Elio: Out of this world

Elio (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for animated action peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.29.25

Pixar still has the touch.

 

Although this wildly imaginative sci-fi fable is one of the animation studio’s goofiest, the story nonetheless is fueled by the essential element common to all of the best Pixar films: relatable human angst. Within minutes, our hearts ache for the title character (voiced by Yonas Kibreab): a lonely little boy still mourning the unexpected loss of his parents.

 

Since Elio is believed to be the official ambassador from the planet Earth, he's formally
introduced to all the dignitaries in the celestial Communiverse.

Pixar animators excel at conveying emotion, via the slump-shouldered set of the boy’s body, his doleful gaze and mournful expression. He’s lonely ... achingly lonely.

And, like any adolescent under such circumstances, he acts out: much to the consternation of his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña), in whose care the boy has been placed. A brilliant Air Force major who has put her career partially on hold, she hasn’t any clue about how to handle her rebellious nephew.

 

His head literally is in the stars. Convinced that he can’t possibly fit into his current environment, the space-obsessed boy repeatedly tries to make contact with extra-terrestrials, hoping that he can be “abducted by aliens” to a happier, more magical place. He comes by this fixation honestly; Olga is stationed at California’s coastal Montez Air Force Base, where she and her team monitor satellite and orbiting debris activity.

 

The story’s first quick-cut comedy shot — of Elio lying on a beach, surrounded by an abduction plea scooped in the sand — is hilarious.

 

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the boy, in a galaxy far, far away ...

 

... various planetary dignitaries belonging to the benevolent Communiverse have long studied our Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched back in 1977 with its “golden record” that showcases Earth’s diversity via greetings, sounds and images. (Yep, there’s real science at the root of this saga.) They’re therefore primed when, through luck and happenstance, they intercept one of Elio’s ham radio messages.

 

And — poof! — he’s beamed light-years away, to the Communiverse.

 

Thanks to Ooooo (Shirley Henderson) — a liquid supercomputer that accommodates and assists species of all kinds who visit — and an amazing Universal User’s Manual, Elio is able to communicate with the strangest and most colorful assortment of aliens ever to grace the silver screen. 

 

Their primary spokespeople are Ambassador Questa (Jameela Jamil), a 15-foot-tall leafy pink sea dragon who hails from the planet Gom; and Ambassador Helix (Brandon Moon), a purplish blob with prominent eyebrows, who hails from the planet Falluvinum.

 

They assume that Elio is Earth’s official ambassador, a belief the quick-witted boy chooses not to correct. (Goodness, no; he’s having too much fun!)

Cleaner: Needs more polish

Cleaner (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, brief drug use and frequent profanity

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

This feels like the British response to Die Hard.

 

Director Martin Campbell has plenty of muscular action epics on his résumé, including a pair of Bonds — GoldenEye and Casino Royale — so he’s certainly comfortable with the genre. Alas, the major problem here is that Simon Uttley, Paul Andrew Williams and Matthew Orton’s script wanders during the first two acts, making us wait too long to get to the “good stuff.”

 

Joey (Daisy Ridley) desperately tries to break a shatter-proof glass window, in order to
gain entry to the high-rise building that is under siege by eco-terrorists.

Even so, the story establishes a nice bond between Joey (Daisy Ridley) and her autistic older brother, Michael (Matthew Tuck), which has a sweet payoff in the climactic third act.

A brief prologue shows adolescent Joey (Poppy Townsend White) growing up in an abusive household, where she has developed Spider-Man-style wall-climbing skills as a means of fleeing her father’s outbursts. Flash-forward 20 years; Joey has blossomed into a tough woman with a hair-trigger aversion to bad behavior by men. Her potential career with the British Army’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment concluded abruptly after she beat up a misogynistic fellow soldier.

 

Her current job as a window cleaner at London’s One Canada Square — the UK’s third-tallest building — is the latest in a series of dead-end jobs. Her inability to maintain a stable lifestyle is mirrored by her brother, a hacker savant who has just been bounced from his ninth care facility placement. She’s therefore forced to bring him to work on this fateful day, and parks him in the building lobby. (Really, she should know better.)

 

In an upstairs ballroom, Agnian Energy is touting its clean, planet-friendly credentials during a shareholder gala hosted by CEOs Geoffrey Milton (Rufus Jones) and his piggish brother Gerald (Lee Boardman). The party is crashed by Marcus Blake (Clive Owen) and fellow members of his radical Earth Revolution eco-activists; they’re determined to expose the Miltons as hypocrites whose company has made its millions via heinous pollution and razing of pristine forest land.

