A Man Called Ove: Endearing character dramedy

A Man Called Ove (2015) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and mild profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.28.16

Rarely has a film delivered such a blend of comedy and pathos, laughter and tears.

Trust the Swedes to leaven humor with such bleak, unexpected tragedy. Must be those long winters.

Ove (Rolf Lassgard) is not a man to cross, when he
makes his morning rounds: Woe to those who leave
garden tools, bicycles, toys or anything else lying
about, in what he believes should be the pristine
grounds of the housing association he monitors.

Director/scripter Hannes Holm’s A Man Called Ove (pronounced ooo-vuh) is a captivating saga of love, loss, redemption, inclusion, kindness and pretty much every emotion that matters. This deceptively uncomplicated saga of a cranky retiree actually has a lot on its mind — as does the cranky retiree — and both are full of surprises.

Holm’s tender little tale was nominated for seven of Sweden’s Guldbagge Awards — their Oscars — and won three, including Best Actor and the Audience Award. The only disappointing surprise is that Holm wasn’t one of the nominees, because the film owes much of its charm to the extremely clever manner in which the narrative unfolds.

Best use of flashbacks. Ever.

Fredrik Backman’s international best-selling novel, on which this film is based, has been described as a heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. Which is accurate, but rather an understatement.

The story focuses on Ove (Rolf Lassgård), the quintessential stubborn, short-fused old man next door. He lives by himself in a good-sized, strictly regulated block community laden with rules, which we eventually learn he established himself, as former association head. No motorized vehicles on the residential pathways. No bicycles or toys left lying about. Garage doors kept closed and locked. No cigarette butts.

You get the idea.

Ove makes his “rounds” every morning before breakfast, confiscating inappropriately placed items, and trading waspish retorts with anybody foolish enough to object. A few imprudent souls argue, such as the woman with a yappy dog (a creature which, in fairness, probably deserves the fate Ove proposes). Most of the neighbors, though, ignore Ove’s waspish tirades, in some cases greeting him cheerily.

Which is interesting, and raises the appropriate questions. Indeed, it points to the story’s essential moral: First impressions can be misleading.

Ove’s other daily ritual is a visit to the grave of his beloved wife, Sonja, where he grouses further, complaining about the “id-jaughts” who’ve taken over the world.

It becomes clear, following his subsequent movements in a house still laden with his wife’s belongings, that Ove isn’t cranky out of mere anger or spite; he’s lonely and profoundly depressed, unable to move on. Nor does he wish to; wanting to rejoin Sonja in the hereafter, he’s determined to end his life. Unfortunately, his efforts are interrupted repeatedly by ... stuff.

The Dressmaker: Leaves us in stitches

The Dressmaker (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, and rather harshly, for occasional profanity and fleeting drug content
By Derrick Bang 

Revenge is a dish best served with needle and thread.

Metaphors aren’t the only things mixed in director/co-scripter Jocelyn Moorhouse’s deliciously savage adaptation of Rosalie Ham’s 2000 novel. The Dressmaker starts as a tart-tongued Aussie burlesque populated by small-town eccentrics: something of a cross between Tim Burton’s sensibilities, and arch British films such as Cold Comfort Farm and Death at a Funeral.

Returning to her home town after an absence of two decades, Tilly (Kate Winslet,
standing) finds that her first chore is to restore order — and cleanliness — to the
grotesquely messy house in which her mother Molly (Judy Davis) is living.

But just as you’ve settled into what seems a comfortable — if rather scathing — groove, the story takes a jaw-dropping third-act lurch and turns dark. Very dark. Pitch-black gallows humor.

All of which continues to work, even as we gasp for breath. Ham had a lot to say about small-minded, small-town snobbery — “suspicion, malice and prejudice,” in her own words — and such concerns are the thread from which this cutting tapestry is woven. Moorhouse and co-scripter P.J. Hogan (who brought us Muriel’s Wedding) faithfully retain both the tone and essential plot points from Ham’s book, and the result is a tasty blend of social commentary, mystery and oh-so-sweet revenge saga.

