The Brutalist: A monumental effort

The Brutalist (2024) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.2.25

This film is impressive in many respects. 

 

Director/co-writer Brady Corbet ambitiously tackles an overwhelming, quite possibly unattainable endeavor much the way this story’s protagonist does.

 

Immigrant architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) has an uphill battle, persuading old-money
movers and shakers that his cutting-edge structure will be an asset to their community.

Alas, Corbet’s reach ultimately exceeds his grasp.

From the very first frame, this film Calls Attention To Itself. Lol Crawley’s cinematographic choice is 70mm VistaVision, a throwback logo and widescreen variant long discarded since its 1950s debut. Sebastian Pardo’s title credits design mimics the shape and style of the Brutalism architectural movement that erupted in Europe and — as in this story — Pennsylvania during that same decade.

 

Further mimicking this Old Hollywood approach, Corbet’s film opens with an overture, then proceeds with a first act — “The Enigma of Arrival” — a 15-minute intermission (with a clock that counts down against a key photograph), followed by a second act — “The Hard Core of Beauty” — and an epilogue.

 

Daniel Blumberg’s wildly eclectic score often clashes — deliberately — with the cacophonous “slabs of noise” from Andy Neil’s sound design. The result is jarring, startling and disorienting, reflecting the central character’s professional, mental and emotional journey.

 

It often feels like this saga is based on actual events, and actual people, but no; aside from acknowledging the post-WWII Brutalism movement itself, Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvoid’s entirely fictitious story and characters are merely suggested by Brutalist architects Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph and Ralph Rapson, with a narrative arc that owes much to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and a soupçon of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

 

László Tóth (Adrien Brody) is introduced in a confusing blur of motion: a Hungarian Holocaust survivor newly arrived in the United States, on a ship laden with fellow immigrants. Tellingly, his first view of the Statue of Liberty is upside-down, and then sideways, as he emerges from the ship’s bowels: a warning that America’s promise of opportunity is skewed.

 

That, coupled with the preceding Goethe quote — “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free” — promises that László’s subsequent journey will not end happily.

Asteroid City: A heaping helping of peculiar

Asteroid City (2023) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.7.23

Calling filmmaker Wes Anderson “eccentric” is like saying the Pope is slightly Catholic. The word doesn’t begin to convey the vast scope of Anderson’s outré sensibilities.

 

The motel manager (Steve Carell, left) is distracted by another atomic bomb test,
when J.J. Kellogg (Liev Schreiber, right) and his son Clifford (Aristou Meehan) arrive
in Asteroid City.

As one would expect, the results have been mixed. ranging from dazzling hits (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Fantastic Mr. Fox) to, shall we say, lesser efforts (The Darjeeling Limited, The French Dispatch).

But Anderson — a true artiste — remains undaunted, which is just fine; even his bizarre films are interesting … and everything he does is visually fascinating.

 

That’s certainly the case with Asteroid City, which is a dazzling display of architectural whimsy by Anderson, production designer Adam Stockhausen, and the art direction team headed by Stéphane Cressend. I mean, like wow; you’ve never seen so many pastels. They’ve gotta be Oscar-nominated.

 

Whether this colorful setting is supported by an equally compelling story … is another matter. Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola’s script is, ah, really Out There.

 

The film begins in standard-ratio black and white, as a host (Bryan Cranston) presents the back-story to the newest production by celebrated playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). We subsequently become the “audience,” as a huge cast of actors present the play in three acts (plus an epilogue). These dominant portions of the film are in stylized wide-screen pastels, sumptuously staged by cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman.

 

The actors occasionally break character in between scenes, which adds yet another (often confusing) layer to the story-within-a-story.

 

The year is 1955, the setting Asteroid City, a dot-on-the-map desert community — population 87 — in the American Southwest. The enclave includes a luncheonette, a gas station, a phone booth, an unfinished highway ramp, and a motel comprising a dozen or so cute little bungalows.

 

The city is named for its regional monument: a massive crater created by the grapefruit-size Arid Plains Meteorite, also on display. Small radio telescopes and an observatory can be seen not far away.

 

The occasion is Asteroid Day, a celebration which has gathered five junior scientists and their families; master of ceremonies Gen. Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) acknowledges each teen’s fabulous invention with an award, followed by the presentation of the annual Hickenlooper Scholarship to one of the quintet.

