Eleanor the Great: Indeed she is

Eleanor the Great (2025) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Obligatory confession: June Squibb can do no wrong.

 

I’m sure she’d somehow make grocery shopping a fascinating experience.

 

Now fast friends, Nina (Erin Kellyman) surprises Eleanor (June Squibb) with a nostalgic
stroll to see what remains of the golden age of Brooklyn's famed Coney Island.

Ever since her Oscar-nominated supporting turn in 2013’s Nebraska, she has moved from one memorably delightful role to another, and this one’s no exception.

But although Tory Kamen’s screenplay has plenty of lighter moments — with occasionally snarky one-liners well delivered by Squibb — the story itself is deeply poignant. Events unfold under the accomplished guidance of Scarlett Johansson, making an impressively sensitive feature directing debut.

 

The moral quandary here revolves around a crucial question: If a truth isn’t somebody else’s to tell, is it nonetheless a truth that should be revealed?

 

Eleanor (Squibb) and Bessie (Rita Zohar) share an apartment in a Florida retirement community. The story begins as they waken on an average morning, have breakfast, and then embark on another day. They have the comfortable — if mildly grumpy — camaraderie that bespeaks decades of friendship. Their lives are simple but enjoyably routine: greeting familiar faces, sparring with clerks and shopkeepers at nearby stores.

 

(Eleanor’s handling of a young stock boy, at their grocery store, is priceless.)

 

Then, suddenly, Bessie is gone.

 

Cast adrift and totally bereft, Eleanor — having lived in the Bronx for 40 years, back in the day — allows herself to be relocated to New York City, where she moves into an apartment with her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and grandson Max (Will Price). Lisa is overly attentive, which frustrates Eleanor, long accustomed to taking care of herself. Although Max obviously loves and admires his grandmother, he’s too occupied with his own “stuff” to pay her much attention.

 

Believing it necessary to keep Eleanor engaged, Lisa enrolls her into a singing class at the local Jewish community center. Eleanor pokes her head in the doorway just long enough to hear a woman warble several stanzas of Stephen Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here” (a bit on the nose, that), and bolts.

 

She’s “rescued” by another woman, who invites Eleanor to join her where a dozen or so similarly elderly men and women are seated in a circle. What Eleanor assumes is some sort of friendship meeting turns out to be a regular gathering of Holocaust survivors, who ease their ongoing torment by sharing their experiences with each other.

 

Embarrassed by being somewhere she doesn’t belong, when it comes Eleanor’s turn to talk, she hesitates ... and then relates what she must have heard hundreds of times from her departed friend Bessie, plagued by horrific memories in the middle of countless sleepless nights.

 

And claims these memories as her own.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy — Love's labors are delightfully messy

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor and constant profanity

Available via: Peacock

By Derrick Bang

I’d forgotten how much fun Helen Fielding’s ditzy singleton could be, when the author is at the top of her game.

 

When invited to share her job as a television producer during her son's classroom career
day, Bridget (Renée Zellweger) uses the opportunity to stage what becomes a revealing
"mock interview" with science teacher Scott Walker (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

This fourquel also brings the film series to a satisfying conclusion, since the previous entry — 2016’s Bridget Jones’ Baby — was such an unsatisfying detour.

The entire gang is back, and the script — by Fielding, Dan Mazer and Abi Morgan — is sharp, witty and laden with Bridget’s hilariously arch inner thoughts (which also become the diary entries that fueled Fielding’s first novel). Renée Zellweger still knows how to deliver a well-timed zinger, and her bemused, squinty expressions, head slightly cocked, are endearing.

 

This film’s surprise — for fans who’ve come to expect a light, frothy and playfully erotic tone — is its bittersweet atmosphere. 

 

As the story begins, Bridget is a sadder and wiser woman. She still mourns the loss of beloved husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), who was killed by a land mine in Sudan four years earlier, while negotiating the release of aid workers. She still “sees” him at telling moments (which gives Firth several significant and poignant scenes).

