The Personal History of David Copperfield: A Dickens of a treat

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) • View trailer

4.5 stars. Rated PG, for occasional dramatic intensity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.9.21

I haven’t had this much fun with Charles Dickens, since 1982’s miniseries adaptation of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.

 

Mind you, “fun” isn’t easy to pull off, when it comes to Dickens. He does love to make his protagonists suffer.

 

As a clever means of helping his friend Mr. Dick (Hugh Laurie, right) exorcise the
"thoughts of King Charles I" that constantly haunt him, David (Dev Patel) suggests
that these snatches be written onto scraps of paper, to then be attached to a large
kite, so they can be blown away and "erased" by a strong wind.

Even so, director/co-scripter Armando Iannucci’s Personal History of David Copperfield — available via HBO Max — is a high-spirited romp: enlivened by marvelous performances, a cheeky interpretation of Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel — co-scripted with Simon Blackwell — breathless pacing, and occasionally dazzling bursts of Terry Gilliam-style special effects.

The mere fact that this film cleverly covers so much of Dickens’ dense novel — 877 pages (!), in the Oxford edition — is astonishing all by itself. Granted, this cinematic experience is akin to a 119-minute sprint, but it’s hard to complain when the result is so entertaining.

 

David Copperfield boasts two of Dickens’ best-known supporting characters: the melodramatic, nobly flustered and penniless Wilkins Micawber, steadfastly retaining his dignity while forever one short step ahead of legions of debt collectors (and based on Dickens’ father); and the smarmy, sneakily loathsome Uriah Heep, one of the most creepily detestable villains ever concocted. They’re brought to glorious life by, respectively, Peter Capaldi and Ben Whishaw.

 

Acknowledging the joy and phenomenal success that Dickens experienced giving public performances of his works — less staid readings, and more acting tours de force (one of the author’s friends noted that “Dickens was like an entire theater company … under one hat”) — Iannucci opens his film as the adult David Copperfield (Dev Patel) stands on the stage of a theater crowded with fans, holding a stack of pages, and intones one of Dickens’ most famous introductions:

 

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

 

Young David (Ranveer Jaiswal, cute as a button) spends his happy early years without a father, raised more by a doting housekeeper, Clara Peggotty (Daisy May Cooper), than his loving but waiflike mother (Morfydd Clark), who mourns the loss of her husband. Alas, when David is 7, she re-marries the cruel and abusive Edward Murdstone (Darren Boyd, suitably imperious), who beats the boy for falling behind in his studies. 

 

Murdstone is accompanied by his equally nasty spinster sister, Jane (the imposing Gwendoline Christie, well remembered as Brienne of Tarth, in HBO’s Game of Thrones).

Love, Sarah: A scrumptious confection

Love, Sarah (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Not rated, and — aside from brief profanity — suitable for all ages

By Derrick Bang 

Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for a well-crafted foodie movie.

 

Particularly one that involves desserts.

 

Having decided to put their new pastry chef to the test, Mimi (Celia Imrie, left),
Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet, center) and Isabella (Shelley Conn) marvel at the
chocolate masterpiece he has prepared.

Director Eliza Schroeder’s Love Sarah — available via Hulu — is a gentle, low-key relationship drama (definitely not a comedy, despite what IMDB claims) set in London’s Notting Hill district. There’s nothing special or unusual in the script — co-written by Schroeder, Jake Brunger and Mahalia Rimmer — which follows a fairly routine path to an entirely predictable conclusion.

Here in the States, these ingredients probably would generate a puerile melodrama on the Hallmark or Lifetime channel. Happily, Schroeder and her cast are much better than that; the narrative may be conventional, but the execution is charming.

 

The story begins on a happy note that quickly turns tragic. Longtime best friends Sarah (Candice Brown) and Isabella (Shelly Conn) are poised to open their own bakery shop. Bicycling across London with the keys to the empty storefront where Isabella eagerly awaits, Sarah is killed in a traffic accident.

 

The world … stops.

 

Except that it doesn’t; it never does. 

 

Isabella, stuck with a business space she no longer wants anything to do with, despairs over trying to break the lease. Sarah’s 19-year-old daughter, Clarissa (Shannon Tarbet), numbly continues her dance training, all passion drained from her efforts. To make matters even worse, she’s dumped by her callous jerk of a boyfriend, leaving her nowhere to live.

 

In desperation, Clarissa turns to her estranged grandmother, Mimi (Celia Imrie), who — also grieving — welcomes the company.

