Orion and The Dark: Joyously illuminating

Orion and The Dark (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated TV-Y7, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

As he introduces himself, at the beginning of this delightful animated film, Orion claims to be “a kid just like you.”

 

But that isn’t quite true.

 

Orion is understandably apprehensive when his late-night bedroom is invaded by a
partially shapeless, ink-black apparition that introduces himself as Dark.

All kids fret about this or that, but Orion’s fears are on an entirely different level. To quote Charlie Brown, his anxieties have anxieties.

As Orion soon confesses, he worries about...

 

• Murderous gutter clowns;

 

• Cancer-causing cell phone waves;

 

• Mosquito bites getting infected, causing a limb to wither and drop off;

 

• Falling off a skyscraper;

 

• Being responsible for his team losing;

 

• Being rejected by Sally, the girl he worships from afar;

 

• School locker rooms, particularly when local bully Richie Panici is present; and

 

• Bees, dogs, the ocean, haircuts and monsters.

 

All of this is depicted in a colorful, crayon-style animated rush lifted from the artwork in Orion’s personal journal: a style distinct from the more traditional animation work in this DreamWorks charmer from director Sean Charmatz, making an impressive big-screen feature debut.

 

Most of all, though, Orion is afraid of the dark. He insists on sleeping with night lights, and his bedroom door open. His tolerant parents haven’t quite given up on him, but they’re running out of ideas; he blatantly rejects their insistence that much of what he professes to fear would be fun, if he simply yielded to the moment.

 

“Fun?” he retorts. “Fun is just a word people made up, to make danger sound more appealing!”

 

Orion and The Dark is adapted from British author Emma Yarlett’s captivating 2014 children’s picture book ... although “adapted” isn’t quite the right word. Her book actually is a jumping-off point for a pleasantly mind-boggling script by Charlie Kaufman, who previously perplexed our brains with Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (the latter earning him a well-deserved Academy Award).

 

Trust Kaufman to weave a singularly unique, existentialist storytelling style into a children’s fantasy, while smoothly blending this with Yarlett’s gentle wisdoms.

The Little Mermaid: Waterlogged

The Little Mermaid (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for dramatic intensity and some scary images

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.26.23

Following in the lamentable footsteps of 2017’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, which transformed its absolutely perfect animated predecessor into a 129-minute slog, this live-action update of 1989’s 83-minute charmer similarly has become an even more bloated 135-minute exercise in tedium.

 

When Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) nearly drowns, following the loss of his ship,
Ariel (Halle Bailey) manages to save him, and drag him to shore.

I’ve no idea why Disney continues to tarnish the memory of these legacy classics, particularly when this one has been done so clumsily. The original Alan Menken/Howard Ashman song score has been “enhanced” with three new tunes by Menken and lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda, and — all due respect to the latter’s better credentials — the mis-match is glaring.

 

Worse yet, Miranda also added additional lyrics to several of Ashman’s existing songs, which were perfectly fine to begin with, thank you very much.

 

David Magee’s updated — and protracted — script apparently was designed to inject a new subtext of inclusiveness: a usually welcome theme which, alas, is delivered here with the subtlety of a sledge hammer. (I’m not one to scream “woke” at the drop of a fin, but good grief, folks; was the overkill really necessary?)

 

2021’s Luca handled this far more gracefully.

 

All of this is a shame, because Halle Bailey is sensational as this new film’s Ariel. She has terrific screen presence, a gorgeous — and powerful — singing voice, and an expressive face that conveys a wealth of emotion. The one saving grace of the otherwise tiresome second hour — which spends far too much time with Ariel navigating her human form in the prince’s castle — is the endearing charm of her muteness (having traded her voice for legs).

 

But that’s getting ahead of things. A quick recap, for newcomers:

 

Ariel, one of the seven daughters of King Triton (Javier Bardem, pompously grave), has long been fascinated by the intriguing trinkets and tchotchkes that occasionally fall overboard from passing ships (or, less happily, which she salvages from shipwrecks). This is a source of amusement to her best friends, Flounder the fish (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) and Sebastian the crab (Daveed Diggs), who also is Triton’s major-domo.

 

Whenever Ariel surfaces, in order to clandestinely observe the mysterious doings of these humans in their passing ships, her little gang is augmented by Scuttle (Awkwafina), a neurotic, dim-witted diving seabird who fancies herself an expert on All Things Human.

 

Luca: Fish out of water

Luca (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang

To paraphrase a line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, all Pixar films are excellent, but some are less excellent than others.

 

Having narrowly avoided being spotted by residents of the nearby coastal community,
Alberto, left, and Luca contemplate the best way to resume their land-based human forms.