 

Bridget has withdrawn from life, to the extent a single parent of two young children can do so. She hasn’t socialized for any reason in ages. Her home is a mess; the refrigerator and grocery shelves are mostly empty; preparing meals is an exercise in unpalatable results; and she spends far too much time in pajamas. She also hasn’t worked for a long time (which makes one wonder what she and her children are living on).

 

Six-year-old Mabel (Mila Jankovic) is an irrepressible bundle of energy, laughter and noise; 10-year-old Billy (Casper Knopf), much quieter, withdraws into chess, science books and video games.

 

But a gathering to celebrate Mark’s life cannot be avoided, even though Bridget almost chickens out. Faithful friend and former lover Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), willingly pressed into last-minute babysitting duties, laments that “You’re effectively a nun ... although a very naughty nun.”

 

(Seriously ... Bridget isn’t Bridget, without constant references to sex!)

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 Old Guard: New take on a familiar concept

The Old Guard (2020) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and graphic violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.24.20

Immortality isn’t as cool as some folks likely assume.

Popular comic book writer Greg Rucka provocatively blended that premise with conventional action-hero thrills in the 2017 series The Old Guard, with artwork by Leandro Fernandez; the graphic novel immediately attracted Hollywood’s attention, with a well-cast Charlize Theron adding another notch to her re-invention as a bad-ass mercenary type.

Although Andy (Charlize Theron, center right) does her best to explain the abilities that
she shares with the much younger Nile (KiKi Layne), the latter isn't interested in playing
nice: a rather foolish attitude, while in a transport plane being flown by a Russian
drug smuggler.

Gina Prince-Bythewood was an unlikely but ultimately just-right choice as director, having previously helmed gentler fare such as Love & Basketball and The Secret Life of Bees. As a result, her approach here is much more character-driven than the soulless slugfests that distinguish most action thrillers. We care about these folks: far more than you’d expect, given the far-fetched premise. They’re well sculpted, and equally well played.

Prince-Bythewood, editor Terilyn A. Shropshire and their stunt/fight coordinators — Brycen Counts, Adam Kirley and Danny Hernandez — also choreograph some furious skirmishes.

The film — debuting on Netflix — is quite faithful to its origins; credit for that goes to Rucka, who wrote his own script adaptation. Fans of the original series will note that he made one significant change, as we slide into the action-laden climax; this new element significantly enhances the pathos of Theron’s performance.

It’s actually a shame that all previews — and media publicity — reveal the immortality angle, because that awareness spoils the jolt of surprise unknowing viewers otherwise would receive, when this detail is revealed midway through the first act.

Andy (Theron) heads a quartet of independent mercenaries who’ve devoted their lives to righting wrongs, saving innocents, executing war-mongers and so forth. They’ve always chosen their assignments carefully; they’re definitely “good guys,” even as they act as judge, jury and executioner.

The team includes Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), who liaises with entities looking to hire them; and Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), passionately devoted lovers. All four are impressively capable warriors, and no wonder; they’ve been around for a long time.

Joe and Nicky met while fighting on opposite sides during the Crusades; Booker was a French soldier during the Napoleonic era.

Andy — actually Andromache of Scythia — is thousands of years old.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Truly inspirational

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.20.20

Since many (most? all?) of us are housebound at the moment, and movie theater screens will remain dark for the near future, this is an excellent opportunity to investigate noteworthy options available solely via streaming platforms.

Having grown up in a village without running water, one of William's (Maxwell Simba)
frequent chores involves hauling up buckets of the precious liquid from the local well,
so that his mother can prepare meals.

Unfortunately, absent a review such as this, you’d likely never know such films even exist. Said streaming outfits put all their publicity efforts and house ads into hot new shows and popular Hollywood product; “quieter” offerings aren’t even a blip on their radar … which is extremely frustrating.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, a masterful directing and scripting debut by actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, was the British entry for last year’s Best International Film Academy Award, although it wasn’t selected as one of the five nominees recently vying for that Oscar. (Frankly, it should have been.)