 

Not long thereafter, having had time to process the situation, Clarissa realizes that they need a pathway out of their heartache. She confronts Mimi and Isabella, insisting that they must continue with the bakery plans. “It’s what Sarah would have wanted,” she implores.

 

But Sarah was to be the baker, Isabella protests. Fine, Clarissa replies, so we’ll hire a pastry chef.

Dream Horse: A crowd-pleasing winner

Dream Horse (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.28.21 

Nothing beats the triumphant emotional rush of a well-crafted underdog story.

 

Except, perhaps, an under-horse story.

 

Particularly one based quite closely on actual events.

 

You just can't beat the excitement of birth, as Jan (Toni Collette) and Brian (Owen Teale)
discover, when their new foal enters the world.

Welsh director Euros Lyn’s Dream Horse is the feel-good film of spring: a timely reminder of the amazing things that can be accomplished when people unite for a common cause. Scripter Neil McKay, gifted with an already incredible true story, has populated these events with the sort of quirky, colorful, small-town residents and eccentrics who pop up in whimsical dramedies such as Gregory’s Girl, The Closer You Get and The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain.

That many of Lyn’s actors are portraying real people, is the icing on the cake.

 

The time is just before the turn of the 21st century, the setting the depressed hamlet of Cefn Fforest in South Wales, fallen on hard times since the closure of its nearby mines. The indefatigable Jan Vokes (Toni Collette) rises at dawn every morning, in order to wash the floors and then work register at a local mega-market; in the evenings, she tends bar at a workingmen’s club.

 

In between, somehow, she looks after her elderly parents and her arthritic husband, Brian (Owen Teale). In her free time (!), as a lifelong animal lover, she raises rabbits, whippets, ducks and even prize-winning pigeons.

 

One evening, she chances to hear a conversation led by club patron Howard Davies (Damian Lewis), while he waxes eloquent about the trials and tribulations — and expense — of raising race horses. Captivated by the notion, despite its complete impracticality, Jan immerses herself in horse lore and pumps Howard for additional information.

 

Fully aware that she’d never be able to buy a racing thoroughbred, Jan opts for the alternative of creating one, by purchasing an undistinguished mare for £300 and installing it in a makeshift stable in her garden. But breeding and then training a racehorse will require much, much more money.

 

Her solution: to enlist the financial support of local townsfolk, via a co-ownership syndicate. On the appointed evening — having mounted and distributed flyers throughout the community — Jan, Brian and Howard nervously wait for somebody to arrive.

 

They ultimately wind up with a motley collection of 23 villagers, each of whom agrees to contribute £10 per week, in service of this wild scheme. Several of these individuals are unemployed and on the dole; others barely make ends meet in their own small businesses. But all are inspired by Jan’s passion, and by the tantalizing notion — however unlikely — of raising and then racing a champion horse.

The Woman in the Window: Draw the curtains

The Woman in the Window (2021) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated R, for violence and profanity

By Derrick Bang

This one should have been a slam-dunk, because the premise is irresistible.

 

And classic.

 

(Alfred Hitchcock certainly thought so, back in the day.)

 

Jane (Julianne Moore, right) proudly shows Anna (Amy Adams) a photo of her son,
which she keeps in a locket.

Consider the elements: Author A.J. Finn’s best-selling 2018 thriller, adapted for the screen by Tony- and Pulitzer-winning playwright Tracy Letts; a top-flight cast headed by Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore and Jennifer Jason Leigh; and director Joe Wright, whose striking visual sense has propelled terrific films such as Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Darkest Hour.

 

Trouble is, we’ll likely never see the film this team created.

 

The Woman in the Window became an orphan when its studio parent, Fox 2000, was absorbed by Disney in March 2019. (In a demonstration of childish behavior akin to Nature at her cruelest, takeover studios rarely embrace projects birthed by the vanquished “parent.”) Bowing to unfavorable test screenings, Disney demanded re-shoots and new material scripted by an uncredited Tony Gilroy.

 

What now has hit the screen is awkward, to say the least. And I can’t imagine this version is superior to what Wright and Letts delivered the first time.

 

New York City-based child psychologist Anna Fox (Adams), crippled by a severe case of agoraphobia, has been unable to leave her Manhattan brownstone for nearly a year. She’s trying to work this out via frequent sessions with her visiting psychiatrist, Dr. Landy (Letts, in a solid cameo).

 

He has put her through an ongoing cocktail of prescription drugs; the most recent, Elevan, comes with a strict warning not to mix it with alcohol. Which doesn’t stop Anna from drinking a lot of wine.

