Wild Ocean 3D: Wild, indeed!

Wild Ocean 3D (2008) • View trailer for Wild Ocean 3D
Four stars (out of five). Rating: G, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.16.08

This film seriously rocks.

Recent IMAX ocean documentaries have been a mixed lot; Deep Sea 3D and Coral Reef Adventure were engaging and informative, while Sharks 3D and the laughably misnamed Ocean Wonderland were little more than grade-school science movies with delusions of grandeur.

On initial impact, the diving Cape gannets have a reasonable chance of spearing
and then devouring one of the billions of sardines that travel up the South
African coast. But if the birds miss this first shot, their clumsy underwater
movement makes it highly unlikely that they'll score a fish. Back into the air,
then, for another dive ... and then another, then another.

That's an important distinction. Although we're enjoying a renaissance of quality documentaries these days, the sheer volume allows one to be more selective; when the bar is set high with something like Young @ Heart, then other nonfiction films must work harder to justify their ticket prices.

Wild Ocean 3D does so. And then some.

Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas — who share credits as directors, writers, editors and soundtrack composers — have found a thoroughly fascinating wildlife phenomenon that takes place each year off the coast of South Africa. They've filmed it superbly and condensed what must have been hours and hours of raw footage into a 40-minute film that is, by turns, astonishing, educational, fascinating and downright exciting.

These thrilling images gain further power from a captivating, heavily percussive soundtrack — no surprise, when one is reminded that the multi-talented Cresswell founded the street performance group Stomp in 1991 — that is delivered at a volume sufficient to rattle your rib cage.

The film chronicles the annual migration of the billions of sardines that travel up South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal shoreline, known to locals as the "wild coast."

This migratory phenomenon used to take place all over the world, but (sadly) overfishing in the United States and elsewhere destroyed these massive sardine runs. They continue to exist now only off the coasts of South Africa and Portugal.

(I can't help thinking that these runs still exist in South Africa only because the entire region boasts an inhospitable coastline that never permitted the establishment of a harbor. Shall we call that geographical luck?)

Body of Lies: Truth or dare

Body of Lies (2008) • View trailer for Body of Lies
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, profanity and graphic torture
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.10.08
Buy DVD: Body of Lies • Buy Blu-Ray: Body of Lies (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray]

For all its concussive, eardrum-shattering explosions and a nasty contemporary plot certain to unsettle — if not terrify — viewers already worried about the spread of Islamic fanaticism, director Ridley Scott's new film is most persuasive during its quieter, conversational moments between two people ... proving once again that the foundation of good drama is character, character, character.

Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) first meets Aisha (Golshifteh Farahani) when
she begins his rabies therapy after a particularly vicious dog attack; he quickly
realizes that his interest in this kind, soft-spoken nurse is more than casual. But
is such a relationship wise, in a profession that puts him — and anybody he
knows — in harm's way?

And Body of Lies is filled with intriguing characters, all of them played quite persuasively by actors who do their best to stand out against Scott's perhaps too-eager inclination to ratchet up the tension with scenes of grisly, crowd-laden mayhem.

Indeed, the balance is wrong, during the scattershot first act, before all the players have been assembled on this story's chessboard; I began to worry that Ridley was unwisely imitating the insufferably tiresome visual tics and hiccups of his more bombastic but lesser-talented brother, Tony Scott.

Fortunately, cinematographer Alexander Witt's zigzag camerawork does settle down, and the prime movers in William Monahan's script — adapted from David Ignatius' chilling novel — are allowed to develop and coalesce. At this point, Body of Lies gets interesting and engage our minds, rather than simply trying to frighten us to death.

The primary relationship is one of distant opposites. Under deep cover and on the ground in Iraq, Jordan or Syria, CIA op Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) relies on razor-sharp instincts and language fluency to discover and infiltrate terrorist cells, and thus gain knowledge about — or even help prevent — destructive acts against innocent civilians.

