The Good Nurse: An unsettling diagnosis

The Good Nurse (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

If the American health care system doesn’t already make you nervous, watching this film will leave you hiding in a closet, whimpering like a child.

 

After Amy (Jessica Chastain) suffers a minor cardiomyopathy attack, Charlie
(Eddie Redmayne) talks her down from panic.

Because Krysty Wilson-Cairns’ screenplay — based on Charles Graeber’s meticulously researched 2013 true crime book of the same title — makes it abundantly clear that lawsuit-adverse corporate ownership of hospitals allowed perhaps the worst serial killer in history to continue unchecked for 16 years.

It can be argued — and this clearly is the point of director Tobias Lindholm’s slow-burn film — that this system is the bigger villain.

 

But such awareness arrives later. Our attention is drawn initially to Jessica Chastain’s richly nuanced, quietly compelling performance as Amy Loughren, a dedicated nurse in a large East Coast hospital. She’s the single mother of two young daughters — Maya (Devyn McDowell) and Alex (Alix West Lefler) — and works long hours during demanding ICU night shifts.

 

Amy also suffers from cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal heart condition that manifests when her pulse rate spirals out of control. It requires surgical intervention, which she cannot yet afford; because she’s relatively new to this hospital placement, she’s still months away from the one-year vesting that’ll allow health insurance to kick in.

 

(The irony is not lost on us: a nurse, working at a hospital, who remain uninsured.)

 

Chastain’s slumped posture and frequently weary expression suggest a woman constantly battling total exhaustion. And yet Amy also radiates dignity and responsibility; she always lights up when with a patient, or comforting a family member; her ministrations are gentle, her compassion palpable. 

 

She isn’t merely a “good” nurse; she’s a great nurse. Chastain delivers one of those “all in” performances that makes her every move and spoken word compelling, and authentic. She feels like somebody living next door.

 

We meet Amy as she tends to an elderly woman with a serious skin condition: uncomfortable and debilitating, but not life-threatening. Lindholm and Wilson-Cairns take their time in establishing Amy’s routine: both during her overworked and understaffed hospital shifts, and at home, where Maya has become frustrated by her mother’s prolonged daily absences.

 

Relief finally arrives when Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) joins her unit. Amy shows him the ropes; he adapts quickly to this late-night shift’s demands. Redmayne makes him affable, observant and — most particularly — empathetic. Amy and Charlie bond during these long nights; she trusts him with her heart issues, and he becomes something of a cheerleader.

 

And also a friend, spending daytime hours with Amy and her daughters, who adore him.

 

Then the elderly woman dies, quite unexpectedly.

Confess, Fletch: Hamm on wry

Confess, Fletch (2022) • View trailer

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

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.28.22

Well, this is a nice surprise.

 

Beloved literary characters rarely get a second chance, if their debut leap to the big screen is sabotaged by arrogant studio execs catering to the whims of a Hot Star Of The Moment.

 

Fletch (Jon Hamm) isn't quite sure what to make of the larger-than-life Countess
Sylvia de Grassi (Marcia Gay Harden), particularly since she's apt to become his
future mother-in-law.

Exhibit A: Author Lawrence Block’s gentleman cat burglar/detective, Bernie Rhodenbarr, who became Bernice when Whoopi Goldberg wound up starring in 1987’s absolutely dreadful Burglar. No surprise, Bernie’s subsequent adventures have remained within the safe confines of two covers.

The late and greatly lamented Sue Grafton, author of the beloved Kinsey Milhone “alphabet mysteries,” famously refused to entertain any sort of screen adaptation. She knew full well, having worked in Hollywood earlier in her career, how often a property gets ruined by meddling hands determined to “improve” a writer’s work.

 

At first blush, Chevy Chase seemed an ideal choice as Gregory McDonald’s rogue investigative journalist, Irwin Maurice Fletcher, and 1985’s Fletch was tolerable. But the deplorable 1989 sequel succumbed to Chase’s disguise-overkill vanity, and the character subsequently languished in development hell.

 

Until now.

 

Jon Hamm is spot-on as Fletch, radiating grizzled charm and just enough snark; his comic timing is well-suited to this amusing script’s many cheeky, insubordinate and downright smart-assed one-liners. 

 

Director Greg Mottola, admired ever since 2009’s under-appreciated Adventureland, has just the right touch for this material. He and co-scripter Zev Borow simplified the book a bit, and introduced some different supporting characters, but all essential plot points are in place; in several cases, they even retained McDonald’s dialogue.