 

She’s estranged from her husband Ed (Anthony Mackie) and their daughter Olivia (Mariah Bozeman), although they chat daily on the phone. Anna also has the company of a tenant: aspiring musician David Winter (Wyatt Russell), who lives in the basement, runs errands for her, and handles odd jobs throughout the house.

 

Anna passes the time by watching classic film noirs — a brief clip from Hitchcock’s Spellbound is a bit on the nose — and observing the comings and goings in the buildings across the street, from the safety of her front windows. She therefore notices when a new family, the Russells, moves in directly opposite her brownstown. She’s charmed when 15-year-old Ethan (Fred Hechinger) pays a visit, to give Anna a “hello” gift from his mother.

 

Anna immediately senses that Ethan is oddly uncomfortable, perhaps distracted, for some reason he’s much too shy to share. They nonetheless part as friends.

Limbo: A kinder, gentler look at asylum seekers

Limbo (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated R, for occasional profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.21.21

Given the refugee crisis once again developing on the Italian island of Lampedusa, Scottish writer/director Ben Sharrock’s cross-cultural drama couldn’t be better timed.

 

With nothing but time on their hands, a quartet of asylum seekers — from left, Omar
(Amir El-Masry), Wasef (Ola Orebiyi), Abedi (Kwabena Ansah) and Farhad
(Vikash Bhai) — struggle to fill every hour of every long, lonely day.

That said, the well-titled Limbo examines this humanitarian catastrophe in a manner that’s both familiar … and somewhat quirky.

 

Omar (Amir El-Masry) and Farhad (Vikash Bhai) are among a couple dozen asylum seekers “temporarily” housed on one of the remote Uist islands, off the northwest Scottish coast. It’s mostly a soul-deadening waiting game — amplified by Sharrock’s very slow pacing — although part of each day is spent taking outrageously misjudged “cultural awareness” classes taught by a couple of clueless locals (Sidse Babett Knudsen and Kenneth Collard).

 

At other times, these men make a lengthy trek to the island’s lone phone booth, plunked in the middle of nowhere, and take turns chatting with family members in their respective countries. Omar, quiet and withdrawn, has fled the strife in Syria; his parents have safely relocated in Istanbul, while his brother Nabil has remained behind as a member of the resistance.

 

Omar’s prized possession is his grandfather’s oud, which he never lets out of his sight, always carrying its oversized instrument case. Back in Syria, before the country went to hell, Omar was poised to follow his grandfather’s footsteps, as a master of this beautiful, lute-like instrument.

 

But Omar’s right hand was injured somewhere along the way, and he’s thus been unable to play. More crucially, he’s unwilling to play: burdened by a degree of survivor’s guilt far heavier than the oud itself. The occasional phone chats with his mother (voiced by Darina Al Joundi) merely amplify the feeling that he should have remained at his brother’s side, to fight the good fight.

 

Farhad, something of a cheerful opportunist, assigns himself the role of Omar’s “talent manager.” But Farhad’s surface merriment conceals his own, quite serious reason for having fled Afghanistan. At one point, he impulsively steals a rooster and makes it a pet, naming it Freddie after his favorite musician, Freddie Mercury. 

 

Farhad wants something he can call his own, akin to Omar and his oud.

The Kid Detective: A complicated case

The Kid Detective (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug use, sexual candor, fleeting nudity and violence

By Derrick Bang

This Canadian import is a droll, slightly tart slice of PI whimsy.

 

That’s actually too superficial a description of writer/director Evan Morgan’s engaging feature film debut. At times, The Kid Detective seems to be taking place in a slightly existential universe not quite our own, where characters drop mordant one-liners without cracking a smile.

 

When Abe (Adam Brody) and Caroline (Sophie Nélisse) realize they're being followed
by a dark sedan, they waver between two equally uncomfortable choices:
attempt to flee ... or confront.

At other times, matters unexpectedly turn real-world serious, and emotions are real-world familiar.

 

It’s an intriguing balancing act, which — for the most part — Morgan skillfully navigates. He’s helped considerably by star Adam Brody’s morose, vulnerable and yet unexpectedly engaging performance as the rather unusual title character.

 

As an adolescent, Abe Applebaum (Jesse Noah Gruman) became a local celebrity in the cheerful little town of Willowbrook, Ontario, thanks to his facility for solving minor mysteries and wacky crimes. His successes resulted mostly from perception and an acute sense of psychology: the way people think and therefore act.