 

Ghosted: Rather insubstantial

Ghosted (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong action violence, mild sexuality and brief profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

This certainly is the epitome of “guilty pleasure.”

 

Were it not for the charismatic screen presence of stars Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, director Dexter Fletcher’s action/adventure rom-com would be nothing but a case study in formulaic excess.

 

Pinned down by gunfire in the mountainous region of Pakistan's Khyber Pass, Cole
(Chris Evans) and Sadie (Ana de Armas) are about to endure a fate worse than death.
But fear not: A dilapidated and hilariously colorful bus is about to provide escape (of sorts).

Goodness knows, the dialogue — blame Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers — is beyond eye-rollingly lame. And while the premise has promise, the required suspension of disbelief too frequently hits 11, on a 10-point scale.

 

That said…

 

Evans and de Armas are entertaining together, and the dog-nuts plot builds to an inventive — if highly improbable — climax that deserves points for originality. (It does, however, remind me of the final merry-go-round sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, although I’d be very surprised to learn that Reese et al channeled that.)

 

Events begin in Washington, D.C., where Cole Turner (Evans) manages a booth at a lively farmers’ market, selling produce grown at his family ranch just outside the city. He and traveling art curator Sadie Rhodes (de Armas) meet cute over her intended purchase of a house plant from a neighboring stall.

 

This is the film’s worst exchange of so-called flirty banter, and — coming so soon — it bodes ill for whatever follows. But hang in there; things do improve. A bit.

 

Lamentable first impressions lead to a whirlwind day together, after which Sadie departs on her next assignment. Cole, assuming that “magic” has entered his life, texts her during the next several days: at first romantically, then curiously, and finally much too aggressively. All to no avail; Sadie ignores — “ghosts” — him completely.

 

Cole’s subsequent agitation proves quite amusing to his father (Tate Donovan), mother (Amy Sedaris) and particularly younger sister Mattie (Lizze Broadway), who warns him against such “stalkerish” behavior. But Cole doesn’t see it that way, and circumstances give him the means to find Sadie. 

 

He forever misplaces things, and long ago put little trackers on crucial personal items, all of which can be located via his Smart phone. Sadie accidentally departed with his allergy inhaler, which places her — Cole is surprised to learn — in London. 

 

“Go after her!” Mom and Dad insist. “Are you kidding?” Mattie, the voice of reason, objects.

 

Cole nonetheless decides that this would be the Ultimate Grand Romantic Gesture. And so he flies to London.

 

But when he traces his tracker to somewhere on or beneath the Tower Bridge, he’s unexpectedly attacked by three goons, chloroformed, and wakens in the sinister lair of a giggling torturer — Tim Blake Nelson, deliberately overplaying the role — who believes that Cole is a legendary CIA operative code-named “The Taxman,” and has information about a mysterious whatzit known as “Aztec.” Because, well, Cole was in the wrong place at the right time.

 

See How They Run: A whimsical delight

See How They Run (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for mild violence and fleeting sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This is way too much fun.

 

Director Tom George’s mischievous period “whodunit within a whodunit” is a valentine to Agatha Christie — and her fans — and a cheeky send-up of theatrical storytelling conventions.

 

Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and his fresh-faced associate, Constable Stalker
(Saoirse Ronan), are surprised by the care with which a murder victim has been
placed on a theater stage couch.

Mark Chappell’s tongue-firmly-in-cheek script misses no targets. This is the sort of romp where, if a character laments the “awkwardness” of flashbacks as a plot contrivance, you can bet that the next scene will be a flashback.

Most of the humor is slow-burn: witty, not farcical, in the manner that is uniquely British.

 

Chappell also did his homework. A surprising amount of his narrative’s core details are based on historical fact (and I’ve no doubt viewers will rush to the Internet to determine fact from fiction, after watching this retro charmer).

 

The setting is early 1953, at West End London’s Theatre Royal, as the cast and crew of Christie’s new murder mystery play, The Mousetrap, celebrates its 100th performance. Essential details are supplied by an unseen narrator who, in a nod to 1950’s Sunset Blvd., speaks from beyond the grave.

 

The festivities are cut short both by the drunken antics of boorish, blacklisted American screenwriter Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody), and — a bit later — the distressing discovery that one of these folks has been murdered. For real.

 

Cue the arrival of world-weary Scotland Yard Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and his eager-beaver rookie, Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan). They find the body propped on the couch of the play’s single-room theater setting.