Ejiofor’s compelling and heartwarming adaptation of William Kamkwamba’s 2009 memoir is another vivid reminder that human inspiration and resourcefulness know no bounds, and that true stories can be more powerful than fabricated drama.

The setting is Malawi, a small southeastern African country bordered by Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique. Even in the early 21st century, electricity and running water remain luxuries enjoyed by only 2 percent of the country’s population: a fortunate few that don’t include the farmers who eke out a living in the tiny village of Kasungu.

Trywell Kamkwamba (Ejiofor) and his family — wife Agnes (Aïssa Maïga), 13-year-old William (Maxwell Simba), his older sister Annie (Lily Banda) and a newborn infant — farm harsh, unforgiving land in a manner that probably hasn’t changed for millennia, with folks forever worried about drought and beholden to infrequent rains.

What has changed is the influx of private businesses eager to exploit Kasungu’s natural resources, offering one-time cash payments to farmers willing to sell their land. To Trywell’s horror (and ours), many of his desperate neighbors do so, whereupon logging operations immediately begin to fell the trees that protect the village farms from flooding.

When a curious William follows the buzz of chain saws, and witnesses the carnage, the impact is sickening.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil — Maladroit

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) • View trailer 
1.5 stars. Rated PG, despite considerable violence and heartbreaking content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.18.19

Wow. Genocide, in a (supposedly) family-friendly Disney fantasy?

What’s next? Gang rape? Child mutilation?

Uncle Walt must be spinning in his grave.

En route to a lavish dinner designed to acquaint Maleficent (Angelina Jolie, center) with
her future in-laws, Aurora (Elle Fanning) and Diaval (Sam Riley) can't help thinking that
this might be a very, very bad idea.

What were these people thinking?

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a tasteless, mean-spirited, Frankenstein’s monster of a movie: a textbook example of what happens when art is sacrificed on the altar of crass corporate commercialism. It follows 2014’s Maleficent, Disney’s response to Wicked, the stage play with its then-novel origin story of Dorothy Gale’s Wicked Witch of the West. Maleficent, in turn, was the origin story of the evil sorceress who bedeviled Aurora (aka Briar Rose) in Sleeping Beauty.

Which was a reasonable concept, the first time. But scripters Linda Woolverton, Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster have broken faith with the original fairy tale here — indeed, the entire genre — by blending cutesy-poo creatures with horrific violence, in service of a thoroughly unsubtle refrain of “We’ve got to overlook our differences, in order to get along.”

Real-world resonance notwithstanding, that lecture is getting very tiresome.

On top of which, the writers have blatantly borrowed (read: stolen) concepts from all manner of other, far superior fantasy sagas. The result is kitchen-sink overkill, as if dazzling us with a cornucopia of cheerful, colorful beasties will compensate for a story that becomes increasingly grim, depressing and sadistic.

And this is supposed to be for children? The PG rating is reprehensible, and a total lie. Disney should be ashamed.

Perhaps recognizing the folly of the entire production, most of the featured performers don’t bother acting. Angelina Jolie’s line readings are atrocious. Her Maleficent, intended to be intimidating, never rises above the smirking insolence of a star who recognizes that she’s wasting her time (and ours). Elle Fanning goes too far in the other direction; her Aurora is breathlessly melodramatic, her eyes forever wide with overwrought angst.

Harris Dickinson’s Prince Philip is no more than a stalwart hunk; his wooden insincerity is laughably inept. And the three actresses playing the colorful good fairies — transformed here into pixies dubbed Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), Flittle (Lesley Manville) and Thistlewit (Juno Temple) — are just plain annoying.

Given that most of these actors have done superior work elsewhere, director Joachim Rønning deserves the blame for their poor performances here. He has no feeling for this material, having previously helmed only grim historical sagas — Max Manus: Man of War and Kon-Tiki — and 2017’s ill-advised Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, a similar big-budget franchise flop.