 

Partly out of respect — and likely also out of amusement — the townsfolk even set him up in a downtown office, where good friend Gracie Gulliver (Kaitlyn Chalmers-Rizzato) worked as receptionist. But then she disappeared one day. Despite Abe’s best efforts, and that of the local police, neither she — nor her body — ever was found.

 

This failure leaves Abe traumatized.

 

Now 32 (and played by Brody), Abe works out of the same office, stubbornly solving the same trivial cases — finding lost cats, and so forth — in between hangovers and raging attacks of self-pity. He has become the town joke, barely making ends meet; his frustrated parents (Wendy Crewson and Jonathan Whittaker) clearly have spent years trying to prod him into responsible adulthood.

 

Even Abe’s Goth receptionist (Sarah Sutherland, hilariously condescending) treats him with contempt.

 

Enter Caroline (Sophie Nélisse), a 16-year-old orphan who brings a real case, by asking his help in solving the brutal murder of her boyfriend, Patrick. Although initially wondering if she’s putting him on — we see the wary uncertainty in Brody’s gaze — Caroline is absolutely serious, her wide, guileless eyes radiating sincerity. And, indeed, Patrick was stabbed 17 times (!).

 

To say the subsequent investigation proceeds in fits and starts would be an understatement. Although his intuition remains sound, Abe’s sloppy appearance and occasionally reckless behavior hinder more than help. None of this shakes Caroline’s faith; indeed, she even drives him from one lead to the next — Abe doesn’t have a car — and becomes a de facto partner.

 

Together Together: Delightful delightful

Together Together (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated R, for explicit sexual candor and occasional profanity

By Derrick Bang

We open on an interview.

 

Matt (Ed Helms), 45 and single, is the San Francisco-based developer of an app dubbed Loner, which allows users to amass photos of random strangers: much the way kids used to collect baseball cards. It proved enormously popular (and, honestly, I can see that happening in real life), and made Matt financially secure. Now he wants a family.

 

Matt (Ed Helms) and Anna (Patti Harrison), having a baby together in a rather
unconventional manner — both mindful of each other's feelings — struggle to
find common emotional ground.

Not a wife or a girlfriend. Just a baby.

And not the, ah, usual way. No, with his sperm, a donor egg and a gestational surrogate.

 

Anna (Patti Harrison), 26 and single, is a coffee shop barista, and a loner by nature. She fields Matt’s eccentric and somewhat invasive questions reasonably well, and finds his sweet-natured excitement at the prospect of fatherhood rather endearing. 

 

They decide to make a go of it.

 

Writer/director Nikole Beckwith’s Together Together — available via Amazon Prime and other streaming outlets — takes us through the subsequent nine months, with distinct emotional chapters divided by trimester. To a degree, the Matt & Anna dynamic evolves the way we’d expect: initially wary and uncertain, with an increasing chance of thaw and bonding.

 

On the other hand, Beckwith isn’t that obvious. The relationship actually moves in some surprising — and unexpectedly poignant — directions, primarily because these two people have absolutely nothing in common, and therefore no easy path to comfortable familiarity.

 

Helms, still channeling the well-meaning nebbish he perfected on television’s The Office, makes Matt the ultimate obsessive/compulsive micro-manager. Once he and Anna metaphorically shake hands, he makes her sign a contract the size of a congressional bill … and, even at that, he overlooks a detail that later haunts him (in an amusing way).

 

It’s tempting to view Matt as a control freak, just this side of a stalker — surprising Anna at work with a thermos of pregnancy tea, turning up at her apartment at inopportune moments — but we know he’s harmless, and that his heart is in the right place.

 

She knows, as well. We quickly admire her benevolence, and forgiving nature.

 

Harrison makes Anna plain-spoken, mildly earthy, unafraid of setting boundaries … and insistent that Matt respect them. Her candor often catches him off-guard; Beckwith’s dialogue frequently is intimately and sexually explicit to a degree that’s both hilarious and cringe-worthy. We chuckle and wince simultaneously.

 

Wrath of Man: Dismay of viewer

Wrath of Man (2021) • View trailer

Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and relentless violence

By Derrick Bang

I miss Guy Ritchie.

 

I miss the British director who burst onto the scene with snarky crime thrillers such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, populated by arch characters with improbable names such as Hatchet Harry, Barry the Baptist, Franky Four Fingers and Bullet-Tooth Tony, all bumping each other off in ways that would have been appalling, were they not so darkly hilarious.

 

As "H" (Jason Statham, second from left) begins his first day on the job, Bullet
(Holt McCallany, far left) introduces him to Hollow Bob (far right) and
Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett).

