Nosferatu: It sucks

Nosferatu (2024) • View trailer

One star (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, graphic nudity and sexual content

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Watching paint dry would be preferable to enduring this turgid, overcooked slog.

 

In fairness, writer/director Robert Eggers gets points for atmosphere. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke definitely maximizes the eerie settings concocted by production designer Craig Lathrop. (That said, much of the film is too damn dark.)

 

Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) and Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) eventually
realize that particularly drastic measures will be required, if they're to have any chance
of defeating the vampire in their midst.

Alas, these opulently sinister backdrops are ill-served by a somnambulant cast that appears to wade through thick glue at all times, delivering lines with breathy pauses in between each word ... particularly true in the case of the title monster, who wheezes through every labored syllable, like he’s battling the world’s worst chest cold.

That affectation undoubtedly was intended to sound scary, but Eggers misses “scary” by a Carpathian mile.

 

His film has an intriguing legacy. 1922’s Nosferatu was plagiarized from Bram Stoker’s Dracula; director F.W. Murnau and scripter Henrik Galeen stole the plot and characters, changing names and relocating the story to their native Germany, in order to evade copyright issues. The ploy didn’t work; Stoker’s heirs sued, and the court ruled that all copies of the film be destroyed.

 

They missed a few, and Murnau’s film now is deservedly hailed as an early silent masterpiece that birthed the horror genre; the appearance of star Max Schreck’s Count Orlok also established a template for vampire makeup. 

 

Aside from the numerous legitimate adaptations of Stoker’s novel during the subsequent century, Nosferatu was remade by director Werner Herzog in 1979, with Klaus Kinski as the title vampire. Francis Ford Coppola’s handling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in 1992, also tipped a fang to Murnau.

 

Eggers’ new film borrows from all of the above, while focusing mostly on Murnau’s setting and characters. Eggers also employs shadows, often of a menacing hand, just as Murnau did. And, as befits our modern era, this film more explicitly emphasizes the lurid sexual eroticism that fuels much of the vampire mythos.

The Fall Guy: Rip-snortin' mayhem

The Fall Guy (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for action violence, drug content and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.17.24

This is way too much fun.

 

Director David Leitch and scripter Drew Pearce dumped their stars into a frothy, tongue-in-cheek action epic that never takes itself seriously ... while simultaneously delivering a heartfelt indictment of Hollywood’s shameful refusal to properly acknowledge the brave, hard-working stuntmen and women — and their support teams — who’ve operated in the shadows since the dawn of cinema.

 

With everything to lose, Cole (Ryan Gosling) makes a last-ditch effort to solve the weird
mystery that plagues his ex's film shoot.

A few have been appropriately recognized, over time: the utterly amazing Yakima Canutt, gender-breaking pioneers Helen Gibson and Evelyn Finley, stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, and acrobatic stars such as Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan.

Most, though, remain anonymous ... thanks in great part to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ ongoing refusal to honor them with an Oscar category.

 

(They’re about to add one for casting directors ... but still not for stunt workers? Shameful.)

 

But I digress.

 

Pearce’s balls-to-the-wall plot, very loosely based on the 1981-86 Lee Majors TV series of the same name, opens as well-respected stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) successfully completes a drop-shot as a stand-in for insufferably self-centered movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The latter, egged on by producer/manager Gail Meyer (the hilariously overblown Hannah Waddingham, late of TV’s Ted Lasso), demands a retake; too much of Colt’s face is visible in the shot, spoiling the illusion that Ryder does his own stunts.

 

(This arrogant PR nonsense, notorious among far too many of Hollywood’s insecure “action heroes,” is woefully tolerated even to this day.)

 

The retake ... goes badly.

 

In a sickening sequence that draws horrified gasps even though Leitch keeps it off-camera — and is a disturbing echo of the real-world accident that crippled Daniel Radcliffe’s longtime stunt double, Davis Holmes (sensitively addressed in a poignant 2023 documentary — Colt breaks his back.

 

Flash-forward a year and change. Colt has withdrawn from life and the career he loved so much ... and from the woman, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), who also meant so much to him. He now works a dead-end job as a parking attendant; she has parlayed her behind-the-scenes film set responsibilities into a first-time directing assignment on an overblown sci-fi epic dubbed “Metalstorm.” It stars Ryder, of course, with Gail as executive producer.

