Nimona: Top-flight fantasy

Nimona (2023) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG, for dramatic intensity and occasional rude humor

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

The best science fiction and fantasy stories — even on the big screen, going back to 1927’s Metropolis and 1936’s Things to Come — have employed these genres as a means of illuminating and indicting lamentable, real-world human behavior.

 

Sir Ballister Boldheart is startled to discover that — among her many other unusual
talents — his new sidekick, Nimona, can breathe fire.

Rod Serling became famous for using his Twilight Zone scripts as subtle message parables on bigotry, government oppression, mob mentality, social justice, war-mongering and individual dignity.

This noble calling has since been picked up by animated features; The Iron Giant, Inside Out, The Sea Beast and Elemental spring readily to mind.

 

Nimona now joins their ranks … and it’s likely to remain this year’s best and most boldly audacious animated feature.

 

Co-directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane’s inventive fairy tale has the breathless, rat-a-tat pacing of a classic Warner Bros. Road Runner cartoon; the snark we adore in the Shrek series; and the hilarious visual set-pieces typical of the Despicable Me and Minions franchises. But although this new film is fun — and that’s Fun with a capital “F” — its power comes from the shrewdly savvy script, with its up-to-the-minute real-world references, by a sextet of writers, loosely adapting ND Stevenson’s (much darker) 2015 graphic novel of the same title.

 

The story’s core message: the shameful human tendency to regard “the other” as a monster.

 

But that doesn’t become clear immediately, in a twisty saga that hits the ground running, and never lets up.

 

A brief prologue — cleverly animated via still images within ancient scrolls — depicts the origins of a futuristic medieval world where sword-wielding knights exist alongside flying vehicles, giant screens and breathless media personalities. Society has been shaped by events a millennium past, when the mighty warrior Queen Gloreth slew the fire-spouting dragon that prompted the realm to erect towering walls to protect it from similar monsters beyond.

 

A long succession of highly trained young warriors has maintained this tradition; the story begins as the current inductees are about to be knighted by Queen Valerin (voiced by Lorraine Toussaint). This group’s stand-out member is an anomaly: Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed), the first knight-to-be who’s not a member of the aristocracy, but instead was hand-selected by the queen, when he was just a street urchin.

 

This hasn’t gone over well with many citizens, who disapprove of placing the realm’s safety in the hands of “a commoner.” Fellow inductee Thoddeus Sureblade (Beck Bennett) is openly contemptuous, having bullied Ballister since they began training. The only saving grace: Ballister’s friend and lover, Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang), whose noble lineage hails all the way back to Queen Gloreth.

Joker: The monster in the deck

Joker (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.4.19

Heath Ledger has some serious competition.

Actors have craved playing villains ever since Shakespeare’s era; as the cliché goes, it’s because they get the best lines. There’s a certain truth to that, just as the challenge of persuasively portraying madness carries its own allure.

As we initially meet him, Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix), much too socially awkward to hold a
"regular" job, makes ends meet — barely — by dressing up as a clown, and trying to
bring some joy into people's lives.

But that’s only half the equation. Unless one believes that evil emerges from the womb that way, it’s even more fascinating to depict the evolution of a monster: the downward spiral that transforms a disenfranchised — but otherwise placid — individual into a violent sociopath.

That’s where director/co-scripter Todd Phillips — sharing the writing credit with Scott Silver — truly shines. Joker is an uncomfortably disturbing portrait of an awkward misfit who’s just perceptive enough to recognize — and eventually resent — the fact that society doesn’t give a bent copper penny about him. He’s one of the “invisibles”: the exponentially expanding mass of homeless, jobless and unloved, utterly ignored by the One Percenters who don’t even glance in his direction.

If this sounds disturbingly similar to current events, that’s no accident. Phillips and Silver unerringly tap into the rising anxieties of middle-class, blue-collar and working poor individuals who have lost patience with the system, and therefore are willing to hitch their wagons to a movement or charismatic individual … even if he is a lunatic. 

Phillips and Silver exploit that angst so well, that at times Joker feels like the match about to be tossed into a dynamite-laden basement.

(Which explains Warner Bros.’ serious case of the jitters, while releasing this film in the wake of last week’s “mass shooting threat” directed at U.S. movie theaters. Recall that 2012’s Colorado slaughter took place during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises.)

Of course, Phillips and Silver’s script is merely the template; Joaquin Phoenix brings it to chilling life. His performance is an all-in depiction of mental instability: of — as initially introduced — a social outcast desperately trying to hang on to meager crumbs of civility and sanity. The film opens on cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s tight-tight-tight close-up on Phoenix, cast as hapless Arthur Fleck, who mumbles, stumbles and chain-smokes his way through an interview with a tight-lipped but sympathetic social worker (Sharon Washington, aces in a brief role).

She asks to see his journal. He reluctantly shares it. We glimpse some of the pages, and regret having done so. The message is clear: This film will be relentlessly, unapologetically uncomfortable. Fasten your seat belts; it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.