Finally Dawn: It can't come quickly enough

Finally Dawn (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Not rated, but equivalent to a mild R, for debauched behavior and drug use

Available via: Amazon Prime and other video-on-demand options

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.27.25 

Italian writer/director Saverio Costanzo’s period drama is a wickedly uneasy character piece, until the story’s key character succumbs — in the third act — to a regrettable case of The Stupids.

 

Bad enough that Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci, far left) is in over her head at this lavish
party; what she doesn't realize is that her companions — from left, Josephine (Lily James),
Sean (Joe Keery) and Rufus (Willem Dafoe) — may not have her best interests at heart.

That aside, the acting is solid throughout, and this piece also is an affectionate nod to Italy’s post-World War II filmmaking period, when Rome became know as “Hollywood on the Tiber.” The city attracted many international productions — particularly from the United States — to its famed Cinecittà studios.

Costanzo opens on a grim, black-and-white sequence toward the end of the war. This 5-minute prologue turns out to be a film, The Sacrifice, being watched in a crowded movie theater by two sisters — vivacious, gorgeous Iris (Sofia Panizzi) and younger, mousy Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci) — and their mother Elvira (Carmen Pommella). After the film concludes, they debate the merits of lush Hollywood artifice as opposed to Italian cinema’s then-rising neorealism.

 

Everybody agrees about the allure of the film’s Italian star, Alida Valli (Alba Rohrwacher) and her American co-star, Sean Lockwood (Joe Keery).

 

As the trio departs the theater, they’re intercepted by a smarmy talent scout seeking extras for a sword-and-sandal epic current being filmed at Cinecittà; drawn by Iris’ allure, he insists that she try out. Elvira and her husband Rinaldo (Enzo Casertano) give their permission, and the two young women duly present themselves at the studio the following day, with Mimosa acting as chaperone after their mother is left at the gate.

 

As a sidebar, Elvira and Rinaldo apparently expect Iris to marry well, given her good looks and personality, whereas they’ve “arranged” for Mimosa to wed a working-class policeman. (We meet him briefly. It’s a fate worse than death.)

 

Iris nails the audition, despite being asked to remove her sweater; the more prim Mimosa balks at that request and thus is dismissed. While subsequently searching for her sister, Mimosa wanders the lot. She first stumbles into a screening room, where studio execs watch footage for a news documentary about the recent discovery of a dead aspiring young actress, Wilma Montesi, on the Capocotta beach adjacent to a lavish estate owned by Ugo Montagna, who had hosted a party the previous evening.

 

(Costanzo is referencing the actual murder of 21-year-old Montesi, which places this film’s events in 1953.)

On Swift Horses: More of a slow trot

On Swift Horses (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for nudity, sexual content and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.27.25

Although director Daniel Minahan draws achingly persuasive performances from the five core characters in this bittersweet melodrama, it’s hard to be satisfied with a story that concludes as this one does.

 

Lee (Will Poulter, left), his bride-to-be Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and his brother
Julius (Jacob Elordi) anticipate an upcoming move to California ... but nothing will
work out as planned.

Bryce Kass’ script captures the melancholy tone of Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel, but film can’t replicate the author’s poetic prose. Absent that — and given that it’s blindingly obvious that we’re about to spend two hours with hopelessly miserable people — this film needs to be more than a mere actor’s showcase.

That said, Minahan and Kass deserve credit for treating gender issues and uncertainty with the same respect and sensitivity that highlight Pufahl’s book.

 

Events begin in the mid-1950s, as brothers Lee (Will Poulter) and Julius (Jacob Elordi) have returned from Korean War service. They gather in the small-town Kansas house that Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) inherited when her mother died. Lee, having long been sweet on Muriel, proposes; she accepts.

 

The long-standing plan — driven by Lee — is that the three of them will move to San Diego, get jobs, and make enough money to eventually buy a house; Julius will be welcome in a second bedroom.

 

However...

 

As this sequence unfolds, the glances that pass between Muriel and Julius are laden with unspoken intensity: hungry, yearning and forlorn. Edgar-Jones and Elordi’s body movements are flirty; the air drips with sexual tension. The snap assumption, at this early stage, is that Muriel will be torn between the two of them.

