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?

 

September 5: Impressively powerful

September 5 (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.26.25 

Ingenuity under pressure is fascinating.

 

Director Tim Fehlbaum’s fact-based depiction of what occurred during the 1972 Munich Olympics — and how those events were broadcast to the entire world — is a suspenseful and riveting docudrama: a true, edge-of-the-seat nail-biter.

 

Members of the ABC News sports team — from left, standing, Jacques Lesgardes
(Zinedine Soualem), Geoff Mason (John Magaro) and Carter Jeffrey (Marcus
Rutherford) — surround translator Marianne Gebhard (Leonie Benesch) as she 
dictates an update from the Munich police radio frequency.

The suspense derives not from the terrorist attack itself — the details of which are well known, and remain seared into history — but the resourceful, behind-the-scenes scrambling by the ABC News sports broadcasting team, which allowed 900 million global viewers to witness this incident, in real time.

The key phrase in that previous sentence is “sports broadcasting team” ... as opposed to seasoned television news journalists. That distinction heightens this story’s drama.

 

Events begin quietly, following coverage of events taking place during Day 10 of the Olympics. Newbie coordinating producer Geoffrey Mason (played by John Magaro) is granted the opportunity to helm the next day’s coverage, thanks to a recommendation by Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), then vice-president of ABC-TV’s Olympic Operations. They both answer to Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), then president of ABC Sports (and later president of ABC News, from 1977 to ’98).

 

World-wide broadcast of the Games has been made possible, for the first time, thanks to new satellite technology.

 

The “thrill of victory and agony of defeat” sporting events aside, these summer Olympics are hugely important for political reasons: the first Games hosted by a German city since Adolf Hitler’s notorious 1936 Berlin travesty. The 1972 invitation was extended, in part, as a means of giving West Germany an opportunity to showcase its reborn democratic virtues.

 

This is tremendously important to the ABC team’s German translator, Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), who wants the world to see her “new and improved” country.

 

(Unlike the aforementioned individuals, and a few others, Gebhardt is a fictitious character based on a composite of several translators.)

 

Everything goes pear-shaped at 4:30 a.m. September 5, when gun shots are heard from within the Olympic Village. They’re followed quickly by reports on the local police radio frequency — which Gebhardt translates — that armed individuals have invaded the quarters of the Israeli Olympic team.

Past Lives: What might have been?

Past Lives (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for fleeting profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.6.23

All of us have paths not taken — mostly insignificant, a few consequential — that prompt occasional curiosity and speculation.

 

But some folks obsess over an emotionally weighty What If, to the point that it interferes with their ability to focus on the alternative happiness that has been achieved.

 

What might they be thinking? Nora (Greta Lee), flanked by Hae Sung (Teo Yoo, left)
and Arthur (John Magaro) contemplates the life choices that have led to this moment.

Writer/director Celine Song’s gentle drama opens on a provocative tableau: three people — two men, with a woman between them — sitting quietly at one end of a bar. Two are Korean, one American. Nobody says anything; the woman’s expression changes — not quite readably — as she glances from one companion to the other. Flirty? Wary? Satisfied? Indecisive?

We hear an off-camera couple try to suss out the dynamic (a game we’ve all played, while people-watching). Who is the woman with? Are the Koreans siblings? Are the guys with each other? Is somebody being dumped?

 

Therein lies a tale…

 

We jump back 24 years, to Seoul, and meet 12-year-old chums Na Young (Moon Seung-ah) and Hae Sung (Leem Seung-min), as they head home after a day at school. She’s in tears, having come in second to Hae Sung, on a class paper. He turns this back on her, pointing out that he usually has come in second behind her, and besides; shouldn’t she be happy for his success?

 

After all, they’re inseparable besties. 

 

Even so, she aspires to greatness: She wants to win a Nobel Prize.

 

Sadly, events are about to separate them. Nora’s parents are emigrating the family to New York. Na Young will be given a new “American” name — Nora — and her sister will become Michelle.

 

But before this occurs, Na Young and Hae Sung’s mothers arrange for the two to have a “date” … perhaps more “play date,” but — as cinematographer Shabier Kirchner’s playful tableaus reveal — love clearly is in the air, at a 12-year-old level that’s deeper than a simple crush.

 

Their final parting is telling, due to the way Song and Kirchner frame the moment: After a perfunctory “Bye” from Hae Sung, Na Young charges up the steep street to her home, without looking back; he watches for a moment, before sadly heading along the level side street to his home.

 

Ambition vs. devotion.

 

The Finest Hours: Waterlogged

The Finest Hours (2016) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

I’ll never understand Hollywood.

The actual account of one brave Coast Guard crew’s mission to rescue survivors of the maimed T2 oil tanker SS Pendleton, undertaken during a raging nor’easter off the New England coast on Feb. 18, 1952, is the stuff of unbelievable legend: a saga of bravery, luck and utterly amazing persistence.

With Seaman Richard Livesey (Ben Foster, left) scanning into the darkness, Coast Guard
Boatswain's Mate First Class Bernie Webber (Chris Pine) struggles to control their small
rescue vessel amid a raging nor'easter, as they try to find the remnants of a
shattered tanker.

Give it to Disney, and it turns into an overcooked, eye-rolling, melodramatic mess.

Granted, the ocean-bound storm sequences are awesome and persuasive, the depiction of the crippled SS Pendleton — literally torn in half by the storm — grimly unsettling on all sorts of levels.

The problem is with character behavior and interpersonal dynamics, as concocted by scripters Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson. Rarely have so many people behaved so childishly, so stupidly, so TV soap opera-ishly.

And so bewilderingly.

