Kingsman: Gleefully vicious carnage

Kingsman (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and very strong violence
By Derrick Bang

At its more entertaining moments — which are many — this is a wildly audacious, totally bonkers spy spoof in the classic 1960s mold; the best echoes hearken back to James Coburn’s two grand Derek Flint flicks, Our Man Flint and In Like Flint.

When Harry (Colin Firth, center) brings Eggsy (Taron Egerton, left) to a posh tailor's shop
in order to outfit the young man properly, they're surprised to find Richard Valentine (Samuel
L. Jackson) present for the same reason. "Surprised," because Harry and Valentine already
have learned that they're mortal enemies...

It’s clever, funny, exhilarating and ferociously paced by director Matthew Vaughn and editors Eddie Hamilton and Jon Harris.

Unfortunately, it’s also atrociously, grotesquely violent in spots: “wet” to a degree that makes a mockery of its R rating. Such intentions are signaled quite early, when one of our protagonists is dispatched in a manner more appropriate to gory horror flicks ... and, indeed, I recall seeing precisely such butchery in the gruesome 2001 remake of 13 Ghosts.

Comic-book sensibilities or not, this is pretty repugnant stuff for a mainstream production sporting an A-list cast topped by Colin Firth and Michael Caine. And while this early scene is the worst, it’s by no means alone; one particular character — the aptly named Gazelle, played with panache by Sofia Boutella — is responsible for quite a few sliced and diced limbs.

At the same time...

There’s no denying that Vaughn is playing to his fan base, which enthusiastically embraced his similarly über-violent 2010 adaptation of Kick-Ass. Such folks are guaranteed to cheer an all-stops-out melee that erupts in the third act: a brutally choreographed display of hand-to-hand slaughter on par with Uma Thurman’s assault on “The Crazy 88’s” in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

So be advised: This is humor at its darkest, and definitely not for the faint of heart.

Such cautionary notes aside...

Vaughn and frequent co-scripting colleague Jane Goldman open their film with a couple of prologues that introduce both Harry Hart (Firth) and Kingsman, the outwardly genteel super-super-secret spy agency for which he works, under the code name of Galahad. As befits an organization that bestows such sobriquets, the Kingsman operatives answer to a chief dubbed Arthur (Caine), who dispatches his agents to handle, ah, “messy” world situations that evade both conventional policing and standard-issue covert agencies.

Still Alice: Profoundly moving

Still Alice (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Rare performances transcend acting; we cease being aware of the celebrity star, or the idiosyncrasies of craft and talent, and instead unreservedly accept the character being portrayed.

As her mother (Julianne Moore, right) slides ever further into the helplessness of
Alzheimer's, Lydia (Kristen Stewart) finds that the minor issues that prompted a partial
estrangement no longer matter, and she subsequently becomes her Mom's constant
companion and most sympathetic friend.

Such is the case with Julianne Moore’s riveting, persuasive and heartbreaking work in Still Alice, directed and scripted by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, from neuroscientist Lisa Genova’s 2009 debut novel of the same title. Calling the film a vital document of our time seems both pretentious and insufficient, and yet the label is accurate; thoughtful, gracefully constructed dramas of this nature do more to enhance the national (perhaps global?) consciousness than a wealth of news stories or TV documentaries.

And if Moore wins the Academy Award for Best Actress — which she certainly deserves — then this little indie film may get the additional exposure that it also deserves.

She stars here as Alice Howland, a respected university linguistics professor who enjoys a loving and comfortable life with her husband, John (Alec Baldwin). They’re at the peak of their respective careers, and have raised three children: Anna (Kate Bosworth), Tom (Hunter Parrish) and Lydia (Kristen Stewart). Life seems ideal.

And then, gradually, Alice realizes that she’s misplacing things to a degree that feels somewhere north of “normal.”

Her mild concern erupts into full-blown terror when, during a routine morning jog across campus, she suddenly doesn’t know where she is, and has no idea where she’s going.

She immediately seeks medical consultation; the eventual diagnosis is Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Knowing full well what that involves, Alice faces the certainty of slowly losing all her memories and perception: everything revolving around her professional work, and ultimately even the basic recognition of best friends and family members.

