Don't Look Up: Profoundly unsettling, despite trying too hard

Don't Look Up (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for frequent profanity, sexual candor, graphic nudity and drug use

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.7.22

Ouch.

 

This is about as scathing an indictment of modern American behavior as can be imagined.

 

Hoping to share their dire and tremendously important discovery on national television,
Randall (Leonardo DiCaprio, center right) and Kate (Jennifer Lawrence, far right) little
realize they're about to be trivialized by hosts Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry).

Back in 2015, writer/director Adam McKay stunned us with The Big Short, a wildly entertaining and ferociously mocking blend of drama, quasi-documentary and break-the-fourth-wall cinéma vérité, in service of an economic crash course that brilliantly explained the upper-echelon machinations that drove our country off a financial cliff in 2007.

This time, McKay and co-scripter David Sirota set their sights much higher: the cognitive dissonance and blind stupidity that prompt so many Americans to deny the existence of climate change, safe covid vaccines, the results of the 2020 election, and a great deal more.

 

Willful ignorance runs rampant these days, which gives McKay and Sirota plenty to scream about. While quite a few of this film’s sarcastic bombs hit their target, Don’t Look Up isn’t as artistically tight as The Big Short, and I also miss that earlier film’s inventively cheeky directorial flourishes. Sarcasm and snark once again are in abundance, but McKay’s approach here is more dramatically conventional.

 

Perhaps that’s because the operative metaphor — and its real-world counterpart — are too sobering, too horrifying, for gleeful frivolity.

 

The Big Short was fun, whereas this one is deeply unsettling: mad-as-hell, take-no-prisoners storytelling.

 

Events kick off quietly, as university astronomy professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discover a new comet orbiting our solar system. Their initial excitement dwindles when Kate and a gaggle of fellow grad students watch Randall compute the comet’s trajectory on a white board, to determine whether it’ll be visible when it passes Earth.

 

The film’s most grimly impactful wallop occurs right here, as Randall — fully absorbed by complex mathematical equations — initially fails to register the implication of the zero he has just written on the board. DiCaprio sells this moment: Randall hesitates, starts to shake his head, knows he hasn’t made a mistake … but nonetheless erases the zero and empties the room. Except for Kate.

 

Computing the dimensions of the comet is similarly easy. It’s the size of Mount Everest … and if — when — it strikes Earth, in just over six months, it’ll be a planetary extinction event.

 

Well.

 

Those Who Wish Me Dead: Smolders fitfully

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021) • View trailer

Three stars. Rated R, for strong violence and considerable profanity

By Derrick Bang

Too soon, too soon.

 

With two horrific fire seasons still fresh in everybody’s memory — and the uneasy potential of a pending third — it’s ill-advised and extremely tasteless to set a survival thriller against the backdrop of deliberately torched forest land.

 

Hannah (Angelina Jolie) and Connor (Finn Little) discover, to their horror, that the most
direct route to town — and safety — has been blocked by an expanding forest fire.

Particularly one as sloppy as Those Who Wish Me Dead, available via HBO Max and movie theaters.

I’m not sure who to blame. Director Taylor Sheridan gave us 2017’s terrific Wind River — which he also wrote — but he’s also the prime mover behind television’s mean-spirited and unrelentingly trashy Yellowstone. 

 

This new film’s primary flaw is its impressively inept screenplay, adapted from Michael Koryta’s well-received 2014 novel. Sheridan co-scripted this adaptation — along with Charles Leavittt and Koryta — so they collectively are at fault.

 

It’s other flaws notwithstanding, this is yet another recent film — following Minari and Together Together — that stops before properly concluding. I can’t figure it out; are these production companies running out of money?

 

In this case, there’s no resolution involving a key villain: ergo, any perceived success our heroes achieve is temporary at best, and therefore pointless. That’s completely unsatisfying … and, I’ll wager, not the way Koryta’s novel ends.

 

It’s also obvious that Koryta’s story has been tweaked and shaped to better showcase the character played by star Angelina Jolie, undoubtedly at her insistence, as a means of demonstrating that she still has bad-ass chops. To her credit, she gets to prove it.

 

She plays Hannah, an elite firefighter — a smokejumper — based amidst a massive swath of Montana forest land. Alas, she’s seriously damaged goods, due a recent fire catastrophe during which she was unable to save three children. Badly traumatized and unable to move beyond her “failure,” she indulges in self-destructive stunts and minor physical mutilation.