 

But no; things aren’t that simple. For starters, Julius is gay ... but perhaps not entirely. He’s also much too free-spirited for such a conventional life; he’s a thief and card cheat — which Lee has long known — and thus heads to what he imagines will be a more exciting time in Las Vegas.

 

Yes, this is another story that decisively punctures the surface “wholesomeness” that many people naïvely assume the 1950s represented. Much of what follows takes place within all aspects of the decade’s closeted gay community.

The Long Game: Hole in one!

The Long Game (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for mild profanity, racial slurs and brief rude material

Available via: Netflix and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.28.24

We’ve enjoyed an impressive run of fact-based sports sagas during the past year — Nyad, The Boys in the Boat and Young Woman and the Sea leap to mind — but in terms of amazing actual events, this one’s the best.

 

As JB (Jay Hernandez, standing center) quietly waits, a clearly surprised Frank
(Dennis Quaid) absorbs the passion that these boys possess, for the game of golf...
and then agrees to coach their fledgling high school team.

Director Julio Quintana’s well mounted drama ticks all the boxes: engaging characters, well played by a strong cast; a story that focuses equally on relationships, racism and distressing history; and a reminder that passion, when properly applied, can move mountains.

And — oh, yes — it’s also about golf: defined so superbly in 2000’s The Legend of Bagger Vance as “a game that cannot be won, only played.”

 

Quintana and co-scripters Paco Farias and Jennifer C. Stetson based their story on Humberto G. Garcia’s 2012 nonfiction book, Mustang Miracle ... and they didn’t need to change much. The actual events are cinematic all by themselves.

 

The year is 1956, the setting Del Rio, Texas. World War II veteran JB Pena (Jay Hernandez) and his wife, Lucy (Jaina Lee Ortiz) have just moved into town; he has accepted a job as superintendent of the local (segregated) high school. He also loves to golf, and hopes to become a member of the local San Felipe Country Club.

 

Alas, sponsorship by close friend and war buddy Frank Mitchell (Dennis Quad) isn’t enough to overcome the club’s color barrier, or the patronizing attitudes of Judge Milton Cox (Brett Cullen) and club director Don Glenn (Richard Robichaux), who function as this story’s racist villains. 

 

“I’m afraid there’s just no place for you here,” JB is told.

 

Both Cullen and Robichaux are persuasively snobbish and condescending, to a degree that makes one want to reach into the screen and smack them.

 

Of course, the club’s white members have no trouble hiring Latino high school kids as caddies, as long as they “know their place.” Toe the line, and they might even get a five-cent tip.

 

Living: A magnificent character study

Living (2022) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for suggestive material and fleeting nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.27.23 

If Bill Nighy were able to shift a single eyebrow, I’ve no doubt the resulting expression would convey a wealth of emotion.

 

He’s that good.

 

Williams (Bill Nighy) is surprised to find Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood) working as a
waitress at her new posting, knowing that she took the job under the belief that she'd
be an assistant manager.

His performance here, as a morose, quietly contemplative civil servant, is a masterpiece of nuance. Nighy’s dialogue is spare; when speaking, he brings a wealth of depth and significance to every word, every syllable. And even when silent, his posture and gaze convey everything we need to know about this man, at each moment.

 

Some actors are born to play a particular role, and I can’t imagine anybody but Nighy playing this one. It will, I’m sure, remain his crown jewel.

 

Director Oliver Hermanus and scripter Kazuo Ishiguro deliver a meticulously faithful adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 classic, Ikiru, which in turn borrowed heavily from Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. (All concerned also owe a significant debt to Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.)

 

The year is 1953, the setting London: still struggling to recover from the bombing raids of World War II. Mr. Williams (Nighy), a lonely widower known by colleagues as “The Old Man,” is head of one department in a multi-story government building laden with similar subdivisions, all of which work hard at having nothing to do with each other.

 

Which is to say, most of these nattily attired men are hardly working.