 

“Staged, so to speak,” Stalker impishly observes.

 

Chappell’s script is full of similarly playful one-liners.

 

The corpus delicti is none other than Köpernick, who — as flashbacks reveal — managed to irritate, annoy, belittle or blackmail just about everybody else. In true Agatha Christie fashion, there’s no shortage of suspects.

The French Dispatch: Impenetrable language barrier

The French Dispatch (2021) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for graphic nudity, profanity and sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.29.21

Although one can only marvel, gape-jawed, at the feverish, coordinated complexity of set and backdrop movement, carefully composed and choreographed actor placement, traveling camerawork and integrated miniatures — relentlessly, as this aggressively bizarre film proceeds — all this visual razzmatazz rapidly wears out its welcome.

 

Magazine editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray, left) listens while star journalist
Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright, right) defends his turn of phrase; both are ignored
by another staffer who serves more as background decoration, given that he never
has written a word.

A classic case of the tail wagging the dog.

There’s never been any doubt that Wes Anderson, as a filmmaker, is obsessed with eccentricity and kitsch; his cinematic visions generally occupy a universe several steps beyond traditionally heightened reality. When he succeeds, the result can be a bravura work of genius, as with The Grand Budapest Hotel.

 

When he slides off the rails, as with this one, we’re left with nothing but contrived and relentlessly mannered weirdness for its own sake. Which doesn’t work.

 

Worse yet, despite all the marvelous eye candy, this film is boring. Crushingly boring.

 

It looks like half of Hollywood wanders through this self-indulgent vanity project, sometimes for no more than a minute or so. You could spend the entire film just trying to identify everybody (and, at times, that’s more interesting than trying to follow the outré storytelling).

 

In fairness, the premise and narrative gimmick are delectable. In a setting that seems 1950s-ish, The French Dispatch is a widely circulated American magazine based in the French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé, lovingly overseen by quietly cranky, Kansas-born editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray).

 

If Anderson’s vision begins to feel like a love letter to the venerable New Yorker magazine, during its 1950s and ’60s heyday, well … that’s undoubtedly intentional.

 

As the film begins, Howitzer has just died. The staff journalists — hand-picked over the years, sometimes less for their writing chops, and more for the way they lend atmosphere to the voluminous offices — assemble to draft his obituary, and prepare the magazine’s final issue. We then watch the three primary feature stories crafted, over time, by writers who embedded themselves, and became part of their assignments.

 

The generous application of flashbacks allows Murray plenty of screen time, as he fine-tunes each piece. His traditional advice, to each scribe: “Try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose.” (You’ve gotta love that line.)

 

We open with a brief travelogue, as Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), the “Cycling Reporter,” takes us on a guided tour of Ennui-sur-Blasé: along the way relating the city’s history, while proudly highlighting many of the seedier neighborhoods, and their often wacky inhabitants.

 

This entertaining sequence showcases the astonishing work by production designer Adam Stockhausen, supervising art director Stéphane Cressend and cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman, who (I hope) was paid by the mile, because he must’ve been run off his feet.

Third Person: Provocative points of view

Third Person (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, nudity and sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.18.14

Writer/director Paul Haggis’ film is too long, too self-indulgent and often too precious.

That said, it’s also intriguing, mysterious, and oddly compelling. And, to a degree, there’s a reason for the many contrivances. Whether the “ultimate answer” justifies the prolonged journey, however, will be up to the taste — and tolerance — of the individual viewer.

Monika (Moran Atias) angrily refuses to share a hotel room with Scott (Adrien Body), and
accusing him of "the obvious" motivations; she chooses instead to make the best of a
bench at the railway station. Of course, this just amplifies Scott's protective instincts, so
he follows and winds up keeping her company for the entire night.

Haggis is a seasoned writer, having cut his teeth on various TV dramas before leaping to the big screen with several high-profile assignments with Clint Eastwood: Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima and most particularly Million Dollar Baby, the latter two garnering Oscar nominations. Haggis also helped revive the James Bond franchise by collaborating on the gritty scripts for Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

Most notably, though, Haggis is known for taking home twin Academy Awards for 2004’s Crash, a victory that remains controversial to this day. Some Best Picture Oscar winners are universally embraced; others divide movie buffs into polarized camps. Crash belongs to the latter group, its interlinked storylines alternately praised as insightful social commentary or ridiculed as puerile left-wing twaddle.

