Turning Red: Clever depiction of teenage crisis

Turning Red (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for mild intensity

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.11.22

The folks at Pixar love to tackle big topics, and they do so with humor, perceptive wit and clever storytelling.

 

Having poofed into a giant red panda at precisely the wrong moment, Mei (the panda)
waits anxiously to see how her friends — from left, Abby, Miriam and Priya — will
react to this admittedly unusual development.

They gave us an ingenious explanation of human emotions, in 2015’s Inside Out, and an equally astute depiction of human purpose, in 2020’s Soul. Both garnered well-deserved Academy Awards.

Pixar now has embraced an even greater challenge:

 

Female puberty.

 

The boldly inspired result — directed by Domee Shi, from an original script by Shi and Julia Cho — is both a remarkably apt metaphor, and an absolutely hilarious depiction of one young girl’s maturity crisis.

 

(As a superb example of the way Pixar nurtures talent, Shi earned this feature film assignment after winning an Oscar for her 2018 short, Bao.)

 

The setting is Toronto, in the early 2000s. Thirteen-year-old Meilin “Mei” Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is an exuberant, mildly dorky, over-achieving force of nature who proudly excels at school. She’d likely be exasperating, except that her potentially patronizing edges are softened by her loyal posse: Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Abby (Hyein Park).

 

Mei also is a model daughter at home, cheerfully helping her mother Ming (Sandra Oh) tend to the ancestral family temple, in Toronto’s Chinatown.

 

Everything is regimented into a familiar and carefully controlled routine. As Mei giddily tells us, at the top of this film — mildly breaking the fourth wall — “This is gonna be the best year ever, and nothing’s gonna get in my way.”

 

Wishful thinking.

 

Like the flip of a switch, Mei suddenly becomes obsessed with the hunky guys in 4*Town, the hottest, coolest band of all time (which, defying its name, has five members). Her three besties share this passion, and their out-of-control enthusiasm turns them into giddily shrieking fangirls.

 

As a result — in a whimsical nod to Kafka’s Metamorphosis — Mei wakens one morning in the form of a an eight-foot-tall, bright red panda. Unable to control this new body, she becomes inadvertently destructive, messy and smelly. (Sound like any teenagers you know?)

Belfast: Deeply moving snapshot of a nation in crisis

Belfast (2021) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters, Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

Armed with an impressive seven Academy Award nominations, Kenneth Branagh’s riveting, semi-autobiographical drama has just become available via streaming services.

 

This is must-see cinema.

 

Buddy (Jude Hill, his back to camera) listens quietly while his mother (Caitriona Balfe),
grandmother (Judi Dench) and grandfather (Ciarán Hinds) explain what has been
happening in their neighborhood.

It isn’t easy to layer an era of chaos, tumult and danger with warmth and humor, and Branagh — who wrote the script, as well as directing — has done so sublimely. He wisely followed John Boorman’s lead, who in 1987’s Hope and Glory similarly depicted the horrors he experienced as a child in London during World War II.

In this case, Branagh’s quasi-surrogate self is 9-year-old Buddy, played with beguiling innocence and impishness by Jude Hill, in a stunning feature film debut. Because this story is viewed through Buddy’s experiences and imagination, Hill is in practically every scene, and he capably carries the film; he’s beyond adorable. 

 

Branagh extracts an amazingly accomplished and nuanced performance from this young lad. It’s a crime that he didn’t secure a Best Actor nod to accompany all the other well-earned nominations.

 

Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos opens with an imposing, full-color overview of today’s Belfast. We then slide into a crowded, working-class pocket neighborhood; the image turns monochromatic as we’re whisked back to the summer of 1969. Children play merrily in the sun-dappled streets; adults chat amiably while walking to and from the little shops nestled in between row houses.

 

Everybody knows everybody else. When Buddy’s Ma (Caitriona Balfe) calls him in for tea, the message is passed along via children and adults until it finally reaches him. 

 

Then, suddenly, anarchy: An angry mob rounds a street corner like a swarm of maddened bees, laying waste to homes, shop windows, vehicles and anything else in their path … with a focus on Catholic families. It’s the opening salvo of the five-day political and sectarian violence that quickly spread through Ireland and led to the 30-year conflict dubbed “The Troubles.”

 

Buddy, terrified, stands frozen like a deer caught in headlights. We see the disconnect in his gaze; the boy cannot begin to comprehend the savage reality of what’s happening.

 

In that instant, his life — and that of his family, and everybody else — is altered. Forever. The calm of sociable neighborliness has been shattered, never to return; Catholic and Protestant families, once close friends, now eye each other warily. (Buddy and his family are Protestants.)