 

The story opens in Rome, where Fletch has become engaged to the voluptuous Angela de Grassi (Lorenza Izzo), whose father has been kidnapped; the ransom demand is a Picasso from the Count’s famed art collection. Unfortunately, other parties unknown have stolen the entire collection, which leaves Angela frantic. 

 

She asks Fletch to liaise with an art broker in Boston, where the Picasso is rumored to have surfaced. He duly flies to Boston, arriving late in the evening; he walks into the apartment Angela has arranged for his stay … and finds a dead woman in the living room.

 

Fletch duly calls the police — an amusing conversation that sets the tone for what will follow — and soon finds himself in the cynical cross-hairs of Inspector Morris Monroe (Roy Wood Jr.) and his recently minted partner, Griz (Ayden Mayeri).

 

(Morris is a replacement for the book’s Inspector Flynn, who is missed … but no matter.)

 

Till: Absolutely riveting

Till (2022) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, strong disturbing images and racial slurs

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.21.22

2017’s Academy Award-nominated live-action short subjects included filmmaker Kevin Wilson Jr.’s My Nephew Emmett, which dramatizes Moses Wright’s late-night dread, as he awaits the men who he knows will kill his nephew.

 

It’s a heart-stoppingly solemn, quietly powerful 20-minute experience.

 

Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall, center) pauses before entering the tiny grocery store, where
the next few minutes will forever change his life, and the lives of many, many others.

Director Chinonye Chukwu’s Till is far from quiet, and even more powerful. Thanks to her astute direction, along with a meticulously detailed and thoroughly absorbing script — co-written by Chukwu, Michael Reilly and Keith Beauchamp — this film is mesmerizing, appalling and unforgettable.

(Beauchamp spent 27 years researching Till’s heinous murder, and his research prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen the case in 2004.)

 

Chukwu draws an absolutely amazing performance from Danielle Deadwyler, cast as Emmett’s loving and protective mother, Mamie. When eventually confronted with what has happened to her 14-year-old son — what he looks like, when she sees his brutally maimed body — Deadwyler summons a degree of anguish, heartbreak and fury that I’d not have thought possible.

 

This goes far beyond acting; she becomes Mamie Till.

 

Few film performances achieve the impact of similar work in a live theatrical production, because the screen remains a barrier between us and the actors. But Deadwyler’s breathtaking work here is a rare exception; she unerringly navigates an astonishing range of richly nuanced emotions, as Mamie resolutely embarks on a path she never would have chosen for herself, and often dreads walking.

 

But that comes later.

 

Equally impressive is the degree of restraint and dignity with which Chukwu and her writers allow this story to unfold; this must’ve been quite difficult, considering the heinousness of what occurred.

 

Events begin in Chicago, in the summer of 1955. Mamie is a widowed single mother — her husband died in action, during World War II — who is the head of her household, and (tellingly) the sole Black woman working for the Air Force in this city. She dotes on Emmett (Jalyn Hall), nicknamed “Bobo,” her only child; he’s an irrepressibly cheerful bundle of energy.

 

Hall’s performance is equally engaging; his handling of Emmett is a blend of enthusiasm and joy, with subtle touches of youthful arrogance. He simply loves life, his gaze forever radiant. (It’s difficult to be certain, as a viewer, if we detect the boy’s somewhat reckless streak on its own, or because we already know that this side of Emmett will prove his undoing.)

 

My Policeman: Quietly arresting

My Policeman (2022) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor and nudity

Available via: Movie theaters and (starting November 4) Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Celebrated British theatrical director Michael Grandage’s roots show in this adaptation of Bethan Roberts’ 2012 novel, which frequently feels more like an intimate stage production than a film.

 

And two become three: Museum curator Patrick (David Dawson, left) is delighted to
discover that visiting couple Marion (Emma Corrin) and Tom (Harry Styles) have a
genuine interest in art.

The melancholy, regret-laden character study centers on three people who — out of desire, desperation and love — have caused each other a great deal of pain.

The kicker, in Ron Nyswaner’s script, is the jolt upon realizing that what seemed like happenstance actually was premeditation.

 

The story opens in the 1990s, in the East Sussex seaside resort of Brighton. Tom (Linus Roache) and his wife Marion (Gina McKee) argue over her decision to allow Patrick (Rupert Everett), an ailing, long-estranged friend, to live with them while he recuperates from a stroke.