For starters, it’s impossible to get a bead on our primary hero, Coast Guard Boatswain’s Mate First Class Bernie Webber (Chris Pine), who overplays a blend of shyness, uncertainty and self-censure to the point that he seems incapable of completing a sentence, let alone piloting a vessel. A failed previous mission apparently has left him riddled with guilt, but that scarcely explains the degree to which he’s belittled, teased and dismissed by both the local veteran fishermen, and his Coast Guard colleagues at the Chatham, Mass., Lifeboat Station.

Then there’s his feckless boss, Daniel Cuff (Eric Bana), assumed to be incompetent because his accent brands him as having come from “somewhere else.” The accusation likely has merit, because Bana plays the role with utter bewilderment, as if Cuff doesn’t even understand how to use the station equipment. We’re supposed to believe this?

But nobody can top the childish histrionics of Holliday Grainger’s Miriam, who frequently behaves like a 5-year-old having a temper tantrum. A confrontation between Miriam and Cuff is so howlingly awful, orchestrated so poorly by director Craig Gillespie, that it must be seen to be disbelieved.

We can’t really fault Grainger, who’s obviously limited to her scripted lines, and the “guidance” from Gillespie. Miriam nonetheless remains the worst “devoted gal left behind” that I’ve seen in many, many years.

Carol: Nothing to sing about

Carol (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for nudity and intimate sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.15.16

Intimate dramas work best when we understand and empathize with the primary characters: when we feel like we know them.

Even during their first meeting, Therese (Rooney Mara, left) can't help noticing the
smoldering, come-hither gaze that Carol (Cate Blanchett) delivers with a shameless
lack of subtlety.

Despite the scrupulous care with which director Todd Haynes has assembled his new film, it’s almost impossible to become involved with the storyline. The narrative is slow, the tone is sweepingly luxurious, and the performances are overstated: all intentional, since Haynes is imitating the opulent 1950s melodramas made by director Douglas Sirk (Magnificent Obsession, Written on the Wind, Imitation of Life and many others).

Which would be fine, if playwright Phyllis Nagy had done a better job with her adaptation of The Price of Salt, the Patricia Highsmith novel on which this film is based.

Granted, Cate Blanchett delivers another of her carefully sculpted performances as protagonist Carol Aird (although I’d argue that Blanchett did the “anguished socialite” shtick much better in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine).

But despite the film’s title, Carol isn’t the most important character in this story, as Highsmith made abundantly clear in her novel. That would be the younger Therese Belivet, who remains an utter cipher as portrayed by co-star Rooney Mara. It’s not entirely her fault; she hits the higher emotional notes reasonably well. But Mara’s Therese has too much “down time,” when she simply stares vacantly toward the camera, as if waiting for Haynes’ next instruction.

More to the point, we know nothing about Therese: her background, the reason she’s so arbitrarily bitchy toward longtime boyfriend Richard (Jake Lacy, who does his best in a thankless role), or — most crucially — why she’s so suddenly infatuated with Carol. We get none of the essential back-story present in Highsmith’s novel.

OK, fine; Therese is trying to “find herself.” But that isn’t good enough; Mara doesn’t sell her half of the dynamic, and therefore the entire film sinks beneath the weight of its own flamboyantly breathy ambiance.

Not Fade Away: Only if we're unlucky

Not Fade Away (2012) • View trailer
Two stars. Rating: R, for pervasive profanity, considerable drug use, sexual candor and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.4.13

Viewers born after 1965, or thereabouts, won’t have the faintest idea what writer/director David Chase is trying to express in this film.

Expecting yet another generation gap-inspired lecture, Douglas (John Magaro, right)
is surprised when his father (James Gandolfini) genuinely opens up to him. Enjoy this
scene, as it's the only truly impressive display of acting, writing and directing in an
otherwise inane and deadly dull drama.

Heck, I lived through this transitional period just like he did, and I barely followed this storyline.

Chase apparently assumes that the 1960s’ musical revolution, and all it involved, are somehow grafted into the brain cells of every American, regardless of age. Granted, the obvious high points have become (in)famous: the long hair, the mod clothes, the casual sex and even more casual drug use, the ever-widening generation gap made worse by mounting contempt for the violent quagmire in Vietnam.

But these are mere backdrop elements, against which the main characters in Chase’s Not Fade Away play out their restless angst ... and that’s where this film falls apart.

We’ve absolutely no sense of the young people at the heart of this story: no concept of what they’re thinking from one moment to the next, or why some of them are so rude and self-centered, or why others are self-destructive. We get no back-stories, no insightful clues, no confessional moments of lucidity. These characters speak in non-sequiturs — when they speak at all — and free-associate stray thoughts with snarky contempt, as if daring us to make sense of anything.

Chase apparently expects us to read everybody’s mind, but that’s impossible; his stars haven’t the acting chops to get anywhere near the level of introspective clarity we so desperately need. And, as if aware of this problem, Chase and cinematographer Eigil Bryld rely tediously, tiresomely on sulky, coldly aloof close-ups, as if searching for significance in the pores of each face.

Where is the fire, the acting gusto, that Chase brought to his work on HBO’s The Sopranos?

And slow? Oh, goodness; trends could rise and fall during the time it takes this morose, 112-minute film to drag to a conclusion.

The topper is an elliptical “conclusion” that arrives several scenes after Chase blows an opportunity to stop at a much more logical moment. Like several other recent films, Chase hasn’t the slightest idea when to stop, and instead gives us several false endings before settling on the least of the bunch.

I have learned, through long experience, to be wary of intimate projects that are deeply personal to filmmakers; in most cases, they can’t get out of their own way. The results are disappointing at best, mawkish self-indulgent at worst. Not Fade Away most often leans toward the latter.