 

It’s a bureaucratic maze of “D-19s,” “K Stacks” and countless other forms and protocols, where suggestions, proposals, petitions and heartfelt entreaties go to die, after being shuttled between — as just a few examples — Parks, Planning, Cleansing & Sewage, and Public Works (the latter a deliciously ironic oxymoron).

 

Public Works is Williams’ department, and whenever a folder shuttles back into his hands, he places in amid countless others on his desk. “We can keep it here,” Nighy sighs, in a disinterested tone. “There’s no harm.”

 

Rest assured, it’ll never be viewed again.

 

All of this is a shock to idealistic newbie Peter Wakeling (Alex Sharp), who is dismayed to find a similar mountain of paper at his desk. Secretary Margaret Harris (Aimee Lou Wood), sympathetic to his first-day confusion, quietly advises Peter to maintain the height of his “skyscraper” of unfinished work, lest colleagues suspect him of “not having anything very important to do.”

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?

The Outfit: Well tailored

The Outfit (2022) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

The show must go on, as the venerable saying goes, and two years’ worth of Covid restrictions and limitations forced filmmakers to think way outside the box.

 

Sometimes — as in this case — with remarkably clever results.

 

Leonard (Mark Rylance) and his assistant, Mable (Zoey Deutch), are about to endure
an unusual — and increasingly dangerous — night.

Graham Moore makes a stylish feature directorial debut with The Outfit, a cheeky period crime thriller laden with Hitchcockian touches. Moore and co-scripter Johnathan McClain have concocted a claustrophobic, tension-laden scenario that would succeed equally well as a stage play, but doesn’t feel the slightest bit constrained as a cinematic experience.

(Moore shared an Academy Award for co-scripting 2014’s equally engaging The Imitation Game. He definitely has a way with plot and well-sculpted characters.)

 

The setting is early 1950s Chicago. Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance), a soft-spoken ex-pat Brit, has established a successful corner-shop career as a talented maker of fine suits. (“I’m a cutter,” he patiently insists, more than once, “not a tailor.”) 

 

Moore opens the film with a lengthy sequence as Leonard explains his craft — in voiceover — while we watch how a suit emerges from paper patterns and four different kinds of fabric. Because of the quietly reverential quality of Rylance’s narration, and the fascinating process itself — so esoteric, and highlighted by an old-world attention to precision — this prologue is totally captivating.

 

(If you assume this introduction is insignificant, think again; Leonard’s calmly measured recitation has an ingenious third-act payoff.)

 

Leonard’s customers are greeted by Mable (Zoey Deutch), his receptionist/assistant. Their relationship is friendly and cordial; the affection and mutual respect are obvious … although Leonard, wholly at peace with his place in the world, is amused by Mable’s restlessness.

 

But not everybody coming through the front door is a customer. Numerous daily visitors bypass Mable — she never looks up — and head straight to Leonard’s rear cutting room, where they place sealed packets into a lockbox. The shop is a drop-off point for protection money payments, and the neighborhood is under the thumb of organized crime.

 

As it happens, Leonard’s best customer, Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale), is the local boss.

Being the Ricardos: We still love Lucy

Being the Ricardos (2021) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters and (beginning December 21) Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Writer/director Aaron Sorkin loves the crackling intensity of rapid-fire dialogue amid interpersonal conflict, as we’ve seen in earlier projects from TV’s The West Wing and The Newsroom, to big-screen efforts such as The Social Network and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

 

The stars of I Love Lucy — from left, Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), William Frawley
(J.K. Simmons), Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda) and Lucile Ball (Nicole Kidman) — rehearse
a scene wherein Ricky and Lucy Ricardo attempt to "re-unite" the bickering Fred and
Ethel Mertz.

When Sorkin is at the top of his game, the result is exhilarating: absolutely the word to describe this new film.

Being the Ricardos is set primarily during a tumultuous single week in late 1952, as the stars, writers and sponsors of I Love Lucy shape the second season’s next episode, prior to it being performed and filmed before a live studio audience. That said, frequent flashbacks reveal the early careers of Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), and how they met and married.