Third Person is an equally personal film that employs a similar template of seemingly disconnected narratives that slide in and around each other. The crossovers aren’t as direct as those in, say, Babel, Love Actually or even Crash; sometimes it’s no more than two people passing each other in a hotel hallway, Haggis’ camera using that excuse to shift quietly from one point of view to the other.

Except that there is more going on here, as we eventually discover.

Perhaps sensitive to the warring camps he created with Crash, Haggis avoids even a whiff of political content this time, focusing instead on interpersonal relationships and issues of trust. All the characters here are in various stages of flirtation, love or rejection, their behavior determined by anger, frustration and impatience.

And by hope. Hope for understanding; hope that things will get better; hope that past transgressions can be surmounted, catalogued and forgiven.

Julia (Mila Kunis) can’t get her life together, much to the vexation of her attorney, Theresa (Maria Bello). Forever between jobs and frequently down to pocket change, Julia nonetheless hopes to regain visitation rights with the 6-year-old son living full-time with his father Rick (James Franco), a famed New York artist, and his girlfriend Sam (Loan Chabanol). We’ve no idea what Julia did, to be shunned so thoroughly by her ex; her flakiness alone doesn’t seem sufficient cause for such total banishment.

The Grand Budapest Hotel: Grandly chaotic

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.21.14

This one’s hard to categorize.

On the one hand, and perhaps most visibly, Wes Anderson’s newest opus is a madcap farce populated by eccentric and oddly polite characters who hearken back to those found within West London’s famed Ealing Studios comedies, during the late 1940s and early ’50s.

With the police hot on their heels, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes, left) and his faithful
junior lobby boy, Zero (Tony Revolori), frantically try to figure out where to hide a
priceless Renaissance painting that they have, ah, liberated.

On the other hand, it’s a droll send-up of Agatha Christie mysteries, with suspicious butlers, nosy maids and assorted other shady and avaricious characters, all of them anxious about the contents of a will that keeps throwing up codicils, riders, supplements, postscripts and assorted other appendices, possibly even superseded by the second copy of a second will.

On the third hand, it’s an affectionate ode to an era of more civilized behavior, when traveling strangers regaled each other with fascinating tall tales while enjoying a sumptuous meal; and when courting lovers exchanged passionate letters.

Then, too, there’s an affectionate nod to Inception, with its nested narratives.

And, last but certainly not least, however we choose to define this unapologetically zany melodrama, it most certainly could have come only from the eccentric imagination of director Wes Anderson ... and perhaps that’s the only explanation that matters.

Anderson’s films take place within a fanciful universe of his creation: one slightly off-center from our own, with occasionally familiar cultural landmarks that merely add to the gently bizarre atmosphere, laced with characters who deliver crucial soliloquies and peculiar non-sequitors with equal aplomb, and always with resolutely straight faces.

No character ever laughs at something said by another; at best, the speaker might get a raised eyebrow that Signifies A Great Deal.

In short, Anderson’s films are strange. Very strange, and definitely an acquired taste. I generally swing toward admiration, but not always; his previous outing, Moonrise Kingdom, is a thorough delight ... but I almost couldn’t make it through The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

This one falls somewhere in between, leaning more heavily toward the wacky delights of Moonrise Kingdom. Anderson has concocted the script with co-conspirator Hugo Guinness, claiming inspiration from pre-code 1930s Hollywood comedies and the stories and memoirs of Viennese author Stefan Zweig (!).

Avid film fans with a fondness for old-style filmmaking technique likely will have a ball. Mainstream viewers who casually wander into the theater will be convinced, after only 15 minutes, that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

And, to be fair, they won’t be wrong.

Midnight in Paris: Enchanted dream

Midnight in Paris (2011) • View trailer for Midnight in Paris
4.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, and needlessly, for mild sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.17.11


Back in 1979, Woody Allen opened his film Manhattan with the following rhapsodic voice-over:

He adored New York City. He romanticized it all out of proportion. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles. No matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black-and-white, and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.

The displaced Gil (Owen Wilson), already enchanted by his unexpected
surroundings, is further mesmerized by the coquettish Adriana (Marion
Cotillard), who guides him through a side of Paris that offers fresh surprises
from one moment to the next.