The Lion King: More of a whimper than a roar

The Lion King (2019) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

It’s difficult to view this film as anything but a cynical cash grab.

Cruelly tricked into believing that he has committed an unspeakable act, the forlorn
lion cub Simba's spirits are lifted when he unexpectedly befriends a warthog (Pumbaa)
and a meerkat (Timon).

Disney has been cannibalizing its legacy of late, and the results are increasingly deplorable. Bad enough that we had to endure (mostly) live-action remakes of Dumbo and Aladdin earlier this year; at least they’re populated mostly by human characters who could be given fresh interpretations by flesh-and-blood actors (as will be the case with a live-action Mulan, arriving next year).

But The Lion King is different: nothing more than “trading up” an entirely non-human cast from (more or less) traditional animation to CGI. To what end? Animation is animation. The opulent, Tony Award-winning Broadway production was highlighted by Julie Taymor’s costume design and inventive direction, Richard Hudson’s scenic design, and Garth Fagan’s choreography … none of which translates to this animated retread.

And, as was the case with Aladdin, this Lion King has been expanded from the 1994 original’s just-right 88 minutes, to a bloated and often insufferable 118 minutes. That additional half-hour adds nothing to the story, aside from granting director Jon Favreau more space for portentously long takes apparently intended to amplify the drama.

In fact, such lengthy pauses make the film seem like more of a drag.

In fairness, the animation is stunning:  a collaborative effort by visual effects supervisor Rob Legato, animation supervisor Andrew R. Jones, and MPC Film VFX supervisors Adam Valdez and Elliot Newman. It’s not merely a pride of lions looking and moving in a lifelike manner; this story has a massive cast of four-legged and winged characters, not to mention sidebar insects, reptiles and all manner of other critters.

The verisimilitude is breathtaking … and that’s part of the problem. Because it frankly looks weird when these creatures break into song. The talking is disorienting enough, but at least that’s subtle; watching the mouths of a lifelike lion, warthog and meerkat wrap their lips around the lyrics of “Hakuna Matata” utterly destroys the illusion.

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.

The Martian: Out-of-this-world suspense

The Martian (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

The most impressive aspect of 1995’s Apollo 13 lay in the tension that director Ron Howard generated, despite our certain awareness of the film’s outcome.

After all, history had spoken: Everybody knew that the astronauts got back safely. So, since Howard couldn’t concoct any suspense from the what, he concentrated on the how ... as in, how in the world did they survive?

Having realized that his only hope for survival involves the long-term rationing of his
supplies — along with figuring out some what of "creating" more food and water — Mark
(Matt Damon) begins a careful record of his days on Mars.

There’s something enticingly absorbing about watching engineers work a particularly difficult problem. In the realm of fiction, this is why caper thrillers and the Mission: Impossible franchise remain so popular: We love to see unworkable puzzles solved via triumphant bursts of ingenuity.

No surprise, then, that director Ridley Scott’s handling of The Martian is 141 minutes of nail-biting anxiety. Andy Weir’s 2011 novel (which has its own amazing history) is a crackerjack sci-fi thriller to begin with, and Scott and scripter Drew Goddard have pumped it up with an engaging blend of quiet agitation and gallows humor.

Best of all, this is smart science-fiction: a rigorously technical narrative that we rarely get from a Hollywood factory that equates the genre with the zap-gun antics of Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy (which, let’s face it, are — at best — equal parts sci-fi and fantasy). In the literary realm, Weir’s book is regarded as “hard” science of the sort written by Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Such stories are harder to bring to the big screen, because they don’t grant actors many opportunities for showboating or melodramatic interpersonal dynamics. But exceptions do exist — 2009’s Moon comes to mind — and if Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman can generate unease from plodding investigative journalism, then surely talented filmmakers can do the same with a clever sci-fi premise. Right?

Indeed. To give further credit where due, Scott has packed his film with an impressive cast, assigning strong actors to even the smallest of roles. Top marks go to star Matt Damon, who anchors most of the film with a compelling, deeply expressive, one-man performance on par with what we’ve seen from Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and Robert Redford (All Is Lost).

