The Phoenician Scheme: Droll lunacy

The Phoenician Scheme (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violence, bloody images and mild sexual material

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Whether working with actors or animation, writer/director Wes Anderson is his own unique brand of crazy.

 

When everything clicks — as with The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs, Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox— the results are imaginatively marvelous.

 

Yet another in-flight assassination attempt forces Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro, left) to
take control of the plane, while Liesl (Mia Threapleton) and Bjorn (Michael Cera) watch
with mounting horror.

But when Anderson’s signature tics and mannerisms overwhelm the material — see Asteroid City, The French Dispatch and The Darjeeling Limited — we’re left with something dire and (for many viewers) utterly unwatchable.

This one’s somewhere in between.

 

For starters, it’s refreshing to see that Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola have delivered an actual plot that drives the wacky action (something sorely missed in Asteroid City). Granted, it’s a dog-nuts plot, but it makes sense, and gives the primary characters genuine motivation. 

 

Anderson also tackles some weighty concepts along the way: legacy, mortality and the final reckoning that results from one’s confrontation with God.

 

God, of course, is played by Bill Murray. Who else?

 

The art direction and production design — by Stephan O. Gessler and Adam Stockhausen, respectively — are spectacular. The latter has worked on every Anderson film since 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom, and he won a well-deserved Academy Award for The Grand Budapest Hotel.

 

The wildly distinctive look of an Anderson film has become legendary. His characters inhabit often static environments that sometimes feel like gigantic doll houses, with theatrical-style backdrops and finely tuned details that don’t quite exist in our workaday world: more like hyper-reality. Anderson favors color schemes in earth tones and soft pastels, which — in this case — occasionally are interrupted by Heaven’s blindingly white monochrome.

 

Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel constantly plays with cockeyed camera angles and forced perspective; one early sequence is entirely a ceiling’s-eye view.

 

All of this establishes another of Anderson’s highly mannered, theater-of-the-absurd narratives: a style you’ll either embrace as cheerfully silly ... or dismiss as ludicrous.

 

The time is the 1950s. Zsa-Zsa Korda (a hilariously deadpan Benicio del Toro), a notorious plutocrat industrialist loathed throughout the world, is introduced mid-flight, as a bomb explodes in the rear of his private plane. He survives the subsequent crash: the sixth recent attempt on his life by unknown parties.

 

His gargantuan business empire also is under threat via financial scrutiny and political pressure, most particularly — at the moment — his complex “Phoenician Scheme”: an interlocking series of railway, shipping, mining and agricultural ventures designed to dominate a (fictitious) Middle Eastern country. This venture has been jeopardized by the U.S. government’s market-manipulating act to exponentially increase the cost of the “bashable rivets” necessary for all elements of Korda’s complicated plan.

 

He therefore must persuade each of his investors to accept less profit than contractually promised; each meeting becomes its own distinctive chapter.

The 2024 Oscar Shorts: (Some) good things in small packages

The 2024 Oscar Shorts (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Not rated, but akin to PG-13 for subject matter and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

With the Academy Award nominations in hand — and predictions and second-guessing increasing by the day — it’s time for one of my favorite traditions: checking out the live-action and animated short subjects.

 

As always, this year’s nominees range between the good, the bad and the baffling. I’ve long been puzzled by the wildly divergent tastes of those who select these nominees; it’s intriguing that the folks who pick the obviously excellent stand-outs also (apparently) find something to admire in entries I wouldn’t consider for a second.

 

But as my father often said, That’s why we have horse races: divergent candidates for every taste.

 

Turning first to the live-action candidates, director Wes Anderson’s handling of Roald Dahl’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” is the obvious stand-out for bravura creativity. I cannot imagine a more perfect artistic collaboration, and blend of sensibilities, than Anderson and Dahl.

This droll tale stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character, a bored and self-centered aristocrat who, as a result of a book he steals, painstakingly develops the talent to see through objects. What he ultimately does with this gift proves unexpected.