A bit more than three decades later, three minor swaps — the city so named, luxurious color for black-and-white, Cole Porter for George Gershwin — could have allowed the same soliloquy to apply to the deliriously romantic montage of images that kicks off Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

This is an idealized vision of Paris, much the way Manhattan was an idealized vision of New York: cinematic love letters to iconic cities with palpable heartbeats. The Paris of Allen’s new film doesn’t — can’t — really exist, any more than the similarly strawberry-lensed Paris of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 masterpiece, Amélie.

Although Allen remains an astonishingly prolific filmmaker — 42 big-screen features to his credit, going back to 1966, with an even more impressive one per year, without fail, since 1982 — he hasn’t had a no-argument-about-it critical and popular hit since 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters. That’s not to say he hasn’t done fine work since then — Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Mighty Aphrodite and Vicky Cristina Barcelona immediately come to mind — but merely that such films aren’t likely to stand alongside his best.

Well, add another title to Allen’s list of classics, because Midnight in Paris is grand, glorious, witty fun ... and extremely sharp and savvy filmmaking.

Although the delectable conceit that fuels this story has echoes of Brigadoon and even Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Allen’s shrewdly clever script moves in an entirely different direction and takes a playful poke at folks who tediously — or naively — insist that things were much better “in the good ol’ days.” Indeed, Allen eats his cake and has it, too, by waxing poetically about the charms of times past ... while cautioning those who’d try to take up residence.

Gil (Owen Wilson) and his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams) are vacationing in Paris while planning their upcoming wedding: an impending union of remarkably dissimilar sensibilities. Although a wildly successful Hollywood screenwriter, Gil chafes at the soulless emptiness of this career, and thus is trying to write a novel; he rather vaguely hopes that Paris will prove a proper environment for this effort. Inez, perfectly content with the largess that Gil’s income provides, wastes no opportunity to belittle or bluntly dismiss this new artistic goal. Gil tolerates her put-downs with good-natured calm, in part because he secretly worries that she may be right.

Cadillac Records: Edsel handling

Cadillac Records (2008) • View trailer for Cadillac Records
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, violence, sexual content and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.5.08
Buy DVD: Cadillac Records • Buy Blu-Ray: Cadillac Records [Blu-ray]

The music is sensational, and the acting is uniformly strong; to my great surprise, Beyoncé is even persuasive with her portrayal of Etta James.

Unfortunately, the script for Cadillac Records is sloppy and disjointed, and the film's overall approach is amazingly clumsy. I've rarely seen a director who's both adept at coaxing solid performances from a cast, but inept when it comes to putting a film together.

Having successfully gotten Muddy Waters' (Jeffrey Wright, right) signature
sound on the radio, music impresario Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody) next
surprises his new colleague by unveiling a state-of-the-art recording studio,
where they can start producing and promoting their own stable of artists.

That would be Darnell Martin, who both wrote and directed Cadillac Records. That her heart was in the right place is obvious; she clearly burned to shine a light on the evolution of Chess Records, the Chicago-based blues label that played such a major role in breaking down the American color barrier in the late 1950s and early '60s.

But passion isn't enough, when it comes to telling a cohesive story; Martin has made a movie that treats its key players with distressing superficiality.

The questions emerge with the first scene, as the perhaps unwholesomely ambitious Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody, appropriately gaunt and hungry) suddenly transforms from a junkyard dealer to an inner-city blues club owner. An interesting shift, to be sure ... and we're supposed to believe that he made it solely because of a stinging remark made by the father of a young woman caught compromised with him?

Did Chess have no prior interest in music? Was he really merely an "opportunistic Polish Jew," as this film so frequently — and pejoratively — suggests?

Actually, I take it back: Martin's first mistake comes even sooner, by having this saga narrated by a much older Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer), looking back over the tempestuous rise of Chess Records. Ongoing voice-overs can add clarity and great dignity to a film — Forrest Gump comes to mind — or they can become an intrusive crutch, employed too frequently to patch over gaping narrative holes.

Martin's use of voice-overs, sadly, falls into the latter category.

She has better luck following the parallel, post-WWII backstory of Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), a Deep-South sharecropper who, after hearing his own voice preserved by a primitive recording machine, decides that he needs to abandon his "slave shack" and make at least some attempt to share his sound with big-city denizens.

His initially unsuccessful efforts are quite touching, in great part because of the calm, unruffled dignity of Wright's performance; this sequence establishes Waters as the film's emotional core.