Judy: A faded rainbow

Judy (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, substance abuse, and profanity
By Derrick Bang

This film has moments — quite a few, actually — that are sublime, and not merely due to Renée Zellweger’s mesmerizing portrayal of Judy Garland.

Determined to revive her career with a cabaret tour in London, Judy Garland (Renée
Zellweger) bids what she hopes will be only a temporary farewell to her children,
Lorna (Bella Ramsey) and Joey (Lewin Lloyd).

Everything comes together during such sequences: Zellweger’s performance, scripter Tom Edge’s dialog, cinematographer Ole Bratt Birkeland’s framing, and director Rupert Goold’s equally sensitive handling of the supporting actors in a given scene. The results are both magical and (frequently) utterly heartbreaking.

If only the entire film could be so assuredly composed.

Such highlights aside, other portions of Judy feel clumsy and ill-conceived: particularly those having to do with Mickey Deans, Garland’s fifth — and most ill-advised — husband. Finn Wittrock’s boyishly giddy performance doesn’t feel the slightest bit genuine, and he tries much, much too hard. Wittrock appears to have been cast for his resemblance to the actual Deans, but that doesn’t get him very far.

It’s quite jarring to see such a false, tin-eared performance alongside Zellweger’s far superior work.

Judy is a distinctly British take on the iconic American film and music star. It’s adapted from Peter Quilter’s play End of the Rainbow, which depicts Garland’s on- and off-stage trials and tribulations during what would become her final series of live performances. She began a five-week cabaret run at London’s Talk of the Town restaurant on Jan. 14, 1969; the results were chaotic, unpredictable, disastrous … and occasionally incandescent, which is why the punters kept purchasing tickets.

That said, late-night cabaret audiences could be brutal; these are far from the refined patrons at concert hall productions.

Zellweger’s all-in portrayal is authentic enough to be frightening. This was Garland at the fragile lowest of low ebbs: twitchy and jittery, her head often bobbing like that of a terrified bird; rambling, dismissive and often incoherent, due to chronic insomnia; beholden to a constant cocktail of uppers, downers, sleeping pills and tranquilizers; and with far too much make-up applied in an effort to conceal a frame so emaciated that it appeared skeletal.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco: Heartfelt and compelling

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug use and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.28.19

Identity and serenity are shaped, in great part, by the stability of place.

Somewhere to call home, where one can shelter from life’s trials and tribulations. Where one can relax, and be at peace.

Mont (Jonathan Majors, left), ubiquitous notebook in hand, worries that Jimmie
(Jimmie Fails) has set his expectations too high, when it comes to his desire to care for a
Victorian house that holds a strong personal attachment.

Indie filmmaker Joe Talbot’s impressive feature debut couldn’t be better timed, arriving amid the rising tsunami of national homelessness: particularly acute in California, and at crisis levels in metropolitan regions such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. It seems exceptionally tragic in Baghdad by the Bay, where tent communities and sidewalk derelicts clash so tragically with the romantic atmosphere and storied neighborhoods of a city that has fueled dreams for generations.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a deeply moving saga of friendship, fractured families, and the devastating hunger to belong — to stillbelong — in a city that seems to have turned its back on native sons and daughters. Talbot, a fifth-generation San Franciscan, co-wrote the story with best friend Jimmie Fails, drawing heavily on the latter’s actual childhood experiences; the script received an assist from Rob Richert, who teaches filmmaking at San Quentin Prison.

The resulting narrative has a firm sense of atmosphere and “street” that feels absolutely — often painfully — authentic. Talbot also grants his characters an aura of grace and nobility, as they pursue an impossible dream with the stubborn persistence of Don Quixote tilting at windmills. The goal is pure, and eminently righteous; this justifies their struggle to a degree that touches us deeply.

And we sense, almost immediately, that the quest — and its outcome — will be heartbreaking. This is no Hollywood fairy tale.

Jimmie Fails (essentially playing himself) has long been obsessed by the ramshackle, elegant old Victorian home — complete with a distinctive, cone-shaped rooftop known as a “Witch’s Hat” — that his grandfather built long ago, in the heart of San Francisco’s Fillmore District. It was home to Jimmie’s extended family, during the vibrant post-WWII years, when the region was alive with joyously boisterous jazz clubs.

