to realize that they're dealing with something quite nasty, our
heroes — from left, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya), Emerald (Keke Palmer) and Angel
(Brandon Perea) can't imagine what to do next.

In this case, much less.

Nope — a terrible title, just in passing — obviously began life as a 10-word elevator pitch (which I cannot speculate upon, due to spoilers). It might have turned into a decently chilling 20-minute short, but as a 135-minute vanity flop, the result is a dull, interminable slog.

 

Ten minutes into this bomb, it’s blindingly obvious that we’re dealing with a world-class stinker. And it doesn’t get any better. Worse, in fact.

 

Following two brief prologues — I’ll dial back to those in a moment — we meet siblings OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer), who are struggling to maintain the legacy of their father’s specialty horse ranch, which provides animals for Hollywood shoots, theme parks and the like. Their operation, located in the isolated Agua Dulce desert in northern Los Angeles County, hangs by a thread.

 

OJ is expressionless and taciturn to the point of somnambulance, throughout this entire story; he makes Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” — back in that actor’s 1960s spaghetti western days — look and sound Shakespearean. It takes genuine talent to guide an actor with Kaluuya’s significant chops into such a relentlessly dull and lackluster performance, but Peele — who wrote, directed and produced this turkey — somehow managed.

 

Emerald, in contrast, is shrill, profane, insolent, mean-spirited and — in short — absolutely intolerable. Palmer behaves as if she’s revved up on cocaine the entire time; her performance is unrestrained, unintelligible and unlikable. We loathe her character on sight, and Palmer isn’t helped by the stream-of-consciousness babble that Peele apparently believes passes for dialogue.

 

Rarely have two movie characters so effectively — and so quickly — turned an audience off. The very thought of spending more than two hours with them is unbearable.

 

First, though, we endure the travesty of prologue No. 1, as a TV family sitcom shoot goes awry when its star — a chimpanzee — suddenly attacks his human co-stars in a gory swath of blood-laden rage.

 

The notion that any filmmaker would be insensitive enough to mount such a tasteless spectacle — in our more enlightened, post-Jane Goodall era — is utterly appalling. It’s also an indication of unrestrained arrogance on Peele’s part, particularly since it adds nothing to his film.

Minari: An unfinished symphony

Minari (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for thematic elements and a fleeting rude gesture

By Derrick Bang

At its core, writer/director Lee Isaac Chung’s gentle drama is the classic saga of one man’s pursuit of the American dream.

 

It’s also a study of fitting in: finding peace as a family, and as immigrants coming to terms with their place in an unfamiliar land.

 

Jacob (Steven Yeun, left) and his family — clockwise from left, grandmother Soonja
(Yuh-Jung Youn), wife Monica (Yeri Han) and their children Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and
Davis (Alan S. Kim) —contemplate the challenge of transforming native Arkansas
landscape into an operational fruit and vegetable farm.

The setting is the 1980s. Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) has just moved his family from California to a 50-acre plot of farmland in rural Arkansas, purchased with all the money that he made during 10 years as a chicken sexer. Mindful of the ever-increasing arrival of Korean immigrants to this part of the United States, Jacob envisions a soon-to-be-thriving business growing and selling fresh Korean fruits and vegetables.

 

His wife Monica (Yeri Han) thinks he has lost his mind.

 

Chung opens his film as Jacob slowly leads his family down a country road; Monica is behind him, driving the truck with all their belongings. Jacob turns into an open field, and parks in front of a large mobile home where they’re now to live. Monica makes no effort to conceal her dismay. Her reaction is magnified by the absence of steps leading to the front door that stands four feet above the ground: a droll touch that deftly amplifies the insanity of what Jacob has gotten them into.

 

(The place does have electricity, although this detail is glossed over. Chung is occasionally sloppy that way.)

 

Worse yet — as they discover a few days later, during a torrential rain — a mobile home isn’t the smartest dwelling in a region known for tornadoes.

 

This cuts to the heart of Jacob’s personality, and his determination to By God Make This Work, despite being wholly ignorant of the region and so many other things. He’s also heedless of the fact that the land’s previous tenant — presumably a better-informed local — went bankrupt trying. 

 

Ergo, as but one example, Jacob refuses to spend money on a dowser, insisting that he can find a well on his own.

 

There’s a certain nobility to Jacob’s stubbornness, and Yeun exudes an aura of quiet dignity and unyielding persistence. Han’s performance, in turn, is richly nuanced: On the one hand, she admires and loves her husband, and clearly wants to have faith in his grand plan … but, on the other hand, she feels it’s foolish, reckless and possibly even hazardous to their children. She’s also anxious about their isolation, and where her own life and marriage go, moving forward.

 

Conversely, Jacob holds firm to the notion that ultimately their children will benefit from his dream. 

 

Eventually. Once the dust settles.