The time is 1951, the setting the tiny community of Dungatar, a one-horse town deep in the wheat belt of southeast Australia. The film opens late one night, as a mysterious woman arrives by bus. This is Tilly Dunnage (Kate Winslet): poised, polished and professional.

And the last person most folks in Dungatar ever wanted to see again.

Moorhouse slyly parcels out brief, sepia-hued flashbacks. As a child, Tilly was hated by the one-room schoolteacher; was the butt of every other child’s prank; was despised even by local adults. The distraught little girl lacked the sophistication to realize that she was being “punished” for being an illegitimate child, her mother Molly (Judy Davis) having defied social convention by remaining in town to raise her daughter alone.

Now, 20 years later, and having been trained in France to become a haute couture designer, Tilly has returned to Dungatar. Ostensibly, she has come back to care for her ailing and now wildly peculiar mother; under the surface, though, Tilly wants answers.

She also wants payback.

The first task, though, may prove impossible. Molly, a bitter recluse with a particularly nasty tongue, won’t even acknowledge Tilly as her daughter; the early confrontations between these two women are hilarious. Davis never has been more wily, Winslet never more grimly determined. Cackling eccentrics are an actor’s dream come true, and Davis milks the role for all it’s worth.

Were it not for my fear that this little film won’t attract any attention, Davis would be a shoo-in for a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, if not the statue itself. Yes, she’s that good.

Humpback Whales 3D: Awe-inspiring

Humpback Whales 3D (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.26.16

In a film laden with captivating facts — an impressive number of them, for a documentary that runs only 40 minutes — none is more unexpected than the revelation that the world’s attitude about whale-hunting was changed, almost overnight, by ... a record album.

Call it the world's most impressive belly-flop: Few things are more breathtaking than the
sight of a 55-foot, 50-ton whale propelling its massive body almost entirely out of the
water, in order to slap back onto the surface, accompanied by a thwomp with the
volume of a sonic boom.

1970’s Songs of the Humpback Whale, produced by biologist and environmentalist Roger Payne, culminated his three-year study of songs and vocalizations among these mighty ocean mammals. It became the best-selling environmental album in history, sharing not only the majestic beauty of these oddly melodic sounds, but proving that they represented a complex means of communication.

The subsequent “Save the Whales” movement, galvanized by this “discovery” of highly evolved whale culture, resulted in the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment’s global moratorium on commercial whaling (observed to this day by all but three countries: Japan, Iceland and Norway).

That’s an impressive result, for a rather unusual pop LP.

These magnificent creatures are celebrated in the MacGillivray Freeman IMAX documentary, Humpback Whales: a gorgeously filmed production with all the hallmarks of previous efforts such as Grand Canyon Adventure, Dolphins, Coral Reef Adventure and many others. Indeed, MacGillivray Freeman productions have long been the crown jewels of IMAX nature documentaries, and this one’s no exception.

Director Greg MacGillivray and his team of giant-screen cinematographers patiently recorded humpback behavior and migrations in the waters off Alaska, Hawaii and most particularly the remote islands of Tonga, which has enjoyed its own success with a local whale restoration program. Via commentary given just the right degree of reverence and Scottish lilt by off-camera narrator Ewan McGregor, we learn why humpbacks “perform” these diverse and haunting songs, and why they migrate up to 10,000 miles, round-trip, every year.

The always amazing footage is given greater dramatic heft by composer Steve Wood’s exhilarating score, which mixes humpback songs with an orchestral blend of piano, synthesized sounds and the energetic themes of Canadian folk guitarist Calum Graham. Wood also choreographs several sequences to the rousing 2014 pop anthem “Best Day of My Life,” which echoes the irrepressible bliss that we can’t help experiencing, while watching the humpbacks whirl, twirl and leap with abandon.

Needless to say, MacGillivray gives us plenty of “money shots” of these 55-foot, 50-ton, unexpectedly acrobatic animals propelling their massive bodies almost entirely out of the water, in order to slap back onto the surface, accompanied by a thwomp with the volume of a sonic boom.

Such scenes are awe-inspiring, to say the least.

Maggie's Plan: The best-laid schemes...