Ferris takes his marching orders from, and is in constant contact with, seasoned handler Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe), an insufferably pragmatic analyst whose big- picture views frequently collide with Ferris' intimate methods. Hoffman demands immediate results and will hasten the "development" (read: ruthless exploitation) of an "asset" (informant), even if this threatens long-term gains; Ferris is more willing to patiently nurture a source, believing that trust will reap more benefits than intimidation.

Their endless philosophical squabble takes place via the continuous cell phone conversations that link Ferris, bouncing hither and yon overseas, to Hoffman, based at Langley's CIA headquarters and outwardly living the life of an average suburban soccer dad. The incongruity of these long-distance dialogues, set against the actions of both men at any given moment — Ferris often chasing a suspect or fleeing for his life, Hoffman helping his young son make the transition to grown-up bathroom behavior — is deliberately ironic and always mordantly amusing. Talk about multi-tasking!

The Duchess: Bird in a cage

The Duchess (2008) • View trailer for The Duchess
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor, sensuality and rape
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.9.08
Buy DVD: The Duchess • Buy Blu-Ray: The Duchess [Blu-ray]

Ah, the good ol' days, in Merry Olde England ... when men were men, and women were chattel.

Both a sumptuous period piece and a meaty dramatic vehicle for Keira Knightley, The Duchess also is, above all else, a terribly sad story. This fascinating glimpse of Georgiana Spencer, the famed 18th century Duchess of Devonshire, reveals that even London's most admired and imitated woman had no actual rights in an era when an aristocrat's wife existed for precisely one purpose: procreation.

The setting is benign, but appearances can be deceiving: Georgiana (Keira
Knightley, far right), having given birth to two daughters, gets no sympathy
even from her mother (Charlotte Rampling, far left) when the Duke of
Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) openly takes his wife's best friend, Bess (Hayley
Atwell) as a live-in mistress.

British director Saul Dibb's film — scripted by Dibb, Jeffrey Hatcher and Anders Thomas Jensen, and adapted from Amanda Foreman's acclaimed biography — casually and coldly presents an environment so repressed, so callous and so outrageously unfair, that modern viewers are apt to greet many of these details with disbelieving horror.

(Worse still, some cretins in last week's Sacramento preview audience, under the mistaken notion that such particulars were exaggerated for comic effect, snickered and laughed openly at all the wrong moments. Rarely have I wished more ferociously for a time machine, and the means to cast such Philistines back a few centuries ... on a one-way trip.)

Bad enough that the spirited and obviously intelligent Georgiana, far more passionate about the politics of the day than her blandly taciturn husband — a memorably malignant performance by Ralph Fiennes, about whom more in a moment — was forced to do little but sit and listen as the members of her beloved Whig party debated issues such as citizen freedom.

Worse still, for the "crime" of having borne her husband two daughters, that Georgiana had no choice but to tolerate her husband's decision to maintain an open ménage à trois with her best and only friend, Lady Elizabeth "Bess" Foster (Hayley Atwell), who was allowed — at the Duke's insistence — to live with them, as a sort of at-will courtesan, for the rest of the Duchess' life.

The first dinner scene, after this arrangement is set in stone — with the Duke and Duchess at opposite ends of an imposingly long table, and Elizabeth at the midpoint of one side, between them — is a chill nightmare.

"I demanded only two things from you, when we married," the Duke coldly tells Georgiana, on more than one occasion, "loyalty and an heir."

Blessed with a petite frame and figure that seem right at home in this era of tiny shoes and corseted waists, Knightley is introduced as 17-year-old Georgiana and several friends place a friendly wager on which of half a dozen eager young gentlemen will win a footrace. She exchanges significant glances with the winner, Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), but whatever might have come to pass evaporates in the wake of a meeting between Georgiana's mother (Charlotte Rampling) and William Cavendish, the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who barter the girl's finer points as if she were a horse.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: A modest winner

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008) • View trailer for How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for frequent profanity, drug references and brief but explicit nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.3.08
Buy DVD: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People • Buy Blu-Ray: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) [Blu-ray]


Simon Pegg is both very funny and quite shrewd; his recent film roles — starting with his breakout success in Shaun of the Dead — have been carefully calculated to take maximum advantage of his sharp timing and pliable features, which can slide from woebegone to deeply mortified at the blink of an eye.

