A Quiet Place: Day One — A solid prequel

A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for terror, violent content and disturbing images

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This film totally confounds expectations.

 

That’s wholly appropriate, since “startling” has been the hallmark of this sharply conceived series. These scripts have teeth ... and not just those belonging to the nightmarish predators that strike victims making the slightest sound. John Krasinski has co-written and co-produced all three, and he directed the first two; he and his co-writers don’t hesitate to surprise and upset viewers.

 

Moving as quickly as possible — without making any noise! — Eric (Joseph Quinn) and
Sam (Lupita Nyong'o) cross an open street while searching for a safe place to hid.

Even so, this prequel moves in unexpected directions, in terms of both plot beats and emotional resonance. 

The setting is New York, roughly a year prior to the events in 2018’s first film. Things begin quietly, as Samira (Lupita Nyong’o) contemplates another dull, grinding day as a terminally ill cancer patient, in a hospice facility outside the city. She’s stuck at anger, in the five stages of grief ... or, perhaps, she settled on anger after dismissing bargaining and acceptance.

 

Her only friend is her service cat, Frodo, aka — as we’ll soon discover — The World’s Greatest And Most Resourceful Feline.

 

Reuben (Alex Wolff), her care nurse, is impressively patient; Sam, bitter and waspish, is unwilling to “play nice” during group sessions. An outing to Manhattan also holds no interest, until she makes Reuben promise that they’ll stop for pizza at Patsy’s, her long-ago favorite Harlem pizzaria.

 

Unfortunately, the outing is interrupted. Hundreds of massive, meteor-like objects crash into the city — and elsewhere, all over the world — and disgorge powerful, hostile extraterrestrials that attack without warning.

 

Fans of the series know that these creatures have an acute sense of hearing, but are blind and without a functional sense of smell. But the terrified Manhanttanites aren’t yet aware of this, and — with shocking rapidity — people are devoured in mid-scream, or when they slam open a car door, or drop anything ... or even cough or sneeze.

 

Director Michale Sarnoski — who co-wrote this script with Krasinski — doesn’t dwell on these attacks; the PG-13 rating is respected, with a lack of gore. But that doesn’t make the attacks any less terrifying, as victims are snatched out of cinematographer Pat Scola’s rat-a-tat framing shots, accompanied by heart-stopping blasts from Alexis Grapsas’ score.

 

The resulting blood trails also are sufficiently unsettling.

 

Sam is knocked unconscious during the initial chaos; she wakens inside a theater with Reuben and numerous other survivors. Her initial attempt to speak is muted by Henri (Djimon Hounsou), huddling with his family. She gets the point, and is relieved to find Frodo still at her side.

 

(Series fans with recognize Hounsou’s Henri from 2020’s A Quiet Place Part II.)

Thelma: Absolutely adorable

Thelma (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.30.24

Delightful surprises like this are why I’ve been a film critic for so long.

 

Writer/director/editor Josh Margolin’s impressive feature debut is a whimsical riff on action films, with their formulaic stunts “gentled down” to a human scale that cleverly blends laugh-out-loud humor with a sharply perceptive exploration of aging, fragility and anxiety. And if all that sounds like an unlikely mix, well, you’re not reckoning with Margolin’s savvy filmmaking and story chops.

 

Shortly after Thelma (June Squibb) and Ben (Richard Roundtree) begin their unlikely
mission, she insists on visiting an old friend, in order to "borrow" something from her.

It also doesn’t hurt that this enjoyable romp is turbo-charged by a scene-stealing performance from June Squibb — 94 years young, as these words are typed — who continues to take advantage of a late-career Renaissance kick-started by 2013’s Nebraska.

Margolin obviously took the old adage to heart: Write what you know. He was inspired by his spunky 103-year-old grandmother, who — in his words — “survived the Great Depression, World War II, the death of her husband, a double mastectomy, colon cancer, a valve replacement and an ongoing but allegedly benign brain tumor.”

 

Goodness, he even took bits of dialogue from his grandmother’s lips.

 

Squibb stars as Thelma Post, a feisty 93-year-old who still lives alone, much to the chagrin of her pestering daughter Gail (Parker Posey) and son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg). But their son Daniel (Fred Hechinger) isn’t the slightest bit worried about his grandmother, on whom he dotes, and the feeling is mutual. They spend a lot of time together.

