Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery — Delightfully devious

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violent content, bloody images, profanity and crude sexual content

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Writer/director Rian Johnson certainly hasn’t lost his fiendishly macabre touch.

 

Although it runs a bit too long, this third entry in the Knives Out series is another gleeful descent into depraved behavior, with a stellar cast dropped into the middle of a twisty whodunit. Orchestrating its slow unraveling, as before, is Daniel Craig’s idiosyncratic private detective, Benoit Blanc.

 

Under the watchful gaze of Police Chief Scott (Mila Kunis) and Father Jud Duplenticy
(Josh O'Connor, right), Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) examines an unexpected clue.

Blanc’s hair has grown longer, and he has left his droll Southern witticisms behind (and they’re missed), but he still cuts a commanding figure in costume designer Jenny Eagan’s debonair outfits.

But we don’t meet Blanc until the second act. Employing his usual penchant for non-linear storytelling, Johnson first introduces us to ex-boxer turned devout young priest Jud Duplenticy (John O’Connor), who regards himself as “young, dumb and full of Christ.” He narrates earlier events while writing … what? A witness statement? A confession? A memoir?

 

Duplenticy lives with the burden of having killed a fellow fighter during his boxing days, the shame of which drove him into the priesthood. But his temper still gets away from him at times, most recently resulting in a “reprimand” that finds him sent to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, in upstate New York’s Chimney Rock (shades of Stephen King!).

 

He’s assigned to assist firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who rules this tiny parish with a blend of charismatic smarm and thundering, shock-and-awe sermons. In short, he’s a sadistic bully … and proud of it.

 

The primary members of his flock — those who tolerate or cater to Wicks’ whims, or (worse yet) believe in his God-given powers — include:

 

• staunchly faithful church-goer Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close);

 

• tightly wound lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington);

 

• town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner);

 

• bestselling author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott);

 

• aspiring politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack);

 

• wheelchair-bound concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeney); and

 

• circumspect groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church).

The Running Man: A giddy, violent sprint

The Running Man (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for extreme violence, gore and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.16.25

This Stephen King dystopian nightmare is an evergreen: It can be re-imagined anew for each generation, thanks to changes in technology, geo-political shifts ... and an increased level of hyper-violence.

 

Ben (Glen Powell, left) has serious doubts when Elton (Michael Cera) invites gun-toting
thugs into his home, believing that his many jury-rigged defense systems will save the day.

The 1982 novel — the fourth and final book initially published under King’s “Richard Bachman” pseudonym — initially hit the big screen five years later, with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing protagonist Ben Richards. It’s an acceptable adaptation, although this new version hews more closely to King’s book.

This film also is directed by Richard Wright, whose snarky blend of thrills ’n’ chills has been evident since 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, followed by equally clever (and sometimes mildly deranged) hits such as Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho.

 

Point being, Wright’s sensibilities are spot-on for this angry high-tech parable. Given the current slide into fascism in the United States, and elsewhere in the world, many of the plot points in this adaptation — co-scripted by Wright and Michael Bacall — feel disturbingly conceivable.

 

The time is the near future, the setting a United States where the gap between the Haves and Have-nots has become a yawning chasm. It’s effectively a police state designed to ensure that the lower classes remain that way. Chances for advancement are restricted to participation in demeaning and barbaric televised “reality game shows.”

 

The worst challenge — and therefore the most popular — is The Running Man, where “contestants” try to stay alive for 30 days, while being hunted by professional gun-toting pursuers. Contestants also must be wary of their fellow citizens, who earn rewards for identifying or even killing them. The longer a contestant survives, the more s/he earns in “new dollars” (with, as a droll inside joke, Schwarzenegger’s photo in the center of each bill).

 

Ben Richards (Glen Powell) lives with his family in a poverty-level district dubbed Slumside. As the story beings, he simply wants work. His infant daughter is quite ill, and his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) is exhausted, working multiple shifts as a “hostess” in an upscale club. Ben has lost numerous jobs: branded as chronically insubordinate for his tendency to selflessly assist fellow employees who need help (apparently a no-no in this society).

 

Production designer Marcus Rowland, cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung and a massive sfx crew bring this oppressive futuristic society to persuasively chilling life. (Shades of Blade Runner!)

Dune Part 2: Moral ambiguity clouds this second chapter

Dune Part 2 (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong violence, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

As Dune Part 1 concluded, back in October 2021, Chani (Zendaya) glanced at Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), newly accepted among her Fremen clan, and said — to him, and to us — “This is only the beginning.”

 

As Paul (Timothée Chalamet) begins to suffer increasingly distressing visions and
nightmares, Chani (Zendaya) finds it harder to comfort him.

In hindsight, I almost wish that hadn’t been true.