What follows is not easy to watch, to say the least. Glatzer and Westmoreland carefully (and wisely) eschew any sort of “movie-making” technique, preferring instead to depict Alice’s increasing disorientation in a quiet, cinema-verité manner that is shattering, even as she fights heroically to salvage ever-smaller pieces of herself.

The title is significant, because it speaks to this struggle: More than anything else, Alice wants her family, friends and colleagues to understand that she’s still herself. But there can be no last-minute reprieves: no deus ex machina medical miracles that will pull her back from the brink. Although Glatzer and Westmoreland conclude their film with what could be termed one of Alice’s “last best days,” we understand what is to come.

The 2014 Oscar Shorts: Petite delights

The 2014 Oscar Shorts (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.6.15

Much as I anticipate this annual opportunity to focus on big-screen “short stories,” the 2014 Academy Award nominees — as a group — are a bit disappointing.

To be sure, both the live-action and animated categories offer several strong nominees. But others are unsatisfying, even puzzling. The respective nominating committees sometimes focus more on form than content — chiefly with animated shorts — and that’s particularly true this year.

As a result, you’re unlikely to greet the entire road-show package with the same delight and enthusiasm generated by those from previous years; the 2014 nominees are noteworthy more for isolated pockets of excellence, rather than overall superiority.

To cases, then, starting with the live-action nominees:

Irish director Michael Lennox’s Boogaloo and Graham is charming, thanks to Ronan Blaney’s droll script and fine performances by the film’s two young stars. Riley Hamilton and Aaron Lynch play Jamesy and Malachy, the sons of working-class parents (Martin McCann and Charlene McKenna) who maintain an uneasy co-existence with occupational British soldiers in 1978 Belfast.

The boys have little to call their own, and therefore are thrilled when their soft-hearted father surprises them with two baby chicks. The boys name their new pets Boogaloo and Graham, and soon amuse their neighbors by “leashing” the birds and taking them for walks. But as the chicks grow into chickens, their mother becomes increasingly annoyed by the bother, and eventually issues an ultimatum.

The result of which leads to a particularly ingenious conclusion.

The British actually have a tendency to stand out in this category, with A-list stars often lending their talents; I still remember how much I enjoyed Martin Freeman and Tom Hollander, in last year’s The Voorman Problem. They’re matched this year by Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent, both sensational in director Mat Kirby’s The Phone Call.

Hawkins, Oscar-nominated for 2013’s Blue Jasmine, stars as Heather, a shy young woman employed at a telephone crisis center, where she can’t work up the nerve to chat with the good-looking guy (Edward Hogg) who handles one of the other phones. But such idle thoughts are forgotten when she receives a call from a distraught old man named Stan (Jim Broadbent), who can barely speak through his misery.

To Heather’s mounting terror, Stan admits to having taken an overdose of pills, but he refuses to divulge any helpful information regarding his whereabouts. We never see Broadbent: just hear his voice on the phone, or from a point within his home where he’s not quite in view ... but he’s easy to recognize, and he’s mesmerizing.

As is Hawkins. Kirby keeps her face in tight close-up, and the actress works this scenario with heart-stopping conviction. Her emotional intensity is absolutely shattering.

Kirby co-wrote this script with James Lucas, and they build their 21-minute film to a very powerful conclusion.

A Most Violent Year: Does corruption inevitably devour idealism?

A Most Violent Year (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and violence
By Derrick Bang

Writer/director J.C. Chandor burst on the scene with 2011’s riveting Margin Call, a fictionalized depiction of how one Wall Street investment firm — Lehman Brothers, in all but name — likely kick-started the 2008 U.S. financial crisis. Although primarily a talking-heads discussion among analysts looking to save their own careers, the dialogue and character interaction unfolded with the crisp intensity of a David Mamet play: in other words, not the slightest bit boring.

As things begin, Abel (Oscar Isaac) and his wife, Anna (Jessica Chastain), are full of
optimism about a waterfront property deal that will help expand their heating-oil business.
But life — and organized crime — are about to throw several nasty barriers in their way,
testing Abel's integrity to the limit.