Newly arrived British journalist Sidney Young (Simon Pegg), unable to make
sense of his job at the pretigious Sharps magazine, gets little sympathy from
fellow staffer Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst), who can't stand her office
companion's rude, crude and boorish behavior. And the dead goldfish? A
failed attempt, on Sidney's part, to gain the attention of a young starlet.

His role as Sidney Young, the focus of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, is certain to continue Pegg's winning streak.

Director Robert Weide's film — deftly scripted by Peter Straughan — is based on the best-selling 2001 memoir by snarky British writer Toby Young, who mercilessly charted his move from London to New York, to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a job for which, as it turned out, he was spectacularly unsuited.

Expecting the prestigious magazine empire's corridors to be filled with the sort of clever, fast-talking journalists who had populated the Algonquin Round Table roughly 90 years earlier — an image reinforced by American movies such as His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story — Young instead discovered a rule-laden environment where all the hacks (writers) had long ago sold their souls to the flacks (publicists) who ruthlessly controlled access to their celebrities-of-the-moment.

"We have this idea that America's this great informal place," Young comments, in the film's press notes, "like one giant speakeasy where everyone is completely themselves. But London's quite like that; New York is nothing like that. New York's much more like London was 100 years ago."

Pegg's Sidney is introduced while struggling to make ends meet at a low-rent scandal-rag vaguely patterned after Spy, by way of any smutty British newspaper that boasts Page 3 girls. After he tries to crash the annual BAFTA Awards — with a pig he blithely claims is "Babe 3" — his cheeky stunt piques the interest of Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), editor-in-chief of New York's prestigious Sharps magazine (Vanity Fair in all but name).

Harding offers Sidney a job, which the eager Brit accepts ... for all the wrong reasons.

Bridges is a howl, all the funnier for the degree to which Harding maintains a straight face while first gently explaining the ropes to the pushy young newcomer, and then — as time passes — finding ample cause to question the decision that brought Sidney to New York.

Because Sidney doesn't just fail to fit in with the Sharps atmosphere; he willfully refuses to. Dressed as if he expected to be joining the crew at Mad magazine — despite being surrounded by Prada-garbed models and tuxedo-clad executives — Sidney cannot believe that this icily formal office environment is for real; he keeps expecting people to appreciate and even participate in his irreverent sense of humor.

Worse yet, the writers at Sharps blithely consent to producing vacuous puff pieces disguised as "revealing glimpses" of equally vacant-eyed celebrities, rather than puncture their self-absorbed balloons in a manner that Sidney remembers Harding doing, back when he was just starting out in the biz, as the youthful editor of a tell-all mag dubbed Snipe.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: Play this baby!

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) • View trailer for Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and rather generously, for profanity, sexual content, drinking and other bad behavior by teens
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.2.08
Buy DVD: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist • Buy Blu-Ray: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray]


Hollywood, forever trying to cannibalize past triumphs, often thinks this way:

In order to generate another teen-oriented hit, pair the hot young male lead (Michael Cera) from last year's Juno with the up-and-coming young female lead (Kat Dennings) from February's Charlie Bartlett — both of which were public and critical, teen-oriented successes — and voila ... another picture certain to draw that prized youthful demographic.

After Caroline (Ari Graynor, center) lives down to expectations by having way
too much to drink, it appears as though Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat
Dennings) won't have a chance to get to know each other after all. Fortunately,
Nick's friends ride to the rescue, although the results of their good intentions
turn the evening into an odyssey of Homeric proportions.