 

She spends most of her time in self-imposed isolation, in the solitary confinement of a forest watchtower high above verdant greenery below.

 

Hannah has friends, who care about her deeply: Ethan (Jon Bernthal), a local deputy, who with his wife Allison (Medina Senghore), runs a wilderness survival school.

Vice: Evolution of a monster?

Vice (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for profanity and violent images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.11.19

It’s sad when the whole doesn’t live up to the sum of its parts.

Vice is turbo-charged by a jaw-dropping performance from star Christian Bale: as wholly immersive as Gary Oldman’s similarly masterful portrayal of Winston Churchill, in 2017’s Darkest Hour. Bale’s impersonation is equally convincing; at times, you’d swear that Dick Cheney himself were on the screen.

The fateful meeting: Presidential candidate George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell, right) wants
Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) as his running mate, a traditionally toothless position that
interests the latter not at all ... until he perceives the degree to which this particular
U.S. president could be controlled and manipulated.

Bale is (in)famous for putting soul andbody into his performances, having dropped 70 pounds for his emaciated role in 2004’s The Machinist, then regaining the weight — plus another 30 pounds — the following year, for the first of his three stints as Batman/Bruce Wayne. More recently, he briefly porked up to 228 for the convincing pot belly sported in 2013’s American Hustle.

Now, in order to step that much more persuasively into Cheney’s shoes, Bale bleached his eyebrows, shaved his head … and gained 40 pounds.

But Bale doesn’t rely exclusively on such physical attributes; he wholly inhabits the man’s bearing, stance, brooding gaze and terse, clipped manner of speech. And the most important feature of all: the reptilian, thousand-yard stare with which Cheney could cut a person dead (or, at the very least, render the recipient into cowed silence).

Amy Adams doesn’t rest in Bale’s shadow. Her handling of Cheney’s wife Lynne is equally compelling, Adams’ acting chops every bit as authoritative. Writer/director Adam McKay clearly has assumed that just as Cheney was the (mostly) unseen power behind George W. Bush, Lynne was the (mostly) unseen power behind her husband.

Vice more or less profiles Cheney’s rise from alcoholic twentysomething ne’er-do-well to Master of the World: an often macabre and deeply disturbing validation of the old warning that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

McKay audaciously acknowledges, via introductory lines of text against an otherwise black screen, that he couldn’t possibly have any inside knowledge regarding many (most? all?) of the conversations taking place between this cheeky film’s numerous real-world characters. Even so, the blend of supposition and known fact is — at times — grimly unsettling, particularly when further juxtaposed against McKay’s satiric tone.

It’s not easy to simultaneously chuckle and gasp with revulsion, but you’ll do so. More than once.

Gone Girl: A thriller for the ages

Gone Girl (2014) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated R, for strong violence, profanity, sexual content and nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.3.14

Thrillers rarely get the respect they deserve.

Oh, sure; it’s a popular genre that sells plenty of tickets, but such public approbation is viewed with suspicion and scorn, when it comes time to hand out awards. The implication is that thrillers represent empty, pop-culture calories unworthy of serious recognition. Academy Awards go to historical dramas and intimate character pieces.

Back in the day, Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike) enjoyed a storybook
courtship in their beloved New York City surroundings, notably the bookstores both loved
to frequent. Sadly, many relationships cannot survive a crisis ... and this one is about to
be hit by several.

Oscar hasn’t given its Best Picture prize to a thriller since 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.

That may be about to change.

Director David Fincher’s masterful handling of Gone Girl is much, much more than an impeccable translation of its wildly popular source novel (so rest easy, readers; I’m sure you’ll be pleased). This also is a tour de force of cinematic craft: one of those rare films that ingeniously utilizes every aspect of movie-making magic.

Fincher masterminds each detail with the meticulous scrutiny of a master conductor who pays careful attention to every last instrument, even those that play but a single note during an entire symphony. This is bravura filmmaking at its finest.

Fincher wisely has surrounded himself with a talented cadre of actors, all flawlessly cast, and an equally accomplished production crew. Then, too, he has the advantage of working with novelist Gillian Flynn, a first-time screenwriter who has adapted her own book with the same cunning that turned it into a page-turning best-seller.