Chandor obviously enjoys the challenge of creating and then dissecting characters under pressure, and in A Most Violent Year he has found another grim “historical moment” in which to build and populate a drama undoubtedly typical of the time and place. And if his new film lacks the razor’s-edge focus and intensity of Margin Call, it nonetheless belongs in the worthy company of thoughtful organized crime dramas such as the Godfather trilogy and Once Upon a Time in America.

Indeed, watching Chandor’s new film, I frequently was reminded of Al Pacino’s iconic line from Godfather 3: “Just when I thought I was out ... they pull me back in.”

Except that Violent Year’s Abel Morales is trying desperately to remain out in the first place, as events conspire to make that impossible.

The story takes place during a single winter month in 1981 New York: a time when Big Apple mayhem had hit ghastly levels, between gang killings, mob family violence, record-breaking robberies, vandalized subway cars and all manner of street crime. Chandor’s characters never stray too far from a radio during the course of his film, and the constant litany of reported murders and vicious misconduct becomes something of a sidebar soundtrack to Alex Ebert’s somber orchestral score.

Against this grim backdrop, we meet Abel (Oscar Isaac) en route to the most important financial transaction of his career: a negotiation to buy some waterfront property that would significant boost the long-term growth of his fledgling heating-oil business. He gets the deal, but it comes with a daunting kicker: This down payment must be followed by the full balance within 30 days, no extensions, or the arrangement is off ... and the initial deposit forfeited.

Sadly, Abel already is in trouble; his trucks have been getting hijacked brazenly, in broad daylight and on busy city streets, by gun-toting thugs who beat up the defenseless drivers. The union boss wants the drivers armed, even if illegally; Abel, angrily defending the “kinder, gentler, better” image that he has worked hard to create, refuses.

Jupiter Ascending: Overcooked sci-fi slop

Jupiter Ascending (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, dramatic intensity and brief chaste nudity
By Derrick Bang

Back in the day — way back in the day — sci-fi pulp magazine covers were known for their wonderfully lurid images of scantily clad maidens being menaced by all manner of strange creatures, usually of a reptilian or insectoid nature.

With several nasty spaceships chasing them through the urban canyons of downtown
Chicago, Jupiter (Mila Kunis) and Caine (Channing Tatum) just barely manage to dodge
the laser blasts, thanks to his anti-gravity footwear, which allows him to "skate" on air.

Such covers generally accompanied thoroughly ludicrous space operas that were light on credible characterization or plausible plotting, and heavy on high-tech hardware and weaponry.

This laughably ridiculous flick belongs squarely in that sort of company.

In fairness, Jupiter Ascending isn’t as inane as the Wachowski siblings’ nadir, a spot forever and always to be occupied by 2008’s ill-advised big-screen adaptation of Speed Racer. (At least, one hopes they never plumb lower depths.)

At times, though, it seems a pretty close call. Despite some genuinely thoughtful “big ideas” that percolate throughout this clumsy original script, Jupiter Ascending will be remembered — if it’s remembered at all — for its howlingly dreadful dialogue and relentless, protracted, video game-style action scenes.

Rarely has an ordinary, flesh-and-blood human being endured such punishment, violated so many natural laws of physics, and emerged with nary a scratch. Heck, our heroine’s hair never even gets mussed. We can but roll our eyes, as she survives megascale carnage that should have pulped her fragile body many times over. Scores of times over. Hundreds of times over.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Outer space fantasies can be a tough genre to mine successfully; it’s difficult to qualify what separates an engaging, rip-roaring homage — such as the original Star Wars trilogy — from the sort of overcooked mess being served here. I guess the distinction becomes obvious only when filmmakers egregiously succumb to the dark side of the Force, as Andy and Lana Wachowski have done so ostentatiously.

And the silly names don’t help much.

Song of the Sea: An enchanted fable

Song of the Sea (2014) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG, for mild peril and fleeting Irish profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.30.15

There’s an irritating tendency to believe that quality animated films come only from the United States, an arrogant assumption that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has attempted to address — with varying success — since granting such features their own Oscar category in 2001.

Ben, left, unfairly blames his younger sister Saoirse for the absence of their mother, who
apparently died in childbirth. But their father, Conor, knows the actual truth ... and it's a
secret that he hopes to preserve, lest it also affect his little girl.