 

In the aftermath, streets are barricaded; watchers are posted 24/7. Buddy’s universe — this tiny portion of Northern Belfast — has become an artificial island.

 

Lucy and Desi: Captivating ode to a talented duo

Lucy and Desi (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for no particular reason

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Hollywood folks are reading each other’s mail again.

 

Just a few months after the release of writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s captivating Being the Ricardos, we now have the documentary Lucy and Desi.

 

Lucille  Ball and Desi Arnaz weren't merely co-stars of television's
most popular show in the 1950s; they were equal business partners
in all manner of other activities taking place under the banner of
their production company, Desilu.

I suspect Lucie Arnaz — Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s daughter — got wind of Sorkin’s project, likely didn’t approve, and “encouraged” the creation of this equally engaging response.

Lucie Arnaz has been down this road before, having produced and hosted 1993’s Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, just four years after her mother died … which was just three years after Desi Arnaz passed. Sweet as it is, grief and loss palpably hovered over that earlier project; this new film, chaperoned by director Amy Poehler and veteran documentarian Mark Monroe, is more measured and methodical.

 

Ball and Arnaz were a beloved Hollywood family, frequently in the public eye, and constantly the subjects of studio photographs; they also had access to personal film cameras that few people owned in the 1940s and ’50s. We benefit from the impressive abundance of home movie footage — 8mm and even 16mm — and extensive media interviews given by both Ball and Arnaz throughout their lives. 

 

Most notably, Ball spent weeks and months with journalist Betty Hannah Hoffman in the mid-’60s, recounting what turned into a detailed oral history preserved on a couple dozen audio tapes.

 

This essentially allows Ball and Arnaz to narrate their own stories, as this documentary proceeds. Poehler wisely keeps contemporary talking heads to a minimum, cutting only occasionally to commentary from Lucie Arnaz, Carol Burnett and Bette Midler. The latter two are an apt choice, as both were mentored by Ball; their warmhearted gratitude is obvious.

 

Ball was a slowly rising film star when she and Arnaz met in Hollywood, during 1940’s big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Too Many Girls. It was love at first sight, and they eloped not quite two months after the film debuted.

 

Ironically, as Ball explains via voice-over, they saw very little of each other during the next decade.

 

She became the “Queen of the B’s,” appearing constantly in a string of lesser-budget dramas, musicals, tear-jerkers and even film noir thrillers. She starred or co-starred in 20 (!) films between 1941 and ’49 … not one of which allowed her to display the comic talent for which she’d later become famous.

 

Even so, the hard work paid off. The pleasure is evident in Ball’s voice when she remembers how, one day, she overheard a studio head telling somebody to find him “a Lucille Ball type.” 

 

Arnaz wasn’t nearly as successful in Hollywood; after a few unremarkable supporting roles, he was drafted and spent his WWII years directing USO programs. Post-service, he formed what became an enormously popular band, and spent several years touring.

 

These years are covered via a captivating collection of publicity photos, studio stills, movie posters and archival film clips; it’ll likely be an eye-opening surprise to learn that Arnaz is credited with introducing conga line dancing to the States.

The 2022 Oscar Shorts: Wildly uneven

The 2022 Oscar Shorts • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Not rated, and patently adult

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.4.22

I always look forward to the live action and animated Academy Award nominees; it’s fun to wonder if we’ll see the first efforts of the next Spielberg, Kurosawa or Scorsese, or the next Miyazaki or Lasseter.

 

Most of this year’s live action nominees show plenty of promise.

 

The animated nominees are, um, more challenging. And be advised: Two of them absolutely are not for children.

 

Starting with live action, Polish director Tadeusz Lysiak’s tender, deeply moving The Dress is fueled by Anna Dzieduszycka’s terrific starring performance as Julia, a lonely woman who works as a maid in a rundown rural motel. 

Lysiak’s story is a bittersweet “first sexual encounter” saga, but Julia isn’t a fresh-faced youth; she’s an embittered, sexually frustrated, middle-aged woman who has spent her entire life deflecting rude comments about her diminutive stature as a “little person.” The pain is palpable in Dzieduszycka’s expression and posture, as she angrily chain-smokes and feeds endless coins into slot machines.

 

Then she chances to meet Bogdan (Szymon Piotr Warszawski), a trucker who smiles and treats Julia with respect; the flicker of hope that illuminates Dzieduszycka’s eyes is heartbreaking. Lysiak doesn’t pull back from subsequent details; the difficulty she has buying a suitable “date dress,” for example, is particularly touching.