 

Although terrifying for the guests, this activist action is somewhat reasonable — given Agnian’s truly deplorable behavior — until Blake’s control is usurped by one of his violently unhinged Earth Revolution associates: radical antihumanist Lucas Vander (Taz Skylar). Then things get really nasty.

 

Joey, stuck outside the building, witnesses the whole thing ... and can do nothing.

 

Worse yet, when she resourcefully figures out a way to alert police, her actions are spotted by Vander, who calls 999 and claims that she’s a terrorist.

 

This is when the script goes off the rails, because that’s an eyebrow-lifting contrivance too many.

Sally: A celestial star

Sally (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated TV-14, for sexual candor

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.22.25

The inevitable first impression: her ubiquitous smile.

 

That warm, radiant, all-encompassing and seemingly spontaneous smile, accompanied by sparkling eyes, with a hint of mischief.

 

Flanked by numerous male colleagues — not all of whom were happy to have her in their
midst — Sally Ride absorbs the information during one of many pre-flight briefings.

Even when she deflected an impertinent question, it was done with a reassuring grin, as if to say, I know why you asked, but don’t do it again.

Ride was the quintessential Beach Boys’ California girl, albeit two decades later. To merely see her picture was to be dazzled.

 

For a decade that began in 1978, when she was one of six women accepted into the upcoming space shuttle program — NASA recently had made a big show of starting to include “women and minorities” in astronaut training — Sally Ride’s photo was everywhere. More than any other woman in history, she became a progressive symbol for girls with stars and STEM careers in their eyes, who embraced her oft-quoted words as a mantra:

 

“Women in this country can do any job they want to do.”

 

Director Cristina Costantini’s absorbing documentary lovingly depicts the Sally Ride the public knew and adored, but that’s only half her story. The other half didn’t come to light until 2012, with the publication of her obituary.

 

That half gives Costantini’s film its emotional heft.

 

She and co-scripter Tom Maroney take a leisurely approach, with a primary narrative that opens dramatically, as Ride and four fellow (male) astronauts are loaded into the STS-7 Challenger shuttle on June 18, 1983, for a six-day mission.

 

“It’s important that I don’t do anything dumb,” she comments, well aware that the eyes of the world are upon her; Costantini cuts to an amused grin from celebrated newsman Walter Cronkite.

 

The film then flashes back to Ride’s Southern California childhood as a young tennis star; as the narrative progresses, occasional non-linear segments dip back into the past, by way of explaining what occurs in the moment. The considerable archival footage is supplemented by extensive on-camera commentary, anecdotes and confessional observations by her longtime partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy.

 

That’s the detail nobody knew until after Ride died.

Deep Cover: Hilariously perilous role-playing

Deep Cover (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, drug use and frequent profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

This film’s premise is irresistible, and the execution is a hoot.

 

The four scripters — Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow, Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen — concocted a sharp comedy thriller with plenty of mirthful, rat-a-tat dialogue. Director Tom Kingsley and editor Mark Williams maintain a lively pace, and Daniel Pemberton’s score adds just the right flourish.

 

Fly (Paddy Considine, far left) is impressed by what his new colleagues — from left,
Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard), Hugh (Nick Mohammed) and Marlon (Orlando Bloom) —
have accomplished ... even if he doesn't entirely trust them.

The casting is inspired, and the players inhabit their parts with élan. At first blush, the three stars seem like unlikely collaborators, but they deftly play to each other’s strengths.

Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard), a wannabe stand-up comic, has taken solace in leading improv lessons for other would-be superstars; she’s sweet, patient and nurturing. One of her students is the über-serious Marlon (Orlando Bloom), who has embraced Stanislavski’s method approach to an unfortunate degree, and believes himself the next Robert De Niro. Even so, the poor guy can’t do better than TV commercials.

 

Elsewhere, shy IT wonk Hugh (Nick Mohammed) hasn’t the faintest concept of social skills, and frequently is ridiculed by his co-workers. He stumbles into Kat’s class one day, hoping to learn the fine art of casual conversation, and become more at ease with himself.

 

Unknown to all, Kat and her students have been observed by veteran London police officer Billings (Sean Bean), who has hatched an audacious plan for a sting operation. Knowing that bad guys can smell undercover cops a mile away, Billings proposes that Kat, Marlon and Hugh work as a team to help nail small-potatoes criminals selling knock-off cigarettes.

