Beckett: Solid acting, inept script

Beckett (2021) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated TV-MA, for violence and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Although the bulk of director/co-scripter Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s “innocent on the run” thriller generates considerable suspense — and John David Washington throws everything into his lead role — the story eventually collapses under the weight of its overly complicated narrative.

 

Beckett (John David Washington) and April (Alicia Vikander), enjoying their vacation in
Greece, playfully concoct fictional back-stories for the other tourists they spot.
Alas, things won't remain casual and carefree much longer.

Even worse, this is yet another frustrating film that stops abruptly, rather than concluding appropriately. Yes, one key issue is resolved, but Filomarino and co-scripter Kevin A. Rice leave several other hanging chads twisting in the wind, giving us no means of separating good from evil, or determining Who Was Behind It All.

On top of which, a running thread of soul-shattering grief and personal responsibility is disagreeably mean-spirited.

 

(On a trivial note, Beckett is a terrible title. Something along the lines of Nightmare in Greece would be far more appropriate.)

 

American tourists Beckett (Washington) and girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander) are vacationing in Greece: a gorgeous, architecturally stunning setting granted lavish exposure by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. Beckett and April are very much in love; their cute, flirty banter fuels a lengthy prologue that overstays its welcome.

 

Depending on one’s tolerance for such things — in fairness, it’s not as if Washington and Vikander are hard to watch — you’ll either get increasingly nervous, waiting for some awful unexpected shoe to drop … or you’ll become annoyed by the way Filomarino seems to be vamping for time.

 

(I favor the latter.)

 

Eventually, though — finally — that shoe does drop.

 

In the aftermath, Beckett walks along the imposing Vikos Gorge, near a small town in Northern Greece, trying to piece together what actually happened. His probing curiosity is interrupted by a hard-edged blonde (Lena Kitsopoulou) who, without warning, pulls out a gun and starts shooting. One bullet punches through his left arm; in abject terror and confusion, Beckett takes panicked flight through the mountainous Tsepevolo countryside.

The Glorias: A glorious life, inventively told

The Glorias (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for profanity

By Derrick Bang

We’ve long been intrigued by the notion of our Older Self being able to step back in time, and personally reassure our Younger Self that everything will turn out just fine.

 

Gloria Steinem (Julianne Moore, left) and Bella Abzug (Bette Midler) chortle over some
of the reactions to a recent issue of Ms. Magazine.

(Or, alternatively, of Younger Self confronting Older Self with a narrow gaze, and demanding to know what the heck went wrong.)

 

Director/co-scripter Julie Taymor cleverly exploits this beguiling premise in The Glorias, her adaptation — alongside co-writer Sarah Ruhl — of Gloria Steinem’s 2015 memoir, My Life on the Road.

 

Love her or loathe her, one must acknowledge that Steinem carved out an impressively ambitious career, despite humble and disorientingly peripatetic origins. Taymor — an eclectic filmmaker known for her boldly unique approaches to varied projects such as Frida, Across the Universe and her gender-switching version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest — employs different actresses to depict four primary “pivot points” in Steinem’s life.

 

As her defiantly non-linear narrative bounces back and forth in time, these four selves occasionally meet and discuss what has transpired, or will transpire. Such encounters are filmed in dreamlike, soft-focus monochrome, always while traveling, and usually on a Greyhound bus whose windows look out upon a different time and place: an easy metaphor for the notion that life is a journey, with each stop far more important than the eventual destination.

 

Youngest Gloria (doe-eyed Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is enchanted by her irrepressible, irresponsible but flamboyantly theatrical father, Leo (Timothy Hutton), a huckster and charlatan forever keeping his family one step ahead of the previous town’s creditors. Despite the profoundly negative affect this has on his wife, Ruth (Enid Graham), Leo nonetheless inspires Gloria to recognize that travel is the best possible education.

 

Hutton is excellent: totally persuasive as a silver-tongued con artist who nonetheless knows, in his heart, that he’s destined to disappoint all the people he loves.

 

Twelve-year-old Gloria (Lulu Wilson), solemn beyond her years, is faced with the challenge of caring for her mentally fragile mother, after Leo abandons his family. With Ruth sliding ever deeper into chronic despair, Gloria soon understands how important it is for a woman to be able to make her own way in the world, without being beholden to a husband. We see the resolve in Wilson’s gaze.

 

There’s also a telling conversation, when Gloria discovers that her mother had once been a writer and reporter … forced to work behind a male byline. And we realize, from our contemporary remove, that Gloria would grow up to live her mother’s unlived life. (And how often, I wonder, does a child honor a parent in such an unspoken fashion?)