 

Dahl, played by Ralph Fiennes, narrates much of this saga — “Henry Sugar” actually is three stories nested within each other — although Dev Patel’s Dr. Chatterjee occasionally takes over. The staging throughout is theatrical and exaggerated, with backdrops sliding back and forth, sometimes manipulated by visible tech hands. Occasional scenes rely upon vintage rear projection. The result is bravura filmmaking, and totally cool.

 

Danish writer/director Lasse Lyskjaer Noer eschews fancy bells and whistles in “Knight of Fortune,” a quietly poignant study of a recent widower, Karl (Leif Andrée), who is overwhelmed by having to bid his deceased wife farewell, while she lies in state in a morgue room. Seeking any sort of distraction, he agrees when Torben (Jens Jorn Spottag) requests company while paying the final visit to his wife.

Except that things aren’t quite what they seem. Noer’s little story takes an oddly quirky turn — the tone and atmosphere uniquely Scandinavian — en route to a sweet conclusion.

 

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and other Roald Dahl Tales: Sadly uneven

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and other Roald Dahl Tales (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, and much too generously, for creepy images and concepts

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

I cannot imagine a more perfect artistic collaboration, and blend of sensibilities, than Wes Anderson and Roald Dahl.

 

The fact that this joint effort by filmmaker and author has long been posthumous — Dahl died in 1990 — matters not a jot.

 

While Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch) relates part of his tale to a policeman
(Ralph Fiennes), both men briefly "break the fourth wall" and stare at the viewer, in
order to emphasize a point.

Dahl certainly has been well-loved on the big screen, with adaptations — sometimes more than once — of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, James and the Giant Peach and Matilda. Anderson also delivered a terrific stop-motion version of Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2009.

Dahl was a highly visible presence of television during his lifetime, mostly due to the UK’s Tales of the Unexpected. This series adapted 26 of his short stories over the course of its nine-season run from 1979 to ’87; these morbid little tales — patently adult, and often with twist endings — blended dark humor with murder, infidelity, blackmail and all manner of other beastly behavior.

 

Few people remember the first TV series Dahl hosted, the U.S.-produced Way Out, which ran a mere half-season in 1961, following Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone in CBS’ 10 p.m. Friday slot. Dahl’s unapologetically macabre horror series was far too gruesome for that era’s viewers, and was canceled shortly after airing its 13th episode, “Soft Focus,” the notorious climax of which scared the hell out of everybody (and still packs a punch to this day).

 

The current quartet of adaptations — “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” “The Swan,” “The Rat Catcher” and “Poison” — debuted on Netflix one per day, late last week. They also draw from Dahl’s adult-oriented short stories.

 

As is Anderson’s habit, his approach is — shall we say — unusual.

 

Recognizing that Dahl’s precise and marvelous prose style is responsible for much of the atmospheric magic in his stories, Anderson has these stories narrated — retaining as much text as possible — by Dahl himself (played with appropriate eccentricity by Ralph Fiennes), and also by the characters within the tale.

 

Fiennes’ surroundings are impressively authentic: seated within a nook of Dahl’s re-created “Gipsy House,” his desk laden with many of the totems and ephemera that were part of the author’s actual working environment. (One must marvel at Anderson’s rigorous attention to detail.)

 

“Henry Sugar,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character, is the longest of these pieces, at 37 minutes. It concerns a bored and self-centered aristocrat who, as a result of a book he steals, painstakingly develops the talent to see through objects. What he ultimately does with this gift proves unexpected.

 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Sheer insanity

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for frightening images, occasional profanity, and relentless action violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.6.22

Magic-laden stories can be problematic.

 

Rules must be established, or else conflict becomes pointless. J.K. Rowling was quite careful, in her Harry Potter books, to ensure well-established strengths and weaknesses on both sides; evil occasionally triumphed, sometimes resulting in the death of beloved characters. Suspense and emotional involvement were maintained throughout the series.

 

On the run from an opponent who can't be stopped by anything, our heroes — from
left, America (Xochitl Gomez), Wong (Benedict Wong) and Doctor Strange
(Benedict Cumberbatch) — pause to consider their next move.