 

Those elements are fascinating, as Sorkin deftly sketches the ambition, shrewd intelligence and business savvy that — once they got together — transformed two B-movie contract players into industry visionaries: They co-created one of television’s all-time most successful shows (No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings for four of its six seasons) and then founded Desilu, one of the world’s top TV production companies at the time (and later the home of Star Trek, among many other hits).

 

Captivating as all this is — and the power couple’s many innovations almost are too numerous to take in, so quickly (a Sorkin trademark) — the film primarily focuses on three crises that erupt during this one week:

 

• A newspaper photo that leads Ball to believe that Arnaz is having an affair;

 

• Muckraking gossip columnist Walter Winchell’s bombshell announcement that Ball is a communist (!); and

 

• The revelation that Ball is pregnant with their second child, and her determination — with Arnaz’s support — to break television’s then-cultural taboo against showing pregnant women on screen.

 

While all these events are factual, Sorkin has “massaged” history — and heightened the intensity of his film — by having them occur simultaneously. (They didn’t. Most notably, Winchell’s radio bombshell wasn’t made until a few days after Ball’s second meeting with the House Un-American Activities Committee, in September 1953.)

 

Ergo, the cacophony of calamity is artistic conceit, but it’s a forgivable sin.

 

Verbal jousting is ubiquitous throughout, in the audacious manner of a 1930s screwball comedy: between Ball and Arnaz; between both of them and their three favorite writers, Madelyn Pugh (Alia Shawkat), Bob Carroll Jr. (Jake Lacy) and Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale); and between all five of them and the CBS suits (Clark Gregg, Nelson Franklin and Dan Sachoff) and Phillip Morris representative (Jeff Holman) who question, nitpick, challenge and argue over any line or act that might be considered controversial, risqué or offensive to American TV viewers.

 

It’s a revelation, to be reminded of the jaw-droppingly insane restrictions placed on TV shows, back in the day … and the long-suffering patience required of the stars, writers and directors who had to put up with such nonsense.

 

Alan Baumgarten’s editing, throughout, is as tight and quick as the rat-a-tat dialogue.

No Sudden Move: Suspensefully riveting

No Sudden Move (2021) • View trailer

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

Available via: HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

Fans of slow-burn crime thrillers will love this one.

 

Scripter Ed Solomon’s noir-ish saga is given precisely the right look and atmosphere by director Steven Soderbergh and production designer Hannah Beachler. The post-WWII Detroit setting emphasizes the deplorable racial divide between cozy white neighborhoods and decaying inner-city Black districts, and the wary mistrust this prompts from both sides.

 

Having maneuvered their way up the conspiratorial food chain, Ronald (Benicio Del Toro,
left) and Curt (Don Cheadle) are startled by where they've suddenly wound up.

Soderbergh’s camera glides languidly along both sets of streets, as if perched atop a slow-moving vehicle; he frequently employs a fish-eyed lens, which distorts the image at both edges. This adds to the unsettling, overall sense of disorientation experienced by our fish-out-of-water protagonists. (As he has done before, Soderbergh “hides” behind the pseudonym “Peter Andrews,” when he handles his own cinematography.)

The year is 1954. Curt Goynes (Don Cheadle), recently released from prison, is offered a job by shady go-between Jones (Brendan Fraser). It sounds simple enough: babysit the family of low-level General Motors executive Matt Wertz (David Harbour) for a couple of hours.

 

“Babysit,” meaning “guard at gunpoint while something goes down elsewhere.”

 

Jones also recruits Ronald Russo (Benicio Del Toro), similarly down on his luck, who isn’t wild about sharing a job with, ah, someone of color. (Cheadle’s dry amusement, when the two men share the back seat of Jones’ car, is priceless.) The little gang is augmented further by Charley Barnes (Kieran Culkin), who outlines the plan.

 

Charley will “escort” Matt to his office, to retrieve a document from a certain safe. Curt and Ronald will keep Matt’s family at home: wife Mary (Amy Seimetz) and their two children, Matthew Jr. (Noah Jupe) and Peggy (Lucy Holt). The three criminals will remain masked the entire time; if everybody cooperates, everybody lives.

