Color Book: An exquisite character piece

Color Book (2024) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for occasional profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.28.26

Writer/director David Fortune’s sensitively assembled little film completely erases the divide between viewer and screen; from the very first frame, it feels more like eavesdropping on two actual people.

 

Although this day begins with the excitement of attending an Atlanta Braves baseball
game, the journey for Mason (Jeremiah Alexander Davis, left) and Lucky (William
Catlett) will have unexpected hiccups.

This is a quiet story, constructed from a series of tender little moments that develop into an emotion-laden journey. Following a brief prologue, events take place during a single day. The characters are so well constructed, the performances so lovely, authentic and perfectly modulated, that we’re wholly immersed.

And, at times, genuinely worried.

 

The setting is present-day Atlanta, in a poorer part of the city. Lucky (William Catlett) and his adolescent son Mason (Jeremiah Alexander Daniels) are emotionally damaged, still grieving the unexpected loss of Lucky’s wife, and the boy’s mother, Tammy (Brandee Evans, in a few fleeting flashback sequences).

 

Mason has Down syndrome; we meet him early one morning, as he painstakingly strings beads. Lucky helps the boy into formal clothing; they make waffles. Lucky involves his son in the process; Mason pays careful attention, although he’s clearly more excited about the finished product. 

 

This film’s title reflects how Mason spends much of his time illustrating his thoughts via drawings in a coloring book, which gives the boy a secondary method of “speaking” to his father, and to us.

 

Lucky and Mason join friends in a nearby park, for a celebration of Tammy’s life: an initially somber but ultimately cheerful gathering, as everybody shares memories. Mason, fixated by the large cluster of balloons, is given one as this service concludes; he happily clings to it.

 

As everybody departs, Lucky’s friend Rico (rapper Kia Shine Coleman), connected with the Atlanta Braves, gives them tickets to the following evening’s game at Truist Park. Back at home, Lucky helps Mason into bed, reminding the boy to say his prayers before slipping under the covers.

 

Lucky’s bearing, speech and gaze bespeak more than anguish; he’s also exhausted, in body and spirit, from the constant care and attention that Mason requires. This formerly was a responsibility shared with Tammy, but her absence has placed this loving burden solely on Lucky’s shoulders.

 

No resentment is present. Catlett makes it clear that Lucky cherishes his son, attending to the boy with a tender patience resulting from long experience. Even so, this has taken a toll, exacerbated by the day’s activities.

 

And the following day begins on a worse note.

I Am Frankelda: Dazzling, but uneven

I Am Frankelda (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated PG, for dramatic intensity, scary images and fantasy violence

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

The imagination, craft and world-building in this fantasy — Mexico’s very first stop-motion animated feature — are off the chart.

 

I wish similar attention had been paid to the story.

 

After allowing her conscious self to be transported to Topus Terrentus (the Realm of
Terrors), Frankelda hopes that her lurid imagination will be enough to save
Prince Herneval's realm.

Even so, brothers Arturo and Roy Ambriz, who share writing and directing chores, have orchestrated a dazzling saga that plays on the (supposedly) thin line that separates reality from fantasy, truth from fiction. Neither can exist without the other.

The narrative is laden with 19th century Mexican culture, Day of the Dead folklore, creation myths and visual nods to the unsettling paintings of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.

 

Art fans also will smile at the film’s opening tableau: a fantasy-hued nod to Rodin’s massive bronze sculpture, The Gates of Hell.

 

The result feels like a mash-up of Pixar’s Coco, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Henry Selick’s adaptation of Coraline, and Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, Frankenweenie and Nightmare Before Christmas. That’s no surprise, since the brothers admitted — in a recent Los Angeles Times interview — that their lives changed after seeing a VHS version of the latter.

 

A lengthy prologue — set in 1866, in Mexico’s Real del Monte — introduces Francisca Imelda (voiced by Habana Zoé), an imaginative little girl who hopes to become a published author. We meet her on the sad day that her mother — who paints lovely landscapes — falls ill with what kills her soon thereafter.

 

This initial sequence is amazingly lush, despite the limitations of stop-motion work. The girl and her mother stand in a gorgeous field of swaying grass and flowers, with small creatures — a lizard and rabbit — hovering in the background. Tears flow from the girl’s eyes, when her mother collapses.

 

To comfort herself, Francisca writes fantastical stories about Herneval, the “Prince of Terrors” in Topus Terrentus (Realm of the Terrors). The girl’s grandmother, with whom she now lives, disdains this useless waste of time. The waspish old hag makes Francisca spend her days like a wage slave: cleaning up, darning clothes and every other chore demanded of her.