 

Tomb Raider: Stylish thrills, chills and spills

Tomb Raider (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, dramatic intensity and breif profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.16.18

Most big-screen adaptations of video games have been an eye-rolling waste of time, but Lara Croft always had an advantage: She was created, back in 1996, as the kick-ass female answer to Indiana Jones ... and we all know how well that franchise turned out.

Having run afoul of some young Hong Kong thugs determined to rob her, Lara (Alicia
Vikander) evades pursuit in the most flamboyant manner at hand.

Lara is similarly alive and well, in her newest cinema outing. Alicia Vikander is perfect for the part — radiating intelligence, spunk, resourcefulness and the never-say-die stamina of the Energizer Bunny — and this film should please both fans and mainstream newcomers. Norwegian director Roar Uthaug has delivered a rip-snortin’ adventure with just enough back-story and character development to mildly stretch the acting chops of a cast that treats this popcorn nonsense with respect.

Indeed, it’s marvelous to note that the current generation of upper-echelon Hollywood talent is willing to swing between serious fare and light-hearted thrills. Jennifer Lawrence continues to honor her X-Men and Hunger Games roots; Viola Davis popped up in Suicide Squad; Eddie Redmayne has embraced the Harry Potter franchise; and now Vikander has become the new Lara Croft. They’re all Oscar winners, and more power to them.

Just as every generation seems to need a new and youthful Spider-Man, Lara has been re-imagined not quite a generation after Angelina Jolie first donned the boots, shorts and tank top back in 2001 and ’03. Vikander adds a playful sparkle to the role — Jolie, good as she was, always felt a bit too grim — and this film’s script touches all the essential franchise ingredients.

We must remember that Lara is a tragic heroine, and Vikander deftly handles that duality. Lara’s cheerful exterior can’t quite mask the pain behind her eyes; as this story opens, her beloved father, Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West), has been missing for seven years. He had a habit of swanning off on unspecified “missions” that had little to do with the stuffy corporate stuff typical of his public face; he never returned from the last one.

Refusing to believe him dead, resisting entreaties from Croft Holdings solicitor Yaffe (Derek Jacobi) and business executive Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomas) to accept the corporate control that would make her financially secure, Lara instead lives hand-to-mouth as an underpaid East London bike courier. This position certainly sharpens her reflexes; it also leads to the film’s first way-cool action sequence, in the form of a captivating bicycle race assembled slickly by editors Stuart Baird, Tom Harrison-Read and Michael Tronick.

The Light Between Oceans: Not bright enough

The Light Between Oceans (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.2.16

Embracing an overblown melodrama requires an act of faith on the viewer’s part: a willingness to sympathize with the protagonists — to understand and accept their behavior as reasonable — even if (when) they yield to ill-advised impulses.

After several failed attempts to start a family, Tom (Michael Fassbender) and Isabel (Alicia
Vikander) finally are rewarded with a child of their own ... but in a rather unexpected
manner, and one that will have tragic consequences.

But if they cross the threshold of acceptable conduct — if they betray our trust with an act too bewildering, or heinous — then the film’s hold on us is broken. The spell under which we’ve allowed ourselves to be placed, shatters like a broken mirror.

Such is the case with scripter/director Derek Cianfrance’s adaptation of Australian author M.L. Stedman’s 2012 novel, The Light Between Oceans. Because, despite the best efforts of its two talented stars, there comes a moment beyond which we cannot maintain sangfroid: a plot hiccup that is, indeed, unforgiveable. Compassion, and the patience to put up with anything that follows, are lost forever.

Mind you, the film’s contrived plot and execution require considerable endurance to begin with. Cianfrance’s lackadaisical approach is old-style Hollywood, by way of Thomas Hardy or the Bronte sisters. He and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw favor extremely tight close-ups, and while Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander respond to that challenge, with nuanced expressions, the technique grows tiresome.

So does Alexandre Desplat’s melancholy orchestral score. Mind you, I’ve been an avid fan of Desplat’s work ever since 2003’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, but his despondent themes here hammer the melodrama; the despair is relentless. And with Cianfrance subjecting us to 132 minutes of this morose character study, it’s just too much.

No doubt everything worked in Stedman’s novel; this sort of saga was born for the literary form. But as a film, with a self-indulgent director who prefers long-suffering gazes to expository dialogue, one can’t help feeling that he’s piling on the schmaltz and noble sacrifice with a shovel.