 

Swiss filmmaker Maria Brendle’s Ala Kachuu (Take and Run) is a harrowing “statement drama.” Nineteen-year-old Sezim (Alina Turdumamatova) lives in a small, rural Kyrgyz village. She’s smart enough to attend university in the capital city of Bishkek: a goal her traditional parents forbid, knowing they’d be “shamed” by a daughter who made such a lifestyle choice.

Sezim nonetheless runs away to Beshkek, moves in with her friend Aksana (Madina Talipbekova), and gets a job in a bakery while awaiting the results of a university entrance exam. One day, totally without warning, she’s kidnapped by three young men; they drive her to an even more remote Kyrgyz village, where she’s forced to marry one of them (Nurbek Esengazy Uulu, as Dayrbek).

 

The village women, themselves former victims of “bride-kidnapping” — which apparently is endemic in Kyrgyzstan — offer no sympathy.

 

Turdumamatova’s performance is shattering; Sezim’s despair and desperation are palpable. Brendle’s plot beats are unrelenting; we Western viewers can’t help being shocked by her helplessness, and the callous “traditions” that tolerate such treatment of young women.

Cyrano: Love's labours lost

Cyrano (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong violence, dramatic intensity and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.25.22

We’ve seen two noteworthy big-screen versions of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play up to now: José Ferrer’s Oscar-winning turn in director Michael Gordon’s modest 1950 American translation; and Gérard Depardieu’s robust, Oscar-nominated work in director Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s far more lavish 1990 French adaptation.

 

Cyrano (Peter Dinklage) has long loved Roxanne (Haley Bennett) from afar, but kept
silent out of the fear that she'd find his worship comical or insulting. She, in turn,
has eyes only for a new King's Guard recruit glimpsed briefly in a crowd.

Nor should we overlook star/scripter Steve Martin’s kinder, gentler rendition in 1987’s Roxanne. (Which is to say, nobody dies.)

Director Joe Wright’s Cyrano is adapted from Erica Schmidt’s new 2018 stage musical, with Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett reprising their starring roles; Schmidt also handles the script. And while Rostand’s story seems an unlikely candidate for musical resurrection, the same could have been said of (among others) Les Miz and Evita … and “unlikely” certainly didn’t damage their popularity.

 

That said, this Cyrano is an awkward beast. Many of Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s songs aren’t memorable, and several interrupt/interfere with the on-screen action in the manner of all clumsy musicals.

 

On the positive side, Dinklage owns this film; his performance is a masterpiece of carefully nuanced expressions and body language. He puts heart and soul into even the most trivial of lines, and his frequent displays of silent, earnest anguish — it’s that sort of story — are heartbreaking.

 

Bennett’s work is similarly charismatic, albeit on a different level. Her Roxanne shimmers with giddy, joyous delight at everything she encounters: most particularly when she swoons over her desire to be swept away by passionate, soul-deep love.

 

Wright’s touch, with the accomplished assistance of frequent cinematographer colleague Seamus McGarvey, is stunning. All of their visual tricks are in evidence: the sliding walls and lengthy tracking shots; the arresting framing of scenes and characters; and the expansive, ethereal depiction of war. (Think back to their work on 2007’s Atonement.)

 

When things work here, they work extraordinarily well.

 

Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen often enough.

 

The setting is Paris, the year 1640. Roxanne attends a stage performance in a theater hosting an audience that ranges from the cream of Parisian society to thieves, pickpockets and cutpurses. She’s escorted by the powerful Duke De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), who craves her in a way that is slimy from his first words; rashly heedless of this, Roxanne flirts as a means of enjoying his wealth and status, while having no intention of marrying him.

 

She chances to lock eyes with newly arrived King’s Guard recruit Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), buried within the rabble-rousing theatergoers. The connection is instant and electric, but he’s swept away by the crowd.

KIMI: They're listening to us!

KIMI (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, profanity and brief nudity

Available via: HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

This seems to be the month for unusual takes on Alfred Hitchcock classics.

 

I Want You Back is a rom-com riff on Strangers on a Train, while director Steven Soderbergh’s new little thriller is Rear Window by way of the “Internet of Everything,” along with a soupçon of 2002’s Panic Room.

 

Angela (Zoë Kravitz) has just heard something disturbing, while searching user logs for
virtual assistant comprehension parameters that need fine-tuning. But as an
agoraphobe unable to leave the safety of her apartment, what can she do about it?

No surprise about the latter, since this film’s scripter — David Koepp — also wrote that Jody Foster nail-biter. And, as was the case with Panic Room, Koepp’s carefully calculated script for KIMI doesn’t waste a single detail. I admire writers who follow the “Chekhov’s gun” principle: Any seemingly innocuous detail introduced in the first act, needs to be employed by the third act.

