Enola Holmes 2: The game's still afoot!

Enola Holmes 2 (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, violence and bloody images

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

I concluded my review of this film’s 2020 predecessor by expressing the hope that it would be popular enough to generate a sequel.

 

My wish has been granted.

 

Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), justifiably pleased with herself, after deducing one
of the puzzles on her older brother Sherlock's "clue board," favors us viewers with a
smile of satisfaction.

Enola Holmes 2 is every bit as stylish, witty and entertaining as the young heroine’s first on-screen escapade. Almost all the major stars have stepped back into their characters; director Harry Bradbeer and writer Jack Thorne also have returned. The one holdout is Sherlock Holmes’ older brother Mycroft, and he isn’t missed; Sam Claflin made him too much of a boorish crank in the previous entry.

Unlike that first film, this one isn’t based on one of author Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes books; Bradbeer and Thorne have concocted an original tale that feels right in this young heroine’s wheelhouse. Better yet, this adventure places these fictitious characters within an actual 1888 major event (and, unless you’re a scholar of 19th century British history, you’re not likely to see it coming, until revealed within the end credits).

 

Following the successful resolution of her first case, now a bit older and wiser, Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) has optimistically set up her own private detective agency. Alas, all the adverts in the city cannot stop the look of dismay that crosses the face of would-be clients, when they realize Enola is (horrors!) a young woman.

 

Worse yet, on the few occasions she’s able to retain somebody long enough to explain that she did, after all, solve a high-profile case, the response is invariably something along the lines of “Didn’t Sherlock Holmes actually solve that?”

 

Disappointed beyond words, Enola prepares to close things down. Cue the last-minute arrival of young Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss, cute as a button), a penniless “matchstick girl” who works atrocious hours in a match-making factory with her sister Sarah (Hannah Dodd) and scores of other orphaned girls. Sarah has gone missing; Bessie hopes Enola will be able to find her.

 

With Bessie’s help, Enola poses as a new matchstick worker. She meets Mae (Abbie Hern), one of the older matchstick girls; and quickly runs afoul of the factory’s foreboding foreman, Mr. Crouch (Lee Boardman, appropriately ill-tempered). Employing quick wits and a handy diversion, Enola sneaks upstairs and sees factory owner Henry Lyon (David Westhead) in a meeting with Treasury Minister Lord Charles McIntyre (Tim McMullan) and his secretary, Mira Troy (Sharon Duncan-Brewster).

 

A high-ranking Cabinet official, discussing something with the owner of a grubby matchstick factory?

 

Odd, that.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things: Why did anybody begin???

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) • View trailer

No stars (Turkey). Rated R, for profanity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.25.20

2017’s Mother! was the most boring, insufferably pretentious twaddle I’d seen in years. 

 

I figured a long, long time would pass before something similarly overblown arrived.

 

When Jake (Jesse Plemons, far left) brings his girlfriend (Jessie Buckley, standing) to
meet his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis), their "friendly dinner" quickly
turns increasingly peculiar.

Wrong.

 

Writer/director Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of novelist Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things — debuting on Netflix — actually is worse.

 

For all its failings, Mother! is an obvious allegory that builds to a graspable conclusion. Kaufman’s film offers no such relief in its final act, which grows more aggressively obtuse by the minute. Indeed, he ignores the resolution in Reid’s similarly weird book — which at least partially justifies what has come before — in favor of more eye-rolling stuff ’n’ nonsense.

 

Not 10 minutes into this unbearable 134-minute slog, a little voice in the back of your head will start screaming, “Abandon ship. Now.”

 

Be smart. Pay attention to it.

 

The frustrating thing is, Kaufman isn’t a talent to be ignored. (Sometimes.) His vivid imagination and defiantly non-linear storytelling style exploded with 1999’s Being John Malkovich, brought him an Oscar for 2002’s Adaptation, and demonstrated sheer genius with 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

 

It should be noted, however, that those films found Kaufman working alongside equally outré directors — Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry — who knew how to check the screenwriter’s more ludicrous tendencies. When Kaufman directs his own material — as with 2008’s Synecdoche, New York and 2015’s Anomalisa — the results are unwatchable.

