Moonlight: A heartbreaking coming-of-age saga

Moonlight (2016) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for drug use, frequent profanity, sexuality and brief violence
By Derrick Bang

Some rare, special films — such as this one — are made with a degree of raw intimacy that’s both compelling and painful.

After finding Chiron (Alex Hibbert, right) hiding from bullies in a condemned apartment
building, Juan (Mahershala Ali) tries to get the frightened boy to open up, by treating him
to a meal. The effort is only partically successful, but it is a significant first step.

Director Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight is profoundly difficult to watch at times, its depiction of contemporary inner city black life achingly sad, with its focus on one young man’s struggle to surmount his upbringing, his environment and the crushing realization that the world expects him to accomplish absolutely nothing. Can it be true, in the modern United States, that one is doomed from birth?

And yet Jenkins’ intriguing storytelling method — co-scripted with Tarell Alvin McCraney — offers glimpses of, if not hope, at least peace and acceptance. Although coming-of-age sagas are a familiar cinema staple, this one takes an intriguing approach; it was conceived as a drama school project in a class run by McCraney, a playwright and 2013 MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.

Jenkins’ big-screen adaptation is divided into three distinct chapters, reflecting seminal moments in the young protagonist’s life, and with different actors — who resemble each other to an uncanny degree — playing the character as he ages. The film’s atmosphere of authenticity is no accident; both Jenkins and McCraney grew up in the South Florida Liberty City housing project where much of this story unfolds.

The picture isn’t pretty, the experience on par with 2009’s Precious, and graced with similarly powerful performances.

There’s another, equally revealing comparison. 1996’s Sling Blade remains famous as the film that turned its star, director and writer — Billy Bob Thornton — into a household name. That film got much of its power from the narrative’s multiple punches. After its protagonist’s first soliloquy, delivered early on, we thought, Damn, Billy Bob peaked too quickly; there’s no way anything else will come close to that scene’s dramatic intensity. And yet, later, Thornton did top it. And we marveled.

Jenkins achieves the same intensity here.

We meet Chiron at age 9, played by Alex Hibbert: a cowed, withdrawn child bullied by schoolmates because of his small size. This earns him the pejorative nickname of “Little,” and classroom torment isn’t even his major problem; at home, he’s alternately coddled and demeaned by his mother, Teresa (Janelle Monáe), a crack addict whose parental instincts flicker erratically, at best.

Little is “rescued” one day, in a sense, by Juan (Mahershala Ali), an essentially compassionate man who — unfortunately — happens to be the neighborhood drug dealer. But the boy doesn’t know this, and their developing relationship is the first demonstration — with several more to come — of Jenkins’ skill at building a sensitive character dynamic under unlikely circumstances.

The Edge of Seventeen: Endearing teen-scene traumas

The Edge of Seventeen (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, vulgarity and some bad teen behavior
By Derrick Bang

Aside from the cool kids — the ones never short of friends and flunkies, and who never seem to embarrass themselves — everybody else, up through high school, inevitably goes through a period of misfit insecurity.

After committing the worst possible blunder, in an era when a single click can expose an
ill-advised comment to the entire world, Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) bares her soul to history
teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson), who'd clearly prefer to enjoy his lunch break in peace.

(In truth, it probably happens to the cool kids, as well. But they never let on.)

In Nadine’s case, it started shortly after birth. By the time she hit second grade, at age 7, she already knew that life — God — had dealt her a rotten hand, and that she’d be a loser her entire life. Taunted by classmates. Plagued by a hopeless clothes sense. Forever in the shadow of an all-too-perfect older brother, the apple of their mother’s eye.

Doomed.

Writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen comes with one of the best tag lines I’ve seen: “You’re only young once ... is it over yet?” It’s an apt description: Craig has an unerring ear for the catastrophes of a disenfranchised high school girl in the modern world, whose outsider status is a quabillion times worse, in this age of social media status.

This film is endearing, embarrassing, poignant and cringe-hilarious: hard to watch for all the ways in which it looks, sounds and — worst of all — feels familiar. We’ve been there. Experienced the end of the world. And, yet, endured. (That which doesn’t kill us...)

The last bit is what worries Nadine, who genuinely fears that her life Never. Will. Change.