Maggie's Plan (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

God must chuckle over how we mortals keep screwing up our own lives.

We fret, we fuss; we second-guess ourselves; we concoct absurdly elaborate schemes designed to accomplish this or that, but which invariably fail; we rebound with even more ludicrous counter-schemes.

When Maggie (Greta Gerwig, left) realizes that she has made a mistake by marrying John,
she concocts an unlikely scheme to re-unite him with ex-wife Georgette (Julianne Moore).
That's assuming, of course, that Georgette even wants him back...

If we’d simply relax and get out of our own way, letting nature take its course, we’d likely be much more pleased with the results.

Writer/director Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan has great fun with this notion. The indie filmmaker’s endearing romantic comedy — based on a story by Karen Rinaldi — also is another fine showcase for steadily rising star Greta Gerwig. The angst-riddled characters and New York setting make comparisons to Woody Allen inevitable, although Miller’s focus is female-centric; she’s also better — more organic — at skewering the pretentious affectations that make her characters so frequently sound like recently arrived visitors from Jupiter.

I’ve often felt that Allen’s gibes at Manhattan pomposity are made at the expense of his characters; the tone feels snooty. Miller, in great contrast, clearly sympathizes with her protagonists, even as she exposes their narcissism; it feels more like Miller is ruefully shaking her head, hoping that we’ll learn by this gentler — but still quite funny — example.

Maggie Hardin (Gerwig) wants to have a baby. Desperately. But she’s unwilling to take the conventional approach, given a track record of relationships that have lasted no more than six months. Artificial insemination therefore seems the best route, and Maggie has selected a slightly off-kilter, former college acquaintance (Travis Fimmel, as Guy) who abandoned a mathematics degree in favor of becoming a pickle entrepreneur.

Despite the decision having been made, Maggie remains conflicted. She shares her doubts with a personal Greek chorus: longtime best friend Tony (Bill Hader) and his wife, Felicia (Maya Rudolph). He’s a lawyer; she and Maggie are work colleagues at The New School, in Greenwich Village. Although Tony and Felicia are a bit crusty with each other, theirs is a loving and successful relationship, and they also care deeply about Maggie ... even if they frequently fail to understand her.

Maggie’s chance encounter with New School part-time teacher John Harding (Ethan Hawke) leads to a fast friendship. They spark: He’s a frustrated debut novelist trying to find his voice; she’s an eager and sympathetic reader. The bond deepens, and that’s a problem; John is married to Georgette (Julianne Moore), and they have two children.

A Bigger Splash: Only a ripple

A Bigger Splash (2015) • View trailer 
3 stars. Rated R, for graphic nudity, strong sexual content, frequent profanity and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang

A sun-dappled Mediterranean island, four attractive people, an uneasy romantic quadrangle linked in all sorts of directions ... the ingredients are ideal for a dreamy, sexually charged romp.

With this quartet — from left, Penelope (Dakota Johnson), Harry (Ralph Fiennes),
Marianne (Tilda Swinton) and Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts) — a walk to the beach is far
from blissful. The interpersonal tension is palpable, and it only gets worse with time.

At first blush, Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash delivers on that promise. We meet rock superstar Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton) and documentary filmmaker Paul De Smedt (Matthias Schoenaerts) as they enjoy a blissfully average day on the volcanic island of Pantelleria, off the coast of Sicily. They make passionate love in the pool of their luxurious vacation home, then — dressed only minimally — head for the warm delights of a beach that routinely attracts many of the island’s other residents.

She’s on an extended sabbatical, recovering from a throat injury that has left her unable to speak in more than a husky whisper. He works on projects as he can, but mostly tends to her every need. The bond is intense; they’re obviously devoted to each other.

Alas, their peaceful solitude is about to be interrupted. Nay, not just interrupted: rent asunder. Scripter David Kajganich (adapting a story by Alain Page) muddies these luxurious waters, and that’s a problem: The further we get into this self-indulgently long film, the less interesting and more tedious it becomes.