The setting is the remote edge of Western Australia, immediately following World War I. Tom Sherbourne (Fassbender), a shell-shocked veteran, has come to the tiny community of Partaguese in order to accept a posting as keeper of the crucial lighthouse, on the isolated and otherwise uninhabited Janus Rock. The island is miles from land, approachable only by boat, although the light keeper’s house has running water and all essential amenities (handy, that).

Tom is quiet, withdrawn and stoic: unable to understand why he was spared, when so many of his comrades perished on the battlefield. The experience has left him uncomfortable in the company of other people; his seclusion on Janus Rock isn’t merely by way of comfort, but to some degree — in his mind — some sort of necessary, self-imposed punishment, for having survived.

Jason Bourne: One helluva ride

Jason Bourne (2016) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense action and violence, and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.29.16

Wow.

Director Paul Greengrass certainly hasn’t lost any of his juice. This newest installment in the Bourne franchise is relentless: It hits the ground running, never lets up for two full hours, and is bookended by a pair of spectacular action sequences.

After learning that Nicky (Julia Stiles) has obtained proof of CIA black-ops programs that
relate to his past, Bourne (Matt Damon) arranges to meet her at an Athens plaza, where
they hope to blend into a melee between rioting civilians and local police officers.
Unfortunately, this chaos does nothing to stop the efforts of pursuing CIA teams.

I wouldn’t have thought Greengrass ever could top the mano a mano melees in 2004’s Bourne Supremacy, but he has ... and then some. Jason Bourne is a taut, breathtaking experience, its giddy momentum the result of equally fine work by editor Christopher Rouse, a longtime Greengrass colleague (and Academy Award winner, for 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum).

Greengrass and Rouse also collaborated on the timely, ripped-from-the-headlines script, which references the “safety or security?” argument at the heart of the recent spat between Apple Inc. and the FBI. The players have been altered to avoid lawsuits, but there’s no question which side of the fence our filmmakers occupy. Having navigated conspiracy-laden waters for more than a decade, Greengrass clearly doesn’t trust government agencies to have their citizens’ best interests — or privacy — at heart.

And with paranoia running rampant these days, this film definitely captures the national zeitgeist.

When last seen, Bourne (Matt Damon) had successfully back-tracked his actual identity, along with those responsible for the CIA training that transformed him into a hardened assassin. The victory was pyrrhic, as it left him without friends or a country. Convinced that the CIA would have him “erased,” he simply vanished.

Having remained off the grid for nearly a decade, Bourne has become a ragged, rootless shell, subsisting on meager earnings from underground bare-knuckle boxing matches. Damon’s grim features are weary and despondent during this introductory montage: the quiet despair of a man lacking purpose.

Then, suddenly, a blast from the past: He gets a message from former CIA colleague Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), who — also long on the run — has joined a hacking collective with the goal of exposing CIA dirty tricks. Her quest has borne fruit: 30 years’ worth of black ops files that include Operation Treadstone — which “created” Bourne — and something new called “Iron Hand.”

Even more damning, Nicky has uncovered additional details pertaining to Bourne’s actual identity — David Webb — along with the strong suggestion that his father, Richard (Gregg Henry), was directly involved with Treadstone. This revelation lends context to another of Bourne’s still fragmented memories: something having to do with a long-ago lunchtime meeting with his father.

2015 Oscar predictions: The envelope, please...

Let’s deal with the elephant in the room.

As of a few weeks ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had 6,261 voting members. All of them submit nominations for best picture.

Alejandro González Iñárritu, left, and Leonardo DiCaprio are certain to win Oscars for
Best Director and Best Actor. But will their film, The Revenant, also take Best Picture?

Nominees in most of the remaining categories are selected via balloting by various Academy branches: editors for editing, cinematographers for cinematography, and so forth. The same is true of the four acting categories, where — again, as of this year’s balloting — 1,138 Academy members, all actors, determined the nominees.

So: 6,261 overall voting members, 1,138 of whom are in the actors branch. And all of whom are limited by one incontrovertible fact: They’re only able to consider the product booked into U.S. movie theaters during the previous calendar year. To put it another way, not one of those Academy actor members is, was, or ever will be in a position to determine which movies get made and/or released, in order to be voted upon.

Those decisions come from a couple dozen different studio heads: almost all male, and white, and young, and guided entirely by bean counters, focus groups and the panicked certainty that more than one flop in a row likely will cost them their jobs. Ergo, they all too frequently stick to the tried and true.

So why — why — is everybody so upset with the Academy, when an absence of diversity clearly isn’t their fault?

If people are unhappy about racial diversity in any category — and yes, I share their absolutely legitimate frustration — then the anger needs to be channeled toward Hollywood’s studio board rooms, and nowhere else. It’s a separate conversation.