Craig’s savvy script fuels the narrative, but the film gets its heart from star Hailee Steinfeld’s adorable, heartbreaking lead performance. Now grown into a high school junior, Nadine is an angst-laden, long-suffering tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions, who manages to be both vulnerable and insufferably self-absorbed. That requires deft acting chops, and Steinfeld delivers.

On the home front, the sibling situation has become worse. Older brother Darian (Blake Jenner), a senior, has matured into a muscled hunk adored by all ... including their mother, Mona (Kyra Sedgwick), who continues to display a streak of favoritism. But it’s clearly a chicken/egg dynamic: Is Nadine massively insecure because of her mother’s bias, or has Mona gravitated toward Darian because his sister is such a handful?

Nadine has survived this long solely because of longtime BFF Krista (Haley Lu Richardson), who became an inseparable companion back in second grade (the two girls bonding over a caterpillar). They do everything together, Krista keenly aware of — and willing to sympathize with — Nadine’s anxiety and lack of confidence.

Arrival: They're here!

Arrival (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.11.16

Michael Crichton’a The Andromeda Strain pretty much invented the modern sci-fi techno thriller, and it was made into a crackling 1971 thriller by director Robert Wise.

After confronting the alien spacecraft that has terrified the entire United States, linguist
Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are garbed in
protective haz-mat suits, prior to their first meeting with the ship's inhabitants.

The tone was pure procedural, with a gaggle of scientists researching and conferencing in labs, to determine why a highly lethal microorganism killed everybody in a small Arizona town, except for a geriatric Sterno addict and a relentlessly cranky baby.

Few films since then have successfully duplicated that formula, because it’s a difficult tightrope walk: too many talking heads, and the result is boring; too much contrivance and coincidence, and audiences roll their eyes in contemptuous disbelief.

Director Denis Villeneuve gets the balance just right with Arrival, easily one of the most intelligent “first contact” movies Hollywood ever has delivered. Scripter Eric Heisserer embraced the challenging assignment of adapting sci-fi author Ted Chiang’s  2000 Nebula Award-winning novella, and the result is impressively faithful: fascinating, clever and suspenseful, with an out-there finale certain to fuel debates as impassioned as those that greeted the conclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The story also boasts one of the most truly unusual alien cultures ever conceived, the depiction of which is likely to forever change most viewers’ perception and understanding of language.

Finally, the film is an uncomfortably timely reminder of the dangerous levels of nationalism and xenophobia currently running amok throughout this country and the globe, and the consequences of failing to recognize that — at the end of the day — we’re a single species sharing this planet, and that it behooves us to behave accordingly.

To cases, then:

Northeastern university professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams), an internationally respected linguist, is surprised one day to discover that her huge, entry-level language class is almost empty. The reason becomes clear as breaking news reports interrupt all radio and television broadcasts: A disturbingly large something has landed in a deserted Montana meadow.

Actually, “landed” is the wrong word; the semi-cylindrical object hovers about 20 feet off the ground.

Hacksaw Ridge: A cut above

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for graphic war action, gore and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.4.16

Factual war dramas often are remembered for seminal sequences: the badly outnumbered British soldiers at Rorke’s Drift, who withstood the final onslaught by native warriors, in 1964’s Zulu; George C. Scott’s electrifying opening speech, in 1970’s Patton; and the Omaha Beach assault that kicked off 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, to name a few.

Once word spreads that Desmond (Andrew Garfield, right) refuses to wield or even touch
a weapon, Smitty (Luke Bracey, left) is the first to register contempt and hostility: How can
he — or anybody else in their division — trust a man who smacks of cowardice?

Indeed, the latter set a new bar for gripping, ghastly, battlefield intensity.

Until now.

Director Mel Gibson’s impressive Hacksaw Ridge is another reminder that, even with a long string of inspiring World War II dramas stretching back to the 1940s, fresh stories remain to be told. The best are those able to personalize the ordeal, by focusing on a few unforgettable individuals, or perhaps just one.

Hacksaw Ridge is the first dramatic depiction of American Army medic Desmond T. Doss’ experiences in the war: specifically his actions with the 77th Division — dubbed the “Statue of Liberty Division” — when it was ordered to take the Maeda Escarpment on Okinawa, as part of the Allied push to mainland Japan.

Frankly, I can’t understand what took Hollywood so long; Doss’ story screams for big-screen treatment.