Sloppy writers, on the other hand, simply make up stuff as a given moment demands; the result becomes random and pointless. If our hero suddenly can summon “the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth” — to quote an oft-used spell in the classic 1960s Stan Lee/Steve Ditko Doctor Strange comic book stories — to reverse an incantation cast upon him, well, where’s the suspense in that?

Michael Waldron, sad to say, is a sloppy writer.

 

We should’ve expected as much, given his involvement as creator, executive producer and occasional writer of television’s Loki miniseries, which — despite a promising start — quickly devolved into utter incomprehensibility. The final few episodes were the worst example of random, kitchen-sink scripting I’ve seen in years.

 

Waldron’s approach to this Doctor Strange sequel is no different, and he repeatedly succumbs to the sloppy cliché that is the death of narrative tension: Every character is only as strong, or weak, as s/he needs to be, in order to triumph — or fail — at a given moment. Lather, rinse, repeat. Ad infinitum.

 

This builds to an utterly ludicrous deus ex machina moment during the climax: the equivalent of Dorothy suddenly being told that she always had the means to return to Kansas. I mean, seriously?

 

So:

 

Events begin quietly, as Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) attends the wedding of Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), a former lover who — wisely — chose a different path. The ceremony is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a massive, one-eyed octopoid galumphing through New York’s streets, in tentacled pursuit of America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez).

 

(For those who haven’t kept up with their comic books, Chavez debuted in 2011, as an alternative universe Marvel character.)

 

The creature is defeated by Strange and his “sorcerer supreme” mentor, Wong (Benedict Wong), after which they pepper America with the obvious who/what/why questions. Turns out she has the power to create star-shaped holes in reality, which grant access to other realities in the multiverse (something Strange helped Peter Parker mess with, in the most recent Spider-Man entry).

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain: Heartbreaking study of a tormented artist

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters and (beginning November 5) Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

One rarely encounters such a Dickensian life, outside of a Charles Dickens novel.

 

Artist Louis Wain’s personal and professional life was just as tragic, as the majority of his vast output was playfully joyous. He remains, to this day, one of the most beloved commercial illustrators in English history; during the Edwardian era, it was the rare home that lacked one of his posters, or many of his children’s books.

 

Louis (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Emily (Claire Foy) are
surprised to find a scruffy, rain-soaked kitten in their
garden. They'll soon be even more surprised by the
degree to which this little feline affects the arc of
Louis' artistic career.

He also deserves credit for helping elevate the humble pussycat into a companion worthy of being a pet, rather than a pesky creature best relegated to the streets.

Author H.G. Wells famously noted — during a radio broadcast reproduced in this biographical drama — that “He has made the cat his own. He invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of themselves.”

 

Wain also was quite popular on this side of the pond, at the beginning of the 20th century, and then much later, in the 1970s, when his more outré cat paintings were ubiquitous among the, ah, college-age psychedelic set.

 

Director Will Sharpe’s poignant, deeply sensitive film is highlighted by sublime performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy. The script, by Sharpe and Simon Stephenson, is remarkably faithful to Wain’s life and career … the all-too-brief highs and numerous shattering lows of which, are almost too much to bear.

 

Indeed, this saga’s midpoint, highlighted by an intensely intimate scene between Cumberbatch and Foy, surely ranks as one of the saddest, most heartbreaking moments ever captured on film.

 

The story begins in the early 1880s, when — following their father’s unexpected death — 20-year-old Louis (Cumberbatch), as the family’s lone male, is forced to support his mother and five younger sisters. 

 

Fortunately, he has a remarkable — and rapid — facility for drawing and painting, which he’s able to do with both hands simultaneously (which Cumberbatch depicts persuasively). Louis specializes in animals and country scenes, and within a few years is selling work to journals such as the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and, a bit later, the Illustrated London News.

 

Unfortunately, Louis also suffers from a mental illness — possibly schizophrenia — which would remain undiagnosed throughout his lifetime. Symptoms include an irrational fear of drowning, which strikes unexpectedly. For the most part, he keeps such demons at bay via the manic intensity with which he fills every minute of every hour: sketching, tinkering with useless inventions, “composing” unmelodic musical works, and even sparring uselessly in an amateur boxing ring.