 

The raw intensity of the early morning home invasion is palpable, as Mary and her children are startled by the sudden appearance of these three menacing intruders. Curt’s calming words do little to ease the atmosphere of terror; Seimetz’s performance is sublime, as the terrified Mary — and we — expect something awful to happen, at any moment.

 

Sylvie's Love: Out of tune

Sylvie's Love (2020) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, which is needlessly harsh, for mild sexual content

By Derrick Bang

At first blush, Sylvie’s Love — an Amazon Prime original — is a charming romantic drama, very much in the cinematic style of its late 1950s/early 1960s setting.

 

Having discovered their shared interest in quality jazz, Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) and
Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) can't help wondering if they have other things in common ...
such as a mutual attraction.

We rarely get a film so richly, thoroughly immersed in that period’s jazz scene. The incredibly busy soundtrack is laden with classics — “Waltz for Debby,” “Summertime,” “My Little Suede Shoes,” Sarah Vaughan’s “One Mint Julep” and many, many others — along with era-appropriate originals by score composer Fabrice Lecomte, drolly titled “B-Bop,” “B-Blue” and “B-Loved.”

 

Stars Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha are enchanting together, and we’re easily charmed as their characters meet and begin what becomes a challenging relationship. Nothing is particularly novel about writer/director Eugene Ashe’s narrative, but his film nonetheless delivers an affectionately retro, comfortably familiar vibe.

 

Until he hits us with a thoroughly ridiculous and wholly unwarranted left turn, as we near the story’s conclusion. Which, frankly, ruins everything.

 

I don’t often see a filmmaker sabotage his own work so catastrophically.

 

Following a fleeting (and rather pointless) flash-forward, the story opens during the hot Harlem summer of 1957. Sylvie (Thompson) fills her days helping at her father’s music store — Mr. Jay’s Records — although she actually spends more time glued to a TV set: not as a casual viewer, but as the careful observer of what goes into the production of a show, because she hopes one day to establish a career in television.

 

Robert (Asomugha) plays tenor sax in a bebop quartet led by the less talented — but much better known — Dickie Brewster (Tone Bell). Robert chafes at the artistic limitations, but, well, a gig is a gig.

 

Needing to supplement his income, Robert applies for a job at Mr. Jay’s Records, after seeing a “help wanted” sign in the window. He and Sylvie share a flirty meet-cute moment, but she’s unavailable; she’s waiting for her fiancé to return from war service.

 

“Unavailable” doesn’t meet “uninterested,” of course, and — as the days pass — nature takes its course. This romantic inevitability is given swooning intensity by pop tunes such as Doris Day’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” the Drifters’ “Fools Fall in Love” and Louis Armstrong’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”

 

Motherless Brooklyn: The Big Apple's rotten core

Motherless Brooklyn (2019) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.1.19

Fans of Jonathan Lethem’s award-winning 1999 crime fiction novel will be quite surprised by what director/scripter Edward Norton has done with it.

The spider and the fly: Thoroughly irritated by the persistent investigation mounted by
private detective Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton, right), rapacious New York City developer
Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin) demands a face-to-face, hoping to make an offer his
pipsqueak tormentor dare not refuse.

Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, although contemporary to its late 20th century arrival, has the attitude, atmosphere and plot stylings of 1940s and ’50s pulp detective thrillers. Revering that style as a jumping-off point, Norton has retained the primary character — and very little else — while bouncing him back to 1957, and dropping him into an entirely new story that blends fact, fiction and noir sensibilities in a manner we’ve not seen since 1974’s Chinatown.

In a word, the result is mesmerizing.

Chinatown scripter Robert Towne ingeniously employed a “simple” gumshoe case to illuminate the real-world corruption and power-mongering behind Los Angeles’ bureaucratic theft of Owens River water, as ruthlessly orchestrated by civil engineer William Mulholland (fictionalized by John Huston’s Noah Cross). 