The story, then:

The time is an unspecified point in the near future, after NASA has successfully sent a six-person mission to Mars. The Ares 3 crew has established a good-sized working habitat within the Acidalia Planitia plain, and has spent some number of days collecting samples and conducting experiments.

12 Years a Slave: A brilliant, timeless drama

12 Years a Slave (2013) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rating: R, for grim violence, brutality, nudity and brief sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.15.13

Some films transcend their big-screen confines.

The story is so compelling, the direction so deft, the performances so persuasively real, that we cease to see the screen or the acting, and simply become immersed in the experience.

As Epps (Michael Fassbender, center) expresses far too much appreciation for the
cotton-picking skills of Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o), Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) gradually
recognizes the unpalatable, one-sided "understanding" between this master and his
attractive slave ... but, of course, can neither do or say anything.

12 Years a Slave is such a film.

I remember, years back, getting wholly caught up in a stage production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. At one point, the fragile Laura Wingfield stepped outside the front door and onto the porch of the simple but effective set, and I grew concerned; she wasn’t dressed warmly enough, and surely she’d get cold out there, late at night.

That’s how invested I was in British director Steve McQueen’s sensitive, unflinching and utterly mesmerizing handling of this film.

John Ridley’s note-perfect screenplay is adapted from Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave, a rare 19th century memoir by a man who lived what he wrote — no, make that endured and survived — and what we now see on the screen. Northup’s saga is brutal, horrifying, even unbelievable at times. We civilized, 21st century citizens of the world cannot comprehend men — and women — behaving so callously, so cruelly to their fellow men and women.

Horrific times, we think, seeking solace. Nearly two centuries ago. Surely, we’ve become better in the meantime.

But then I reflect on the Nazi persecution of the Jews, with the often willing participation of “good Germans,” and I reflect on young Malala Yousafzai, nearly killed by Taliban thugs who’ve promised to keep trying, just as they bomb schoolchildren and continue to maim and behead others who’d encourage education, and I realize what McQueen clearly intends to demonstrate.

This film isn’t a portal to another time, another place. Sadly, it’s a mirror to the here and now.

The year is 1841, in pre-Civil War United States; we meet Solomon Northup (a simply astonishing performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor) as a dignified gentleman living with his family in Saratoga, N.Y. He walks assuredly among his white peers, treated with respect whether on the street or conducting business in a shop.

Although, even here, we get a flash of underlying tension: a flicker of ... something ... in the eyes of one white aristocrat who registers Solomon’s presence, his station, and says nothing, but silently speaks volumes.

Salt: Well-seasoned

Salt (2010) • View trailer for Salt
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.29.10
Buy DVD: Salt (Deluxe Unrated Edition) • Buy Blu-Ray: Salt (Deluxe Unrated Edition) [Blu-ray]


Tom Cruise abandoned Salt during pre-production a few years ago, apparently in favor of Knight and Day.

Well, the joke's on him; Salt has all the suspenseful pep(per) that Cruise's incomprehensible summer vehicle lacked, not to mention a leading lady who knows how to sell this sort of popcorn action fare.

Although she's about to be late for a dinner date, Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie)
agrees to perform a snap assessment of a walk-in Russian defector claiming to
have good intel. Her boss, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber, left), appreciates the
favor; the less generous Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the resident counter-
intelligence officer, figures such work is part of her job. Alas, Salt is about
to regret her compliance, when the defector's information cites her personally.

Indeed, pouty Angelina Jolie could turn this fast-paced thriller into a franchise, if she so desired; Phillip Noyce's slickly choreographed directorial control and Kurt Wimmer's twisty, engaging script give the actress ample opportunity to blossom in this femme fatale response to the "Bourne" series.

Yep, the action scenes have that sort of rugged, well edited pizzazz, starting with a stylish early chase scene that's every bit as breathtaking as Warren Beatty's frantic efforts to evade the bad guys at the end of 1972's $ (Dollars).

