The Invisible Man: Nothing to see here

The Invisible Man (2020) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and strong bloody violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.28.20

It starts so well.

Writer/director Leigh Whannell’s re-boot of H.G. Wells’ 1897 classic has a terrific first act, beginning with a chilling, wordless prologue as Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) stealthily slips out of bed late one night. Her wary, frightened eyes never leave the sleeping man formerly beside her; her skittish movements are those of a trapped animal attempting a final shot at survival.

What you can't see ... could hurt you a lot. Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) attempts to calm
herself with a soothing hot shower, little realizing that she isn't alone.

Whannell stages this sequence brilliantly, and Moss plays it with impressive conviction. We immediately know that she’s a long-abused, likely battered woman; we instinctively root for her to escape from this massive, heavily masculine estate of long hallways and electronically controlled doors (ominously sterile production design by Alex Holmes). Cecilia’s cautious departure seems to take forever, and we nearly scream when she pauses long enough to free their dog.

They make it. Barely.

Time passes. Still terrified, she shelters inside the comfortable suburban home of childhood friend James (Aldis Hodge), a San Francisco police detective and single parent to teenage daughter Sydney (Storm Reid). They’re kind and patient, even when Cecilia remains too terrified to step outside long enough to get the mail.

Then, a most unexpected release. Cecilia’s sister Emily (Harriet Dyer) arrives with phenomenal news: Cecilia’s abusive ex, Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), has killed himself. The nightmare is over.

Or is it?

Given the title of this film, it’s hardly revelatory to mention that Cecilia’s relief is short-lived. Thanks to preternatural senses honed during years of trying to anticipate Adrian’s hair-trigger explosions of temper and violence, Cecilia begins to feel uncomfortable in James and Sydney’s home. Empty rooms seem … wrong somehow. (Whannell and cinematographer Stefan Duscio have great fun with agonizingly slow pans of … absolutely nothing at all.)

The atmosphere remains unsettling and creepy, the suspense almost unbearable. And then Cecilia recalls (and we learn) that Adrian was a brilliant inventor and optics pioneer, and her paranoia rises to a shrieking point. If anybody could “haunt” a person by being invisible, Adrian would be the one; maybe he isn’t dead.

Or maybe she’s just losing her mind.

A Wrinkle in Time: Crumpled beyond recognition

A Wrinkle in Time (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.9.18

Many reasons exist for this book’s failure to be adapted to the big screen, during the half-century since its publication in 1962, all of which director Ava DuVernay and scripters Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell attempted to ignore, evade or surmount.

Their well-intentioned effort clearly is heartfelt; it’s just as clearly a failure.

Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), younger brother of Meg (Storm Reid), has the ability to
"know things." Ergo, he's not surprised by the unexpected appearance of the decidedly
unusual Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon).

Madeleine L’Engle’s Newbery Medal-winning fantasy was quite unusual for its time: a loquacious children’s novel that blends discussions of quantum physics and upper-echelon mathematics with a Christian subtext likely inspired by C.S. Lewis. It’s a “head” story, with much of the narrative probing the thoughts and interactions of its protagonist, who — also quite unusual, for its time — is a young teenage girl.

That latter detail no doubt has made the book more attractive to today’s potential filmmakers, and I guess DuVernay can be applauded for bravery. But her handling of A Wrinkle in Time is ponderous, boring and weird, with characters too frequently placing so much weight on flowery speeches, that I’m surprised the words don’t sink beneath the story’s many unusual landscapes.

Much of the acting is stiff and clumsy, and Ramin Djawadi’s relentlessly maudlin orchestral score — which never, ever lets up — makes one want to scream for relief.

DuVernay practically begs her audience to regard this film as Momentously Important, and — needless to say — that’s the death of successful drama. (Indeed, she did beg, during the uncomfortably awkward on-camera appeal that preceded Tuesday evening’s preview screening.)

The many disappointing performances notwithstanding, Storm Reid is an exception. She stands tall as the saga’s heroine, Meg Murry, a brilliant but self-conscious social outcast who has come to believe that she’s nowhere near the best version of herself. Since that insecurity is worn like a shroud, she’s naturally a target for mean-spirited classmates.

Reid handles this role with delicacy, her flickering, downcast eyes often half-concealed by a hairstyle she wears as a shield. She blends the awkwardness of departing childhood with the coltish grace of impending womanhood, her face often on the verge of tears that Meg likely couldn’t explain. At the same time, Reid exudes the perception and ferocious intelligence at the core of this girl. She’s a marvelous heroine.

Adolescent angst notwithstanding, Meg has good reason for her unrelenting despair: She grieves the loss of her father (Chris Pine), a scientist who simply ... vanished ... four years earlier. He and his equally brilliant wife (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) — they’re never given first names, and are addressed simply as Mother and Father — had been working on a high-falutin’ concept of instantaneous space travel via what’s dubbed a “tesseract.”