Wicked Little Letters: Hilariously entertaining

Wicked Little Letters (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for relentless, breathtaking profanity and vulgarity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.5.24

You’ve gotta love the cheeky epigram with which director Thea Sharrock opens her mischievous little film:

 

“This is more true than you’d think.”

 

When the newly arrived Rose (Jessie Buckley, right) first moves into the house
adjacent to where Edith (Olivia Colman) lives with her parents, they get along
reasonably well. Alas, that isn't destined to last...

Indeed, the vast majority of Jonny Sweet’s script is based on actual events ... including a couple of details that you’d swear he fabricated. The biggest shift from reality lies in the multi-racial casting, which makes the story more entertaining for us modern viewers.

The setting is the seaside town of Littlehampton, in the early 1920s. Sharrock and Sweet hit the ground running, with prim and proper Edith Swan (Olivia Colman) in the midst of an escalating feud with vulgar and earthy Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley). Their hostility is exacerbated by the fact that their front doors are inches from each other, and their row houses have a common wall (which does little to mute the, um, enthusiastic late-night noises that emanate from the bedroom Rose shares with her lover).

 

The close proximity becomes even more uncomfortable due to shared toilets and baths.

 

Edith, last in a massive line of siblings, still lives with her parents, Edward (Timothy Spall) and Victoria (Gemma Jones). The former is a fire-and-brimstone authoritarian and emotional abuser, a role that Spall plays with terrifying ferocity. Whenever Edith fails to toe some behavioral line, she’s sent to her room to copy Biblical passages 200 times.

 

Edith’s mother long ago gave up trying to change this dynamic, and now meekly refuses to intrude. Jones makes the woman so withdrawn, that’s she’s practically insubstantial.

 

Buckley, in great contrast, throws everything into her performance as Rose, a rowdy Irish migrant with a cheerfully foul mouth that unleashes breathtaking profanities, while enjoying life to the fullest: often in the local pub, smoking, drinking and being the life of the party. Buckley is a total hoot: as much a force of nature as her character.

 

But although unschooled, Rose isn’t stupid. She’s also a sharp judge of character.

 

Her boyfriend Bill (Malachi Kirby), calmer and loyal to the core, loves to play his guitar while paying close attention to local doings. Rose’s young daughter Nancy (Alisha Weir) is a sweet adolescent who adores her mother, and has bonded tightly with Bill.

Early Man: Aardman lite

Early Man (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang

According to the whimsical minds behind Early Man, soccer’s origins go way back.

No matter how much trouble Dug gets into, he can depend on his best friend — his
pet prehistoric pig, Hognob — to save the day.

British director Nick Park and his Aardman production team, best known for claymation superstars Wallace and Gromit, go prehistoric with their newest project: a gentle comedy set at the dawn of time, when cave folk tremble from exploding volcanoes, woolly mammoths and Jurassic-size ... ducks.

The droll production is a smooth blend of Park’s traditional puppet animation and scale-enhancing computer effects. All the characters can be recognized as Wallace’s great-great-great-many-more-greats ancestors: most particularly buck-toothed Dug (voiced by Eddie Redmayne), the most curious and idealistic member of a small Stone Age tribe led by genial Chief Bobnar (Timothy Spall).

They’re a motley bunch of meek eccentrics unwilling to hunt any game larger than rabbits, despite Dug’s insistence that tackling a mammoth might keep food on the table a bit longer.

It’s important to note, just in passing, that no rabbits are killed or otherwise injured during the course of this story ... although Mother Nature isn’t nearly as kind to Dug’s even more prehistoric ancestors, during a prologue that reveals How Soccer Came To Be.

This is merely the first of many fanciful touches emanating from Park and co-scripters Mark Burton, James Higginson and John O’Farrell. The humor is typically British: dry and mildly snarky, often relying on anachronistic touches. As an example, when confronted with a plate of sliced bread, one fellow enthuses that “That’s the greatest thing since...” and doesn’t really know how to finish the sentence.

At times, one senses the spirits of Monty Python hovering overhead.

Denial: Profound courtroom drama

Denial (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, disturbing images and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

This film fascinates in all sorts of ways.

Most notably — and, obviously, the reason it was made — director Mick Jackson’s absorbing, rigorously faithful drama shines a necessary spotlight on longtime Holocaust denier David Irving, and the shameful lengths to which he went, in an effort to legitimize his odious beliefs.

As Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) watches nervously, QC Richard Rampton (Tom
Wilkinson, standing) prepares to address another of sham historian David Irving's
deplorable claims.

American viewers — at least, those who didn’t devour the escapades of John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey — will be equally intrigued, possibly even astonished, by this film’s well-crafted depiction of the British legal system, and specifically how it differs from the U.S. court system, with respect to libel suits.

Most impressively, though, scripter David Hare — adapting historian Deborah E. Lipstadt’s memoir, Denial: Holocaust History on Trial — has crafted a parallel dilemma that focuses on Lipstadt herself, played superbly here by Rachel Weisz. Lipstadt’s struggle to remain true to her own conscience and principles, and her reluctant recognition that she must — simply must — have faith in others, is just as compelling as the courtroom duel that dominates the film’s second half.

The title, therefore, is deliberately double-barreled: As well as signifying Irving’s standing as an unrepentant Holocaust denier, it also represents the tremendously difficult choice that must be made by the passionate, fiery and independent Lipstadt, to swallow her pride and deny a public outlet for her own righteous indignation.

We know the legal outcome; it’s obvious — given Hare’s source material — even for viewers who didn’t follow the case, while it unfolded during the final four years of the 20th century. But few outside of Lipstadt’s friends and inner circle would have known how this case affected her on a personal level; Hare and Weisz give us an intimate and thoroughly absorbing view of how Lipstadt faced this challenge, and — with the help of a superb legal team — ultimately triumphed.

The case began with a whisper in 1993, with the publication of Lipstadt’s book, Denying the Holocaust. She acknowledged Irving within those pages, briefly but trenchantly, labeling him a Holocaust denier, a racist, and a falsifier of history.

(It’s important to understand that although Irving’s charitable views of Hitler and Nazism never were taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was a tireless writer, having published more than two dozen books. Regardless of how he was regarded by the world, Irving viewed himself as a serious academic and valid historian.)