 

The story begins with a scene that’ll be familiar to every competent computer user who has attempted to instruct a clueless older relative on concepts such a folders, passwords, and drag-and-drop. But Margolin immediately telegraphs his charming touch, as Daniel sensitively guides Thelma through baby steps, without the slightest touch of impatience; indeed, he turns the process into a fun, shared experience. And Thelma gets it.

 

This interlude also introduces one of her tics: She often interrupts herself, or somebody else, to ask oblique questions such as “What is a computer?” or “What is electricity?” It’s not that she isn’t familiar with such concepts — she absolutely is — but she genuinely wants to know what things are, in the sense of what they’re made of, or how they came into being.

 

Squibb’s quiet sincerity, as Thelma unexpectedly drops such queries into a conversation, add gentle hilarity to this running gag. When in public, Thelma also frequently stops to chat with elderly individuals who look familiar, but turn out to be total strangers, after several rounds of “Do you know so-and-so?” and “No, but do you know whozit?”

 

(That latter bit also has a cute third-act payoff.)

The Old Oak: Solid, true to life, and timely

The Old Oak (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, but R territory for nonstop profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD outlets

By Derrick Bang

A reassuring quote, usually incorrectly attributed to St. Augustine, observes that “Hope has two daughters: Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”

 

Far too many people, these days, have shunned that second daughter.

 

When an unlikely friendship develops between Syrian newcomer Yara (Ebla Mari) and
pub owner TJ (Dave Turner), it's viewed as a betrayal by some of his longtime
neighbors and customers.

The Old Oak is the final entry in director Ken Loach’s unofficial “Northeast Trilogy,” following 2016’s I, Daniel Blakeand 2019’s Sorry We Missed You. At 88 years young, this new film is likely to be his swan song ... although I wouldn’t bet against him. But if it is to be his last hurrah, it’s a lovely note on which to conclude a career that stretches back more than half a century.

This also is the 16th film Loach has made with scripter Paul Laverty: a collaboration that began with 1996’s Carla’s Song. Their oeuvre is dominated by brutally unhappy stories that focus on struggling, working-class individuals driven to — and often beyond — their breaking point. These films are well-crafted statements of rage against real-world systems that seem deliberately designed to crush ordinary folks ... and they’re often quite painful to watch.

 

The Old Oak, however, is a bit different ... although, at first blush, it doesn’t seem that way.

 

The year is 2016, the setting a village in Northeast England: once a thriving mining community, now fallen on hard times. Shops are boarded up, and most former residents have left; many of those who remain are frustrated, depressed, bitter and — yes — angry. The town’s sole remaining gathering spot is its only pub: The Old Oak, run by TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner).

But even TJ is barely hanging on by his fingertips. The pub’s larger “function space” has been locked for years, due to unrepaired plumbing and electrical issues; the regulars are limited to the smaller space in front of the bar. This sense of slow-motion collapse is conveyed cleverly as the film begins, when TJ — prior to opening one morning — attempts, without success, to straighten the final outdoor letter in the pub’s name.

 

And as far as many of the locals are concerned, things get much worse on this particular day, when a busload of Syrian refugees arrives unexpectedly. Because so many houses have remained empty for so long, they’ve been advertised at fire-sale prices by distant landlords — sometimes based in other countries (!) — who couldn’t care less how this practice destroys the value of the homes owned by the villagers who remain.

 

One such victim is TJ’s boyhood friend Charlie (Trevor Fox), who with his wife did all the right things: They worked hard, raised a family, bought the terraced house they initially rented, and maintained it throughout the years, believing it a secure investment that would fund a happy retirement. Now, through no fault of their own, that carefully nurtured plan has crumbled into dust.

Inside Out 2: A wild emotional rollercoaster

Inside Out 2 (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for no particular reason

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.16.24

Nobody could have expected this film to live up to its brilliant 2015 predecessor, which earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination for its ingenious script.

 

While Joy (yellow), Disgust (green) and Anger (red) watch with horror, Envy (turquoise)
and Anxiety (orange) seize control of their beloved Riley's behavior, with disastrous results.

But this sequel comes darn close, thanks to an equally clever narrative touch that establishes a solid reason to revisit these characters.