 

Along with a frenzied fascination with the wonders of electricity, which he comes to believe is a defining force in life and the universe.

 

So, yes: Cumberbatch once again is portraying an eccentric and deeply unstable genius, who’s all tics and twitches. But it must be acknowledged that his Louis Wain is completely distinct from his Sherlock Holmes, or his Alan Turing, or his Hamlet.

The Courier: Suspenseful espionage saga

The Courier (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, dramatic intensity, brief profanity and fleeting nudity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.14.21

The more I learn about early 1960s Cold War posturing, and Nikita Khrushchev’s volatility, the more frightened I get in hindsight.

 

Thank God, the adults in the room remained calm and rational.

 

Once Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch, right) agrees to become a spy for MI6,
his initial meetings with Soviet military intelligence Col. Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze)
are the stuff of total anxiety. Over time, though, Wynne blossoms and embraces his
clandestine role.

Director Dominic Cooke’s The Courier, opening today at a theater near you, is adapted reasonably faithfully from actual events; the result is an absorbing slice of old-style British espionage cinema. Cooke’s tone, Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography and Suzie Davis’ impeccable production design strongly evoke classics such as The Ipcress File and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold; indeed, at times this film feels as if it had been made during the same era.

 

Events begin in July 1960, when Soviet military intelligence (GRU) Col. Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) — gravely concerned about Khrushchev’s plans regarding Cuba and nuclear missiles — impulsively approaches a pair of American students on Moscow’s Moskvoretsky Bridge; he hands them a packet of documents and insists they be delivered to the American Embassy.

 

The two young men oblige.

 

In London, we meet business consultant Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his wife Sheila (Jessie Buckley). He exudes aptitude and refinement: the sort of cultured, impeccably dressed British chap who’d smoothly navigate a deal over drinks at a gentlemen’s club. 

 

Cumberbatch makes him the epitome of ordinary: happily married, satisfied with his profession, at ease with life. Wynne isn’t overly intelligent, his dyslexia having hampered formal schooling, but he seems to have made peace with that.

 

In short, Wynne is just the sort of fellow who — thanks to his frequent international business trips — would make the ideal undercover agent, because the Soviets wouldn’t look twice at him.

 

Which is precisely what MI6 operative Dickie Franks (Angus Wright) and CIA agent Emily Donovan (Rachel Brosnahan) propose, to the utterly astonished Wynne. More precisely, they want him to act as the courier conduit to the information Penkovsky wishes to supply to Western powers.

 

Franks and Donovan appeal to Wynne’s patriotism, while also stressing how extremely valuable Penkovsky’s intel is.

The Mauritanian: A disservice to history

The Mauritanian (2021) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity, and grim scenes of torture

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.5.21

Many stories demand to be told.

 

Some are so important, that it’s crucial they be told well.

 

After having gained his trust, defense attorney Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) begins
what will become a lengthy, seemingly impossible battle to free Mohamedou Ould Slahi
(Tahar Rahim) from his Guantánamo Bay prison.

That simply isn’t the case with director Kevin Macdonald’s oddly flat handling of The Mauritanian, adapted from Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s best-selling 2015 memoir, Guantánamo Diary. It’s available via Amazon Prime and other streaming services.

 

Under the authority of the United States’ post-9/11 “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists” resolution, Slahi, a Mauritanian citizen, was arrested in November 2001; he subsequently was sent to Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp in August 2002. He remained there, without charge, until finally being released on Oct. 17, 2016.

 

Although some probably will argue this point forever, Slahi’s sole “crime” appears to have been guilt by association: most critically, a) a chance call accepted from Bin Laden’s phone; and b) having allowed an al-Qaeda recruit to spend one night at his home. There’s never been any indication that Slahi knew the man before that evening, or ever saw him again.

 

On said “evidence,” Slahi was accused of having recruited the men who flew the planes into the World Trade Center … which obviously didn’t sit well with the interrogators and Guantánamo soldiers charged with extracting a “confession.”