The animation — always visually dazzling — never is at fault, but some scripts fall far short of the creatively thoughtful brilliance found in (for example) Inside Out and Soul. The Good Dinosaur simply didn’t work; neither did Brave or the Cars sequels (the latter fueled more by merchandising desires, than artistic merit).

Luca is similarly disappointing.

 

Director Enrico Casarosa and his three co-scripters try hard to blend two disparate plot elements, but they never align successfully. And while the story ultimately offers a welcome message on the subject of inclusiveness, that feels like an afterthought.

 

It’s also impossible to ignore the strong echo of The Little Mermaid, which adds an unsatisfying note of been there/done that.

 

The story, taking place in the late 1950s or early ’60s, opens in the ocean, not far from the small Italian seaside town of Portorosso. This underwater setting is home to its own community of “sea monsters,” notably a family unit comprising teenage Luca Paguro (voiced by Jacob Tremblay), his parents Daniela and Lorenzo (Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan), and his elderly, gravel-voiced grandmother (Sandy Martin).

 

These “monsters” — despite their spines, sharp tails and webbing — are much too cute to be the slightest bit scary. The animation team based them vaguely on medieval illustrations from the Carta Marina — a Renaissance map dating back to 1539 — while granting them iridescence, gorgeous colors and oversized, animé-style eyes.

 

In a droll touch, Luca works as a “shepherd,” keeping watch over a school of small fish that bleat like sheep. As with actual sheep, some are prone to wander; Luca’s efforts to keep them in line are quite amusing.

 

We may think Luca and his family are adorable and obviously friendly, but Portorosso’s residents live in abject terror, as if these creatures have been destroying boats and eating small children for centuries. (This clearly isn’t the case, making such panic seem rather odd.)

The Predator: A bloody good time

The Predator (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore, relentless profanity and vulgar sexual references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.14.18

Revived sci-fi action franchises have done pretty well lately.

Chris Pratt and a fresh team breathed welcome new life into the Jurassic Park series, and now director/co-scripter Shane Black has done the same with an updated Predator. He and co-writer Fred Dekker acknowledge the 1987 original, while cleverly welding their story to a can’t-miss formula that hearkens back to 1967’s The Dirty Dozen.

When a captured Predator regains consciousness and realizes that it's about to become a
laboratory experiment, it reacts with understandable fury. (Unfortunately, our heroes
won't get their act together for several more scenes.)

The result is 107 minutes of skillfully paced suspense, divided into distinct “chapters” that involve audience-pleasing characters, all played well by an ensemble cast that blends familiar faces with several newcomers. The dialogue is sharp, the action frequently laden with droll banter: no surprise, coming from the guy (Black) who made his mark with 1987’s Lethal Weapon and, more recently, ensured that Iron Man 3 was far better than its sophomore-slump predecessor.

Too bad Black undercuts all this good stuff by making his new Predator so unrelentingly gory. 

We’re talking splatter-porn levels of abattoir grue more appropriate to trashy zombie flicks. Black signals such sensitivities right out of the gate, when an early human victim — suspended upside-down from a tall tree limb, as befits Predator custom — is sliced in half, after which the camera lingers needlessly on his entrails, as they slowly drip and slide to the ground below.

Seriously?

That’s merely the beginning. Black and Dekker gleefully succumb to all manner of slicing, dicing, severed limbs, eviscerations, disembowelments, decapitations and more, often depicted via grody-to-the-max close-ups. I fully appreciate that a Predator entry must be violent, but there’s such a thing as too much … particularly when such excess damages an otherwise shrewdly assembled thrill ride.

That aside, there’s no denying that Black hits the sweet spot that blends macabre humor, fast-paced thrills and edge-of-the-seat suspense.

The film opens with a space battle between two small fighters; the targeted ship escapes and crash-lands on Earth, right where retired Special Forces army ranger-turned-mercenary Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) is leading a clandestine op against some Mexican drug cartel baddies. He alone survives the subsequent assault by the ferocious whatzit that emerges from the craft; better yet, McKenna escapes with the alien’s helmet and weapon-laden armband.

Suspecting a potentially hostile de-briefing back in the States, McKenna ships the alien tech home, where it unintentionally winds up in the hands of his adolescent son, Rory (Jacob Tremblay, well remembered from Room). He’s a spectrum child, on the border of autistic, and also — thanks to Tremblay’s gifted performance — one of the film’s strongest assets.

Due to Rory’s insatiable curiosity and savant-like talent for pattern recognition and puzzle-solving, he begins to figure out how this strange stuff functions.

The Book of Henry: A fascinating read

The Book of Henry (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.16.17

Films don’t surprise me much any more.

This one did.

