Captain America: Brave New World — Oh, really?

Captain America: Brave New World (2025) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence and mild profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

The bloom definitely has worn off the Marvel Cinematic Universe rose.

 

More than most, this new Captain America outing relies too heavily on details from previous MCU entries. Keeping a score card isn’t enough; nothing short of an annotated spread sheet would suffice.

 

When two American fighter pilots inexplicabgly go rogue, and start firing on Japanese
military vessels, Captain America (Anthony Mackie, right) and Falcon (Danny Ramirez)
know they must act quickly, to prevent a war.

The result here is something of a mess, with one engaging sub-plot overwhelmed by a far too complicated set of fresh crises. But that’s to be expected from a film with five (!) credited scripters, who seem to have competed with each other, in a contest to resurrect the most obscure MCU nugget.

That said, Anthony Mackie deserves ample credit for navigating the herculean task of holding this mess together as well as possible, and for capably replacing Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers as the new red, white and blue Captain America. Mackie’s Sam Wilson isn’t quite the same shield-slinger, though; he’s more a Cap 2.0.

 

Lacking Rogers’ super soldier serum-enhanced strength and agility, Sam has compensated with a set of vibranium and gadget-laden wings that would be the envy of Iron Man. Sam also has a fresh-faced partner: Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez, as playful as a puppy), a “Falcon-in-training,” last seen in 2021’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV miniseries.

 

As this overcooked saga begins, former military hawk Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) has just been elected President of the United States. Elsewhere, Sam and Joaquin are tasked with retrieving a cannister of the metal alloy adamantium, stolen by the mercenary Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) from Japanese scientists who’ve extracted it from the massive “Celestial Island.” 

 

(This “island” actually is the dead body of a celestial named Tiamut, now floating in the Indian Ocean, who was defeated by the Eternals in their eponymous 2021 film, which many of today’s viewers won’t know, because that film was a notorious flop.)

 

Cap and Falcon are successful, although Sidewinder survives to fight another day. Sam also gets an unexpected “attaboy” from the newly installed President Ross, who has long held a love/hate relationship with superheroes. At this moment, though, Ross insists that his views have changed, and he even floats the notion of re-establishing The Avengers.

 

(In the MCU, Ross’ behavior dates back to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, when — then played by William Hurt — he oversaw a project with his daughter Betty’s boyfriend, scientist Bruce Banner, which went awry and transformed him into the not-so-jolly green giant. Ross went on a vengeful tear that ultimately disbanded and divided the Avengers in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, which left Earth more vulnerable when Thanos subsequently wreaked havoc in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. And, much to Ross’ dismay, drove Betty into estrangement from her father.)

Greedy People: Crime really doesn't pay!

Greedy People (2024) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, sexual content and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and video-on-demand

By Derrick Bang

They don’t come much darker than this one.

 

At first blush, this modern crime noir from director Potsy Ponciroli and writer Mike Vukadinovich looks like it’ll occupy the darkly humorous neighborhood populated by sardonic classics such as Fargo and In Bruges. The occasional dollops of humor are twisted: driven both by a bevy of burlesque characters and a plot that is far more comically convoluted than it initially appears.

 

The story cooked up by Will (Hamish Patel, left) and Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), in an
effort to explain a woman's grisly death, doesn't withstand the smell test ... but they
nonetheless stick to it.

Midway through the second act, though, Vukadinovich delivers an unexpected wallop that destroys what’s left of a humorous tone.

People who make films of this nature understand that some boundaries shouldn’t be crossed; call them Thou Shalt Nots. Savvy writers and directors recognize that, no matter how twisted or deplorably their characters behave, it’s wise to avoid Thou Shalt Nots, lest viewers be outraged and alienated past the point of forgiveness.

 

Occasionally, though, really savvy directors and/or writers sometimes take that risk, assuming that their filmmaking chops are solid enough to hold the audience. John Carpenter (in)famously violated a Thou Shalt Not at the beginning of 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13, gambling that he’d maintain a level of suspense that would make the move worthwhile. He won that gamble.

 

And goodness; the entire John Wick film series owes its longevity to a Thou Shalt Not broken in the initial 2014 entry.

 

I’m less persuaded that Ponciroli and Vukadinovich are similarly successful here, although the aforementioned wallop definitely plunges their film into much deeper waters.