Scripters Andrew Knight and Robert Schenkkan didn’t even have a mainstream biography on which to base their film treatment (although an obscure small-press book — Booton Herndon’s Unlikeliest Hero — was published in 1982). They were able to draw from Terry Benedict’s award-winning 2004 documentary, The Conscientious Objector. That title cuts to the core of Doss’ unique status: He was the only American soldier in World War II to fight on the front lines without a weapon.

As a Seventh-Day Adventist, Doss believed strongly that killing was against God’s Sixth Commandment. But he also insisted on serving his country in a meaningful way —obtaining a deferment, due to his employment at a naval shipyard, seemed cowardly — and therefore viewed a role in the army medical corps as a logical compromise.

It wasn’t to be that simple.

Gibson opens with a brief flash-forward to the chaos on Okinawa — a pointless foreshadowing of the carnage to come — and then takes us back to Desmond’s youth and young adulthood. He came of age in a household terrorized by his alcoholic father, Tom (Hugo Weaving): a man unable to forgive himself for surviving his WWI service, when so many of his friends and fellow soldiers died. Weaving makes Tom a forlorn and unstable — even dangerous — wreck, but not an entirely unsympathetic monster. In fact, Tom gets his shot at redemption, later in the story.

A couple of seminal events harden Desmond’s decision never to wield a gun, or take a life by any other means. We don’t doubt his resolve.

Doctor Strange: Needs life support

Doctor Strange (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for nonstop fantasy violence and a nasty crash scene
By Derrick Bang

As a card-carrying member of the original Merry Marvel Marching Society, I kept waiting for Dr. Strange to employ one of his favorite signature phrases: “By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth!”

The Western-educated Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch, right) resists the
possibility of actual magic, until the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) whips up a few quick spells
that remove all doubt. And suddenly Stephen wonders: What else doesn't he know?

Never happened.

Here’s what else never happened: any flicker of emotional involvement with this pinball machine of a movie.

Magic-laced fantasy is much more difficult than creators often assume. Rigorous rules must be set in place, and the supernatural realm carefully conceived, with a comprehensible balance between good and evil: something that J.K. Rowling — as a recent successful example — understands full well.

To get sloppy with such strictures — or ignore them completely — results in a “story” of make-it-up-as-we-go chaos. When no limits are placed on heroes and villains, any conflict becomes meaningless. If a bad guy can bend reality to his will, well, there’s always a sentient magic cloak to help the good guy at a dire moment. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Toss in the potential for an instant re-boot, given the ability to manipulate time, and the result is even more inane.

And b-o-r-i-n-g.

This was the insurmountable problem with late spring’s most recent X-Men adventure, where the über-villain Apocalypse could re-shape the material world with a wave of his hand. That made him effectively unbeatable, until ultimately defeated by some “tricks” that didn’t make any sense, in light of his inherent abilities. Meanwhile, we endured an hour’s worth of meaningless, time-wasting, thud-and-blunder nonsense.

Same here.

Happily, Doctor Strange isn’t laced with the sort of landscape-leveling melees that cratered entire landscapes, in early spring’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (another soulless disappointment). Physical mayhem rarely played a part in this second-tier Marvel character’s various adventures. The “master of the mystic arts” instead battled his adversaries with spells and counter-spells, often in fantastic parallel dimensions of unreality that were an excuse — in the hippy-dippy 1960s and early ’70s — for comic book panels laced with eye-popping, psychedelic visuals.

They were the four-color, printed equivalent of the LSD-influenced “star gate” sequence in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which dazzled substance-altered viewers for decades.

But no matter how hard Marvel’s writers tried — and this remained an ongoing issue — it was hard to identify with Dr. Stephen Strange. He and his opponents were too powerful, too indefinable, too weird. And too blandly impassive.

Trolls: Hair today, gone tomorrow

Trolls (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, and needlessly
By Derrick Bang

Occasional successes such as The Lego Movie notwithstanding, Hollywood’s track record with respect to designing films from toys has been spotty, at best.

After several of their friends are kidnapped by the evil, Troll-chomping Bergen chef, the
eternally cheerful Poppy, left, tries to persuade the eternally gloomy Branch to join her
on a rescue mission.

Anybody out there remember GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords? Or Bratz: The Movie? Kit Kittredge: An American Girl? Clue? Battleship? Jem and the Holograms? Or — God help us all — The Garbage Pail Kids?

Contrary to what is assumed by far too many of today’s Tinseltown deal makers, good movies rarely spring from 15-word concept pitches, regardless of the source material. At the beginning, middle and end of the day, it always comes down to story, story, story.