 

We’ve no clue what prompts the hostility, which Tom refuses to discuss, preferring to retreat to long walks along the massive sea walls that protect the cliffs above (an impressively dramatic image given imposing ferocity by the way cinematographer Ben Davis frames the crashing waves).

 

Grandage and Nyswaner then slide back to the 1950s. Newly minted schoolteacher Marion (Emma Corrin), enjoying a day at the beach with friends, is taken with Tom (Harry Styles), a handsome young policeman. Sympathetic to her fear of the water, he offers to teach her to swim in the local lido (public outdoor pool), if she’ll broaden his horizons by recommending some good books and classic artists.

 

She’s charmed by this. A copper, wanting to better himself?

 

The days pass idly and happily. They visit a gallery, where Tom is drawn to a painting of storm-tossed seas. Patrick (David Dawson), the curator, offers some learned observations; then, sensing kindred spirits, he impulsively offers them tickets to a classical music concert. Tom falls asleep. (So would I.)

 

They become inseparable, a larkish three musketeers enjoying life to the fullest whenever possible. Patrick’s cultured sensibilities are more perfectly aligned with Marion’s, and his solicitous attention to her begins to feel like something more than friendship, which Tom can’t help noticing (prompting Constant Companion to mutter, “Threesomes never work out”).

 

But is Patrick actually interested in Marion? Or is she merely an excuse for his close proximity to Tom?

Ticket to Paradise: A bumpy trip

Ticket to Paradise (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and stupidly, for one wholly unnecessary blast of profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Old-style romantic comedies live or die on the basis of three essential ingredients:

 

• Stars with charisma and chemistry;

 

• A premise that’s either fresh or, if familiar, has some sort of novel twist; and

 

• Dialogue that sparkles with wit, flirty banter and just enough — but not too much — snark.

 

David (George Clooney, left) and Georgia (Julia Roberts) may look cheerful, as they
arrive in Bali and see their daughter waiting on the beach, but their ulterior motives
are far from noble.

It also doesn’t hurt if the setting is swooningly gorgeous.

Director Ol Parker’s Ticket to Paradise manages about 1.5 out of three, with bonus points for location-location-location.

 

George Clooney and Julia Roberts obviously have charisma to burn, and they’ve demonstrated delightfully flirty chemistry in earlier films such as Ocean’s Eleven. But this story — co-written by Parker and Daniel Pipski — finds them indulging far too long in spiteful bickering and bad behavior, to the detriment of a sweet parallel plot element that becomes far more endearing than anything involving our two stars.

 

David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts) married 25 years ago, enjoyed five years of wedded bliss, then divorced and have spent the past two decades sniping at each other from opposite ends of the country … much to the dismay of daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever), who has tried hard not to pick sides.

 

As the film begins, David and Georgia reluctantly re-unite — as briefly as possible — in order to celebrate Lily’s graduation from college, where she has worked hard toward an anticipated career as a lawyer. By way of reward and emotional release, Lily and BFF Wren (Billie Lourd) take off for a sun, sand and — in Wren’s case — soused vacation in Bali.

 

Slightly more than a month later, David and George receive a bombshell email: Lily has decided to abandon her law school plans, remain in Bali, and marry the just-met love of her life … a seaweed farmer named Gede (Maxime Bouttier).

 

Determined to prevent their daughter from making the same mistake they made a quarter-century ago, David and George reluctantly team up in order to make Lily come to her senses, by sabotaging the wedding.

 

A few problems here.

 

We’ve already watched Lily and Gede “meet cute,” and — even though she falls for him improbably quickly — Dever and Bouttier are totally endearing together. A match made in heaven. We also can’t help being charmed by a subsequent sequence when Gede explains his long-held family profession to Lily; he’s far more savvy entrepreneur than “mere seaweed farmer.”

 

Watching David and Georgia burst into this dazzlingly romantic scene, like bulls in a china shop, is wincingly painful.

Mr. Harrigan's Phone: A flawed connection

Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasional profanity and fleeting drug content

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.14.22

We’ve moved into what Ray Bradbury dubbed “The October Country”: the time of year when the boundary thins, and all manner of phantoms, wraiths, apparitions and presences meddle in the affairs of mere mortals.