Along with just plain odd. After a lengthy set-up that is no more than relationship angst, Guadagnino and Kajganich abruptly switch gears, with a final act that’s procedural crime drama. Which is unexpected, to say the least.

And not really justified by what comes before.

Kajganich’s script is “inspired” by French filmmaker Jacques Deray’s 1969 “New Wave” classic La Piscine. That’s all well and good, but Deray had a much better handle on the undercurrent of illicit intent that fueled third-act events. Guadagnino and Kajganich are much too leisurely, their approach too vague, to justify their unexpected shift in tone.

The Meddler: Portrait of an endearing pest

The Meddler (2015) • View trailer 
4 stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for brief drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.20.16

Marnie Minervini can solve any problem. Any problem.

And for those foolish enough to insist they’ve haven’t any problems, Marnie will help diagnose some previously overlooked “issue,” and then suggest the best possible course of action. She’s never wrong, and she’s the first person to admit as much.

During a dinner already laden with emotional angst, Marnie (Susan Saranon, left) watches
warily after her daughter, Lori (Rose Byrne), sees her ex enter the restaurant with his
new girlfriend.

In fairness, that opinion is shared by most folks on the receiving end of her largess — medical, spiritual or financial — who marvel at Marnie’s cheerful altruism, while assuming that she must be the world’s best, most caring mother.

Except that daughter Lori knows the truth, as do we: that Marnie is a nosy, relentlessly hovering, knows-no-boundaries nuisance who, despite her kind-hearted intentions, is a two-legged 24/7 nightmare.

She’s also the genius creation of actress-turned-writer/director Lorene Scafaria, who has concocted this character from the heart: from the complicated dynamic that resulted when, after her father died, her mother sold the family home in New Jersey and moved 3,000 miles to the West Coast, in order to be closer to her daughter.

“And,” Scafaria explains, in her film’s press notes, “I’ve been raising her in Los Angeles ever since.”

Granted, Scafaria has embellished a bit, but still: No mother could hope for a better, funnier, more even-handed portrait of a widow trying to work her way through grief, while blundering amid the walls freshly erected by a daughter struggling to process her frustration and sense of loss.

Nor could we, as viewers, request or expect anybody better than Susan Sarandon, when it came to depicting this character. Sarandon is a revelation, both on camera and while delivering Marnie’s stream-of-consciousness narration. I’d call the latter a clever means of illustrating just how exasperated Lori (Rose Byrne) gets, as the victim of her mother’s constant, intrusive nagging ... but the voice-overs are too hilarious to be viewed as irritating.

Mind you, it’s more accurate to call Sarandon’s delivery wincingly funny: As this film progresses, few things become scarier than watching Marnie plunge into a fresh crowd of strangers, knowing — with an odd blend of dread and amused anticipation — that she’s about to target fresh prey.

Miles Ahead: A bizarre, self-indulgent cacophony

Miles Ahead (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity, nudity, drug use and flashes of violence
By Derrick Bang

Following an astonishing prolific decade of studio work — with 32 (!) albums released on Prestige, Blue Note and Columbia during the 1950s — Miles Davis hit mainstream acclaim with 1959’s now-legendary Kind of Blue, followed in quick succession by Sketches of Spain and Someday My Prince Will Come, the latter inspired by his wife Frances, who was pictured on the LP cover.

Don Cheadle's performance as Miles Davis is so spot-on that it's eerie, down to the
smallest details. Alas, the film that surrounds this superb acting isn't nearly as satisfying.

Those forever remained the go-to albums for many of Davis’ most enthusiastic fans, much to the jazz trumpeter/composer’s ongoing annoyance. He hated looking back, and he absolutely hated being “defined” by his 1950s/early ’60s sound; God forbid that one should even pigeonhole his work by calling it “jazz.”

“Jazz is an Uncle Tom word,” he famously said, during a December 1969 Rolling Stone interview. “It’s a white folks word.” When pressed, he insisted that rock and jazz both deserved to be termed “social music.”

Like most truly inquisitive artists, Davis thrived on exploring and challenging music’s very essence and form. His output during the latter 1960s and early ’70s became increasingly outré, unmelodic and challenging for even the most patient listener: wild, harsh, flamboyant, unrestrained — granted, always technically proficient — dissonant and cacophonous.