 

This film’s screenplay — by Michael Bronner, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani — bounces between these 2002 events and ’05, when Slahi’s case comes to the attention of renowned defense attorney Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster). She was an apt choice, possessing the necessary security clearances, and having defended Irish clients against charges of terrorism.

 

Hollander is assisted by the much younger Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley), depicted here as enthusiastic, fresh-faced and rather naïve. (That’s likely unfair to the actual Duncan; the screenplay also omits a third defense attorney, Sylvia Royce, and assigns some of her involvement to Duncan.)

 

The Grinch: Hardly a bad banana with a greasy black peel

The Grinch (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.9.18

Dr. Seuss purists who still shudder at the memory of 2000’s live-action Jim Carrey fiasco can rest easy. 

Once the Grinch decides to ruin Whoville's Christmas once and for all, he realizes that
stealth infiltration will be most successful if he's disguised as Santa Claus. Cue a
furious sewing session on an elaborate machine powered by his dog, Max.

Illumination — the animation studio that brought us the Minions — has done well by its 21st century revival of the modest 1957 picture book, which took a savvy poke at Christmas over-commercialization … eight years before Charlie Brown and his little tree.

The Grinch retains most of what was important about both that 69-page children’s classic, and the 1966 Chuck Jones adaptation that remains must-see TV every December. It’s evident from this film’s opening montage: a swooping camera shot that descends — accompanied by a gentle instrumental cover of the familiar “Fahoo Foraze” — from snow-covered mountains into the heart of Whoville.

The little town bustles with the expectation of Christmas, only a few days away. Decorations spring up on homes and in streets, thanks to elaborate, marvelously crazed, physics-challenged Seussian gadgets, doohickeys, widgets, doodads, gizmos, thingamajigs and thingamabobs: everything from wobbly garland hangers and improbable candy cane twirlers, to a Zamboni-esque contraption that scoops up snow drifts and excretes neatly stacked pyramids of perfectly formed snowballs, for young Whovians to throw at each other.

By which point, we viewers can’t help smiling.

Our appreciation redoubles as the narration begins, with scripters Michael LeSieur and Tommy Swerdlow retaining and expanding upon the original book’s text, the new material capturing the same Seussian rhyming scheme. 

Such enhancements feel reasonably organic: Little Cindy Lou Who (voiced by Cameron Seely) now is the daughter of a hard-working single mother, Donna Lou (Rashida Jones), who also rides herd over rambunctious infant twins; and the scowly-growly Grinch (Benedict Cumberbatch) must contend with his nearest neighbor, Bricklebaum (Kenan Thompson), an ebullient, joyous, irrepressible fellow who — insufferably! — believes that they’re good friends.

In so many ways, producer (and Illumination founder) Chris Meledandri, directors Scott Mosier and Yarrow Cheney, and their massive animation team have done their best to honor the source material. No surprise, since Illumination also delivered 2012’s delightful adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax.

Avengers: Infinity War — Too much of a good thing?

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and perhaps generously, for relentless brutal violence and destruction, fleeting profanity and occasional crude references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.27.18

Way back in the day, Universal Studios had the bright idea to gather all of their movie creatures together in a couple of glorious monster mashes — 1944’s House of Frankenstein, and 1945’s House of Dracula — after their individual franchises had run out of steam.

With Thanos due at any moment on the devastated planet titan, our already exhausted
heroes — from left, Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Drax
(Dave Bautista), Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) — prepare for
a final battle.

Marvel Studios has unleashed the same superhero romp for precisely the opposite reason. Having meticulously set the stage each year since 2008’s Iron Man — carefully bringing new characters into an overall continuity akin to what has been crafted in Marvel Comics since 1962 — Avengers: Infinity War is the undeniably awesome result of a shrewd master plan that only gained momentum during the past decade.

No doubt about it: This film is a comic book geek’s dream come true: bigger, better (in some ways) and badder (in other ways) than everything that has come before. Directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo — allied with scripters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, along with the legion of Marvel Comics writers and artists acknowledged in the end credits — have wrought nothing less than dense cinematic myth-making on the scale of Star Trek and Star Wars.