Even capable novelists don’t always make good screenwriters; they’re entire different sciences. Flynn, clearly, is adept at both.

And that’s what it comes down to: All the aforementioned talent would be wasted, were the core narrative not up to snuff. Flynn’s storyline is mesmerizing, and not just for its deliciously twisty — even macabre — thrillers elements. She also unerringly skewers contemporary society’s bread-and-circuses infatuation with the mindless media “talking heads” who scurry like rats from one overblown crisis to the next, passing judgment without attempting even the most basic research legwork.

Because, at the end of the day, too many of us prefer such vacuous glitter and glitz, and get a vicarious thrill out of feeling superior to the maligned victim of the moment.

This particular victim-in-waiting is Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), whom we meet on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary: a milestone that doesn’t bring the pleasure one would expect from a guy who, he always insists, enjoyed a deliriously happy courtship and subsequent marriage with Amy (Rosamund Pike). Instead, as Nick strolls into the downtown bar that he co-owns with twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon), he seems ... troubled. Not quite himself.

A neighbor calls; Nick and Amy’s cat seems to have gotten out of their house. Nick returns home, restores their feline friend to indoor safety, and then spots an unsettling mess of upended furniture and broken glass in the living room. And Amy is nowhere to be found.

Alex Cross: Impossible to bear

Alex Cross (2012) • View trailer
Two stars. Rating: PG-13, and somewhat generously, for considerable nasty violence, disturbing images, profanity, sexual content, drug references and nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.19.12

I realize James Patterson writes trashy airport novels, but he still doesn’t deserve this sleaze-wallow.

After finding the tortured and maimed body of a wealthy young woman, Alex (Tyler
Perry, right) and his partner, Tommy (Edward Burns), uncover an unusual clue: a
charcoal sketch that is a gory nod to Picasso. Alex soon will notice a clue in this
drawing: a truly ridiculous hint that will help them anticipate carnage to come.

Director Rob Cohen signals his intentions right from the start, with a prologue that finds our hero and his Detroit Police Department colleagues pursuing a perp through a dilapidated slum building: ear-splitting gunshots, battered down doors, pell-mell chases, smash-cut editing and cockeyed camera angles.

Forget all about the thoughtful profiler and methodical, imperturbable Alex Cross played so well by Morgan Freeman in 1997’s Kiss the Girls and 2001’s Along Came a Spider. That Alex Cross doesn’t exist any more; as re-imagined by Cohen, scripters Marc Moss and Kerry Williamson, and star Tyler Perry, our man of science and sociology has morphed into John Shaft.

The results aren’t pretty.

Cohen made his rep on noisy, brain-dead action thrillers such as The Fast and the Furious and xXx: unapologetic eye-candy that reveled in audacious stunts and testosterone-fueled characters who traded dialogue in words of one syllable. Nothing wrong with that, of course, since we viewers understood that such films are the live-action equivalent of Road Runner cartoons.

But Cross exists in the real world — at least to some degree — and Perry tries to play him (during the rare quieter moments) as devoted husband, loving father and loyal partner. But those fitful efforts at emotional authenticity are wholly at odds with the nasty, brutal storyline into which Cross gets dumped in this film: a kitchen-sink amalgam of elements more or less suggested by Patterson’s Cross, the 12th novel in his ongoing series (19 thus far, with No. 20 due next year).

Thing is, I can’t imagine Patterson’s fans will be happy with this film. Names and relationships have been altered, behavior and motivation are wholly different ... often for no reason. Why, for example, would Moss and Williamson change the name of Cross’ childhood best friend from John Sampson to Tommy Kane (played here by Edward Burns)? Is it that important to leave clumsy screenwriter footprints all over Patterson’s original story?

The biggest change, however, concerns the depraved serial killer whom Cross faces: the Butcher (actually Michael Sullivan) in Patterson’s book, here re-christened Picasso (!) and played with chilling, scary-eyed credibility by Matthew Fox, late of TV’s Lost.

I’ll give Cohen credit for drawing such a memorable performance from Fox, who dropped 35 pounds in order to play this gaunt, heavily tattooed, bone-and-sinew pain freak. Fox’s Picasso is the stuff of nightmares: a believably unstoppable force who derives shuddery erotic pleasure from — as one example — snipping off a woman’s fingers with pruning shears.