As if he were trying to be provocative, and daring people to dislike the result.

The same can be said of Don Cheadle’s aggressively weird “cinematic reflection” on Davis’ life and career ... or, at least, some portions thereof. This project obviously is a labor of love for Cheadle, who directed, stars, co-produced and co-wrote the script (the latter credit shared with Steven Baigelman, Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson).

The result is, by turns, celebratory, random and maddening: as gleefully bizarre and uncompromising as much of Davis’ latter-day music. To be sure, the film is anchored by Cheadle’s flat-out astonishing portrayal of Davis: less an acting challenge and far more some sort of full-immersion experience, as if the actor somehow figured out a way to “wear” Davis, like a suit of clothes.

From the raspy voice to the smug, condescending attitude and flashes of hot-tempered anger; from the often clumsy gait that seemed so unusual, contrasted with the always loving embrace with which Davis handled his horn ... it’s positively spooky.

Whether Cheadle’s riveting performance is sufficient compensation for the bizarre narrative style, though ... that’ll be up to individual viewers.

Born to Be Blue: A long, dark journey of the soul

Born to Be Blue (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug use, sexuality and brief violence
By Derrick Bang

After watching I Saw the Light, Miles Ahead and now this — all in the space of 10 days — I’m starting to wonder if any successful musicians have happy and stable lives.

After a day spent working on a movie in which he plays himself, Chet Baker (Ethan Hawke)
lays some charm on co-star Jane (Carmen Ejogo), who — despite an earlier insistence
that she never dates colleagues — finds herself attracted to him.

Canadian filmmaker Robert Budreau’s Born to Be Blue can be viewed as an expansion of his 2009 6-minute short, The Deaths of Chet Baker. This new drama also is what Budreau terms an “anti-biopic,” which is to say an unapologetic blend of fact and fiction: a modicum of the former, plenty of the latter.

In other words, very little here is true; Budreau’s script improvises upon a few key moments during Baker’s career, much the way a jazz musician explores and expands upon a familiar tune, in order to deliver a riff that’s both the same and different.

Going in, then, we must regard Born to Be Blue as a jazz-inflected fever dream that, in time, will contribute its own layer of myth to what already has become Baker’s increasingly apocryphal legend. With that understanding, we can admire star Ethan Hawke’s thoroughly engaging performance as the troubled musician, whose career endured despite his own best efforts to destroy it.

Let’s begin with known fact: Baker was “discovered” by Charlie Parker and Gerry Mulligan in the early 1950s, and quickly rose to become a seminal figure in the nascent West Coast “cool jazz” movement. He also became a heroin addict, often pawning his trumpet in order to purchase the next fix. He wound up in an Italian prison on drug charges in the early 1960s, and — so the story goes — was approached by producer Dino de Laurentiis, who suggested that Baker star in a movie as himself.

That project never got off the ground, but — as this film opens — Budreau imagines that it did. We meet Baker (Hawke) as he clumsily maneuvers his way through a club scene fabricated on a movie stage, building to an emotionally intimate moment with co-star Jane (Carmen Ejogo). Although a budding actress, Jane is serious about her craft, and mildly vexed at the notion of working with a guy who doesn’t know the first thing about acting.

But Chet wins her over. Despite a personal rule against dating co-stars, Jane falls for him ... just in time to confront a crisis. Emerging from a bowling alley after a sorta-kinda date, Jane watches in horror as Chet is beaten by goons associated with a drug dealer to whom he owes money; they knock out Chet’s front teeth, forever destroying his ability to perform in the manner that made him famous.

(Baker did lose his teeth during just such an attack, although whether it was a simple mugging — or indeed a drug deal gone bad — is a secret he took to the grave. And it happened after a gig at The Trident, in Sausalito.)

Hello, My Name Is Doris: A woman worth knowing

Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.1.16

Sally Field remains cute as a bug: as personable and effervescent as she was back in 1965, when she debuted as television’s Gidget.