The Oscars, one hopes, are presented to honor the best work in the best movies available during a given year. Anything else would be quota pandering, which would make a mockery of an institution celebrating its 88th anniversary this year.

So let’s embrace the tradition for what it is, and what it does — and should — represent. And let’s also enjoy the time-honored pastime of trying to predict what’ll win this year.

But before we get down to cases, some fun facts:

• The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road are only the fourth and fifth films ever to receive nods in all seven technical categories — cinematography, costume design, editing, production design, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects — after Titanic, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Hugo.

• Bridge of Spies brought Steven Spielberg his 11th nomination for best director, a category he won twice, for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan. Director William Wyler still holds the record, at 13 nominations and three wins: Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives and Ben-Hur. (But Spielberg still has plenty of time!)

• On the other hand, the total number of nominations accrued by Spielberg’s various films now sits at 128 ... to Wyler’s 127. That makes Spielberg the top nomination-gathering director of all time.

• All six of director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s films have earned at least one Oscar nomination.

• Jennifer Lawrence has become the youngest actress to earn four Oscar nominations, having snatched that honor from Kate Winslet.

• With a span of 39 years between Sylvester Stallone’s Oscar nod for 1976’s Rocky and last year’s Creed, he has broken the previous record of 38 years, held by Helen Hayes, Jack Palance and Alan Arkin. Stallone also has become only the sixth actor to be nominated twice for playing the same character, after Bing Crosby (Father O’Malley), Peter O’Toole (King Henry II), Paul Newman (“Fast Eddie” Felson), Al Pacino (Michael Corleone) and Cate Blanchett (Queen Elizabeth II).

The Danish Girl: An awkward transformation

The Danish Girl (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for nudity and considerable sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

History is laden with fascinating people whose stories never make it into standard classroom curriculum, even at the college level.

We can be grateful, then, that movies often come to the rescue.

When Greta (Alicia Vikander, left) learns that her husband Einar (Eddie Redmayne)
enjoys posing in the guise of a woman, she begins to produce an entire series of
paintings that find favor with art lovers.

During the early decades of the 20th century, Danish artist Einar Wegener was celebrated for his landscape paintings. His wife, Gerda, enjoyed a steady career as a portraitist of prominent citizens, but recognition as an accomplished artist eluded her. This changed when Gerda began producing a series of Art Deco paintings of alluring, fashionably dressed women with distinctly almond-shaped eyes: in many cases, working with the same model.

The “model” later was revealed to be Einar, who had embraced this role as a means of validating a lifelong desire to dress and live as a woman: a wish so all-consuming that he eventually sought radical surgical intervention.

Today, Wegener is acknowledged as one of the first-known recipients of gender-reassignment surgery: a procedure most people probably don’t realize dates back to the early 1930s.

Einar and Gerda’s story has been dramatized with sensitivity by director Tom Hooper, the gifted British filmmaker who draws exemplary performances from his casts, and who turned The King’s Speech into such a droll, charming and effervescent slice of historical drama. Hooper elicits similarly strong work from stars Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl, but — alas — the film itself doesn’t live up to their memorably haunting efforts.

The problems are difficult to specify. At 120 minutes, Hooper’s film is a bit too long; the pacing also is extremely slow. Perhaps most noticeably, much as we admire Redmayne’s richly complex performance, Hooper and cinematographer Danny Cohen overuse tight close-ups, particularly of Redmayne’s mega-watt smile. To be sure, they’re varying levels of grins — nervous, bashful, triumphant — but, ultimately, a smile is a smile is a smile.

Strip 15 minutes’ worth of Redmayne’s smiles, and I’m convinced the entire film would play better.

But the issues go deeper. Lucinda Coxon’s script, adapted from David Ebershoff’s 2000 novel of the same title, is a bit sloppy with detail. This film has us believe that Einar’s transition from “closeted” female to surgically altered woman takes place in four short years, starting in 1926, when in fact Einar was “passing” as female by 1912. Compressing so many key events into this shorter time-span feels false and contrived: absolutely (I’m sure) the last impression Hooper would have desired.

That said, we’re no less transfixed by Redmayne and Vikander. Both cross that threshold that transcends acting, where we simply accept that they are the characters being brought to life.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: Vintage spyjinks

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence, suggestive content and partial nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.14.15

Having so successfully re-imagined the sleuthing Sherlock Holmes and his late 19th century London surroundings, director Guy Ritchie has plunged forward half a century and change, in order to replicate the Cold War-era intrigue of classic 1960s spy flicks.