Sadly, that often isn't a winning recipe.

Happily, it is this time.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is a charming, often hilarious and occasionally poignant misfit romantic comedy set in New York's world of late-night living and very loud live music. Toss in just enough gross-out comedy to leave an impression without becoming tiresome, and the result is as lively and engaging as the mix-CDs produced by Cera's woebegone Nick.

The poor guy can't get over being dumped by his shallow ex-girlfriend, Tris (Alexis Dziena), and has taken "mental health days" away from high school in order to hibernate in his New Jersey bedroom while making a seemingly endless stream of mix-CDs to "commemorate" their break-up. These are ignored by Tris, who tosses each into the trash without a second glance ... an act of casual spitefulness that horrifies Norah (Dennings), who with best gal-pal Caroline (Ari Graynor) tolerates Tris as a frenemy.

One wonders why. The oh-so-hot Tris is a self-absorbed little witch who misses no opportunity to bad-mouth the plainer and quieter Norah, going so far as to suggest that Norah wouldn't even have any friends, were it not for her high-profile family connections (a secret left unrevealed for awhile).

Truth be told, Norah's too inherently kind to rip Tris' eyes out, particularly with good-time Caroline acting as peacemaker.

Besides, hanging out with Tris maintains Norah's access to these mix-CDs, which she adores; they seem to reflect the heart and mind of an unknown somebody who seems her ideal musical soulmate.

On this particular day, Nick is dragged away from self- indulgent moping by best buds and band mates Dev (Rafi Gavron) and Thom (Aaron Yoo) for a gig that night in the city. As the only straight member of The Jerk-Offs, Nick is something of an anomaly, but he certainly knows his music. And, reluctantly, he agrees to go.

The performance goes well enough, although it ends badly when Nick spots Tris in the audience with a new guy in tow. For her part, Tris has been hassling Norah over her apparently lack of a date (true), which she "proves" wrong by throwing her arms around the first halfway palatable guy she spots and giving him a wet one.

Eagle Eye: Flying blind

Eagle Eye (2008) • View trailer for Eagle Eye
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for brief profanity and relentless, vicious violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.26.08
Buy DVD: Eagle Eye • Buy Blu-Ray: Eagle Eye [Blu-ray]

This one requires a serious suspension of disbelief.

All momentum, very little logic and even less common sense, Eagle Eye is one long chase scene occasionally interrupted by reluctant dollops of exposition. It's pure 21st century Hollywood escapism: frantic, noisy and obsessed far more with the destruction of as much real estate as possible, rather than trifling details such as character development.

Rachel (Michelle Monaghan, left) and Jerry (Shia LaBeouf) can't imagine how
they'll get a mysterious suitcause — with contents that shouldn't be taken onto
a plane — through airport security. Little do they realize that assistance will
come from a very hidden ally...

It is, therefore, a serious comedown for director D.J. Caruso, who previously teamed with star Shia LaBeouf for the clever and well-plotted thriller Disturbia. That film took its time and allowed us to bond with its young protagonists, while also setting up some unsettling what's-he-really-doing tension with the mysterious guy who lived next door; by the time we hit the exciting third act, we genuinely cared about out heroes.

Not so with any of the stick figures in Eagle Eye, all of whom have less substance than off-market tissue paper. The only character liable to win our hearts and minds is young Sam Holloman (Cameron Boyce), and that's solely because he's an incredibly cute little guy. We like him for the same reason that we're instinctively drawn to puppies and kittens.

Jerry Shaw (LaBeouf), a serial slacker with no intention of embracing the career path proposed by his parents, has aimlessly traveled the world and kept himself going with odd jobs. His current address is a low-rent apartment in Chicago, his current paycheck earned as a counter clerk at a local copy shop.

