A Million Miles Away: Earthbound

A Million Miles Away (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for no particular reason

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.22.23

José Hernández’s remarkably impressive life and career definitely warrant a suitably exhilarating film.

 

Sadly, this one isn’t it.

 

José Hernández (Michael Peña, center), newly hired as an electrical and computer
engineer at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, finds that his input
is neither requested nor appreciated by his white colleagues. During meetings, he often
doesn't even get a seat at the table.

The script — by Bettina Gilois, Hernán Jiménez and director Alejandra Márquez Abella, based on Hernández’s 2012 autobiography — jarringly skips massive chunks of his early years, and is quite sloppy with respect to the passage of time. It’s also frequently hard to determine what year it is, and when various things take place.

Die-hard NASA fans will be able to fill in the gaps, but casual viewers will wonder if key scenes wound up on the cutting-room floor.

 

That’s a shame, because all the performances are strong and heartfelt, particularly Michael Peña’s starring role as Hernández. The film also excels at its depiction of family dynamics, and the strong ties binding him with his parents, his cousin Beto (Bobby Soto), and (eventually) his wife Adela (Rosa Salazar) and her family.

 

That said, it could be argued that Abella spends too much time on these relationships, at the expense of a more thorough depiction of how José gets from A to B, and then to C and D.

 

The story begins in the late 1960s, as the families of 7-year-old José (endearingly played in these early scenes by Juan Pablo Monterrubio) and Beto (Leonardo Granados) divide their lives between home in La Piedad, Michoacán, Mexico, and work each year as farmworkers, moving from one California town to another. Education is scattered and inconsistent, as the boys shuttle from one school to the next.

 

On top of which, they’re often both exhausted, sometimes — in a poignant scene — falling asleep on their school desks.

 

Even so, young José has a thirst for learning, and receives encouragement from a teacher (Michelle Krusiec) who sees a spark in his eager gaze. “You’re a force of nature,” she tells him. “Nothing will stop you.”

 

José’s father Salvador (Julio César Cedillo) also has a telling encounter with a guidance counselor. “A tree doesn’t like to be uprooted and planted somewhere else every few months,” she points out. “It will grow, but it won’t thrive.”

Ambulance: Dead on arrival

Ambulance (2022) • View trailer

No stars (TURKEY). Rated R, for intense violence, bloody images and relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.8.22

This may be the most annoying movie ever made.

 

It’s certainly one of the worst.

 

With his get-rich-quick bank heist gone south, deranged psychopath Danny Sharp
(Jake Gyllenhaal, left) screams at the pursuing police vehicles to "Stay back!",
while his adopted brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) tries to keep their speeding
ambulance on the road.

Director Michael Bay has cornered the market on high-octane junk — witness his ever-more pathetic string of noisy, soulless Transformer epics, not to mention 2019’s similarly wretched 6 Underground — but this one plumbs hitherto untapped depths of awfulness.

The English language, graced with such a vast and colorful collection of adjectives and adverbs, is insufficient to adequately explain just how deplorable this film is. (But I shall try.)

 

Chris Fedak’s bone-stupid, so-called script hasn’t a shred of credibility, and his dialogue is as limp as a dead banana. The one-dimensional acting ranges from ludicrously stoic — notably Garret Dillahunt’s somnambulant, I’ve-wandered-in-from-another-movie portrayal of LAPD tactical SIS Capt. Monroe — to over-the-top, foaming-at-the-mouth derangement (Jake Gyllenhaal, take a bow for a performance so bad, you’re guaranteed a Razzzie Award).

 

Cinematographer Roberto De Angelis relies heavily on swooping, swooshing, barrel-roll, upside-down, skyscraper-hugging drone shots guaranteed to send unprepared viewers into motion-sickness shock: all assembled and cut at hyperspeed by a team of editors — Doug Brandt, Pietro Scalia and Calvin Wimmer — who obviously laced their morning coffee with meth.

 

Note to Mr. Bay: The mere fact that you can do something with drone cameras, doesn’t mean you should. And the result sure as hell isn’t anything approaching art or craft. 

 

Not even 10 minutes into this barrage of wretched excess, I was fighting vertigo and nausea.

 

The “story,” such as it is.

 

Decorated military veteran Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), at wit’s end trying to navigate insurance restrictions, can’t get clearance for the expensive surgery required to fix his wife’s unspecified medical condition. (Of course it’s unspecified; otherwise, Fedak would have had to do actual research.)

 

Will therefore — unwisely — seeks a loan from his motor-mouthed career criminal brother, Danny (Gyllenhaal). Instead, Will gets roped into joining a motley, heavy caliber-toting crew on a “perfectly planned” heist to steal $32 million from a nearby bank.

 

Elsewhere, we meet plucky ambulance EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González), who can “keep anybody alive for 20 minutes, but can’t keep a partner.” She trades flirty, tone-deaf banter with newly assigned colleague Scott (Colin Woodell).

 

Elsewhere, we meet patrol officer Mark (Cedric Sanders), who encourages his rookie partner Zach (Jackson White) to try for a date with a cute teller at — wouldn’t you just know it — the same bank Danny’s crew is about to hit.