Having outwitted one set of enemies, Napoleon (Henry Cavill, left) and Illya (Armie Hammer)
cautiously check out the scene, in case other adversaries are waiting to ambush them.
Since this is an action-oriented spy thriller, you can bet the answer will be yes...

The engaging result isn’t merely set in the twisty, double-crossing world of Iron Curtain espionage; it even looks and feels like a movie made in the 1960s, thanks to the meticulous efforts of cinematographer John Mathieson, production designer Oliver Scholl, costume designer Joanna Johnston — you have to love how she dresses Alicia Vikander — and even composer Daniel Pemberton.

But let’s be clear: This film has absolutely nothing to do with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Scripters Ritchie, Lionel Wigram, Jeff Kleeman and Davis C. Wilson may have borrowed a couple of iconic character names — Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin — but the whole elaborate U.N.C.L.E. mythos has been abandoned and/or ignored.

Ritchie’s film feels much more like a blend of early Sean Connery James Bond adventures and Michael Caine’s first two Harry Palmer spy thrillers (The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin). Mind you, that’s not a bad thing ... but if Ritchie & Co. wanted to mimic a 1960s spy film, why not invent their own characters?

Messing about with a beloved TV franchise seems a risky proposition either way: Longtime fans are guaranteed to be disappointed — or even irritated — while younger viewers won’t have the faintest idea who these guys are anyway. So ... what’s the point?

This cranky rant aside, Ritchie definitely has the formula down: the all-important blend of nimble spycraft, inventively staged fisticuffs, mildly audacious action sequences and just the right dollop of bone-dry humor (shaken, not stirred). The resulting tongue-in-cheek thriller is a bit lethargic at times — editor James Herbert could (and should) have tightened some of the many talking-heads interludes — but it’s otherwise a sleek and colorful blast from the cinematic past.

The action takes place in 1963, and begins as CIA agent Solo (Henry Cavill) is sent into East Berlin to extract Gaby Teller (Vikander), the long-estranged daughter of Dr. Udo Teller, once Hitler’s favorite rocket scientist. The hope is that Gaby will lead Napoleon to her father, whose wartime research into uranium enrichment has become highly dangerous, in an unstable world where the United States and Soviet Union are locked in an anxious, high-stakes game of chicken over nuclear arms supremacy.

Ex Machina: The perils of playing God

Ex Machina (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, disturbing content, nudity and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.24.15

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley would have loved this film.

Indeed, granted a time machine and access to today's technology, she likely would have made this film.

During one of the rare moments when he feels like showing off, Nathan (Oscar Isaac, left)
allows Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) into the lab where all of the "bits" were created, which
eventually came together as a disarmingly personable robot dubbed Ava.

At its core, writer/director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina is an absorbing update of Shelley’s Frankenstein: a 21st century cautionary tale about the limits of humanity’s hubris, and the unintended consequences of science outstripping ethics and morality. Midway through the first act, we can’t help recalling the wonderful sentiment that has been paraphrased in so many sci-fi B-movies: “There are things we are not meant to know” (which likely originated, appropriately enough, with a line of dialogue from 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein).

Garland’s film is thoughtful, methodical science-fiction: akin to Duncan Jones’ Moon, which made a well-deserved splash back in 2009. Like Moon, Garland’s narrative is an intimate character study that plays out in an isolated, claustrophobic setting. And, as with Moon, Garland’s storyline revolves around a core mystery that becomes increasingly disturbing as we move inexorably toward a chilling third act.

Along the way, we ponder questions relating to existence, consciousness and the nature of one’s soul: the big issues that always arise when contemplating the possibility of creating life. Heady stuff. But although Garland’s film is dialogue-heavy, it’s never boring ... in great part because production designer Mark Digby has crafted a fascinating, yet always persuasively believable setting for these events.

Not to mention the simultaneous creation of an amazing “subject” for what becomes an uncomfortably twisted psychological clash between two men.

Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is an unremarkable programmer employed by a Google-esque Internet search giant dubbed Blue Book (deliberately named after philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1930s-era notes for his class on the philosophy of language). He’s delighted one day to discover that he has won a company-wide contest to spend a week with Blue Book’s brilliant, über-wealthy and reclusive founder, Nathan (Oscar Isaac).

Nathan lives (mostly) alone in an imposing home/lab built into the remote heart of Alaska: reachable only by helicopter, and isolated from all of civilization’s trappings. Although uneasy from the moment he passes through the compound’s fortified front door, Caleb is too excited to worry about such things; he’s overcome by this opportunity of quality face time with a genius blend of Howard Hughes, Steve Jobs and Richard Branson.