 

But there’s trouble on the set. Unknown to Jody, Ryder has mysteriously vanished; worse yet, so has his stunt double, Kevin (Ben Gerrard). Gail, knowing that she can stall for a few days by suggesting that Jody focus on second-unit action scenes, reaches out and begs Cole to step in.

 

“Jody wants you,” Gail insists. “She needs you.”

 

Although plagued by doubt and guilt over how he abandoned Jody, Colt cannot resist this plea; could it mean that she has forgiven him?

Bullet Train: One helluva ride!

Bullet Train (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore, relentless profanity and brief sexuality

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

The first 10-15 minutes of this film are remarkably off-putting.

 

We’re dumped into the midst of a story in progress, with numerous characters muttering sotto voce dialogue that gets buried beneath a shrieking pop score soundtrack. A gory and unpalatable flashback illuminates a running argument between two posh assassins over whether they’ve thus far killed 16 or 17 people.

 

Ladybug (Brad Pitt, left) believes that he has made an easy score, when he quickly
locates the metal briefcase he's been hired to snatch. Then he encounters Wolf
(Benito A Martinez Ocasio), merely the first of numerous assassins on this
bullet train run from Tokyo to Kyoto.

Elsewhere, Brad Pitt wanders amid the cacophony of late-night Tokyo — bewildered but purposeful — following instructions from a cool, soothing female “handler” at the other end of his phone.

Honestly, you’ll be tempted to bail …

 

… but that would be a mistake.

 

Once this film settles into its groove — and, more importantly, once viewers embrace that groove — this stylish, gleefully violent romp is a lot of fun.

 

Due in great part to Pitt’s increasingly amusing “Who, me?” performance.

 

Director David Leitch’s heavily stylized, unapologetically brutal thriller is a mash-up of Guy Ritchie-style crime romps and bloodthirsty Japanese yakuza epics, replete with wrathful assassins who go by code names, and have various scores to settle. Pitt’s character — dubbed “Ladybug” for the purposes of this snatch-and-grab assignment — swans not-quite-helplessly through this increasingly lethal chaos: the ultimate (comparative) innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

He has been tasked with retrieving a certain metal briefcase on the Töhoku Shinkansen Hayate bullet train run between Tokyo and Kyoto. It should be simple: Find the briefcase, depart the train at its next stop, liaise with his unseen handler.

 

What poor Ladybug doesn’t know — what we also don’t know, and learn only in fits and starts, as he does — is that the case is in the possession of the useless, wayward son (Logan Lerman) of White Death (Michael Shannon), a reclusive and much-feared Russian kingpin within the international crime scene.

 

White Wolf’s son is being chaperoned by professional killers Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry). The former is a Savile dandy with slicked-back hair and a penchant for erudite, long-winded speeches; the latter has a guileless demeanor and an uncanny ability to “read” people honed from (I’m not making this up) a lifelong study of Thomas the Tank Engine.

 

Ah, but this is a very busy train. The passengers also include Kimura (Andrew Koji), an alcoholic, low-level Tokyo criminal who has hit rock-bottom after failing to stop the unknown culprit who shoved his young son off the roof of a tall building. With family honor at stake, Kimura has concocted a mad scheme that will put him face-to-face with his target.

 

Then there’s Wolf (Benito A Martinez Ocasio), a rage-fueled assassin with a score to settle against Ladybug; The Hornet (Zazie Beetz), a master of disguise with a lethal sting, who travels beneath the radar of every job she accepts; and Prince (Joey King), a seemingly angelic young woman whose sweet looks and tender voice conceal torturous tendencies.

 

Oh, and let’s not forget the boomslang, a highly dangerous snake stolen from the Tokyo Zoo, whose highly toxic venom causes victims to bleed out from every bodily orifice within 90 seconds.

 

And off we go…

Godzilla: Radioactive waste

Godzilla (2014) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for intense sequences of destruction, mayhem, creature violence and civilian casualties
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.16.14

The good stuff, up front:

Fairness demands that I acknowledge visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel and production designer Owen Paterson, who have done a superb job with this film’s monster mayhem. As also was the case with last year’s Pacific Rim, the massive sense of scale is handled quite persuasively, and Northern California audiences will get a kick out of seeing familiar San Francisco landmarks flattened like pancakes.

When Godzilla trails a winged, radiation-chomping MUTO (Massive Unidentified
Terrestrial Organism) to San Francisco, you just know the Golden Gate Bridge
will be toast!