Decked out in a wildly inappropriate, hot-neon-yellow '80s-era jumpsuit in order to "fit in"
with the modern millennial nightclub crowd, Doris (Sally Field, center) does her best to
impress John (Max Greenfield, third from left) and the rest of their hipster entourage.

The difference, all these years later, is that she also has matured into a deceptively powerful actress. Too many people take the bubbly exterior for granted — the signature cheerfulness — and then act surprised when Field unleashes impressive layers of pathos or expressive intensity.

We shouldn’t be surprised; her dramatic chops have been well established ever since Norma Rae and Places in the Heart, and subsequently well exercised in Steel Magnolias, a well-remembered guest appearance on TV’s E.R., and 2013’s Oscar-nominated supporting role in Lincoln.

Given the right material, Field can be a force of nature ... and Hello, My Name Is Doris definitely is the right material.

Director Michael Showalter’s bittersweet dramedy has been expanded from Doris and the Intern, an 8-minute short by then film student Laura Terruso, who shared her work with Showalter while he was teaching at her alma mater, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Obviously impressed, he and Terruso began a scripting collaboration that has resulted in this feature film: a clever and sensitive expansion of what began as little more than a droll comedy.

(Terruso’s short is readily available for online viewing: an opportunity I strongly encourage ... but only after you’ve seen this feature.)

We meet Doris Miller (Field), a “woman of a certain age,” during her all-time worst personal crisis. Her mother has just died, after having been “monitored” full-time by Doris, who put her own life on hold in the process. We get hints that Mom was something of a shut-in with a “clutter habit,” both traits having been absorbed, more or less, by Doris.

With Mom barely in the grave, Doris’ insensitive brother Todd (Stephen Root) and his mean-spirited wife Cynthia (Wendi McLendon-Covey, the pluperfect shrew) are anxious for Doris to sell the Staten Island house in which she was raised, and has spent all that effort as a full-time caregiver. Todd and Cynthia wish to reap the financial windfall.

Doris panics at the thought: What Cynthia dismisses as the home’s mountains of junk, Doris regards as a “museum” of accumulated memories shared with her late mother. As with most hoarders, Doris simply refuses to acknowledge any sort of problem.

More to the point, she’s suddenly adrift — answerable to nobody but herself — and utterly baffled by how to put that first self-indulgent foot forward.

I Saw the Light: Needlessly dim

I Saw the Light (2015) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

During a remarkably prolific career, Hank Williams released 35 singles that reached the Top 10 in Billboard’s Country/Western best-sellers chart, 11 of which hit the coveted No. 1 spot. Many of the latter — among them “Lovesick Blues,” “Hey, Good Lookin’ ” and “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” — continue to be covered, to this day, by new pop and country artists.

Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston) indulgently allows his wife Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen) to
join him at the microphone, during one of their live shows on radio station WSFA ... while
the members of his backing band, the Drifting Cowboys, try not to wince.

All the more remarkable, considering that Williams’ recording career was so brief. To paraphrase an old chestnut, when Williams was as old as Mozart, when the latter died at age 35, he (Williams) had been dead for six years.

Writer/director Marc Abraham’s biographical drama focuses exclusively on William’s professional career, from shortly before his first recording session, to the substance abuse and weak heart that claimed his life at age 29. But despite being based on the respected 1994 biography by Colin Escott, George Merritt and William MacEwen, Abraham’s film is a maddeningly superficial affair that devotes far too much time to Williams’ alcoholism and his prickly, on again/off again relationship with Audrey Mae Sheppard, at the expense of conveying even the slightest sense of the singer/songwriter’s creative spark.

Although I Saw the Light is laden with Williams’ songs — performed with impressive faithfulness by star Tom Hiddleston, who sings every note — they all arrive whole and complete, as if God simply dropped them, fully formed, into Williams’ head. We see no scribbled lyrics and crossed-out rhyme schemes; no late-night experimentation with guitar chords; no real-life incidents that bring a smile to Hank’s lips, and prompt him to sit down and pen a tune.

That’s simply nonsense.