That Guy Ritchie attempted to go mainstream a decade ago, with uneven results, by tampering with pop-culture icons such as Sherlock Holmes and Napoleon Solo (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.)

 

Happily, the original Guy Ritchie returned with 2019’s The Gentleman, another cheeky crime thriller leavened by the writer/director’s caustic sense of humor.

 

Alas, that Guy Ritchie is AWOL in his new film. Wrath of Man hasn’t a single wry chuckle in its dreary 118 minutes; it’s nothing but a grim revenge saga with far too much collateral damage to be enjoyable on any level.

 

It’s not fun, merely tedious. No snark. No attitude.

 

It’s also a disappointing reunion with star Jason Statham, who was introduced — nay, detonated — in Lock, Stock and Snatch. Statham also isn’t fun here; he’s merely a grim rage machine, in an under-developed role that could’ve been played by any number of grade-C action stars.

 

The sole Ritchie touch evident — in a script co-written with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, and adapted from the 2004 French thriller Le Convoyeur — is the clever, non-linear structure that teases us with partial details, until finally Revealing All during the third act.

 

But that’s hardly enough to hold our interest, when surrounded by so many one-dimensional characters.

 

Maybe the Los Angeles setting is to blame. Ritchie needs to operate in his native Merry Olde, where British wit is an institution. Everybody knows that Los Angeles has no sense of humor.

 

Anyway…

 

After a deadly ambush on one of its armored vehicles, L.A.-based Fortico Securities replaces one of its slain guards with tight-lipped Patrick Hill (Statham), who immediately is dubbed “H.” He barely passes the necessary driving, behavior and shooting tests administered by the veteran Bullet (Holt McCallany), who nonetheless speaks up for the new recruit, despite the doubts of depot manager Terry (Eddie Marsan).

 

Fortico handles the transport of major cash sums that — for one reason or another — can’t be processed via banks (a good option for marijuana dispensaries). 

 

Stowaway: Clever riff on a classic sci-fi dilemma

Stowaway (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated TV-MA, for dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.21.21

Math is unyielding.

 

No matter how desperate the circumstances, no matter how dire the situation, math won’t suddenly offer a more promising result.

 

While Michael (Shamier Anderson, far left) watches nervously, Commander Barnett
(Toni Colette, far right) clarifies their mission's implacable resource limitations to
Zoe (Anna Kendrick) and David (Daniel Dae Kim).

Writer/director Joe Penna’s absorbing Stowaway — a Netflix original — is Tom Godwin’s “Cold Equations” writ large (and a nod to that 1954 sci-fi classic would have been nice). Penna and co-scripter Ryan Morrison have “opened up” Godwin’s short story quite effectively, expanding the character roster, modifying the setting and circumstances.

 

But the core imperative remains the same: You simply can’t argue with math.

 

The story, set in a future when Mars has been colonized, begins as a Kingfisher rocket blasts off from Earth, under the command of Marina Barnett (Toni Colette). She’s joined by medical researcher Zoe Levenson (Anna Kendrick) and biologist/botanist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim), accomplished academics chosen from thousands of applicants who submitted proposals for Mars-based research.

 

They dock with the Hyperion MTS-42, a modular space station. The spent rocket is transformed into a spinning counterweight at the end of a 500-meter-long tether; this supplies artificial gravity for the months-long journey to Mars. (Very cool concept, I might add.)

 

Shortly after this lengthy trip begins, during routine safety checks, Marina discovers an unconscious man in an overhead compartment that contains the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA). When the body drops to the floor, his weight breaks Marina’s forearm; his safety harness, wrapped around a pipe attached to the CDRA, also inflicts damage.

 

Once he regains consciousness, the newcomer proves to be Michael Adams (Shamier Anderson), a ground crew engineer who blacked out after injuring himself during final pre-flight checks.

 

(I know, I know. The notion that there wouldn’t be some sort of personnel role call prior to take-off, is rather difficult to swallow. We gotta just go with it.)

 

(Technically, Michael also isn’t a stowaway, since he’s present accidentally, rather than intentionally. But that really is picking nits.)

 

Michael initially is horrified by the implications of his plight; the MTS-42 already has traveled past the point of no return, which means he’s looking at a two-year leave from Earth. This is agonizing — and Anderson plays this quite well — because he’s the sole support for his younger sister Ava, back on Earth. Happily, Hyperion officials — reached by radio — rise to the occasion, and promise to house and support her.

 

At which point, Michael calmly accepts the situation, and promises to “carry his weight” to whatever degree the others can use him.

 

Ah, but there’s the rub.