The King's Man: A royal good time!

The King's Man (2021) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.24.21

Fans of this series are apt to be mighty surprised — happily, one hopes — by this third entry’s unexpected shift in tone and style.

 

En route to Russia in a private train, Orlando (Ralph Fiennes, far left) shares what he
knows about Grigori Rasputin, while, from left, Shola (Djimon Hounsou),
Conrad (Harris Dickinson) and Polly (Gemma Arterton) listen attentively.

Whereas 2014’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and 2017’s Kingsman: Golden Circle are deranged, profane and gleefully over-the-top comic book burlesques, this new entry is only mildly naughty. It’s more accurately a sly bit of alternate history, with director/co-scripter Matthew Vaughn — and co-writer Karl Gajdusek — setting their cheeky Kingsman origin story against the very real horrors of World War I.

The tone is more akin to a Golden Age classic such as 1939’s Gunga Din … albeit with dollops of 21st century hyper-violence.

 

Key events are rigorously accurate: from the triggering assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which set the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) against the Triple Entente (France, Russia and Britain); to the ghastly horrors of trench warfare that claimed the lives of an estimated 9 million soldiers.

 

Other films have depicted the latter more authentically — director Sam Mendes’ 1917 immediately comes to mind — but Vaughn, Gajdusek and production designer Darren Gilford convincingly establish a similarly grim tableau. One sequence, achieved with some clever CGI, is particularly effective: a bit of time-lapse legerdemain that reveals the impact of two years’ of war, as a pastoral Western European landscape transforms into a barren wasteland laden with mutilated corpses.

 

But this comes a bit later. The conceit of Vaughn and Gajdusek’s script is that this nation-shattering abattoir was orchestrated clandestinely, behind the scenes, by a nefarious cabal whose many members include Russia’s mad monk, Grigori Rasputin (Rhys Ifans). Their leader, known only as The Shepherd — he remains unseen, as with the early 1960s machinations of James Bond’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld — is motivated by an enraged hatred of England, for its centuries-old repression of Scotland.

 

Meanwhile…

 

Following a brief 1902 prologue set during South Africa’s Boer War, during which we meet Orlando, the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), and his young son Conrad (Alexander Shaw), the story flashes forward a dozen years. Fiennes excels at this sort of refined, crisply authoritative figure; Orlando is unapologetically aristocratic but also mindful of his station, and the need to behave honorably for the common good.

 

As a result of events during that prologue, he’s also a devoted pacifist: a philosophy that increasingly puts him at odds with the impetuous Conrad (now played by Harris Dickinson), who — like so many young men of his era — wishes to prove his bravery in “glorious battle.”

Summerland: A deeply emotional sojourn

Summerland (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.16.20

I marvel at the variety and emotional sensitivity of World War II-based dramas that continue to arrive from across the pond.

 

As Alice (Gemma Arterton) grows more tolerant of Frank's (Lucas Bond) presence,
she becomes willing to share her interest in the fascinating atmospheric phenomenon
known as Fata Morgana mirages.

Clearly, several generations of our British cousins continue to be profoundly impacted by the Blitz, which terrified the London populace for eight harrowing months, from September 1940 through May 1941. (And a noisy subset of Americans complain that the sensible request to wear a mask is too restrictive? Please.)

 

Writer/director Jessica Swale’s engaging and clever scripted Summerland — available via Amazon Prime and other streaming platforms — focuses on this era through the lens of yet another fresh perspective. Her film is fueled by a richly nuanced performance from star Gemma Arterton, who — in turn — is surrounded by a talented ensemble cast that brings this drama to vibrant life.

 

The setting is a tiny community nestled along the seaside cliffs of Southern England’s Kent district; the story’s catalyst is “Operation Pied Piper,” the mass evacuations designed to keep children safe in outlying rural locations during the Blitz, while their parents remained behind in cities across Britain.

 

Alice Lamb (Arterton) is a reclusive researcher/writer who lives in a quaint home overlooking the ocean. She’s constantly tormented by local children: in part because they always get such a furious rise out of her; and also because much of the community suspects she might be a “Nazi spy.” (Not really. But tongues do wag…)

 

Her isolation is rudely interrupted when she’s assigned a young boy — Lucas Bond, as Frank — who arrives in the newest wave of displaced children. Alice is furious, wanting no part of such an intrusion; the townsfolk — led by genial school headmaster Mr. Sullivan (the quietly excellent Tom Courtenay) — are equally firm. She must do her part.

 

Fine, she replies waspishly, but only for one week: until you can find him another home.

 

We cringe during these early scenes, because Alice doesn’t even try to conceal her disgust over the situation in general, and poor Frank in particular; she couldn’t care less if his feelings get bruised. But — intriguingly — he’s a remarkably resilient boy, and he accepts her hostility with equanimity (although Bond ensures that we see the distress in his gaze, when Alice isn’t looking).

 

Runner Runner: A fouled hand

Runner Runner (2013) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity and occasional blunt sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Some movies defiantly wear their movie-ness like an ill-advised badge of honor.

The premise is so contrived, the characters so ill-defined, their behavior so random, that all we can do is shake our heads in resignation, thinking, What can we expect? It’s only a movie.