By dropping us abruptly into the rising, post-WWII arc of Williams’ career, we also get no sense of back-story: the boy who took guitar lessons from Alabama blues musician Rufus Payne, and how that shaped what followed; the kid who was isolated from his peers because of spina bifida, which left him unusually gaunt. Abrahams opens his film with Hank’s marriage to Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen), thereby bypassing all sorts of essential details that would explain why she and his mother Lillie (Cherry Jones) despise each other so much.

Granted, the broad strokes are obvious: Both women want to control Hank’s career. But that alone isn’t enough to justify the obvious contempt Lillie shows for Audrey, and we’re left to wonder what went down before this movie begins.

Mostly, though, Abrahams gives us a thoroughly unflattering portrait of Williams, played to insolent, short-tempered and highly unstable perfection by Hiddleston. He’s an excellent actor, easily able to project the charisma with which Williams could light up a stage. But the unflattering emphasis on Williams’ flaws frequently feels like character assassination.

Eye in the Sky: A riveting real-world thriller

Eye in the Sky (2015) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, profanity and violent images
By Derrick Bang

Guy Hibbert’s thoughtful screenplay has the unsettling intensity of an immaculately crafted stage play.

Helen Mirren, as Col. Katherine Powell

Indeed, I can see this being a great play, even though its primary characters are spread out across the globe. An imaginative director could handle that detail, much the way Gavin Hood has choreographed this big-screen drama with such authoritative snap.

Eye in the Sky is a taut, up-to-the-minute geo-political thriller that belongs in the company of 1960s Cold War classics such as Fail Safe and Seven Days in May, and more recent efforts such as Thirteen Days and Munich. At its core, Hibbert’s script — which he wrote back in 2008, making it even more cutting-edge — is a study of actions and consequences: to what degree, if any, a desired end justifies the means to obtain it.

Hibbert’s approach is what makes the result so riveting: This is a “process thriller” very much in the mold of 2011’s Margin Call. That film gave us a talking-heads glimpse of the primary players at a Wall Street investment firm who, during the course of 24 hours, watch helplessly as their own previous actions precipitate the 2008 meltdown. You’d think such back-room financial commentary and analysis would be boring, but that was far from the case; the excellent cast brought compelling tension to every aspect of writer/director J.C. Chandor’s script.

As Margin Call was to the 2008 economic crisis, Eye in the Sky is to digital-age drone warfare.

British Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), waking early one morning at her cozy home in Sussex, assumes her decidedly un-cozy duties at a nearby military base. This is likely to be a crucial day: She has been tracking, for six years, a particularly notorious British citizen-turned-terrorist — a radicalized young woman — who is expected to attend a meeting at an Al-Shabaab safe house in a bustling Nairobi neighborhood.

As a bonus, this target is expected to be in the company of at least one other terrorist ranked high on the British/American “most wanted” list.

The developing situation is being monitored from the sky by a surveillance drone piloted by American soldiers at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, and at ground level by Nairobi anti-terrorist personnel. Facial recognition identification, if such an opportunity arises, will be confirmed by an American military analyst stationed in Hawaii. All are in constant contact with Powell.

She, in turn, passes this intel along to her commanding officer, Lt. Gen. Frank Benson (Alan Rickman, in his final performance), who is spending the day in a London conference room, where he shares these same details with upper-echelon British government overseers. The intention, at every moment, is to follow protocol and chain of command, while adhering to legal justification.

All these players are assembled to monitor a pre-approved “capture mission” that will be coordinated by the Nairobi ground troops. Powell, in charge of the operation, waits only for verification that her targets have arrived.

The Bronze: Quite tarnished

The Bronze (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.18.16

Redemption stories are as old as novels themselves, as today’s readers of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and countless other authors can testify. There’s something tremendously satisfying about following the adventures of flawed characters who eventually, finally experience an epiphany, subsequently becoming better versions of themselves.

While a poster of the deceased "Coach P" scowls in the background, Hope (Melissa Rauch)
has an uneasy reunion with long-ago former boyfriend Lance (Sebastian Stan, left). Ben
(Thomas Middleditch), acutely aware of the discomfort, stands ready to intervene if
things get unpleasant.

