The Woman in Cabin 10: Mystery at sea

The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and violence

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang 

Although this engaging thriller’s core premise owes a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, the story — co-written by Emma Frost, Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse and director Simon Stone, loosely based on Ruth Ware’s best-selling 2016 novel — moves in an entirely different direction.

 

While scanning the many photos that Ben (David Ajala) has taken thus far during their
voyage, Laura (Keira Knightley) spots something unexpected.

Seasoned investigative journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock (Keira Knightley), traumatized by a previous assignment that ended horribly, is given a softball story by her editor: tag along during a cruise hosted by gazillionaire Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce) and his wife, Anne (Lisa Loven Kongsli), on their obscenely extravagant luxury superyacht, the Aurora Borealis.

It's something of a farewell trip, because the terminally ill Anne isn’t expected to live much longer. 

 

For the most part, the Bullmers’ guests are an insufferably privileged lot: notably condescending Heidi Heatherley (Hannah Waddingham) and her equally pompous husband, Thomas (David Morrissey); hard-partying Adam Sutherland (Daniel Ings); and long-ago rock star Danny Tyler (Paul Kaye). Even Anne’s physician (Art Malik, as Dr. Robert Mehta) and hovering security consultant (Sigrid Nilssen, as Amanda) are oddly chill.

 

Laura feels like an outsider, an uncomfortable position nobody attempts to correct.

 

She’s further irked when the on-board photographer turns out to be Ben Morgan (David Ajala), with whom she has uncomfortable personal history. Reflexively trying to avoid him, she accidentally backs into Cabin 10 — the one adjacent to hers — and sees a young woman with bright blond hair: a guest who wasn’t present during earlier gatherings.

 

Following dinner that evening, Laura is surprised — and intrigued — when Anne seeks a private audience, and explains that she and her husband have decided to donate their entire fortune to charity.

 

Later that night, Laura is awakened by what sounds like a noisy struggle in the adjacent cabin, followed by a splash. Rushing to her balcony, she sees a woman sinking beneath the waves. She alerts the crew; the yacht stops; Richard and the captain conduct a head-count.

 

Nobody is missing.

 

Worse yet, Richard and several crew members insist that Cabin 10 has been empty the entire time.

The Little Mermaid: Waterlogged

The Little Mermaid (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for dramatic intensity and some scary images

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.26.23

Following in the lamentable footsteps of 2017’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, which transformed its absolutely perfect animated predecessor into a 129-minute slog, this live-action update of 1989’s 83-minute charmer similarly has become an even more bloated 135-minute exercise in tedium.

 

When Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) nearly drowns, following the loss of his ship,
Ariel (Halle Bailey) manages to save him, and drag him to shore.

I’ve no idea why Disney continues to tarnish the memory of these legacy classics, particularly when this one has been done so clumsily. The original Alan Menken/Howard Ashman song score has been “enhanced” with three new tunes by Menken and lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda, and — all due respect to the latter’s better credentials — the mis-match is glaring.

 

Worse yet, Miranda also added additional lyrics to several of Ashman’s existing songs, which were perfectly fine to begin with, thank you very much.

 

David Magee’s updated — and protracted — script apparently was designed to inject a new subtext of inclusiveness: a usually welcome theme which, alas, is delivered here with the subtlety of a sledge hammer. (I’m not one to scream “woke” at the drop of a fin, but good grief, folks; was the overkill really necessary?)

 

2021’s Luca handled this far more gracefully.

 

All of this is a shame, because Halle Bailey is sensational as this new film’s Ariel. She has terrific screen presence, a gorgeous — and powerful — singing voice, and an expressive face that conveys a wealth of emotion. The one saving grace of the otherwise tiresome second hour — which spends far too much time with Ariel navigating her human form in the prince’s castle — is the endearing charm of her muteness (having traded her voice for legs).

 

But that’s getting ahead of things. A quick recap, for newcomers:

 

Ariel, one of the seven daughters of King Triton (Javier Bardem, pompously grave), has long been fascinated by the intriguing trinkets and tchotchkes that occasionally fall overboard from passing ships (or, less happily, which she salvages from shipwrecks). This is a source of amusement to her best friends, Flounder the fish (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) and Sebastian the crab (Daveed Diggs), who also is Triton’s major-domo.

 

Whenever Ariel surfaces, in order to clandestinely observe the mysterious doings of these humans in their passing ships, her little gang is augmented by Scuttle (Awkwafina), a neurotic, dim-witted diving seabird who fancies herself an expert on All Things Human.

 

The Infiltrator: One of the greatest roles ever played

The Infiltrator (2016) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for strong violence, profanity, sexual candor and drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.15.16

Truth isn’t merely stranger than fiction; it’s also a lot scarier.

When the undercover Bob Mazur (Bryan Cranston, right) finally gains an audience with
Colombian drug cartel overlords, he's surprised to discover that he first must pass some
sort of dangerous "initiation" overseen by Rudy Ambrecht (Carsten Hayes, left).

U.S. Customs operative Robert “Bob” Mazur spent years as a deep undercover agent in the 1980s, climactically building an identity as a high-level money launderer for senior members of several Colombian drug cartels. The operation ultimately led to one of the largest busts in U.S. history: 100 drug traffickers and money launderers arrested, along with the seizure of 3,200 pounds of cocaine and roughly $100 million in cash and assets.

Perhaps more dramatically, it brought about the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, at the time the world’s seventh largest privately held financial institution, with assets of $20 billion. It also was one of the world’s largest money-laundering banks.

Remember BCCI? Anybody involved with the banking industry recalls full well how transaction reporting regulations changed, almost overnight, in the wake of this scandal.

Mazur detailed his experiences in a riveting 2009 memoir, The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel. That book, in turn, has been transformed into an equally compelling film by director Brad Furman. Screenwriter Ellen Sue Brown’s adaptation is by turns fascinating, suspenseful, terrifying and even mordantly amusing.

The film gets additional dramatic heft from star Bryan Cranston’s impressively nuanced portrayal of Mazur: a performance of delicate subtlety that becomes more persuasive as the narrative moves from one jaw-dropping incident to the next.

And while it’s true that Cranston commands the screen, he has equally superb support from all of the impeccably selected co-stars. This is another film that lends weight to the call for giving casting directors their own Academy Award category, because Gail Stevens found just the right individual for every part.

Perhaps more than anything else, this is a very nervous film. Despite knowing full well that Mazur will survive these events, the suspense is no less intense; plenty of sidebar individuals are vulnerable at every turn, and we’ve ample evidence throughout, of the cold-blooded ferocity of cartel shot-callers.