 

As is the case here.

 

Our protagonist and voiceover narrator is an unnamed young woman (Jessie Buckley) who, somewhat against her better judgment, agrees to a day trip to visit boyfriend Jake’s (Jesse Plemons) parents at their secluded farm. She’s been thinking of ending the relationship — she repeatedly informs us, as things proceed — out of, I dunno, boredom, dissatisfaction, whatever.

 

She and Jake chat at length during this initial car trip, as they pass along the bleak and barren Oklahoma countryside. Their conversation rises from the depths of mundane banality, to the heights of philosophical speculation. She’s a quantum physicist — or maybe she’s a poet — or maybe she’s a student with a paper due Wednesday, on “Susceptibility to rabies infection in the sensory dorsal root ganglia neurons.” 

Wonder Woman: The Amazon goddess gets her due

Wonder Woman (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for fantasy violence, dramatic intensity and mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.2.17

It’s darn well about time.

During the big-screen superhero eruption that began when Christopher Reeve first donned Superman’s iconic blue-and-red garb back in 1978, no super-heroine has been able to carry her own film.

Although Diana (Gal Gadot, center) reluctantly allows Steve (Chris Pine) and Etta (Lucy
Davis) to dress her in the fashion of the day, she's unwilling to abandon the sword and
shield that define her as an Amazon goddess ... which presents a bit of a problem.

Until now.

(Misfires such as 2004’s Catwoman and ’05’s Elektra are best left forgotten.)

We caught a glimpse of Gal Gadot’s interpretation of Wonder Woman in last year’s Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, and there’s no question: The 5-foot-10 Israeli actress sold the outfit and the essential regal bearing. But that soulless film gave her no opportunity for anything approaching emotional gravitas, so the jury remained out.

Until now.

Director Patty Jenkins’ thoroughly engaging depiction of Diana — first daughter of the sheltered Amazonian island of Themyscira — owes its heart to both Gadot and a respectful script from Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder and Jason Fuchs. The narrative honors the character’s origin, as laid down in October 1941, in issue No. 8 of DC’s All Star Comics.

Much more crucially, this film blends its myth-making and furious action with just the right touch of humor: a droll undertone that has been lamentably absent in recent Batman and Superman entries. Much of this wit derives from Diana’s fish-out-of-water reaction to so-called civilized society, which Gadot displays with a charming balance of innocence and sparkle. She definitely catches her character’s (ahem) sense of wonder.

But that’s getting ahead of things. Diana’s story begins on Themyscira, where — rather oddly — she’s the only child amid hundreds of Amazon warriors. She’s a precocious child (adorably played by Lilly Aspell), eager to battle-train, but her mother (Connie Nielsen, as Queen Hippolyta) rejects the very notion. Diana thus practices in secret, under the tutelage of champion warrior Antiope (Robin Wright).

The years pass; Diana achieves maturity. Fate places her on a high island cliff just as a strange object — a crippled plane — penetrates the invisible “cloak” that conceals Themyscira from the outer world. The craft crash-lands and sinks rapidly beneath the ocean waves; the quick-thinking Diana rescues the lone pilot just in time, thereby getting her first glimpse of a man.

Anomalisa: A conundrum wrapped in an enigma

Anomalisa (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity, graphic nudity and strong sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.22.16

This may not be the most pointlessly weird movie ever made, but it’ll do until that one comes along.

Everybody in the world sounds exactly the same to Michael, until a chance encounter with
Lisa, who speaks in a voice that is uniquely her own. Alas, this film makes very little use
of this intriguing notion, and devolves into an incomprehensible mess.