While this narrative form has been equally popular on the big screen, recent examples have substituted the traditional shortcomings — avarice, deceit, betrayal — with revolting levels of vulgarity and malice. The protagonists in Tammy (Melissa McCarthy), Bad Words (Jason Bateman) and Trainwreck (Amy Schumer), among others, are social pariahs to a degree that is breathtakingly inexcusable ... not to mention their sporting potty-mouths that undoubtedly bring joy to giggling adolescents.

Which is, perhaps, an intriguing social statement ... since such uncouth, infantile sensibilities now seem perfectly acceptable to thirty- and fortysomethings.

(And current Republican presidential candidates. But that’s another story.)

More critically, the balance has been skewed. When we spend 92 percent of a film being horrified by our main character’s relentlessly nasty behavior, is salvation even possible? And even if a script arbitrarily insists on yes ... is it deserved?

The Bronze straddles a very narrow vaulting horse. Some will argue, with complete justification, that the film slips and lands with a thud on the wrong side of the mat. I’m inclined toward feeble generosity, thanks to a couple of clever last-minute plot twists ... but the viewing experience remains wincingly painful at times. Lots of times.

This Sundance Festival indie is a pet project by actress Melissa Rauch, well recognized in her long-running role as Bernadette Rostenkowski, on TV’s The Big Bang Theory. She and husband Winston co-wrote the script; they also co-produced the film itself, in which she stars. The result is — to say the least — light-years removed from her work in Big Bang, and not for the faint of heart (or easily offended).

She plays Hope Ann Gregory, who as a hard-working teenage gymnast became America’s sweetheart after bravely performing at the 2004 Olympics, despite having ruptured an Achilles tendon. The result: an unexpected and well-earned bronze medal. She returned home to a hero’s welcome in the working-class town of Amherst, Ohio, determined to train hard, re-ignite her career, and take a gold next time out.

But it wasn’t to be.

The Lady in the Van: Driven to delightful distraction

The Lady in the Van (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for a fleeting unsettling image
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.19.16

Some plays make awkward films, the very nature of their enclosed stage universe rendered claustrophobic on the big screen.

When Alan (Alex Jennings) cautiously worries about his new "permanent interloper's"
ability to drive — let alone whether she even possesses a license — the feisty Miss
Shepherd (Maggie Smith) shrugs him off with one of her imperious displays of
dignified entitlement.

That absolutely isn’t the case with The Lady in the Van, which opens up quite cleverly under the guidance of director Nicholas Hytner and scripter Alan Bennett. The latter has adapted this charming little drama from his own play, which debuted in 1999 in London’s West End, and which in turn was based on actual events recorded in his exhaustive memoirs.

Maggie Smith starred in the stage production, and also played the same role in a BBC Radio adaptation. No surprise, then, that she delivers a crisp, saucy and richly memorable performance in this cinematic version.

She plays Mary Shepherd, an elderly homeless woman who lives in a dilapidated van that she has trundled about a bucolic North London street called Gloucester Crescent, a neighborhood which — in this late 1960s setting — hosts various British stage and literary luminaries. As introduced in Hytner’s film, we get the vague sense that “Miss Shepherd” has made a habit of parking in front of a given house until her sloppy ways prove too distressing, at which point she fires up the van and moves elsewhere along the lane.

Her eccentric behavior comes to the attention of playwright, screenwriter, actor and author Alan Bennett (Alex Jennings) when he moves into the neighborhood, taking the house at No. 23. She’s rather hard to miss — given the combination of street rubbish and feisty imprecations that trail in her wake — and Bennett’s new neighbors are only too happy to supply details and rumors.

They’ve all kinda/sorta tolerated Miss Shepherd, out of a sense of liberal guilt that prompts them into occasional deliveries of food, reading material and any other small items they assume she might find useful. Parents cluck when their children, passing too close to Miss Shepherd, wrinkle their noses and complain that “she smells bad.”

Here, too, Bennett’s descriptive prose paints marvelous word pictures, when (for example) his running commentary describes her aromatic miasma as an “odoriferous concerto ... with urine only a minor component.”