 

The time is the present, in the sleepy Northeastern coastal island community of Providence (not to be confused with Rhode Island’s capital city). Rookie policeman Will (Himesh Patel) and his very pregnant wife Paige (Lily James) moved into town just three days earlier; they’re still waist-high in unpacked boxes.

 

Will dutifully reports for work on this, his first day; he’s given a brief rundown by Captain Murphy (Uzo Aduba). We’ve already seen her earlier this same morning, at home, still mourning the loss of a young child. Murphy assigns Will to a week of training with veteran cop Terry (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), after which the newcomer will get his own vehicle and beat.

 

Will is an inherently honest family guy who believes in the social stabilization of moral law enforcement. Terry is an opportunistic, foul-mouthed horse’s ass who views police work as an easy path to free coffee and donuts, while rousting and threatening folks for the sheer joy of it. They have nothing in common.

 

Terry acts according to three personal rules, the first of which is, Try Not To Kill Anybody. “It gets messy,” he tells a bewildered Will. 

 

Because, really, who would need killing in a place like Providence?

Ghosted: Rather insubstantial

Ghosted (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong action violence, mild sexuality and brief profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

This certainly is the epitome of “guilty pleasure.”

 

Were it not for the charismatic screen presence of stars Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, director Dexter Fletcher’s action/adventure rom-com would be nothing but a case study in formulaic excess.

 

Pinned down by gunfire in the mountainous region of Pakistan's Khyber Pass, Cole
(Chris Evans) and Sadie (Ana de Armas) are about to endure a fate worse than death.
But fear not: A dilapidated and hilariously colorful bus is about to provide escape (of sorts).

Goodness knows, the dialogue — blame Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers — is beyond eye-rollingly lame. And while the premise has promise, the required suspension of disbelief too frequently hits 11, on a 10-point scale.

 

That said…

 

Evans and de Armas are entertaining together, and the dog-nuts plot builds to an inventive — if highly improbable — climax that deserves points for originality. (It does, however, remind me of the final merry-go-round sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, although I’d be very surprised to learn that Reese et al channeled that.)

 

Events begin in Washington, D.C., where Cole Turner (Evans) manages a booth at a lively farmers’ market, selling produce grown at his family ranch just outside the city. He and traveling art curator Sadie Rhodes (de Armas) meet cute over her intended purchase of a house plant from a neighboring stall.

 

This is the film’s worst exchange of so-called flirty banter, and — coming so soon — it bodes ill for whatever follows. But hang in there; things do improve. A bit.

 

Lamentable first impressions lead to a whirlwind day together, after which Sadie departs on her next assignment. Cole, assuming that “magic” has entered his life, texts her during the next several days: at first romantically, then curiously, and finally much too aggressively. All to no avail; Sadie ignores — “ghosts” — him completely.

 

Cole’s subsequent agitation proves quite amusing to his father (Tate Donovan), mother (Amy Sedaris) and particularly younger sister Mattie (Lizze Broadway), who warns him against such “stalkerish” behavior. But Cole doesn’t see it that way, and circumstances give him the means to find Sadie. 

 

He forever misplaces things, and long ago put little trackers on crucial personal items, all of which can be located via his Smart phone. Sadie accidentally departed with his allergy inhaler, which places her — Cole is surprised to learn — in London. 

 

“Go after her!” Mom and Dad insist. “Are you kidding?” Mattie, the voice of reason, objects.

 

Cole nonetheless decides that this would be the Ultimate Grand Romantic Gesture. And so he flies to London.

 

But when he traces his tracker to somewhere on or beneath the Tower Bridge, he’s unexpectedly attacked by three goons, chloroformed, and wakens in the sinister lair of a giggling torturer — Tim Blake Nelson, deliberately overplaying the role — who believes that Cole is a legendary CIA operative code-named “The Taxman,” and has information about a mysterious whatzit known as “Aztec.” Because, well, Cole was in the wrong place at the right time.

 

Just Mercy: A real-world horror story

Just Mercy (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and racial epithets
By Derrick Bang

Effective advocacy cinema should enlighten, inspire or outrage.

And, in some cases, prompt grief.

Summoned back to court to hear the results of an appeal for a new trial by defense
attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan, left), he and wrongly incarcerated
Death Row inmate Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) await the judge's announcement.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy manages all of the above, and then some. This thoroughly absorbing — and progressively infuriating — drama is an impressively faithful depiction of the jaw-dropping ordeal endured by Walter McMillian, who in June 1987 was arrested for a murder he couldn’t possibly have committed, sentenced to death during a patently absurd trial, and subsequently spent six years on Death Row.