Additionally, our dino-sized star is granted a quite distinctive personality.

However...

If mankind as a whole behaved as inanely as the cretins in this narrative, the monsters would deserve to win.

Writers Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham have concocted a truly absurd premise, and their dialogue sparks unintentional laughter at every turn. This is purple, afternoon-soap melodrama at its absolute worst, and matters aren’t helped by director Gareth Edwards’ insistence that his actors deliver all their lines with the sort of clipped, wooden stoicism we associate with stuff that routinely got skewered on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

OK, let’s assume — for the sake of argument — that Edwards & Co. deliberately tried to imitate the hilariously grave tone of the post-atomic sci-fi flicks back in the 1950s. That would suggest we treat this update of Godzilla as high camp: the sort of romp that becomes entertaining precisely because it IS so solemnly sincere.

Except that this clearly wasn’t Edwards’ intention, given how he has insisted, in pre-publicity interviews, that Hollywood hasn’t delivered enough “serious takes on giant-monster movies.” Hate to tell you, Gareth, but you’ve not improved that situation.

So, maybe he’s so clumsy that he didn’t realize he was trying for camp. That still doesn’t work, because the aforementioned mayhem includes multitudes of civilian fatalities, with some folks perishing quite horribly. Edwards goes for the same death-by-apocalyptic spectacle that made previous doomsday popcorn flicks such as 2012 and last summer’s Man of Steel so unsettling.

Some films of this nature have begun to display a level of gleeful, kid-like callousness that evokes images of little boys pulling the wings off flies. Just as hard-core torture porn flicks such as Saw have turned complex evisceration into a spectator sport, these mainstream action flicks have upped the ante so much that (for example) the stomping of innocent bystanders becomes a pinball-style laugh line.

Which is ironic, because — for the most part — we care more about these innocent bystanders, than the tight-lipped blank slates who pose as this story’s protagonists. Not one of these so-called stars plays anything approximating a real character; they’re all one-dimensional archetypes ... and quite stupid ones, at that.

Kick-Ass 2: Still bustin' skulls

Kick-Ass 2 (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, brief nudity, crude sexuality, plenty of violence and buckets o' blood
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.16.13

Sequels are de rigueur in the comic book world, even when the material doesn’t necessarily demand subsequent chapters.

It all builds to this: As Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) watches from the sidelines,
Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, center) confronts his wildly garbed arch-nemesis
(Christopher Mintz-Plasse) in anticipation of a true battle royale.

I’m pretty sure writer Mark Millar and artist John Romita Jr. never expected 2008’s Kick-Ass to be more than an eight-issue miniseries, although Millar did leave himself an out, with the aggrieved young snot Red Mist demanding revenge in the final panel, following his evil father’s quite fitting death.

But the original series became a smash success, and director Matthew Vaughn’s 2010 film adaptation — which he co-scripted, with Jane Goldman — was one of that summer’s biggest surprises: a gleefully violent guilty pleasure that delivered the right blend of snarky humor and gory mayhem.

No surprise, then, that Millar and Romita re-teamed for the seven-issue Kick-Ass 2, which kicked off in December 2010 ... followed by the five-issue Hit-Girl, which began last August; and the ongoing-as-we-speak Kick-Ass 3, which debuted in July.

No surprise, as well, that director/scripter Jeff Wadlow has unleashed a big-screen sequel.

But I approached this second movie outing with more than a little concern. Millar has a reputation for pushing the envelope of good taste — hell, he shredded the damn thing several years ago — and his comic book Kick-Ass 2 is unforgivably mean-spirited, even given the violent realm within which his characters operate.

Fortunately, Wadlow’s cooler head prevailed, and he recognized — quite correctly — that mainstream viewers wouldn’t tolerate casual rapes or the pointless execution of little children (a needless story element I suspect Millar would like to recant, in this post-Sandy Hook era). Indeed, Wadlow makes his point rather emphatically, when this film’s über-villain — Red Mist, albeit with a new nom de bad, and back for his predictable revenge — balks at the offer of killing a dog, insisting “I’m not that evil.”

In yo’ face, Mr. Millar.

Wadlow actually bases his script on elements from both the Kick-Ass 2 and Hit-Girl story arcs, opening as our two triumphant heroes — Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz) — attempt to resume normal lives. For Dave, that means hanging out with best friends Marty (Clark Duke) and Todd (Augustus Prew), or watching TV at home with his father (Garrett M. Brown).