Norton, in turn, dumps Lethem’s intriguing protagonist into the clandestine, Tammany Hall-style empire ruled by the even more powerful Robert Moses, the mid-20th century developer/builder who — by manipulating politicians behind the scenes — ruthlessly transformed New York City into his vision of a metropolis. It’s a fascinating slice of history, which Norton cleverly blends with the character that he also plays in this thoroughly absorbing drama … but it has absolutely nothing to do with Lethem’s novel.

The film opens at a sprint: Lionel Essrog (Norton) and colleague Gilbert Coney (Ethan Suplee), both operatives of a small-time detective agency run by Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), accompany their boss when he arranges a meeting with shadowy figures left unspecified. The acutely perceptive Lionel knows that Frank is up to something, and likely something dangerous; this hunch proves accurate in the worst possible way, when Minna winds up dead.

Frank was more than merely a boss to Lionel; he also was mentor, friend and protector. Indeed, all four agency operatives — including Tony (Bobby Cannavale) and Danny (Dallas Roberts) — emerged from the same Catholic orphanage, back in the day, where Minna became their father-figure. 

His murder therefore hits Lionel quite hard, particularly since he is far from “normal.” Lionel is obsessive/compulsive and also suffers from an uncontrollable tendency to erupt in nonsense speech: often punning, rhyming and “clanging” against what somebody else has just said. He’s constantly forced to apologize for the “glass in the brain” that prompts such spontaneous outbursts; we recognize this as Tourette Syndrome, a designation not at all familiar to the characters in this re-imagined 1950s version of Lethem’s novel.

Storm Boy: A touching little fable

Storm Boy (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

This lovingly mounted, deeply moving Australian drama brought back memories of The Snow Goose.

When Mike (Finn Little) is accompanied by his three foundling friends during a visit to the
nearby village, folks can't help staring. (Wouldn't you?)

I was 15 when director Patrick Garland’s poignant adaptation of Paul Gallico’s 1941 novella aired as a Hallmark Hall of Fame special in November 1971; the final scenes left me shattered for weeks. Seeing it again, decades later — much better able to understand the Dunkirk element — I was moved anew, identifying more this time with Richard Harris’ Philip Rhayader, than with young Jenny Agutter’s Fritha.

All this came tumbling back while enjoying director Shawn Seet’s equally sensitive handling of Colin Thiele’s 1963 children’s book. Storm Boy — both the original story, and this beautifully structured film — has the magical, slightly other-worldly atmosphere of a fairy tale, while at the same time being grounded in real-world disputes as relevant today, as they were half a century ago.

Seet and scripter Justin Monjo have added a framing device, to bring the story into the modern era; this liberty doesn’t detract at all from Thiele’s original narrative, and in fact serves as a reminder that the battle between industry and environment — even now — too frequently favors the former.

Successful retired businessman Michael Kingley (Geoffrey Rush) has returned briefly as a senior director on his company’s board, for a meeting that will determine whether a mining company can base its operation in Western Australia’s Pilbara. The vote seems a foregone conclusion, much to the dismay of Michael’s environmentally impassioned 17-year-old granddaughter, Maddy (Morgana Davies).

But then, an odd — almost supernatural — event: A sudden, massive storm shatters one of the board room windows, delaying the vote by a day. Michael returns to the house he’s temporarily sharing with Maddy’s family; perhaps more eerily, he briefly sees a trio of pelicans that … well … aren’t there. Sensing his unease, Maddy questions him: Michael obligingly relates the story of his quite unusual childhood.

And, thus, we’re transported back to the late 1950s, where cinematographer Bruce Young so gorgeously captures the sweeping majesty and isolation of South Australia’s Coorong, and its 90-Mile Beach: a coastal wilderness where young Mike (11-year-old Finn Little, in a winning feature debut) lives in a rustic bungalow with his reclusive father, known as Hideaway Tom (Jai Courtney). He keeps them in supplies by catching fish and selling them in the nearby village; young Mike — whom everybody calls “Storm Boy” — helps as best he can. 

Schooling is limited to reading aloud from William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, with Mike’s father gently correcting pronunciation errors.