I also admire directors who know when to get off the stage. Given the number of overly long, needlessly bloated films that we’ve endured recently, it’s refreshing to watch a tight, taut thriller that clocks in at a just-right 89 minutes.

 

This also may be the first mainstream film that acknowledges Covid as a major part of its narrative.

 

The setting is Seattle, the time now. Angela (Zoë Kravitz) is an agoraphobe also saddled with a healthy dose of OCD; the pandemic has further amplified the fear of leaving her comfortably appointed loft apartment. She paces nervously during bouts of anxiety, hands twitching at her sides: not randomly, but always in specific patterns.

 

She has managed a flirty, window-to-window relationship with Terry (Byron Bowers), who lives in the apartment across the street. Alas, her best-intentioned efforts to meet him at a food truck, on the sidewalk below her place, always go awry when she’s unable to make it through her own front door.

 

All this aside, Angela is a talented tech worker with The Amygdala Corp, tasked with fine-tuning the comprehension parameters of its just-released, “life-changing” Siri/Alexa-esque gizmo, dubbed KIMI. She analyzes other users’ communication data, helping the KIMIs better understand colloquial phrases and alternate definitions: teaching it, for example, that one user’s request to order “kitchen paper” means “paper towels.”

 

Which obviously means that everybody with a KIMI is being monitored, at all times, by a device that’s recording every word and action. And all of that data is subject to additional review by employees such as Angela … and God knows who else, further up the corporate ladder. Or for what purpose.

 

During a brief prologue, we’ve learned that Amygdala’s CEO, Bradley Hasling (Derek DelGaudio), is about to take his company public; thanks to the explosive interest in KIMIs, he expects a hefty payday. But all isn’t quite copacetic, given his troubled reaction to a certain phone call.

Licorice Pizza: Quite warped

Licorice Pizza (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor, drug use and considerable profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Well, this one’s all over the map.

 

That’s no surprise, since we’re dealing with writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson; outré is his calling card. Who could forget the rain of frogs toward the end of 1999’s Magnolia, or the freakishly violent finale in 2007’s There Will Be Blood?

 

Alana (Alana Haim) surprises herself by agreeing to act as chaperone and driver for her
new "business partner," Gary (Cooper Hoffman), and his younger brother, Greg
(Milo Herschlag).

Anderson always is more concerned with atmosphere, attitude and location, than anything remotely approaching credible human behavior. And there’s no denying that Licorice Pizza nails its 1973 San Fernando Valley setting: the clothes, cars, strip malls, seedy pop-culture palaces, and the vibrant, awakening youth culture sense that anything was possible, and anything could happen.

Anderson also handles much of the cinematography here, alongside Michael Bauman; between them and production designer Florencia Martin, they’ve re-created the razzle-dazzle Valley vibe to a degree that’s almost spooky. That said, this is a heightened reality, laced with sidebar characters who usually are more burlesque than believable.

 

In fairness, though, this is a kinder, gentler Anderson: possibly because — in his typically outlandish way — he intends this film as a valentine to the area where he grew up. The on again/off again mutual crush that bonds this saga’s two primary characters is quite sweet at times … even as everything around them becomes aggressively weird.

 

(The film gets its title, by the way, from a once-famous chain of record stores that ruled Southern California from 1969 to ’85.)

 

Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), a 15-year-old child star, meets cute with 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim) at his high school’s yearbook portrait day; she’s assisting the photographer. He boldly chats her up, much to her initially amused annoyance … but he’s so self-assured, so persistent, that she can’t help being curious.

 

Gary is an anomaly, in that all the adults in his orbit respect him as an equal (even if some roll their eyes when he leaves the room). He’s on familiar speaking terms with the manager at the iconic Tail o’ the Cock restaurant, who respectfully reserves Gary’s “special table” and also tolerates his presence at the bar (sipping only sodas, of course). Alana finds it hard to resist when he suggests that she meet him there, and it’s emotionally deeper than that; she surprises herself by accepting.

 

Although Hoffman’s Gary ostensibly dominates what subsequently transpires — frequently through sheer force of personality — this really is Alana’s story; she’s the character trying to figure out how to become a better version of herself, whereas Gary never really changes.

 

Alana is a failure-to-launch decades before that phrase became a thing, still living at home with her parents and two older sisters (Haim’s actual sisters, Danielle and Este), who also still are stuck with their parents. The high school photography gig obviously is just the latest in a long string of dead-end temp jobs that give Alana a reason to get up each morning.

 

Initially, she’s seduced more by Gary’s lifestyle and environment, than the boy himself. She agrees to become a combination chaperone/handler, leaving his mother Anita (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) more time to focus on the business side of his career.