Yes, this is that kind of story. Be advised. And while the pruning takes place off camera, we are later treated to the sight of bloody fingers in a bowl ... because Cohen is that kind of director.

Cross is, to a degree, the character’s origin story; Patterson’s novel begins with an extended flashback that depicts our hero’s early days as a Detroit police detective/psychologist, long before he becomes an FBI profiler. This glimpse into the past explains many of the details given as basic character background in the earlier Alex Cross books.

Moss and Williamson take that flashback as this film’s starting point; we meet Cross, his wife (Carmen Ejogo) and two children, and their feisty “Nana Mama” (Cicely Tyson), whose word is law in the attractive suburban home they share. At the precinct, Cross is teamed with Kane and Monica Ashe (Rachel Nichols), the latter a young detective looking to earn her department rep.

Kane and Ashe are having an affair, which is completely contrary to department policy; Kane, genuinely concerned, warns that it could adversely affect Ashe’s career (no worries, apparently, about his career). No problem, she replies; that’s why we’re keeping it secret. Uh-huh, he answers, knowing full well that nobody can keep secrets from their senior partner, whose snap deductive skills could give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money.

Such trivial issues are put aside, however, when Cross and his team catch a multiple homicide at the home of a wealthy, hedonistic Asian woman whose carnal pleasures include betting on mixed martial arts cage matches. Her three bodyguards are dead; she’s also dead and missing her fingers. Cross studies the scene and labels this carnage the work of a single methodical and ferociously intelligent killer, albeit one with a few screws loose. (This would be Picasso.)

Somehow — and the frequently sloppy script never makes this clear — this woman is tied to German corporate bigwig Erich Nunemacher (Werner Daehn), who in turn is allied with multi-national industrialist Leon Mercier (Jean Reno), who has a bold vision for transforming downtown Detroit into a city of the future.

For reasons unknown, the shadowy Picasso is working his way up the food chain, with Mercier as his ultimate goal. Cross and his team are assigned by their precinct captain (John C. McGinley) to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Things ... don’t go as planned. (Are you surprised?)

Longtime Patterson fans who worried about whether Perry could handle this role — he is, after all, best known for cross-dressing comic turns in the likes of Madea’s Big Happy Family — can rest easy; he’s eminently credible ... at least, initially. Perry displays both a no-nonsense investigative manner and a sweet, sensitive side; he and Ejogo share a pleasant, easy chemistry as a couple.

Burns is properly laid back as the laconic Kane, who functions as Cross’ walking conscience: the longtime bro’ who often challenges his partner to be a better version of himself. Burns and Perry also do well at trading this script’s few quips: mordant commentary and gallows humor, which is appropriate, given the circumstances.

Fox, as mentioned, is the ultimate adversary: a presence felt throughout this story even when Picasso is nowhere to be seen.

Tyson is a delight as Nana Mama, and Yara Shahidi is superb as Cross’ young daughter, Janelle.

Nichols never successfully inhabits her character, mostly because she lacks the necessary acting chops; it’s impossible to get a sense of who Ashe is. McGinley is wasted in a one-dimensional, take-charge role that the screenwriters manipulate to ludicrous extremes; Brookwell’s “command decision” in the third act is too stupid for words.

But, then, “too stupid for words” is pretty common in this inept screenplay. The reason for Picasso’s name is specious at best, and a detail quickly abandoned. One prominent character’s off-camera death is so sudden — and so inexplicably forgotten, from that point forward — that I couldn’t help wondering if some key exposition scenes had been left behind.

Cohen’s bombastic directorial flourishes are irritating throughout, and the jumpy editing — by Matt Diezel and Thom Noble — is equally exasperating. This isn’t a film to relax and watch; it’s something to be endured. Everything builds to a silly, pell-mell climax in Detroit’s former Michigan Theater, now (sadly) transformed into a three-story parking lot with its ornate 1920s plasterwork ceiling hanging mostly intact 60 feet above the cars.

One gets the impression — from the way Cohen stages this scene, and cinematographer Ricardo Della Rosa shoots it — that the setting is far more important than the characters battling within in. And that, I think, says it all.

Patterson is one of 12 (!) producers credited on this mess. Clearly, he should have held out for a better jury.