 

Intrigued by the challenge — and also excited by the low-level danger — they agree.

 

When they show up the next day, Kat has tarted up, going for tough-chick street sleaze, accompanied by a sassy attitude. Marlon looks, sounds and behaves like a dangerous mob enforcer, while Nick ... looks like himself. Which is to say, a nerdy accountant, prompting a long-suffering sigh from Billings.

 

Their assignment is simple: Stroll into a nearby bodega, ask the guy behind the counter for the “cheap stuff,” complete the purchase, and depart.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

Quite a lot, as events go down, because Kat and Marlon are too eager to go off-book, repeatedly relying on her “Yes, and...?” class exercise. As a result, they snag an invite to make a major buy from local drug baron Fly (Paddy Considine), which exasperates and delights Billings.

 

But although Kat and Marlon look and sound like who they’re supposed to be, Fly regards Hugh warily, questioning his appearance. “That’s why we call him Squire,” Kat quickly interjects, while Hugh smiles awkwardly.

 

In a film laden with laugh-out-loud moments, none is funnier than Mohammed’s nervous body language and mounting terror, when Fly insists that Hugh test the purity of the product.

How to Train Your Dragon: Still a thoughtful fantasy

How to Train Your Dragon (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, perhaps generously, despite intense fantasy action and peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.15.25

I deemed this film’s 2010 animated predecessor perfect, which is a term I rarely use.

 

Writer/director Dean DeBlois’ (mostly) live-action remake therefore had mighty large shoes to fill.

 

After spending several days trying to earn this massive dragon's trust, Hiccup
(Mason Thames) achieves an important breakthrough.

On the encouraging side, DeBlois also co-wrote and co-directed the 2010 original — and its two sequels — all loosely based on British author Cressida Cowell’s children’s book series; he therefore knows the material quite well. DeBlois also cleverly reused one of the original voice actors in his same role here, which is a nice touch of continuity ... as also is retaining John Powell as score composer.

While the result here isn’t up to the original’s quality, it gets reasonably close, and avid fans of the 2010 film will recognize key moments and bits of dialogue.

 

Perhaps too many of them, actually; at times this feels like a scene-for-scene copy.

 

The setting is a long time ago, in an isolated Viking community far, far away. The island of Berk consists of dwellings nestled amid rocky outcroppings, whose inhabitants have long dealt with a unique pest problem: an assortment of imaginatively named, bad-tempered, fire-breathing dragons that frequently raid the community to torch homes while snatching sheep ... and the occasional luckless human.

 

The beasts have been catalogued in a massive book that describes size, speed, levels of danger, weaknesses (if any) and other details. As was the case in the animated film — and Cowell’s book — the story’s whimsy comes from the syntax-mangling names given the creatures: Gronckle, Deadly Nadder, Scauldron, Hideous Zippleback and many more.

 

Along with the legendary Night Fury, which nobody ever has seen.

 

Under the guidance of tribal leader Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) and inventive blacksmith/weapons designer Gobber (Nick Frost), the villagers have managed to hold their own. Sort of. Stoick occasionally leads ocean-going sorties in an effort to locate and destroy the dragons’ nest, but they’ve never been able to find it; each attempt merely produces more casualties.

 

Stoick’s overly impetuous son, Hiccup (Mason Thames), can’t wait to follow in his father’s footsteps, by joining one such mission. Unfortunately, Hiccup is uncoordinated, timid and completely useless during dragon raids; he therefore has been apprenticed to Gobber, who fails to credit the boy’s clever dragon-battling gadgets.

 

The Phoenician Scheme: Droll lunacy

The Phoenician Scheme (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence, bloody images and mild sexual material

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Whether working with actors or animation, writer/director Wes Anderson is his own unique brand of crazy.

 

When everything clicks — as with The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs, Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox— the results are imaginatively marvelous.

 

Yet another in-flight assassination attempt forces Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro, left) to
take control of the plane, while Liesl (Mia Threapleton) and Bjorn (Michael Cera) watch
with mounting horror.

But when Anderson’s signature tics and mannerisms overwhelm the material — see Asteroid City, The French Dispatch and The Darjeeling Limited — we’re left with something dire and (for many viewers) utterly unwatchable.

This one’s somewhere in between.

 

For starters, it’s refreshing to see that Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola have delivered an actual plot that drives the wacky action (something sorely missed in Asteroid City). Granted, it’s a dog-nuts plot, but it makes sense, and gives the primary characters genuine motivation. 