Charlie Kaufman has built his reputation on strange, way-out-of-the-box projects ever since he scripted the deliciously wacky Being John Malkovich for director Spike Jonze. Kaufman was less successful with Human Nature, alongside director Michel Gondry, but once again delivered the goods — and earned an Academy Award nomination, alongside his “fictitious twin brother” Donald — after re-uniting with Jonze for Adaptation.

Kaufman’s magnum opus, however, came with 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s bizarre, challenging and at times self-indulgently irritating, but it’s also ferociously clever, poignant and, in its own unusual way, one of the most insightful love stories ever written. (To give credit where due, Kaufman based his script on a story co-written with Gondry and Pierre Bismuth.)

The past decade, however, hasn’t been nearly as kind to Kaufman. His directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, is an unwatchably pretentious slog; and I’m not certain anybody even saw his 2014 TV movie, How and Why.

Which brings us to Anomalisa.

To be fair, it isn’t really long enough to be boring. But it’s nonetheless inane and meaningless, and an utter waste of the gorgeous, replacement/stop-motion puppet animation that has been employed to bring this story to the big screen (and which just earned the film an Academy Award nomination).

If this film hoped to duplicate the success of Wes Anderson’s similarly animated Fantastic Mr. Fox, Kaufman needed a much sharper script: for openers, one that could sustain its 90-minute length. Anomalisa offers about 15 minutes’ worth of story, along with a few trivial (and rather sexist) observations about human mating habits. 

Yes, Kaufman tries for some social analysis, but you’ll go crazy trying to determine the point he’s attempting to make.

Macbeth: Macawful

Macbeth (2015) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for strong violence and fleeting sexuality
By Derrick Bang

This is Shakespeare; I knew the guy had to die eventually.

Trouble is, even his death seemed to take forever. Like everything else in this dreadful film.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair ... except that everything about this turkey is foul, including any
sense of an actual relationship between Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) and his wife
(Marion Cotillard).

I’ve seen Macbeth at least a dozen times on stage, TV and the big screen, with the mad king played by the likes of Orson Welles, Jon Finch, Sean Connery (believe it or not, back in 1961) and Ian McKellen, the latter a Royal Shakespeare Company production with Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth (definitely a high point, in productions of “the Scottish play”).

Goodness, I’ve even watched Sam Worthington lumber about in a contemporary update of the play, set amidst criminal gangs in Melbourne (far from a high point).

Do a title search on Macbeth at the Internet Movie Database, and you’ll come up with 95 matches, with adaptations clocking in from — among other countries — Japan, Australia, Russia and India.

Look far and wide, though, and you’ll not find a big-screen Macbeth that is worse than what director Justin Kurzel has unleashed this holiday season. Rarely has this play — or any other — been presented with such plodding, ponderous dreariness, its crackling dialog reduced to monotonous speeches mumbled by actors apparently instructed to utter every line with a complete lack of involvement.

This is Shakespeare, for goodness’ sake; impassioned monologues and overwrought performances are de rigueur. Instead, we get an entire cast that behaves like extras from a George Romero zombie movie, which is to say the slow, shambling walking dead, marked by dull, vacant expressions.

Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are exceptional actors; their Macbeth and Lady Macbeth should have leaped ferociously from the screen. Instead, for reasons known only to Kurzel, they hunch, cower and sulk, often standing motionless and staring into vacuous nothing, muttering their lines so softly, and with such little energy, that we often can’t even hear what they’re saying.

Which, perversely, could be a blessing. Students of Shakespeare will be appalled by the way scripters Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie and Todd Louiso have butchered this play, committing artistic murders far more heinous than any of Macbeth’s on-screen blood-letting. Motivation and (ir)rational thought are abandoned, with far too many key events occurring seemingly at random.

The Theory of Everything: A beautiful mind

The Theory of Everything (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for dramatic intensity and mild suggestive material
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.5.14

It’s necessary, up front, to recognize that this film is adapted from Jane Wilde Hawking’s 1999 memoir, Music to Move the Stars: A Life with Stephen (extensively updated and re-published in 2008, as Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen).