Which is the ingredient most sorely lacking in DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls.

To be sure, the film’s “fuzzy immersion” look is fabulous, with everything given a luxurious, yarn-like quality. The color palette is equally pleasing: bright pastel hues that favor rich blues, greens, pinks and purples. No question: It’s a razzle-dazzle delight, populated by adorable animated characters that are certain to please very young viewers.

Anybody over the age of 6 or 7 ... not so much.

Adults ... not at all.

The derivative, threadbare script aside — Erica Rivinoja, Glenn Berger and Jonathan Aibel couldn’t have spent much time on it — this film’s insufferable, gooey-sweet tone is guaranteed to send diabetics into sugar shock. It’s syrupy overkill on par with the slushy, mushy movies based on the Care Bears, Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony.

Ya gotta worry about a movie that promises to help viewers Find Their Happy Place.

So. This vividly multihued realm is inhabited by fuzzy, barefooted Trolls of various shades (and a few unusual sizes). All possess the ability to expand and manipulate their hair, with the skill of Spider-Man and his web-shooters. By and large, though, the forever cheerful Trolls are much too busy with “hug attacks” every 30 minutes, and their tendency to burst into song at random moments.

Alas, the Trolls share this kingdom with the much larger, uglier and nastier Bergens: dour, pessimistic creatures who look much more like the actual trolls of ancient myth, than the little Trolls themselves. The Bergens yearn to be happy, and learned long ago that the only way to achieve such bliss ... was by devouring Trolls. Baked, fried, sautéed, fricasseed or simply popped into the mouth and chomped, like a gumball.

Even if the Troll is still alive and protesting.

(Like, seriously? That’s a rather grim concept for such a family-friendly endeavor.)

A Man Called Ove: Endearing character dramedy

A Man Called Ove (2015) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and mild profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.28.16

Rarely has a film delivered such a blend of comedy and pathos, laughter and tears.

Trust the Swedes to leaven humor with such bleak, unexpected tragedy. Must be those long winters.

Ove (Rolf Lassgard) is not a man to cross, when he
makes his morning rounds: Woe to those who leave
garden tools, bicycles, toys or anything else lying
about, in what he believes should be the pristine
grounds of the housing association he monitors.

Director/scripter Hannes Holm’s A Man Called Ove (pronounced ooo-vuh) is a captivating saga of love, loss, redemption, inclusion, kindness and pretty much every emotion that matters. This deceptively uncomplicated saga of a cranky retiree actually has a lot on its mind — as does the cranky retiree — and both are full of surprises.

Holm’s tender little tale was nominated for seven of Sweden’s Guldbagge Awards — their Oscars — and won three, including Best Actor and the Audience Award. The only disappointing surprise is that Holm wasn’t one of the nominees, because the film owes much of its charm to the extremely clever manner in which the narrative unfolds.

Best use of flashbacks. Ever.

Fredrik Backman’s international best-selling novel, on which this film is based, has been described as a heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. Which is accurate, but rather an understatement.

The story focuses on Ove (Rolf Lassgård), the quintessential stubborn, short-fused old man next door. He lives by himself in a good-sized, strictly regulated block community laden with rules, which we eventually learn he established himself, as former association head. No motorized vehicles on the residential pathways. No bicycles or toys left lying about. Garage doors kept closed and locked. No cigarette butts.

You get the idea.

Ove makes his “rounds” every morning before breakfast, confiscating inappropriately placed items, and trading waspish retorts with anybody foolish enough to object. A few imprudent souls argue, such as the woman with a yappy dog (a creature which, in fairness, probably deserves the fate Ove proposes). Most of the neighbors, though, ignore Ove’s waspish tirades, in some cases greeting him cheerily.

Which is interesting, and raises the appropriate questions. Indeed, it points to the story’s essential moral: First impressions can be misleading.

Ove’s other daily ritual is a visit to the grave of his beloved wife, Sonja, where he grouses further, complaining about the “id-jaughts” who’ve taken over the world.

It becomes clear, following his subsequent movements in a house still laden with his wife’s belongings, that Ove isn’t cranky out of mere anger or spite; he’s lonely and profoundly depressed, unable to move on. Nor does he wish to; wanting to rejoin Sonja in the hereafter, he’s determined to end his life. Unfortunately, his efforts are interrupted repeatedly by ... stuff.