 

Unbeknownst to Francisca — and all human beings — Topus Terrentus and Herneval (Jules Presley) are real: He’s the son of King Ficturo (Beto Castillo) and Queen Veritena (Gabriela Cárdenas). All three resemble a regal cross between human beings and birds of prey.

 

Their realm is home to all of humanity’s fears; when Ficturo plays the immense harpspider — which connects to our Realm of Existence — he shapes human consciousness. The denizens of Topus Terrentus, in turn, are kept alive by the power of humanity’s nightmares.

 

Unfortunately, humans have become too sophisticated for the nighttime visions created by Procustes (Luis Leonardo Suárez) the Royal Nightmare Maker. His efforts have grown tired, stale and clichéd.

Toy Story 5: Absolutely perfect

Toy Story 5 (2026) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five); rated PG, for mild rude humor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.21.26

The Toy Story franchise has been a marvel since the first film’s 1995 debut.

 

This fifth entry is the best thus far: a bold statement, considering the quality, imagination, voice talent, carefully sculpted characters, sentimentality and heart that long have been this series’ hallmark.

 

When an angry Jessie insists that newcomer Lilypad is useless with respect to helping
Bonnie make new friends, the quick-thinking tablet briskly signs up the little girl with
three schoolmates ... in a chat room.

Ah, but this one adds an oh-so-timely new element: topicality.

Andrew Stanton and McKenna Harris, sharing writing and directing chores, have challenged these beloved characters with an existential threat: impending irrelevance, due to the competitive, soul-sucking arrival of (gasp, shudder) screens.

 

Woody, Buzz, Jessie and all the other toys have long cherished their crucial role in helping young owners nurture their imaginations, while also shaping their social skills. When one owner successfully “grows up,” the toys are passed along to another, as when college-bound Andy lovingly introduced his toy friends to young Bonnie, at the end of Toy Story 3.

 

But the increasingly ubiquitous tablets threaten to break that chain, which our heroes aren’t about to tolerate. They’ve no desire to mimic Puff the Magic Dragon, who “sadly slipped into his cave.”

 

Although this story gives everybody plenty of screen time, Jessie is the focus. Cusack deftly conveys this character’s huge emotional arc.

 

That said, this film opens on a disorienting and unexpected note. Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) wakens in a strange place, during a dark and stormy night. Waves crash on a debris-strewn beach. He spots a huge, damaged container several yards away, apparently having fallen off a passing ship. 

 

Peering inside, he spots 49 more Buzz Lightyears. He activates them; they assemble en masse to scout the island. Sharp-eyed viewers might notice a fleeting glimpse of their spacesuit decals: “Hi-Tech Edition.”

 

(Hold that thought.)

 

Uncertain of their location, unsure of what to do, they equate a blazing star in the nighttime sky with their venerable “Star Command” ... and, hastily assembling a raft, set off to reach it.

 

Meanwhile...

 

Bonnie (Scarlett Spears) happily plays with her toys, putting them through adventures that (for the first time) we “see” through her imaginative eyes. The visual style of these playtime sequences are wholly different: a pastel, tactile, chalk-drawing technique that evokes animated child’s drawings. The impact is sweet, vibrant and mirthfully silly.

 

This gaggle of toys, led by Jessie and Buzz, includes her faithful horse Bullseye, Rex (Wallace Shawn), Mr. Potato Head (Jeff Bergman), Slinky Dog (Blake Clark), Forky (Tony Hale) and many other familiar faces.

 

Woody (Tom Hanks), Bo Peep (Annie Potts) and Combat Carl (Ernie Hudson) are elsewhere at the moment.

 

Disclosure Day: The truth is out there

Disclosure Day (2026) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for action violence, gruesome images and some profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.14.26 

This is 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind writ very large.

 

Director Steven Spielberg’s original story — fleshed out by skilled genre screenwriter David Koepp — hits the ground running, and trusts viewers to catch up.

 

Despite being surrounded by shadowy agents with orders to apprehend them, each
one unexpectedly steps aside as Margaret (Emily Blunt) and Daniel (Josh O'Connor)
slowly walk toward potential freedom.

The film opens suspensefully on a late-night hostage swap. Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) apparently stole something quite valuable from Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of WARDEX — “Waived Reporting, Development and Extraction” — a shadowy Department of Defense contractor that apparently answers to nobody. 

This is made clear by the fact that Casper Boyd (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), Scanlon’s go-to “dirty work” field agent, kidnapped Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), in order to facilitate this exchange. It looks fairly cut and dried ... until Daniel raises a small, slender, metallic bipyramid that he holds in one carefully gloved hand.