It's every teenage boy's dream come true: Richie (Justin Timberlake, left) couldn't be
happier when Internet gambling tycoon Ivan Block (Ben Affleck) accepts him as a
protégé. Of course, Richie fails to heed the slightest trace of common sense, branding
himself as the biggest sucker of all time: an attitude without which we wouldn't have
this film. Which might have been a good thing.

Runner, Runner fits that bill.

The script, credited to Brian Koppelman and David Levien, is absolutely ludicrous. It opens with a behavioral howler and just gets worse, its central character — our de facto hero — ignoring common sense to a degree that makes it impossible to sympathize with him. Frankly, he fully deserves the consequences that he eventually struggles so hard to escape.

Let him hang, and move on.

But no, that would defy the revenge scenario that Koppelman and Levien so clumsily stitch together, from one bewildering moment to the next. Director Brad Furman, perhaps recognizing the weak hand he has been dealt, does his best to dazzle us with Costa Rican scenery and the wretched excess of an opulent casino gaming community.

Indeed, cinematographer Mauro Fiore lingers so long on such a setting, when our young hero initially enters this hedonistic realm, that I began to wonder if Furman had forgotten what to do next.

Runner, Runner, set in the world of Internet gambling, is an echo for Koppelman and Levien. They made their bones back in 1998 with Rounders, a slick suspense thriller also involving high-stakes poker and a protagonist — in that case, Matt Damon — who gets in over his head. Clearly obsessed with gamblers and intricate stings, Koppelman and Levien subsequently created the short-lived TV series Tilt and brought the Danny Ocean series to a satisfying conclusion with Ocean’s Thirteen.

Things since then haven’t been nearly as satisfying, with two failures — The Girlfriend Experience and Solitary Man, both in 2009 — that were outside their comfort zone. No doubt Koppelman and Levien viewed Runner, Runner as a means of returning to what they know best.

Well guys, they say you can’t go home again ... and that’s certainly the case here.

Richie Furst (Justin Timberlake), a Wall Street up-and-comer who lost everything when the market crashed, has started over as a Princeton grad student. Lacking a respectable means to fund his education, he has been earning a commission as a shill for Midnight Black, an enormously successful Internet gambling site.

Alas, Princeton’s dean (a small but well-played role by Bob Gunton) thinks little of Richie’s clandestine operation, and orders it shut down. With no other means of earning tuition money, Richie goes “all in” one night by yielding to the very temptation that he has professed, during his smart-alecky narration, to be smart enough to avoid: playing online poker at Midnight Black. Naturally, he loses everything.

But suspiciously.

Tamara Drewe: Draw your own conclusions

Tamara Drewe (2010) • View trailer for Tamara Drewe
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, nudity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.3.10


Not long into director Stephen Frears’ big-screen handling of Tamara Drewe, Posy Simmonds’ rather viciously snarky graphic novel, we get a telling remark from the character we’re encouraged to loathe the most: condescending pop-fiction author Nicholas Hardiment, played to snobbish perfection by Roger Allam:

“All storytellers are liars and thieves.”

We can't see who everybody is looking at -- that would be Tamara -- but her
entrance certainly has a dramatic impact. The key players in this cheerfully
bent little drama include, from left, Glen (Bill Camp), Nicholas (Roger Allam)
and, in foreground, Beth (Tamsin Greig).

Keep that comment in mind, as this film works rather languidly toward its conclusion, because Tamara Drewe isn’t a story that rewards good behavior. Cheaters DO prosper in this rather caustic little saga, and that can prove unsettling.

At first blush, Frears’ film – scripted by Moira Buffini – feels like a slice of rural British whimsy, in the same vein as 1995’s Cold Comfort Farm or 2000’s The Closer You Get. All the elements are in place: a very small community, a core setting with plenty of eccentric characters – in this case, a “writers colony” run by Hardiment and his wife, Beth (Tamsin Greig), on their farming land, Stonefield – and an underlying current of earthy sexuality that constantly threatens to burst into voluptuous bloom.

And, for a great stretch, that’s precisely the way things proceed. The action takes place during a single year in the quaint, quiet village of Ewedown, with significant events divided into chapters according to season; we begin one summer and conclude the following spring. Nicholas and Beth host half a dozen or so writers per season; they come to this isolated setting in order to have nothing to do but write. Most are hopeless cases without a prayer of ever getting published, who hang onto Nicholas’ every statement as if each were one of God’s commandments to writers … little realizing that their host’s pithy observations are veiled put-downs.

As the story begins, only one of this particular gaggle of writers will be important: Glen (Bill Camp), a displaced American professor on sabbatical, who is making a last-ditch effort to complete a book on Thomas Hardy. Alas, Glen is as constipated in mind as he is in body: equally unsuccessful at putting words on paper, as he is, ah, emptying his digestive system. Which, of course, he discusses.

Stonefield’s lovely, secluded farm and gardens are tended by Andy Cobb (Luke Evans), a handsome “son of the soil” who respects and enjoys working the land, but also is far smarter – and more perceptive – than most folks give him credit for.