(Needless to say, all of the above owe a huge debt to J.R.R. Tolkien and other veteran sci-fi and fantasy authors.)

Disclosure No. 1: Uninitiated mainstream viewers are likely to have no idea what the heck is going down. To be sure, the broad stroke is obvious: Big, bad Thanos (Josh Brolin, barely recognizable beneath impressive layers of costuming, make-up and CGI) must be stopped by just about everybody else. But the fine points are likely to be lost on anybody who hasn’t avidly devoured every Marvel Studios entry to this point.

Like — for example — why Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers/Captain American (Chris Evans) aren’t talking to each other. Or what U.S. Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) has to do with that. Or why Thor and his fellow Asgardians are journeying between the stars in immense spacecraft. Or why Vision (Paul Bettany) and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) are hiding in Scotland.

Or — most obviously — who the heck some of these characters even are.

Doctor Strange: Needs life support

Doctor Strange (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for nonstop fantasy violence and a nasty crash scene
By Derrick Bang

As a card-carrying member of the original Merry Marvel Marching Society, I kept waiting for Dr. Strange to employ one of his favorite signature phrases: “By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth!”

The Western-educated Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch, right) resists the
possibility of actual magic, until the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) whips up a few quick spells
that remove all doubt. And suddenly Stephen wonders: What else doesn't he know?

Never happened.

Here’s what else never happened: any flicker of emotional involvement with this pinball machine of a movie.

Magic-laced fantasy is much more difficult than creators often assume. Rigorous rules must be set in place, and the supernatural realm carefully conceived, with a comprehensible balance between good and evil: something that J.K. Rowling — as a recent successful example — understands full well.

To get sloppy with such strictures — or ignore them completely — results in a “story” of make-it-up-as-we-go chaos. When no limits are placed on heroes and villains, any conflict becomes meaningless. If a bad guy can bend reality to his will, well, there’s always a sentient magic cloak to help the good guy at a dire moment. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Toss in the potential for an instant re-boot, given the ability to manipulate time, and the result is even more inane.

And b-o-r-i-n-g.

This was the insurmountable problem with late spring’s most recent X-Men adventure, where the über-villain Apocalypse could re-shape the material world with a wave of his hand. That made him effectively unbeatable, until ultimately defeated by some “tricks” that didn’t make any sense, in light of his inherent abilities. Meanwhile, we endured an hour’s worth of meaningless, time-wasting, thud-and-blunder nonsense.

Same here.

Happily, Doctor Strange isn’t laced with the sort of landscape-leveling melees that cratered entire landscapes, in early spring’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (another soulless disappointment). Physical mayhem rarely played a part in this second-tier Marvel character’s various adventures. The “master of the mystic arts” instead battled his adversaries with spells and counter-spells, often in fantastic parallel dimensions of unreality that were an excuse — in the hippy-dippy 1960s and early ’70s — for comic book panels laced with eye-popping, psychedelic visuals.

They were the four-color, printed equivalent of the LSD-influenced “star gate” sequence in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which dazzled substance-altered viewers for decades.

But no matter how hard Marvel’s writers tried — and this remained an ongoing issue — it was hard to identify with Dr. Stephen Strange. He and his opponents were too powerful, too indefinable, too weird. And too blandly impassive.

Black Mass: Nightmarish deal with the devil

Black Mass (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for brutal violence, profanity, sexual candor and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.18.15

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.

The saga of gangster James “Whitey” Bulger was far from complete when Boston Globe reporters Gerard O’Neill and Dick Lehr — the former a Pulitzer winner, the latter a Pulitzer finalist — published their true-crime saga Black Mass in 2000. With his criminal empire having been crushed during the previous decade; Whitey already was six years a fugitive.

It may seem like a quiet meal, but the atmosphere is far from benign ... particularly when
mob enforcer Stephen Flemmi (Rory Cochrane, far left) decides that FBI agent John Morris
(David Harbour, far right) has insulted him. Suddenly, even Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp,
center left) and fellow FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) are sure what'll happen...