Better still, you won't be annoyed by Wimmer's screenplay, which opens with a clever premise, puts its resourceful leading lady into unexpected peril and then plays with us during the game-changing second and third acts. Espionage fans will be reminded of 1987's No Way Out, which is good company to keep.

Jolie stars as CIA operative Evelyn Salt, introduced while being tortured in a North Korean cell by interrogators convinced that she's a spy. (They're right, of course.)

Although resigned to her fate, Salt is surprised one day to be part of a prisoner exchange that restores her to American soil and the arms of her devoted lover, Mike (August Diehl), a mild-mannered spider researcher who kicked up such a public fuss that the CIA had no choice but to retrieve her, in order to shut him up.

Time passes. Evelyn and Mike marry, and she adjusts to the challenges of domestic bliss and CIA desk duty: no more field work, thank you very much. She demonstrates a talent for interrogation analysis, which one day prompts her boss and longtime friend Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) to have her spot-check a newly arrived Russian defector.

2012: End of days

2012 (2009) • View trailer for 2012
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity, considerable carnage and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.13.09
Buy DVD: 2012 • Buy Blu-Ray: 2012 (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Goodness, it's déja vu all over again!

Its modern CGI effects aside, director/co-scripter Roland Emmerich's 2012 is a throwback to the cornball disaster flicks of the early 1970s — think Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, along with a nod to The Poseidon Adventure — and their rigid formulas: stalwart good guys, women and children in peril, grim fates for the sexually adventurous, and B-list actors introduced solely so they can perish after exchanging noble sentiments with each other. ("I've had a good run, son; don't you worry about me.")

This could be the computer-screen from a particularly difficult air-flight-
simulator game, but no: It's actually a rip-snortin' action sequence that finds
five of our central characters -- in the plane -- trying to dodge and climb above
the crumbling Los Angeles high-rises that rather peskily keep threatening to
hit them, during an early sequence in this film.

Bowing to our 21st century demand for bigger and noisier, of course, Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser couldn't be satisfied with demolishing a single building or even all of Los Angeles; no, they've got to take out Earth itself.

One wonders what could possibly come next. The destruction of all eight-and-a-half planets in our solar system, along with their various complements of moons?

Familiarity aside, Emmerich orchestrates this mayhem with considerable panache, and 2012 never flags during its bloated 158 minutes. That's pretty impressive, when the explosive money sequences start after a brief introductory half-hour. You'd think it unwise for a film of this nature to lead off with the sinking of California — all together now: "It's San Andreas' fault!" — but Emmerich has plenty of equally bombastic cards left up his sleeve.

Indeed, once beyond the obligatory mayhem and mass destruction, this film evolves into a strong echo of 1951's When Worlds Collide, the solid adaptation of Edwin Balmer's sci-fi novel that wonders how the people of Earth would behave, after learning of the impending arrival of a massive celestial body that will strike and destroy our planet.

Both When Worlds Collide and 2012 subscribe to the hail-fellow-well-met view of humanity: that we will (for the most part) behave virtuously and pull together for the common good, in an effort to save as many people — and as much of our way of life — as possible.

This may be naively optimistic, but it's a helluva lot more entertaining and gratifying than the bleak, every-cannibal-for-himself attitude on display in the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

2012 takes its premise from the pseudo-scientific twaddle currently making the rounds, about how the Mayans supposedly predicted a massive celestial event — an alignment of planets and our sun that takes place only once every hundreds of thousands of years — that will destroy life as we know it on Earth.

Translations being what they are, calmer heads tend to believe (if they address this nonsense at all) that the Mayans simply recognized that, as of 2012, it would be time to flip the page and start a new calendar. But hey, that would take all the fun away from the conspiracy wingnuts who stand on street corners and carry those cardboard signs proclaiming that "The end of the world is near" ... a phenomenon that this film acknowledges with a good laugh.