 

Scanlon and all of his black-garbed associates carefully back away.

 

Daniel and Jane flee, which kicks off the first of this film’s several pell-mell chase sequences. They manage to escape, much to Scanlon’s vexation. (Firth displays an impressive level of barely controlled rage.) But how can they stayhidden, given all the high-tech surveillance resources available to Scanlon? 

 

Meanwhile...

 

Chirpy Kansas City KCXE-TV news meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), after completing a day’s work, returns home to boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell), a low-stress musician and Fruit Loops-loving Everyman. The following morning, before she leaves for the morning shift, they’re startled when a red cardinal flies in an open window and perches on the kitchen table. 

 

And stares at her. She stares back, trance-like, Blunt’s expression suddenly a blank, wordless slate.

 

Shaking herself from this fugue, she rushes off to work. After arriving at KCXE, she suddenly starts speaking in foreign languages ... including, as this scene’s uneasy atmosphere builds, a series of guttural clicks, burps and grunts that don’t sound the slightest bit human.

 

Shortly thereafter, she feels a strange, strong pull to go “somewhere else,” much to Jackson’s bewilderment. Somewhere north. 

 

Throughout scenes with these two sets of characters, disturbing radio reports and TV news broadcasts warn of the rapidly increasing probability of a world-wide nuclear war. The threat level jumps to DEFCON 2.

Miss You, Love You: Captivating character study

Miss You, Love You (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated TV-MA, for profanity

Available via: HBO

By Derrick Bang

Two-handers are a challenge on film, because they often feel like plays that wandered into the wrong medium, losing some of their live-on-stage intensity in the process.

 

That isn’t an issue when one of the performers is Oscar winner Allison Janney.

 

As time passes, Diane (Allison Janney) and Jamie (Andrew Rannells) learn a lot about
each other, including the fact that they're both wounded sparrows.

We expect great work from her, and she certainly delivers. This film’s biggest surprise is that co-star Andrew Rannells matches her, line for line, and scene for scene.

Their shared energy is nurtured by writer/director Jim Rash, who grants them a beguiling premise, plenty of tart dialogue, and numerous revelatory exchanges that ramp up the emotional intensity.

 

We’re dumped into the story without preamble, as Jamie Simms (Rannells) parks in the driveway of an attractive New Mexico suburban home, adjacent to nearby desert land. He drags out luggage for what we assume will be a lengthy stay, knocks on the door, and confronts Diane Patterson (Janney), who doesn’t know him from Adam.

 

What initially seems like rude hostility actually is a blend of anger, disappointment and crippling grief. She’s mourning her recently deceased husband, whose departure was preceded by a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s. She hoped that her estranged son Tyler would help her handle the necessary details; instead, he sent Jamie, his assistant.

 

Which, yes, feels coldly insensitive.

 

Jamie, wide-eyed and inappropriately prepped, visibly shrinks under her withering verbal explosion of dismay. She doesn’t shout or screen — Diane is too refined for that — but Janney employs plenty of perfectly articulated, pent-up spite in order to intimidate her visitor.

 

“Am I a lot?” she scathingly asks, after pausing for breath.

 

“No,” Jamie politely lies.

 

“That’s a shame,” she snaps back, “because I’m trying to be.”

 

Resignation eventually sets in; Diane does need help, and the solicitous Jamie won’t be cowed into retreat. He explains that Tyler wanted to help, but is hung up waiting to interview a former POW in Khartoum; he has promised to come as soon as he can. Tyler and Jamie text each other relentlessly, which also annoys Diane. (How could it not?)

 

Jamie notices that Diane seems to be killing the potted succulents that her late husband Henry left behind. (That’ll prompt a smile from gardeners, who know full well that one must work very hard to kill a succulent.)

Power Ballad: Music to our ears

Power Ballad (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated R, for relentless profanity and some drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.7.26 

Irish writer/director John Carney clearly loves music as much as I admire his films.

 

Starting with 2006’s charming Once — with its poignant, Academy Award-winning song “Falling Slowly” — and continuing through 2013’s Begin Again, 2016’s Sing Street and 2023’s Flora and Son — Carney has found fresh ways to explore the complicated, sometimes maddening relationship his characters have with music, and their muse.

 

After a blend of swapped stories, too much alcohol, and a mutual love of songwriting,
Danny (Nick Jonas, left) and Rick (Paul Rudd) play original tunes for each other.

His newest beguiling drama, co-written with Peter McDonald, focuses on the frequently shattering impact today’s corporate, money-driven music industry has on talented individuals who don’t ... quite ... make it.