During Cambridge's annual May Dance, Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) can't quite get into the
spirit of the event itself — for openers, he refuses to dance! — but his goofy charm
nonetheless makes an increasingly strong impact on Jane (Felicity Jones).

We therefore cannot be surprised by the saintly hue that Felicity Jones brings to her portrayal of Jane: devoted, compassionate and (particularly) patient beyond comprehension. To be sure, selfless caregivers certainly exist in real life: quiet heroes who rarely receive the admiration they so richly deserve. And there’s no doubt that Jane Hawking must’ve had a very hard life, during her early years with a husband succumbing to motor neuron disease (MND, which is related to ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

But no displays of impatience or hostility, no raging against the universe, no signs of crumbling on Jane’s part? Even if we acknowledge traditional British reserve, that’s a bit hard to swallow here.

Hard, perhaps, but not impossible ... thanks to James Marsh’s thoughtful, sensitive direction, and the incandescent performances by Jones and most particularly Eddie Redmayne. The latter looks, moves and sounds so much like Stephen Hawking, that at times it’s hard not to believe it’s actually him on the screen.

Most crucially, Redmayne captures Hawking’s goofy grin, sparkling eyes and irrepressible, Puckish sense of humor. After the MND robs the man of his limbs — and, eventually, even his ability to speak — Redmayne nonetheless continues to convey a wealth of emotion with faint head movements, raised eyebrows, a twitch of that famous smile, and his darting, ever-inquisitive eyes that miss nothing.

We’ve not seen an actor so thoroughly inhabit a physically challenged role since Mathieu Amalric’s portrayal of Jean-Dominique Bauby, in 2007’s equally fine The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Bauby’s life changed in an instant, though, whereas Hawking — and his friends, colleagues and family — endured the heartbreak of his slow, debilitating slide into utter helplessness.

But we begin in happier times. It’s 1963, where Stephen is a cosmology student at Cambridge University: the mischievous, easily distracted member of a doctoral team being supervised by famed British physicist Dennis W. Sciama (David Thewlis, in a nicely understated performance). Stephen’s apparent disconnection from real-world requirements is a source of constant amusement to roommate and best friend Brian (Harry Lloyd), who probably has to remind his buddy to eat and sleep on a regular basis.

RED 2: Twice the goofiness

RED 2 (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for constant action and violence, frenetic gunplay and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

This one’s a triumph of star power over script shortcomings.

RED 2 doesn’t even try for logic or verisimilitude; it’s a globe-trotting, live-action cartoon that does little but place its characters into improbable situations that prompt wry one-liners from the seasoned cast.

Having arrived in Moscow, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker, center) is annoyed to discover
that boyfriend Frank (Bruce Willis) and Russian agent Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones)
have some history ... and that Katja seems eager to resume their studies.

In most cases, that’s good enough ... because when the cast is this polished, and their comic timing so well established, we can’t help enjoying the result. Scripters Jon and Erich Hoeber have strayed even further afield from the original graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, but that really doesn’t matter. Films of this sort may be no more than a guilty pleasure, but there’s no denying the entertainment factor.

I’m sure 2010’s RED was envisioned as a one-off, but the global box-office must have been a pleasant surprise ... and we all know how Hollywood operates. On top of which, it probably wasn’t hard to persuade Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren to reprise their roles as aging former spies — RED stands for “retired, extremely dangerous” — who are granted yet another chance to show up their condescending younger colleagues.

Hoeber and Hoeber have reprised their scripting chores, but director Dean Parisot is a series newcomer, taking over for Robert Schwentke. It’s a good trade; Parisot helmed 1999’s cheeky sci-fi spoof, Galaxy Quest, so he clearly understands the tone required by this equally snarky franchise.