He's brought back to the disapproving atmosphere of his family home by a senseless vehicular accident that killed his identical twin, Ethan, an Air Force public relations officer and pride of the family. After the funeral and a bitter confrontation with his father (William Sadler) — a truly clumsy, trite and utterly unbelievable exchange between LaBeouf and Sadler — Jerry returns home and finds that his bank account is $750,000 richer ... and that his apartment is stuffed with do-it-yourself terrorist supplies.

His cell phone rings; a woman's voice instructs him to leave the apartment, or he'll be arrested in 30 seconds. Jerry fails to leave, and is promptly — and none too gently — arrested by FBI agents. Supervisor Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton) conducts the subsequent interview, which of course goes nowhere; Jerry doesn't know anything. (Or does he, we begin to wonder, at this stage.)

Meanwhile...

Overly stressed single mom Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) is even more jittery than usual, due to 8-year-old Sam's first big trip away from home: a train journey to Washington, D.C., where he'll play trumpet with his school band, as the kids perform at the Kennedy Center.

That evening, after a particularly emotional farewell — punctuated by the brief arrival of her deadbeat ex- husband, another useless character we never see again (detect a pattern here?) — Rachel receives a similar phone call from what we recognize is the same woman. Rachel is ordered to find a particular vehicle and drive it to a pre-determined spot, with the warning that failure to comply will result in her son's death by train derailment.

Nights in Rodanthe: Contrived nonsense

Nights in Rodanthe (2008) • View trailer for Nights in Rodanthe
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and quite needlessly, for mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.25.08
Buy DVD: Nights in Rodanthe • Buy Blu-Ray: Nights in Rodanthe (+ BD-Live) [Blu-ray]


Full disclosure time:

I'm a hard-core romantic and a sucker for sweet little love stories; were it not for light-hearted caper thrillers — absolutely my favorite genre — starry-eyed melodramas would occupy the No. 1 spot.

Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere), having traveled to North Carolina's Outer
Banks during the off-season, for a supremely uncomfortable personal errand,
doesn't wish to eat alone at the inn managed by Adrienne Willis (Diane Lane);
he therefore brings his dinner into the kitchen and joins her. It's a cute, gently
flirtatious scene; sadly, the rest of the film can't match its charm.

And I'm absolutely equal-opportunity; I don't care whether the equation's two halves are a guy and a gal, two members of the same gender, mismatched robots or cowboy string-dolls named Woody and Jessie. As long as they fall into each other's arms as the final act concludes — or we know they will — I'm a happy camper.

Shirley MacLaine's sidelong demand that Jack Lemmon "Shut up and deal," at the end of 1960's The Apartment, is one of the greatest — and most romantic — closing lines ever written for a film.

I mention all this by way of demonstrating that I am, quite clearly, part of the target audience for director George C. Wolfe's adaptation of Nights in Rodanthe, scripted by Ann Peacock and John Romano, and based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks.

But despite my genre willingness, this flick did nothing for me.

Sparks, frequently courted by Hollywood, has a tendency to ladle his melodrama with a trowel; the films adapted from his overly contrived novels often suffer from the same disease.

Sparks' characters don't just suffer; they endure the overwhelming mental anguish of the damned.

It might work on the printed page, but selling such purple melodrama on the big screen depends on the acting talent involved.

Kevin Costner spent all of 1998's dreary and laughably improbable Message in a Bottle looking for character motivation.

2002's A Walk to Remember — despite the sympathetic treatment of its religious protagonist — was little more than a hiccup in Mandy Moore's slow rise up Hollywood's ladder of fame.

The Notebook, depending on your tolerance for such stuff, was either too maudlin for words or too sad to endure, although it certainly boasted a strong cast.

Which brings us to Nights in Rodanthe, which gets some of its notoriety for once again re-uniting stars Richard Gere and Diane Lane, who struck reasonably tragic sparks in Unfaithful, and first worked together all the way back in The Cotton Club.

Lane can act — quite well, in fact — and she pulls off this story's tougher scenes.

Gere cannot, and does not.