Back in the day, American singer/songwriter Rick (Paul Rudd) established a modest presence and released a few albums. While performing in Dublin during an international tour, he met and married Rachel (Marcella Plunkett) ... and never left. Pop star aspirations were set aside 14 years ago, when their daughter Aja (Beth Fallon) was born.

 

Rick now is the charismatic lead singer of a pop/rock quintet dubbed The Bride and Groove, which is reasonably successful on the local wedding circuit. Unfortunately, Rick has a tendency to sprinkle one of his own early tunes among the band’s popular, by-request selection of power ballad covers such as Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” ... to the constant annoyance of band leader Binzer (Rory Keenan).

 

While at  home, Rick continues to noodle away at new songs. One in particular — a sentimental ballad titled “How to Write a Song Without You” — has obsessed him for years, but he can’t quite get it right.

 

He frequently shares his efforts with his disinterested daughter, who scoffs at romantic lyrics.

 

What do you want out of a song, Rick asks.

 

“Revenge,” Aja replies, without skipping a beat.

 

The band’s next booking is a posh gig at a massive estate reminiscent of Downton Abbey. Toward the performance’s conclusion, newlyweds George (Robert Mitchell) and Elaine (Mae Higgins) ask the band to let a “friend” share a song. He turns out to be American pop star Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a former “boy band” sensation now struggling to establish a solo career.

 

Later that evening, once all the revelers have retired, Rick and Danny bond over their shared love of music. After plenty of alcohol and shared stories, they play music for each other; Danny gratefully accepts Rick’s suggested feedback and lyrical notes. As dawn approaches, Rick plays “How to Write a Song” on the piano, which clearly impresses Danny.

 

Carney lets this warm and enchanting montage sequence unfold at a leisurely pace. Both actors are note-perfect as their respective characters thaw, surprise and impress each other, and develop a palpable level of mutual respect.

 

As they part, Danny hands Rick his record label’s business card, encouraging him to keep in touch.

 

She Dances: Plenty of the right moves

She Dances (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for fleeting profanity and some drug references

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

This is a Wince During The First Half And Pray For A Reasonably Happy Outcome movie.

 

I don’t mean that in a bad way. Director/co-writer Rick Gomez’s feature debut is a frequently charming little character drama, which depicts the often embarrassing struggle of an estranged father and his teenage daughter trying to re-connect, after a tragedy ripped the family apart.

 

As Claire (Audrey Zahn, left) and Kat (Mackenzie Ziegler) look on with mounting
dismay, a flummoxed Jason (Steve Zahn) discovers that his intended hotel room
upgrade has misfired in a devastating way.

The film also features a noteworthy acting debut by dancer/choreographer Audrey Zahn, working here with her father Steve Zahn, playing — you guessed it — the aforementioned daughter and father.

This seems to have become something of a thing. Ethan Hawke directed his daughter Maya in 2023’s Wildcat; and Ewan McGregor and daughter Clara played a similarly estranged family unit in that same year’s Bleeding Love.

 

This new film is considerably better McGregor’s effort, and for several reasons. The situation is more relatable; Gomez’s touch is gentler, and at times quite funny; and the script — by Gomez and Steve Zahn — grants everybody plenty of persuasively awkward moments that’ll likely feel familiar to many viewers.

 

Kat (Audrey Zahn) has spent her entire life dancing, both for joy and in competition. Her bedroom is filled with ribbons and trophies, and everything has built up to the impending Southern Regional Dance Finals. Kat lives with her mother Deb (Rosemarie DeWitt); her long-unseen father Jason (Steve Zahn) parted following their divorce.

 

The plan was for Deb to take her daughter and longtime partner/BFF Kat (Mackenzie Ziegler) to the competition, but a last-minute emergency demands Deb’s presence elsewhere. With no other options — although Claire initially views this as a non-starter — Deb calls Jason and asks him to step in. Claire still is 17, and the rules require her to be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

 

“It’ll be perfect,” Deb insists.

 

“It’ll be perfectly imperfect,” Claire snaps back.

 

Due to the sort of coincidence that often lurks in stories of this nature, Jason and longtime business partner and best friend Brian (Ethan Hawke) are in the midst of negotiating the sale of their popular Two Jack Bourbon business. Immediately recognizing the importance of this opportunity, Brian insists that the astonished Jason doesn’t pass it up.

 

Zahn’s wavering expressions, over this wholly unexpected turn of events, speak volumes: Jason is surprised, pleased, worried and — most of all — terrified ... particularly because he can tell, over the phone, that Claire isn’t wild about the idea. He hasn’t spent quality time with her for years, and hasn’t the faintest idea how to relate to her.

 

Then, too, the long-ago tragedy hovers over everything.