Recall, from the first film, that young Riley’s life was upended when her parents (voiced by Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) moved them from the Midwest to San Francisco. This shattering adjustment taxed the skills of the emotional avatars in Riley’s noggin, who collaborate to keep her every thought and action (somewhat) under control: Joy (Amy Poehler), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale, taking over here for Bill Hader) and Disgust (Liza Lapira, similarly replacing Mindy Kaling).

 

Several years have passed, and Riley (Kensington Tallman) has become a well-adjusted middle-schooler: intelligent, kind-hearted, generous and blessed with a pair of inseparable besties: Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green). They do everything together; they’re also members of the school hockey team, where Riley is a shining star who — as the academic year concludes — has attracted the attention of talent scout Coach Roberts (Yvette Nicole Brown).

 

It has been smooth sailing for the emotions, and Joy — their de facto leader — is delighted by the way they’ve molded Riley into a “good person” via careful manipulation of their complex control panel.

 

Even so, the first hint of trouble concerns the means by which Joy has brought everyone to this happy moment: a classic case of good intentions destined to go awry.

 

But that comes later. Far more seriously, these five emotions are aroused one night from their slumber — Riley being similarly asleep — by the relentless soft beep-beep of a previously unnoticed red monitor light ... which suddenly erupts into a shrieking klaxon.

 

As it happens, Riley had just celebrated her 13th birthday. And that red button?

 

Puberty.

Hit Man: Scores a bullseye

Hit Man (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content, occasional violence and relentless profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

This one’s too much fun.

 

Richard Linklater has enjoyed an impressively varied career during his four decades as a self-taught writer/director, covering all manner of genres, styles and approaches. Even his lesser efforts are interesting in some way, and his gems are choice.

 

While posing as an assasin-for-hire named Ron, Gary (Glen Powell) discovers that his
newest "client," Madison (Adria Arjona) is much more complicated than his usual marks.

Hit Man is a ruby.

Linklater and star Glen Powell — rising rapidly into the A-list stratosphere — collaborated on this scripted adaptation of Skip Hollandsworth’s mesmerizing 2001 Texas Monthly non-fiction article. The film’s tone is cheeky from an initial promise that “What you’re about to see is a somewhat true story,” and it gets more audacious by the minute.

 

What’s truly amazing is the degree to which this film’s events are factual ... but do yourself a favor: Watch it first, before looking up Hollandsworth’s magazine piece. (Which, I promise, you’ll definitely want to do.)

 

Many of the true portions come under the heading of You Simply Couldn’t Make Up Stuff Like This.

 

Gary Johnson (Powell) is the epitome of mundane. He teaches philosophy and psychology at the University of New Orleans, where his students snicker over the fact that he drives a Honda Civic. He lives with two cats — named Id and Ego, of course — feeds birds, and carefully spray-waters his houseplants. His reading leans toward Carl Jung; a copy of Memories, Dreams, Reflections rests on his desk.

 

His very appearance is dull, thanks to Juliana Hoffpauir’s crafty costume design and Ally Vickers’ hair styling. Add the baggy jorts and unflattering glasses, and Gary looks like a total dweeb ... which, given Powell’s actual hunky self, is rather astonishing.

 

Gary does have a side hustle: He’s an electronics whiz, and for some time has assisted the New Orleans police with surveillance equipment and cleverly concealed bugs. His frequent partners during such assignments are cops Claudette (stand-up veteran Retta) and Phil (Sanjay Rao), a hilariously understated Mutt ’n’ Jeff duo who trade dry quips.

 

Their frequent targets involve ordinary citizens, who — fed up with a spouse, family member or business partner — want to hire a contract killer to, um, take care of the problem. Permanently. They invariably ask “disreputable types” — topless dancers, bar bouncers, bail bondsmen — for a “reference” ... at which point, said individuals usually contact the cops, who set up a sting. The mark’s lethal desire must be spoken aloud, and money must change hands.

 

Fellow cop Jasper (Austin Amelio) traditionally has played the “hit man” role; he’s smarmy enough to look the part.

The Great Lillian Hall: Sublime character study

The Great Lillian Hall (2024) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated TV-14, for dramatic intensity

Available via: HBO MAX

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.9.24

Julianne Moore won a well-deserved Academy Award for her performance in 2014’s Still Alice, as a linguistics professor doing her best to cope with a slide into Alzheimer’s.

 

Jessica Lange deserves the same reward, for her richly nuanced work in this film.