 

Although Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland, right) initially wants no part of an iPhone,
he quickly becomes seduced when Craig (Jaeden Martell) demonstrates some of the
gadget's many features.

Hollywood always responds appropriately.

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone hails from the gentler side of Stephen King, and director/scripter John Lee Hancock’s faithful adaptation is ideal for folks who prefer their cinema chills to be slow-burn unsettling, rather than in-our-face gory. Think The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption and The Body (which became Stand By Me on the big screen).

 

This is more of a mood piece. Indeed, the lengthy first act is a touching and completely “normal” character drama, of the sort that King always establishes so vividly in his fiction.

 

The year is 2003, in a fly-speck town in semi-rural Maine, where Craig (Jaeden Martell) lives with his father (Joe Tippett); both still grieve over the untimely loss of Craig’s mother. When Craig gives a reading during the weekly Sunday church service, it impresses reclusive local gazillionaire Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), who — with failing eyesight — hires the boy to read novels aloud to him.

 

The selections are broad: Dickens’ Dombey and Son, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, among others. Given that Craig is somewhat withdrawn himself, he isn’t bothered by Harrigan’s gruff, authoritarian demeanor.

 

Following a long career during which he made his money by ruthlessly buying and shredding other companies, Harrigan has reached his twilight years with no friends or family; his only companions are a tight-lipped housekeeper (Peggy J. Scott, appropriately prim) and somewhat surly gardener (Thomas Francis Murphy).

 

Craig always finds Harrigan in his favorite chair, in a book-laden study adjacent to a glass-walled conservatory filled with orchids.

 

Sutherland and Martell are marvelous in these early sequences. Sutherland sits in an imperiously regal pose: commanding quietly but firmly; gazing watchfully, as if Harrigan expects the boy to cower and bolt at any moment. But Craig doesn’t wilt under his host’s hawk-like gaze; if anything, the dynamic makes the boy more curious.

Halloween Ends: As well it should

Halloween Ends (2022) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated R, for bloody horror violence, gore and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This is a sorry, tawdry excuse for a movie.

 

Producer Malek Akkad, whose family has owned the Halloween franchise since the first one back in 1978, obviously believes his property is bullet-proof.

 

Although Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) initially feels sorry for Corey (Rohan Campbell), 
because they're both social outcasts, she soon begins to see something troubling
in his eyes ... something very, very dark.

Meaning, that any gaggle of hack writers can be hired to throw together a flimsy excuse for a script, as long as it contains the obligatory number of slashed throats, smashed heads and other bodily mutilations.

This pathetic entry’s writers — Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride and director David Gordon Green — deserve some sort of award, because their so-called storyline makes no sense, and is populated by numb-nuts characters who never once behave in a credible manner.

 

This is another textbook example of the “idiot plot” … which lurches forward, from one eye-rolling moment to the next, only because each and every character behaves like an idiot at all times.

 

The sole bright note — and the only reason this misbegotten junk gets even one star — is the gently flirty relationship, during the rare calmer moments, between franchise stalwarts Jamie Lee Curtis and Will Patton, as long-beleaguered Laurie Strode and protective Officer Hawkins. These moments feel real, and heartfelt.

 

The film opens with a brief prologue in 2019, as 21-year-old Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is hired to babysit the brat from hell. The evening doesn’t end well, effectively ruining Corey’s life.

 

Flash-forward to the present day, as we peer over Laurie’s shoulder, busily typing her magnum opus memoir of Life With The Boogeyman (a subplot that goes nowhere, I hasten to add).

 

Corey, equal parts taunted and haunted, has become a pariah in the long-beleaguered Illinois community of Haddonfield; he works part-time at the mechanic and wrecking shop owned by his sympathetic stepfather (Rick Moose). Corey is immediately targeted by a quartet of local bullies — two guys, two gals — led by Terry (Michael Barbieri); Laurie, knowing what it feels like to be an outsider, comes to Corey’s rescue.

Amsterdam: A great place to visit

Amsterdam (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence and bloody images

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.7.22

“Some of what follows actually happened,” the initial title card promises.

 

And how.

 

Our heroes — from left, Burt (Christian Bale), Valerie (Margot Robbie) and Harold
(John David Woodman) — finally realize that Henry (Michael Shannon, far right) and
Paul (Mike Myers) haven't been entirely candid with them.

