Aquaman: Waterlogged

Aquaman (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, and somewhat generously, for considerable sci-fi action and violence, and occasional profanity.
By Derrick Bang

This film has serious issues with tone and balance.

Far too much of director James Wan’s narrative — he shares writing chores with Will Beall, Geoff Johns and David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick — sags beneath the weight of overly florid, Shakespearean-style dialog that most cast members lack the gravitas to pull off.

Having burrowed deep beneath the Sahara Desert, to discover the remnants of a long-
lost undersea kingdom, Arthur (Jason Momoa) and Mera (Amber Heard) activate a device
that will provide the next clue to the whereabouts of the fabled Lost Trident of Atlan.

And which is compromised further by the mildly earthy comments tossed off by star Jason Momoa. Mind you, he’s good with a quip, and Wan apparently felt that such contrasting elocution styles would be amusing. Instead, it’s merely awkward.

Then there’s the matter of villains. A superhero is only as good — as interesting — as his adversaries, and Momoa’s Aquaman has two. By far the more stylish, and far more dangerous, is a high-tech pirate known as Manta, played with savage malevolence by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. He’s a baddie to be reckoned with: a rage machine who radiates danger and has serious issues with our hero.

But Manta is relegated to B-villain status: an afterthought who isn’t much of a problem, and ultimately becomes a joke.

Which is ironic, because the true joke is Patrick Wilson’s laughably awful handling of the alpha villain: Aquaman’s half-brother Orm, would-be despotic ruler of all the undersea kingdoms. Wilson is atrociously out of his depth — pun intended — and radiates about as much menace as damp Kleenex. He looks and sounds like a whiny little boy who’s about to have his toys taken away.

This film collapses every time Wilson speaks a line, or faces off against the far more formidable Momoa.

I’m guessing Wan brought Wilson along for the ride, because the two of them have worked together on a bunch of nasty little horror flicks (the Insidious and Conjuring series, The Nun). Which points further to Wan’s poor judgment.

Aquaman also suffers from excess been there/done that: the inevitable result of too many superhero films piling atop each other. The regal look and sound of Atlantis, with its massive statuary and guarded “approach bridge” — and its position as one of seven mythic undersea kingdoms — are blatant echoes of Thor’s Asgard and its neighboring eight realms.

Aquaman’s mano a mano duels with Orm, over control of the Atlantean throne, are straight out of the Black Panther playbook … where, rest assured, the clashes were handled far better, and carried much greater emotional weight.

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.

3 Days to Kill: Silly spy stuff

3 Days to Kill (2014) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rating: PG-13, despite considerable intense violence, profanity and lurid sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.21.14

In theory, teaming French action filmmaker Luc Besson and American action director Joseph McGinty Nichol — who prefers the nom de guerre “McG” — should produce the perfect cinematic marriage.

Once past her initial hostility, Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld) decides that she likes having her
father, Ethan (Kevin Costner), back in her life. Unfortunately, their fragile bonding
efforts keep getting interrupted by Ethan's demanding boss, with fresh bad guys for
him to find and kill.

The former is a one-man movie machine well known for (among many others) La Femme Nikita, Jason Statham’s Transporter series and Liam Neeson’s Taken series; the latter is perhaps notorious for the two big-screen Charlie’s Angels entries and 2009’s Terminator Salvation.

Assuming your desires extend no further than noisy, attitude-laden eye candy, what could possibly go wrong when these two fellas get together?

Clashing sensibilities, of course.

3 Days to Kill — directed by McG, written by Besson and Adi Hasak — proudly displays its comic book tone right up front, as veteran CIA agent Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) and a sizable team prepare to capture nasty international terrorists laughably known only as The Albino (Tómas Lemarquis) and The Wolf (Richard Sammel). The operation goes awry, and the baddies get away, much to the annoyance of CIA handler Vivi Delay (Amber Heard), sent by Washington to monitor the situation.

Worse yet, Ethan gets rather bad news while recuperating from injuries sustained during this fiasco: a diagnosis of advanced terminal cancer that’ll kill him in a few months. Not that this will stop any of the action to come; just as Ali MacGraw became more radiantly beautiful, the sicker she got in 1970’s Love Story, ol’ Ethan loses none of his flair for beating up on baddies twice his size and half his age.

Even so, he’s tired and discouraged, and wants to spend his remaining time with his ex-wife, Christine (Connie Nielsen), and long-estranged teenage daughter, Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld), both living in Paris. But catching up on a decade’s worth of missed birthdays and youthful milestones isn’t easy, and Zoey isn’t about to cut him any slack.

On top of which, Vivi rather inexplicably wants Ethan to finish the botched pursuit of The Albino and The Wolf. I say “inexplicably” because Vivi clearly has the resources, the ruthless attitude and the improbable skills necessary to complete the assignment herself, likely in half the time.

As conceived and audaciously played by Heard, Vivi is equal parts Marvel Comics’ Black Widow, Sidney Bristow (from TV’s Alias) and strip club lap dancer. Why waste time with the dying Ethan, who’s obviously — in Vivi’s mind — long past his sell-by date?

Well, because the script says so.