He remained on the run until June 22, 2011, when he was arrested quietly in Santa Monica, Calif. Two courtroom trials later, jaw-dropping for their sordid detail, Whitey — then 83 years old — was sentenced to two consecutive life terms (plus five years, for good measure). He’s now a permanent resident at a Florida federal penitentiary.

Whitey’s vicious career, and the scandalous FBI incompetence that allowed it to flourish, have been brought to the big screen by director Scott Cooper, whose two previous films — Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace — demonstrated an impressive flair for character drama. Cooper doesn’t disappoint here either; armed with a taut and densely layered script adaptation by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, the director delivers a horrific portrait of unrestrained evil and corruption.

The film is anchored further by star Johnny Depp’s chilling depiction of Whitey: as far from the comic antics of Capt. Jack Sparrow as could possibly be imagined.

Depp obviously has an affinity for true crime, having previously played John Dillinger in director Michael Mann’s slick and sordid Public Enemies. Awful as Depp’s Dillinger was, though, a bit of the actor’s charm occasionally leaked around the edges, Mann and co-scripters Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman perhaps trying to suggest a soupçon of “honor among thieves” camaraderie.

You won’t find any such quasi-ethical respite here; Depp’s Whitey is the stuff of nightmares, his tightly compressed lips and stone-cold stare as unnerving as his flat, detached manner of speaking. The only thing worse than Whitey’s reluctance to smile, is an occasion that does prompt a death’s-head grin: a certain signal of looming brutality.

Folks will talk about this performance for quite some time.

The Imitation Game: What price genius?

The Imitation Game (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for mature content and occasional sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Mankind has an unfortunate tendency to devour its champions. Always has, likely always will.

We’re also not very tolerant of those who are different, whether in appearance or behavior. During times of crisis, such eccentricities are regarded even more suspiciously.

Despite indifference and outright hostility from some of his Bletchley Park colleagues,
Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) proceeds doggedly with the creation and
construction of a massive "thinking machine" that he hopes will break the German
"Enigma code" that has frustrated Allied efforts for so long.

Norwegian-born director Morten Tyldum’s handling of The Imitation Game employs shaming and ostracization as dramatic plot points: issues every bit as significant as the WWII-era predicament that brings young mathematician Alan Turing to the unusual code-breaking operation at Buckinghamshire’s Bletchley Park.

As scripted by Graham Moore and depicted by star Benedict Cumberbatch, Turing is a social outcast by virtue of his utter obliviousness to decorum and protocol. He affects a level of bland arrogance that infuriates everybody, yet remains utterly bewildered by how he is perceived by others.

This characterization places Turing squarely “on the spectrum,” to acknowledge the phrase du jour ... and I can’t help feeling that this artistic decision may have been propelled more by our current fascination with such characters — think Hugh Laurie’s Dr. Gregory House, or Cumberbatch’s own modern spin on Sherlock Holmes — than by authenticity.

This film’s opening credits are a bit deceptive, implying that Moore concocted this screenplay on his own. Only when we hit the closing credits can sharp-eyed viewers spot, in tiny print, a reference to Moore’s script being adapted from Andrew Hodges’ 1983 biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma. And while Hodges drew upon ample sources to confirm Turing’s impatience with bureaucracy and the grinding sluggishness of the military chain of command, Moore’s decision to re-cast this as full-blown autism is ... well ... historically suspect.

That said, it allows Cumberbatch to inhabit another of his fascinating, eccentricity-laden characters: a fresh performance that never ceases to be both fascinating and entertaining. Tyldum clearly recognizes this, choosing to open his film with Turing’s initial interview in the office of Bletchley Park Commander Alastair Denniston (Charles Dance). It’s a hilarious, impeccably timed display of rat-a-tat dialogue between an increasingly annoyed Denniston and the calmly indifferent Turing.

Indeed, such unruffled disdain later leads to the film’s funniest line, when one of Turing’s colleagues comments, in the aftermath of a particularly blunt display, “Popular in school, were you?”

Likely not, but that’s hardly the point; Turing’s unlikely presence at Bletchley Park, juxtaposed against the increasingly importance of his work, is what makes this film so engaging.