Writer/director David O. Russell’s audacious new film is a cheeky banquet of historical fact and fiction, served up as a comedic thriller about loyalty, love and the dogged determination to do the right thing, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

The impressive ensemble cast is highlighted by fascinating performances from leads Christian Bale (once again, almost unrecognizable), Margot Robbie and John David Washington.

 

Russell’s story hits the ground running and never lets up, its twisty plot unfolding against a slightly stylized tone that begins as mild burlesque, but soon turns increasingly, believably sinister.

 

And — let it be stated — there’s no question Russell also intends this as a strong cautionary parallel to our current times. 

 

As philosopher George Santayana famously observed, Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.

 

The setting is 1933 in uptown New York, where WWI comrades Dr. Burt Berendsen (Bale) and attorney Harold Woodman (Washington) have become “fixers of last resort” for those down on their luck or low on money, and particularly for the many physically and emotionally shattered veterans who’ve been ignored by the U.S. government.

 

(Although granted so-called “bonus certificates” with a face value equal to each soldier’s promised payment with compounded interest, these scripts could not be redeemed until 1945 … which hardly helped unemployed individuals during the height of the U.S. Depression. In July 1932, President Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to clear the campsites of 43,000 desperate demonstrators who had gathered in Washington, D.C. The soldiers, along with their wives and children, were driven out, after which their shelters and belongings were burned.

 

(Sound familiar?)

 

Burt is quite the flamboyant kook, forever “inventing” restorative and pain-relieving medicines that won’t be available for decades — if ever — and cheerfully testing them on himself. His dilapidated office is filled with suffering veterans hoping to feel better — and in some severe cases look better — while Burt does everything to help cheer them up.

 

Bale’s performance is sublime, starting with the unreliable — and persuasively realistic — glass eye that constantly pops out of its socket: the result of a war injury. Burt is unkempt, unshaven, seemingly flustered and reckless … and yet possessed of acute intelligence and sharp perception.

 

Bale appears to be channeling Peter Falk’s Detective Columbo, with a superficially harmless and disarming manner that conceals razor-sharp awareness.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A heady brew

The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022) • View trailer

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

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

Fiction doesn’t hold a candle to this particular slice of dog-nuts truth.

 

In November 1967, on little more than a dare, 26-year-old John “Chickie” Donohue impulsively decided to bring some Pabst Blue Ribbon and Schlitz beers to the neighborhood buddies who were serving in Vietnam.

 

When the hell of war suddenly breaks out, Arthur (Russell Crowe, left) and Chickie
(Zac Efron) are torn between witnessing and recording events, and running for safety.

His subsequent four-month journey throughout that war-torn country eventually became a 2015 documentary short sponsored by (who else?) Pabst, and then a 2017 book co-written with New York Daily News reporter Joanna Molloy.

And now a thoroughly engaging film by director Peter Farrelly.

 

Given the larkish marketing art, and recalling the lowest-common-denominator oeuvre of the Farrelly brothers as a team — There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber, The Heartbreak Kid — one is tempted to dismiss this project as a similarly dopey comedy. That would be a mistake; we must remember that Peter Farrelly, on his own, brought us the Academy Award-winning Green Book.

 

While this new film doesn’t approach that level of quality, it’s nonetheless entertaining, thoughtful and sneaky: the latter due to an initially light-hearted tone that suddenly turns deadly serious in the third act.

 

Zac Efron, with the High School Musical trilogy now a thoroughly distant memory, is spot-on as Chickie: introduced at loose ends, between hitches as a Merchant Marine. He’s living with his parents and younger sister Christine (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) in their upper Manhattan Inwood neighborhood, and doing little beyond hanging out with friends each evening at Doc Fiddler’s Saloon, where George “The Colonel” Lynch (Bill Murray, grizzled and irascible) holds court.

 

The Colonel and his patrons, dyed-in-the-wool supporters, are annoyed by protesters whose “antics” are broadcast all over the world; Chickie confronts it more directly, because Christine has joined the local anti-war brigade.

 

These early scenes — particularly Chickie’s argument with his sister — aren’t directed very well; there’s a strong sense that Efron and Serkis are “acting” and merely spouting lines, rather than sincerely inhabiting their characters.

 

Fortunately, matters subsequently improve, particularly when The Colonel — in a mild huff — growls, “I’d like to go over to Vietnam, track down all the boys in the neighborhood, and just give ’em a beer.”

 

“I could do that,” Chickie replies, a thoughtful look on his face.

 

That’s how it starts.