 

Edith (Kathy Bataes, left) loses her patience — but not her compassion — when longtime
best friend Lillian (Jessica Lange) refuses to believe that anything is truly wrong with her.

The similarities are cruelly ironic. Just as Moore’s Alice Howland was horrified by her failing connection with the language career central to her very being, Lange’s Lillian Hall cannot conceive of a future without her ability to command a stage in front of an admiring, sell-out audience. It’s who she is...

...to the almost total exclusion of her adult daughter, to that poor woman’s dismay. But that’s getting ahead of things.

 

Scripter Elisabeth Seldes Annacone was inspired by her aunt, Tony Award-winning stage and film actress Marian Hall Seldes, whose busy career included every one of the 1,809 performances of Ira Levin’s play Deathtrap, which earned her mention in the Guinness Book of World Records. She worked tirelessly until 2011, at which point — sadly — she spiraled into dementia during the final three years of her life.

 

Annacone’s sensitive script is handled with assurance by director Michael Cristofer, best known for theater works that include his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Shadow Box. His approach here feels very much like a stage play, which focuses on the crucial few days when veteran stage actress Lillian Hall (Lange) — proud of the fact that she’s never missed a performance during her long and celebrated career — realizes that she no longer can conceal her worsening condition from the world.

 

Or from herself.

 

Annacone and Cristofer split their narrative into three parallel elements: rehearsals of Lillia ‘s next starring role, in a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard; intimate glimpses of her personal life, whether alone at home or in the company of family and colleagues; and B&W “interview footage” of various individuals filmed for the electronic press kit that’ll accompany the play’s opening.

 

On stage, it becomes increasing clear that Lillian has trouble remembering her lines, to the dismay of play director David Flemming (Jesse Williams). He has long admired her, and has been making allowances ... and excuses to the other cast members. 

 

Producer Jane Stone (Cindy Hogan) is more pragmatic; she’s horrified by the possibility that the star who attracted this production’s financial backers, may prove incapable of making it to opening night.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga — An awesome, explosive sci-fi epic

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for relentless strong violence, gore and grisly images

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Seventy-nine years young, director George Miller has lost none of his creative energy or filmmaking chops.

 

Piloting the weapons-laden War Rig — and accompanied by scores of kamikaze
"War Boys," who'll cheerfully die while taking out enemies — Praetorian Jack
(Tom Burke, left) and Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) believe they're ready for anything.
Boy, are they in for a surprise...

Actually, he’s getting better, which is saying a great deal.

Furiosa, the fifth installment in his increasingly complex Mad Max saga — chronologically, the fourth — is a wildly imaginative, audaciously breathless, pedal-to-the-metal thrill ride. This film never lets up, from its first moment to the last, and its 148-minute length doesn’t feel excessive. Indeed, I was disappointed when the final fade to black led to the end credits.

 

That said, Miller’s grimly amoral, post-apocalyptic nightmare of a violence-ridden future isn’t for the faint of heart; this is savage stuff.

 

Those willing to embrace Miller’s vision will be stunned by the spectacle, the awesome production design (Colin Gibson), the mind-blowing stunt work and energetically choreographed action sequences (Guy Norris), the crackerjack editing (Eliot Knapman and Margaret Sixel), the wildly bizarre and often repugnant costume design (three-time Oscar winner Jenny Beavan, one of them for 2016’s Mad Max: Fury Road), the similarly weird and wacky makeup design Lesley Vanderwalt), and the unbelievable energetic cinematography (Simon Duggan).

 

All of which is assembled, with unerring precision, by the equally gifted Miller.

 

Honestly, adjectives fail me.

 

For those not versed in the Mad Max saga — after all, the first three films were four decades and change ago — an off-camera narrator explains, during a brief prologue, that a global catastrophe left much of Earth uninhabitable. Most of Australia, setting for this narrative, is a radioactive wasteland.

 

(One must take this information with a possible grain of salt; later events suggest that this is an unreliable narrator.)

 

The subsequent storyline is divided into five chapters, each running roughly half an hour, each given ominously ironic titles. The first opens as adolescent Furiosa (Alyla Browne) and Valkyrie (Dylan Adonis) pick fruit in the Eden-like “Green Place of Many Mothers.” Furiosa spots four raiders; aware of the importance of keeping this realm a secret from any outsiders, she tries to sabotage their motorbikes.