In late 1988, the case came to the attention of freshly minted Harvard lawyer Bryan Stevenson, newly arrived in Alabama to partner with Eva Ansley, with whom he’d co-found the Equal Justice Initiative. (Since 1994, the Republican-controlled Alabama has been the only state that refuses to provide legal assistance to death row prisoners.)

Stevenson’s growing involvement in McMillian’s nightmare fuels the drama in Cretton’s film; he co-wrote the script with Andrew Lanham, based on Stevenson’s 2014 memoir of the same title. The result is must-see cinema, thanks also to powerhouse performances from Michael B. Jordan (Stevenson) and Jamie Foxx (McMillian), along with equally solid work from a roster of shrewdly cast supporting players.

At its core, this saga is about repugnant racism, corruption and the hideous abuse of power by smugly arrogant white men who know they can get away with anything. The villains in this drama are headed by Michael Harding’s chilling portrayal of Sheriff Tom Tate, who — as the film opens — has been under mounting pressure to find the person who shot and killed 18-year-old dry-cleaning clerk Ronda Morrison (white, of course) on November 1, 1986.

For reasons this film never makes clear — partly because there didn’t seem to bea reason — seven months later Tate arrests McMillian, a pulpwood worker shown felling trees in a brief sequence prior to the fateful traffic stop. (The poetic image of blue sky shimmering through gently wafting pine needles, as McMillian glances reverently heavenward, will prove important later.) Tate’s choice seems governed solely by his belief that McMillian looks like a black guy who’d gun down a helpless white woman.

This arrest, surrounded by white cops with rifles and pistols drawn, gives Harding his first flat-out scary moment. (Several others will follow, the actor often radiating lethal menace without saying a word.)

Angel Has Fallen: A devilishly good time

Angel Has Fallen (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and violence
By Derrick Bang

The third time’s definitely the charm, for this series.

Were it not for A-level casts toplined by Gerard Butler’s indestructible Mike Banning, 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen and 2016’s London Has Fallen would have vanished from the face of the planet, due to their outrageously stupid scripts, unforgivably cowardly characters, and offensively jingoistic political undertone.

On the run, and with almost nobody to trust, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) chances a
phone call to his wife, knowing full well that the FBI has tapped his home phone.

Both typified the exploitative action swill that Cinemax programmed in late-night time slots, back in the 1980s.

Given that series creators Katrin Benedikt and Creighton Rothenberger have been on board throughout, this third entry was approached with more than a little skepticism. But I’m happy to report that Angel Has Fallen is vastly superior to its predecessors; indeed, you’d never believe it came from any of the same folks. Credit likely belongs to new co-scripters Matt Cook and Robert Mark Kamen, the latter a seasoned veteran who has written and co-written crowd-pleasing hits as diverse as The Karate Kid, The Fifth Element and the Transporter series.

In short, Kamen knows how to concoct and pace an effective thriller. More to the point, his stories always have heart, and this new Fallenentry is no different; it includes a level of emotional gravitas that was completely absent in the first two films, whose characters had the depth of tissue paper.

On top of which, the core plot is an always reliable chestnut invariably tapped during the third or fourth season of successful television investigative dramas: the ol’ “We’ve all trusted this guy for years, but now — solely because of circumstantial evidence — we’re gonna believe that he’s been an evil bastard all along.”

Contrived, yes. But undeniably effective, because it puts our hero in the situation beloved by Alfred Hitchcock: on the run from good guys and bad guys.

In fairness, said circumstantial evidence is quite formidable. While keeping President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) company during a restful fishing trip in the middle of a freezing-cold lake, Banning and his Secret Service team are attacked by a phalanx of explosive drones. Thanks to quick thinking, Banning saves Trumbull’s life, but only barely; the president remains hospitalized, in a coma. Recovering is uncertain.

Banning, in turn, awakens to find himself handcuffed to a hospital bed. As he stares in disbelief, FBI Special Agent Thompson (Jada Pinkett Smith) coldly informs him that he’s the lone survivor, the entire rest of the Secret Service team having been wiped out. Far more damning, the tech-laden van from which the drones were fired has been found, and it’s laden with Banning’s DNA. The cherry on top: $20 million in a clandestine account under his name, with the funds traced back to — we pause, for emphasis — the Russians.

(How’s that for election interference?)