Having survived the events of their previous adventure, veteran spy Frank Moses (Willis) and girlfriend Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker) are attempting to solidify their unlikely relationship. They’re crazy about each other, but that doesn’t seem to be enough; the protective Frank wants to ensure that Sarah remains out of harm’s way — rather difficult, given his history — while she pouts over the prospect of missing another dose of dangerous fun.

Be advised: Parker has one of the best pouts in the business. Parisot clearly understands the power of her stricken expressions, and finds ample opportunity to showcase them.

Alas, Frank isn’t destined for a quiet retirement. Paranoid best friend Marvin Boggs (Malkovich) barely has time to deliver a warning, before being blown up by Forces Unknown. Moments later, Frank is snatched by U.S. black ops thugs operating under orders from the malevolent Jack Horton (Neal McDonough, making the most of his deliciously nasty bad-guy role). Somehow, these events have something to do with a next-gen weapon code-named Nightshade: a remnant from Frank and Marvin’s Cold War past.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Grim bedtime story

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008) • View trailer for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.20.08
Buy DVD: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas • Buy Blu-Ray: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas [Blu-ray]


Innocence, inevitably, is the first casualty of war.

Children, their hungry and ever-inquisitive minds not yet shaped by hardened reality, experience events — even tragic events – far differently than adults. In Hope and Glory, director John Boorman's 1987 film memoir of his experiences during World War II, his childhood self and friends found great adventure in the rubble of homes bombed during the London blitz.

Having disobeyed strict orders to remain in his own enclosed yard, 8-year-old
Bruno (Asa Butterfield) makes his way through a woodsy area, crosses a stream
and is astonished to find Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a boy his own age, on the far
side of a wicked fence. Try as he might, Bruno cannot fathom the purpose
behind this enclosed "farm," and his quest for answers becomes increasingly
horrifying, as this film moves to its final act.

All those years later, theater audiences briefly found such behavior heartless and horrifying, then realized they were missing the point: Such actions were not disrespectful, but instead represented the resilience of the youthful human soul ... indeed, the hope of future generations. Children — little sponges, all — are the vessels into which we pour our best virtues ... or our most heinous faults.

Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is the child at the heart of director/scripter Mark Herman's eloquent and deeply moving adaptation of novelist John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, yet another intriguing take on the WWII Holocaust. The film is both memorably poignant and tremendously important, as it indicts human ugliness through the insight of the ultimate judge: a young boy's instinctive desire to believe the best of his father.

I recall mentioning, earlier this year in a review of The Counterfeiter, how fascinating it is, at this late date, that dramatists continue to find fresh insight — indeed, as-yet unexplored actual events — in a subject and time period that one would have thought exhausted decades ago. And now it's happening again: As 2008 draws to a close, we're getting not just one but two new sagas of Nazi horror: this fictitious parable by Boyne, and the fact-based Defiance, certain to show a far different side of star Daniel Craig, currently basking in the limelight as James Bond.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. Great drama springs not from how we react during our workaday lives, but how we rise — or fall — to the challenge of a soul-numbing crisis. And although world events continue to provide fresh atrocities that one day will inspire their own body of drama — Darfur and Guantanamo Bay come to mind — precious little can match the Holocaust for its depiction of humanity at its most evil, on the one side, and resiliently courageous, on the other.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas begins in Berlin, in the deliberately vague early 1940s, as 8-year-old Bruno learns that his family will be moving to the countryside. The relocation is prompted by his father's military career; although sympathetic about the friends his son will leave behind, the man (David Thewlis) gently explains that a soldier must respond to the call of duty.

Bruno's equally dutiful mother (Vera Farmiga) seems complacently content with this; Bruno's 12-year-old sister, Gretel (Amber Beattie), recognizing her role is to set a good example for her younger brother, smiles bravely.

We wonder, idly, precisely what sort of "soldier" Bruno's father is. We don't wonder very long.