Although domestic efforts still tend to win the award — and that’s also annoying — the competition nonetheless has granted welcome exposure to foreign talents such as Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville), Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud (Persepolis) and Hayao Miyazaki (nominated three times, and a winner for Spirited Away).

But a sidebar problem also has emerged: It can be hard to see some of the nominees, particularly prior to the Academy Awards broadcast. As I’ve noted previously, the Academy’s animation branch can be congratulated for recognizing talent outside the United States, but that cultural generosity hasn’t been embraced by American movie distributors ... or, for that matter, by American movie viewers.

In 2011, A Cat in Paris and Chico and Rita had almost no distribution throughout the United States. One of last year’s nominees, Ernest & Celestine, never was released in our local area, having been granted only limited national release and exposure at some film festivals. And although nothing could have stopped the Frozen juggernaut — which inevitably included the Oscar in this category — Ernest & Celestine is a far better film on every level.

Which brings us to this year, and similar frustrations. Studio Ghibli’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya played a few film festivals in October and had very limited release in the rest of the country ... but only in a compromised version that inserted a new American voice cast (another practice that I deem horrifying). Good luck finding it.

Irish director Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea played for two qualifying weeks in late December, in New York, and has remained off the radar since then ... until now. The film is making spotty appearances nationwide, and, starting today, we’ve been granted one screen at an outlying Roseville multiplex.

Trust me: It’ll be worth the drive.

And don’t wait, because I doubt it’ll stay there very long.

Moore may be remembered for having helmed the delightful Secret of the Kells back in 2009, which also earned an Oscar nod. He and his crew began work on Song of the Sea that same year, and the lengthy production time will be understood the moment you experience the luxurious, absolutely gorgeous hand-drawn art that fills every frame.

Black Sea: No treasure here

Black Sea (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and violence
By Derrick Bang

Something’s rotten in the state of cinema...

Back in the day of classic Hollywood “disaster movies” — a cycle that began with 1970’s Airport — the survival rate was roughly an audience-acceptable 50 percent. This issue revolved around key characters; in 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, we lost Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Roddy McDowall, Leslie Nielsen and Stella Stevens, while Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Pamela Sue Martin, Jack Albertson, Carol Lynley and Eric Shea made it to daylight.

Frustrated by the mutual hostility that divides his Russian and British crew members,
Robinson (Jude Law, center) angrily orders the men to get along ... while promising that
this clandestine submarine mission will make them all very, very rich.

In 1974’s The Towering Inferno, Robert Wagner, Jennifer Jones, Robert Vaughn, Richard Chamberlain and Susan Flannery got toasted, while the survivors included William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Fred Astaire. (Paul Newman and Steve McQueen weren’t in the building.) And so it went, with Earthquake, the various Airport sequels and others.

More to the point, many of those who perish do so heroically or tragically, in some cases while saving others. We feel for them. Yes, all such films have their villains, but no more than one or two ... and they always get their just desserts.

Things have changed.

These days, disaster/survival films have become slaughter films: mainstream cousins of the countless “dead teen” horror flicks that erupted in the wake of 1980’s Friday the 13th. Most of the characters are nameless, faceless and two-dimensional, just like all those doomed teens: stick figures present solely to be killed, under unpleasant and often ludicrous circumstances. Nobility and self-sacrifice are absent, replaced instead by venal and brutish behavior.

If we’re lucky, one person might survive, as in 2011’s odious Sanctum, which raised the bar for acceptable mainstream butchery. Alternatively, nobody survives, as with 2012’s The Grey. Heroic effort proves futile.

Which, in my mind, makes such films rather pointless.

And deplorably mean-spirited.

I’d hate to think this attitude shift reflects our national psyche; if it does, we’re in a lot of trouble.

All of which brings us to Black Sea, ostensibly an action thriller from director Kevin Macdonald, best known for absorbing dramas such as The Last King of Scotland and State of Play. I say “ostensibly” because you shouldn’t believe the promotional slant; this is actually a disaster movie. Which is to say, in the current vogue, a slaughter-fest.

And an insufferably dumb one, at that.