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Minor-key melodramas

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R for strong violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.7.18

Anthology films — also known by the far niftier term “portmanteau films,” with interior short subjects usually linked by genre, author, premise or even star — have been mini-fads at various points in cinema history.

Having unwisely left the wagon train in search of her wayward little dog, Alice
Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) is terrified to discover that she and her sole companion have
been spotted by a band of angry Native American warriors.

They became something of a vogue during the 1940s, starting with 1942’s Tales of Manhattan. That was followed by 1943’s occult-laden Flesh and Fantasy; 1945’s deliciously spooky Dead of Night; 1948’s Quartet, with its four Somerset Maugham stories; 1950’s Trio and 1951’s Encore (Maugham again); and 1952’s O. Henry’s Full House.

Occasional one-offs notwithstanding, portmanteau films didn’t become popular again until 1968’s The Illustrated Man — with its selection of Ray Bradbury tales — led to a series of horror entries: The House that Dripped Blood, Asylum and Tales from the Crypt, ad infinitum to this day.

High-tone entries included 1989’s New York Stories, with segments directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen; and 1995’s Four Rooms, with Roald Dahl short stories loosely adapted by directors Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.

This brings us to Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which gathers half a dozen short concepts they’ve had kicking around for the past quarter-century. The tales are linked by their setting in the American West, which rarely has looked more vicious; and by a clever framing device that “lifts” each yarn from the pages of a vintage hardcover book, complete with gorgeous color illustrations whose captions — in each case — give a dramatic clue to what we’re about to see.

As always is the case with portmanteau films, the contents vary from excellent to good to not such a much. But since we’re dealing with the Coen brothers, even the lesser entries are worth viewing for tone, acting, cheeky directing, and Bruno Delbonnel’s lush cinematography.

The segments also have a few things in common: a darkly comic, even macabre tone; unexpected bursts of gruesome violence; and — in most cases — an atmosphere of grim despair.

Fantastic Four: Doomed

Fantastic Four (2015) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang

When some movies go wrong, they really go wrong.

Given the care with which the Marvel Comics Group has shepherded recent projects to the big screen, I’m amazed they ever let this atrocious mess out of the box. Based on this evidence, Josh Trank shouldn’t be allowed to direct a small-town theater production, let alone helm a big-budget superhero epic. He hasn’t the faintest idea how to handle actors, maintain a consistent tone, or even execute smooth scene transitions.

Reed (Miles Teller) and Sue (Kate Mara), obviously having no idea how to approach their
next scene, wait in vain for directorial guidance. It ain't gonna happen, now or at any other
point during this misbegotten superhero adventure.

Trank apparently got this assignment as a result of his only previous feature credit: 2012’s over-praised Chronicle. For a fleeting moment, apparently perceived as the Next Best Thing in sci-fi cinema, he even was assigned to direct the next Star Wars film (following this December’s Episode VII: The Force Awakens). Based either on early footage from this inept handling of Fantastic Four, or reports of his behavior while making this film — the media spotlight hasn’t been kind — Trank’s relationship with the Star Wars franchise was abruptly severed.

Smartest decision George Lucas ever made.

This re-boot of Marvel Comics’ original superhero family — the FF debuted in November 1961, almost a year ahead of Spider-Man’s launch in August 1962 — is even worse than the two earlier efforts, back in 2005 and ’07. And, mind you, that means impressively bad, because those two attempts were quite disappointing.

In fairness, Trank doesn’t deserve the sole blame. He shares scripting credit with Simon Kinberg and Jeremy Slater; the former has a vastly superior résumé as both writer and producer, but the latter’s sole previous credit is the completely awful Lazarus Effect, which was unleashed to unsuspecting viewers earlier this year.

Clearly, Kinberg’s efforts weren’t enough to salvage the clumsy, sloppy input from Trank and Slater.

More than anything else, this Fantastic Four resembles the cornball sci-fi TV shows of the 1950s — Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, Captain Video and His Video Rangers, and a few others — with their clunky dialogue, laughably wooden actors and amazingly silly storylines. Yes, Trank’s new film benefits from special effects that those old shows could only dream of, but that’s meaningless these days, when even stinkers can boast awesome visuals.

Frankly, Trank & Co. have ruined the Fantastic Four. The previous two films left Marvel’s “first family” on life support, but this one puts the final nail in the coffin. And that’s truly a shame, because the FF have an even richer comic book history than Spider-Man or the X-Men.