 

Anderson also tackles some weighty concepts along the way: legacy, mortality and the final reckoning that results from one’s confrontation with God.

 

God, of course, is played by Bill Murray. Who else?

 

The art direction and production design — by Stephan O. Gessler and Adam Stockhausen, respectively — are spectacular. The latter has worked on every Anderson film since 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom, and he won a well-deserved Academy Award for The Grand Budapest Hotel.

 

The wildly distinctive look of an Anderson film has become legendary. His characters inhabit often static environments that sometimes feel like gigantic doll houses, with theatrical-style backdrops and finely tuned details that don’t quite exist in our workaday world: more like hyper-reality. Anderson favors color schemes in earth tones and soft pastels, which — in this case — occasionally are interrupted by Heaven’s blindingly white monochrome.

 

Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel constantly plays with cockeyed camera angles and forced perspective; one early sequence is entirely a ceiling’s-eye view.

 

All of this establishes another of Anderson’s highly mannered, theater-of-the-absurd narratives: a style you’ll either embrace as cheerfully silly ... or dismiss as ludicrous.

 

The time is the 1950s. Zsa-Zsa Korda (a hilariously deadpan Benicio del Toro), a notorious plutocrat industrialist loathed throughout the world, is introduced mid-flight, as a bomb explodes in the rear of his private plane. He survives the subsequent crash: the sixth recent attempt on his life by unknown parties.

 

His gargantuan business empire also is under threat via financial scrutiny and political pressure, most particularly — at the moment — his complex “Phoenician Scheme”: an interlocking series of railway, shipping, mining and agricultural ventures designed to dominate a (fictitious) Middle Eastern country. This venture has been jeopardized by the U.S. government’s market-manipulating act to exponentially increase the cost of the “bashable rivets” necessary for all elements of Korda’s complicated plan.

 

He therefore must persuade each of his investors to accept less profit than contractually promised; each meeting becomes its own distinctive chapter.

Karate Kid: Legends — All the right moves

Karate Kid: Legends (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for punishing martial arts violence, and minor profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.8.25

A pleasant degree of nostalgia glows within this sixth entry in the popular franchise, and not merely because of its two name stars.

 

Mr. Han (Jackie Chan, left) and Daniel (Ralph Macchio, right) examine the rules for the
upcoming Five Boroughs Martial Arts Tournament, while Li (Ben Wang) sizes up his
likely opponents.

Director Jonathan Entwistle adopts an old-school, family-friendly approach, and scripter Rob Lieber deftly bridges key events going back to the 1984 series debut, along with an occasional nod to the interwoven Cobra Kai TV series. At an economical 94 minutes, this coming-of-age saga tells its story without a trace of unnecessary filler.

Entwistle and Lieber set the stage with a flashback scene lifted from 1986’s Karate Kid Part II, and cleverly re-purposed to establish a long-time friendship between Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) and Mr. Miyagi (the late Pat Morita). This defines the “two branches, one tree” mantra that binds Han kung fu and Miyagi-do karate: rooted in the same style, and — despite their differences — connected and compatible.

 

Shifting to the present day, Mr. Han is introduced as the respected shifu (master) of a large kung fun school in Beijing. His students include his great-nephew, Li Fong (Ben Wang), attending against the wishes of his mother, Dr. Fong (Ming-Na Wen). She insists that he abandon martial arts and fighting, having lost her elder son, Bo (Yankei Ge), during a lethal attack by thugs led by a defeated opponent.

 

(That’s a bit of a whoosh, and no; this wasn’t covered in a film you somehow missed. It’s solely back-story here.)

 

Unable to endure remaining in China, with its tragic memories, Dr. Fong has accepted a position at a New York City hospital. Li is forced to bid farewell to Mr. Han.

 

The Big Apple is a big adjustment, but Li gamely navigates subway routes, a new school, and a lack of friends. The latter improves when he meets Mia (Sadie Stanley), who works after school at the pizza joint owned by her father, former boxer Victor Lipani (Joshua Jackson).

 

Li and Mia spark, and they’re adorable; Wang and Stanley totally sell the tentative, flirty trajectory of their growing relationship. That said, Li runs mildly afoul of the amused Victor at the outset, when he “insults” the man by requesting a stuffed crust pizza. 

 

From that moment forward, Li is forever nicknamed Stuffed Crust. 

 

The two teens strike a bargain: She’ll show him New York, while he teaches her Chinese, in order to barter better with Chinese merchants.