The Book of Henry is a captivating convergence of premise, cast and execution: a beguiling “little” drama filled with big ideas, carefully shepherded by a director and writer who maintain unerring control throughout.

While Mom's away, the boys will play: Armed with a vacuum cleaner, toilet plungers,
goggles and gallons of packing "peanuts," Henry (Jaeden Lieberher, left) does his best
to put a smile on the face of younger brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay).

Trust is in short supply these days, from all sorts of quarters. It seems like people and things too frequently disappoint us, and that’s equally true of films that betray our faith and intelligence. Not so The Book of Henry. Barely half an hour in, it became clear that scripter Gregg Hurwitz wasn’t going to miss a step with his enchanting narrative, and that director Colin Trevorrow’s guiding hand would monitor all the elements with the precision of the Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions concocted by the story’s title character.

In short, I gave my trust to Hurwitz and Trevorrow, and they didn’t let me down.

Eleven-year-old Henry (Jaeden Lieberher) shares a bedroom with his younger brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay) in a pastoral suburban town in upstate New York. Their mother Susan (Naomi Watts), a single parent, toils as a waitress at a tiny diner, alongside co-waitress and feisty family friend Sheila (Sarah Silverman).

Susan is forgetful, immature and only mildly educated: still stuck in post-adolescence, all these years later, and more big sister than parent. The preternaturally serious Henry, in stark contrast, has the family well in hand; he’s charismatic, shrewdly intuitive and super-smart. (He prefers the term “precocious.”)

On a typical weekday evening, Susan spends hours playing video games; Henry sits quietly at a table, paying all the bills and keeping an eye on the stock market.

He also keeps an eye on Christina (Maddie Ziegler), the girl next door who sits at an adjacent desk in his classroom. Normally a friendly, cheerful lass, of late she has grown quiet and withdrawn, frequently half-concealing her face beneath her hair. Her step-father Glenn (Dean Norris) — also a single parent, and the local police chief — seems ... well ... tightly wound.

All three kids are creative. Christina dances; Henry and Peter spend lots of time in their tree house, in the woods behind their home. This kids’ heaven has been assembled from all manner of found materials — no doubt engineered by Henry — and filled with toys, gadgets and discarded junk waiting to be transformed into something spectacular. Best touch: the tree house entrance is a re-purposed refrigerator door, complete with bottles held within its shelves.

Room: Claustrophobic chiller

Room (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Tightly enclosed, confined-location dramas seem to have become a minor rage.

It may have started back in 2002, when Colin Farrell was trapped in Phone Booth. More recently, though, we’ve agonized while Ryan Reynolds tried to escape from an underground coffin, in Buried; and played invisible back-seat passenger while Tom Hardy spent 85 minutes in a car, in Locke.

Nothing goes to waste, in the tiny, isolated space that represents the entire universe for
Ma (Brie Larson) and young Jack (Jacob Tremblay). Thus, after gathering enough
egg shells, they naturally appoint their "home" with a decorative chain.

On a superficial level, Room would appear to belong in their company. But I actually wonder if scripter Emma Donoghue — who adapted her own best-selling 2010 novel — is familiar with Ray Bradbury’s similarly chilling “Jack-in-the-Box,” which debuted in the fantasy master’s 1947 short story collection Dark Carnival.

A few similarities are striking, but possibly coincidental. And Donoghue definitely takes her narrative into a vastly different direction, which is more in keeping with modern-day horrors. In fact, she acknowledges being inspired by the ghastly, real-life behavior of Josef Fritzl, an Austrian man whose conduct was exposed in 2008. (Research at your own peril.)

Most striking, though, are the starring performances by Brie Larson and young Jacob Tremblay, who carry the first half of this disturbing tale almost entirely on their own. Dublin-born director Lenny Abrahamson draws quite intense performances from both, and Tremblay is particularly fine: thoroughly credible as a just-turned 5-year-old boy forced to experience the world — actually, “a” world — in a manner no child should have to endure.

A typical dawn awakens Jack (Tremblay), introduced in tight close-up as he quietly shrugs out of sheet and blanket; the camera pulls back to reveal that he shares the bed with his mother (Larson), whom he calls “Ma.” She rises, prepares breakfast, and we note the presence of the bed, a sink, a toilet, a bathtub, a wardrobe, table and chairs, and a rudimentary kitchen ... all in the same 11-by-11-foot space.

The morning progresses through various activities designed to keep Jack engaged. We take in Ma’s behavior: overly bright and cheerful, with an exaggerated enthusiasm that cannot fully conceal the weary, beaten resignation in her eyes. Details pile atop each other: the sallow complexions of these two people, the way in which Jack exhibits no curiosity about anything beyond these four walls...

...these four walls which are the extent of their entire universe.