Then Jimmie’s father lost it somehow — details don’t matter — and the family fractured, pushed to various parts of the city’s outskirts. Jimmie remains haunted by the house’s hold on his soul. With best friend Mont (Jonathan Majors) acting as reluctant lookout, Jimmie frequently sneaks onto the property, to touch up some paint trim, or attempt to control the overgrown garden.

Despite the fact that the current owners — white, of course — have repeatedly chased him away.

La La Land: (Mostly) breathtaking magic

La La Land (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.16.16

Ten minutes into this film, giddy with excitement, I couldn’t wait to see it again.

Ninety minutes in ... the enthusiasm had waned.

When Mia (Emma Stone) insists that she doesn't care for jazz, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling)
takes her to his favorite club, in order to demonstrate why true jazz can't just be heard,
but must be seen emanating from those who perform it.

At its best, La La Land sparkles with true magic. Writer/director Damien Chazelle’s romantic, music-laden fantasy is a true “sense of wonder” movie akin to Moulin Rouge! or Hugo: a dazzling tour de force that takes full advantage of the medium’s many elements.

It’s also an exhilarating throwback to classic American and French movie musicals, particularly Gene Kelly’s athletically graceful dance spectaculars: Singing in the Rain, An American in Paris, The Band Wagon and (most particularly) the sort of terpsichorean legerdemain he wove into a creaking floorboard and a stray section of newspaper, in Summer Stock.

Coupled with the luxuriously romantic atmosphere of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Chazelle obviously loves all of these classics, just as he includes more than a few nods to Bob Fosse’s aggressively gymnastic choreography. Chazelle also understands music’s ability to transport us to ethereal elsewheres, and he lives and breathes the toe-tapping, finger-snapping intensity of jazz; he demonstrated that with his mesmerizing directorial breakout, in 2014’s Whiplash.

That film was a grinding endurance test for its young protagonist, as he clashed with a brutal mentor en route to becoming a master drummer. La La Land is a much gentler saga of dreams and dreamers: of young people drawn to Southern California in pursuit of fame and/or artistic satisfaction (not necessarily in that order).

The simple core story is told with the heady, tongue-tickling sparkle and fizz of expensive champagne, Chazelle masterminding a squadron of associates who operate on full throttle: from Linus Sandgren’s opulent cinematography to David Wasco’s enchanting production design, from Tom Cross’ whip-cracking editing to Mary Zophres’ retro-stylish costume design, and Mandy Moore’s breathtaking choreography.

Unbroken: A bit underwhelming

Unbroken (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence, brutality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.26.14

Depicting the human spirit’s strength and indomitable resolve can be a tough sell in the visual realm of the big screen, because so much of that ability is an inward, fundamentally mental challenge.

Dismayed to have come to the direct attention of sadistic concentration camp guard
Mutsuhiro Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara, right), Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell)
is subjected to a series of increasingly brutal and humiliating ordeals.

And yet we’ve been blessed, this month, by two powerful films that convey precisely that heroic struggle: the first one devoted to a quiet academic who refused to yield — Stephen Hawking, in The Theory of Everything — and now the equally authentic saga of a scrappy athlete driven by equal measures of grit and stubborn fury.

As with Eddie Redmayne’s bravura performance in Theory, director Angelina Jolie’s adaptation of author Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken is fueled by equally riveting work from British actor Jack O’Connell, whose until-now obscurity on these shores is certain to vanish forever. O’Connell is the heart, soul and raw guts of this film, and he achieves the near impossible: He genuinely makes us believe that fresh-faced, Southern California-based Italian immigrant Louis Zamperini could have survived — nay, triumphed over — a series of heart-stopping ordeals that clearly would have felled, and killed, lesser men.

Hillenbrand is the meticulous biographer who in 2001 dazzled readers with her first book: Seabiscuit: An American Legend, which went on to become an equally popular 2003 film. Hillenbrand acknowledges that her research into that famed horse frequently uncovered references to another famous Californian who “could give Seabiscuit a run for his money.” That led to an eight-year “chat” with Zamperini, but only by phone; Hillenbrand didn’t want to meet him in the flesh until after her second book was published.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption hit bookstores in 2010, subsequently spending 185 weeks on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list. It was a natural for film adaptation, and therein lay the challenge: how to bring Zamperini’s amazing story to cinema.

Jolie’s smartest move was casting O’Connell in the lead role, and the young actor absolutely rewards her faith. But while Jolie clearly approached this project with both passion and sensitivity, her directorial touch is too remote: We often feel like distant observers, rather than being intimately connected with these men, and their plight.