The Mastermind: A dull, tedious slog

The Mastermind (2025) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other video-on-demand options

By Derrick Bang 

In addition to the flowery words of praise emanating from numerous critics, The New York Times recently named this one of 2025’s Top 10 films.

 

That clearly warranted a look-see.

 

Fully aware that the art heist he's planning is far outside his area of expertise, James
(Josh O'Connor) carefully considers every possible detail.

Having done so, I can’t imagine what all these people have been smoking.

Although I generally respect indie filmmakers who weave compelling stories about recognizably ordinary people — a welcome relief from most of the noisy, soulless blockbusters churned out by major studios these days — writer/director Kelly Reichardt’s ironically titled character study brings new meaning to dull, colorless and tedious.

 

“Colorless” is particularly apt. Cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt’s washed-out palette must’ve been intentional, but the result merely enhances this film’s drab, lifeless qualities.

 

There’s a point at which measured stillness approaches meaningless, intolerable immobility, and Reichardt crosses that threshold far too many times.

 

At the risk of succumbing to the obvious pun, this film is like watching paint dry.

 

The setting is Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1970. The story begins in a local art museum, where James Mooney (a somnambulant Josh O’Connor), an unemployed carpenter and art school dropout, carefully examines four modernist Arthur Dove paintings hung in one gallery. Museum attendance is sparce; a lone guard sits, head down, sleeping at his post. (Is he supposed to be a joke?)

 

We eventually get a sense, based on his later comments during a family dinner, that James wants to make something special of his life. How he lands on becoming an art thief is left unexplained. Has he done this before? Who put him up to this particular assignment? Who’s the fence? How did he get to know the dodgy friends who participate in this venture? 

 

Don’t wait for any answers; they never come.

 

Given the year, it’s conceivable that James, his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and their two adolescent sons — Carl (Sterling Thompson) and Tommy (Jasper Thompson) — could have a house and get by solely on her salary. James apparently has supplemented by sponging off his well-to-do parents; his mother Sarah (Hope Davis) is a soft touch, but his father Bill (Bill Camp) — a circuit court judge — is losing patience with James’ ongoing failure to launch.

 

So: an art heist, in order to make quick cash. Why not?

 

Real Steel: A knock-out

Real Steel (2011) • View trailer for Real Steel
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for action, brief violence and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.7.11


Well, color me surprised.

Previews for Real Steel made it look like an unholy marriage between Rocky and Transformers, with the worst qualities of both.

Unable to control their robot via the usual headset or touchpad interface, Charlie
(Hugh Jackman, left) activates its "shadow" mode, which allows the machine to
mimic every move it sees. Young Max (Dakota Goyo) understands the
significance of this decision: It means that Charlie will rely on his own boxing
skills. But will they be enough?

And, true enough, this new robot boxing film does resemble a mash-up of those two elements, with dollops of The Champ thrown in for good measure ... not to mention a rather clever nod to the original Richard Matheson story.

The patchwork result shouldn’t work ... but it does. Real Steel is hokey and cornier than a Frank Capra melodrama, but it’s a crowd-pleasing delight nonetheless. Tuesday evening’s preview audience cheered in all the right spots; the enthusiasm level was so high, rolling into the third act, that folks couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.

Stars Hugh Jackman and Dakota Goyo deserve a lot of credit. So does John Rosengrant, for his smashing animatronic robot designs.

But the real star is director Shawn Levy, who has moved beyond his usual broad slapstick — Night at the Museum, Date Night and the Pink Panther revival — to put genuine heart into this crazy-quilt flick. Levy deftly avoids the overstated farce that characterizes (and often ruined) most of his previous films, and coaxes heartfelt performances while maintaining the proper atmosphere for the hybrid narrative scripted by John Gatins, from a story by Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven (based on the aforementioned Matheson piece).

Like Cowboys and Aliens, Real Steel is a blend of disparate elements, in this case futuristic robotics and contemporary working-class angst. That was true of Matheson’s original short story, as well, which was made into a nifty 1963 episode of Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone, with Lee Marvin in the role more or less inhabited here by Jackman.

The “near future” 2020 setting is an odd mix of technology and old-fashioned rodeos, carnivals and inner-city training gyms. The vehicles, clothes, social behavior and architecture feel quite contemporary, but the sport of boxing has been declared off-limits for human beings, who’ve been replaced in the ring by 8-foot battling ’bots.

No more loss of life or permanent brain damage ... and besides, as any kid who ever owned a set of Mattel’s Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots knows full well, watching ’bots bash each other is way cool.

Even so, washed-up former prizefighter Charlie Kenton (Jackman) hasn’t adjusted to the change. Now reduced to touring the underground boxing circuit, trying to secure matches for dilapidated rejects from the World Robot Boxing League, Charlie is forever one step ahead of various creditors who’d cheerfully break his legs in lieu of cash.

Worse yet, Charlie isn’t very adept at the robot remote controls. Unable to translate his hard-learned skills to joysticks and touchpads, he has the sad habit of coming out a loser.

Charlie Bartlett: The doctor is in

Charlie Bartlett (2007) • View trailer
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, drug content, teenage smoking and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.22.08

Hang around long enough, and you'll spot this disclaimer at the very bottom of the final credits for Charlie Bartlett:

"No teenagers were harmed in the making of this motion picture."

Principal Gardner (Robert Downey Jr., center) gets curious after spotting a long
line of boys and girls waiting to visit the boys restroom, but before he can peer
inside, a thoroughly calm Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin, left) emerges and
heads off in the other direction ... at which point the other students disappear
as well, leaving Gardner to wonder again precisely what the new kid in school
is up to.

That observation sums up the wonderfully arch tone of Gustin Nash's script, which fuels another mordant view of high school life, very much in the mold of Election and Juno.

Indeed, Nash and director Jon Poll quite cleverly reference one of the great anti-establishment movies of all time, by making prominent use of the Cat Stevens song "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out," which served as an anthem for 1972's Harold and Maude. The song's appearance here conveys precisely the same sort of triumphant coda: a wistful reminder that success and survival often erupt in unexpected ways, and that some of the best happy endings involve simply surviving another day.

With integrity intact. That's the most important part.

Charlie Bartlett is as hilariously dark a view of high school dynamics as I've seen since Heathers. That film made a heroine out of a girl who essentially turned serial killer in order to establish a place in the social pecking order, whereas Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) gets ahead in his school by supplying prescription medication to an expanding base of "clients."

The film opens as Charlie is expelled from yet another private school, for making and selling impressively realistic IDs. Although outwardly every inch the blueprint of an educated, well-spoken preppy scholar, Charlie has been tossed from every institution within range of the palatial estate he shares with his somewhat scattered mother, Marilyn (Hope Davis).

That leaves only the local public high school: a bubbling stew of unrestrained hormones and individualists who naturally view the academy-dressed Charlie with giggling derision. Our hero eventually makes his way home with a black eye, courtesy of schoolyard thug Murphy (Tyler Hilton, who played the young Elvis Presley in Walk the Line).

Charlie's mother, incapable of considering any other alternative, sends her only child to the shrink they keep on retainer; that gentleman, not really motivated to "cure" this ongoing cash cow, suggests a regimen of Ritalin.

But Charlie's smarter than that. After wisely rejecting this prescription, having perceived that a five-day dose turns him into an over-stimulated madman, he transforms the hostile Murphy into a business partner; they sell the rest of the pills to an eager consumer base at the next high school dance, and marvel at the results.

Suddenly, Charlie has found a new business model ... and a path toward his own popularity.