The first film encompassed only (roughly) half of Frank Herbert’s famed 1965 novel, and Paul’s saga was far from over. Unfortunately, the book’s less satisfying second half takes a distinct ethical turn. Characters we had grown to like become less admirable; the story’s broader palette shifts, turning less heroic and more disturbing.

 

Although Herbert’s messianic subplot may have seemed benign (even worthy?) six decades ago, our world has changed. While director/co-scripter Denis Villeneuve — with fellow scribe Jon Spaihts — are once again commended for so faithfully adapting the key plot points of Herbert’s book, this second installment’s rising call for jihad strikes an entirely different note in our tempestuous times.

 

To put it another way, the story’s first half — with its clash between House Atreides and House Harkonnen, provoked behind the scenes by an unseen emperor and the mysterious women of the Bene Gesserit — felt very much like Game of Thrones, with all manner of similar subterfuge, betrayals and dashed hopes. (One wonders if Herbert’s book was on young George R.R. Martin’s reading list.)

 

The second half, alas, focuses more on Paul’s struggle to avoid a horrific destiny that he fears is preordained. To be sure, the promise of revenge also is on the table ... but it feels less important, given the gravity of the bigger picture.

 

All this said, there’s no denying — once again — the epic magnificence of Villeneuve’s vision, and the jaw-dropping scale of his world-building. Herbert’s fans will be gob-smacked anew.

 

To recap:

 

Paul’s father, the honorable Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) of House Atreides, ruler of the ocean world Caladan, is sent by the Emperor to replace House Harkonnen as the fief overlords of the inhospitable planet Arrakis. This desert world is the galaxy’s sole source of “spice,” which enables safe interstellar travel. But mining operations are extremely dangerous due to the ginormous sandworms that move beneath desert sands, like whales swimming through water, and have teeth-laden maws immense enough to swallow a huge spice-mining platform whole.

 

Leto knows this mission a trap, and that he has been set up to fail; he and his people nonetheless occupy the Arrakian capital of Arrakeen, and attempt to make allies of the planet’s indigenous Fremen people. He gains the grudging respect of Fremen representative Stilgar (Javier Bardem).

Dune: Epic sci-fi storytelling

Dune (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and somewhat generously, for considerable violence, disturbing images and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters and (until November 21) HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

This film’s final line of dialogue, spoken with a soft smile and the hint of promise by a key character: “This is only the beginning.”

 

Deliberate irony, I’m sure, on the part of director Denis Villeneuve.

 

With seconds to spare before a massive sandworm erupts to the desert surface, Gurney
Halleck (Josh Brolin, left) drags Paul (Timothée Chalamet) onto their ornithopter, just
as the aircraft takes off.

Folks wondering how Frank Herbert’s complex 1965 novel could be condensed into a 155-minute movie need wonder no longer. Misleading publicity notwithstanding, this actually is Dune: Part One … with the second half likely several years away.

From what I recall — the read was decades ago — Villeneuve and co-scripters Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth get slightly more than halfway into Herbert’s chunky book. In fairness, the breakpoint is logical — more or less where Herbert divided the two portions of his novel — and the film’s conclusion is reasonably satisfying.

 

But let’s just say that about 17 chads are left hanging. Resolution ain’t in the cards. Not yet.

 

That aside, Villeneuve’s always engaging film is a breathtaking display of sci-fi world-building: absolutely an honorable adaptation of Herbert’s blend of future-dreaming, socio-political commentary and (for its time) ground-breaking eco-fiction.

 

Dune has, practically since publication, been the great white whale of filmmakers. Surrealistic Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky spent three years, in the mid-1970s, trying to mount an adaptation that would have starred David Carradine and Salvador Dali(!), with music by Pink Floyd (!!); the project finally collapsed when backers bolted over the rising budget. 

 

David Lynch’s misbegotten effort, deservedly loathed by fans and critics, did make it to the screen in 1984 (and more’s the pity).

 

The 2000 TV miniseries isn’t bad; it also isn’t very good.

 

Neither holds a candle to the bravura work by Villeneuve and the massive, massive crew that brought this vision to the screen. This is true sense-of-wonder moviemaking.

 

For all its merits, Herbert’s novel is a slog at times, burdened by didactic passages and tediously descriptive prose. This film’s greatest achievement — scripters, take a bow — is the distillation of such stuff: retaining just enough to highlight the essential plot points and narrative beats, while simultaneously juicing up dramatic tension.

 

That makes this film frequently exciting: something that’s rarely true of Herbert’s novel. Villeneuve and editor Joe Walker move things along at a suspenseful clip, and matters almost never flag. (This can’t be said of Villeneuve’s previous film, Blade Runner 2049, which — despite its many merits — is hampered by far too many dull stretches of Nothing Much Happens).

 

With Dune finally realized so marvelously on the big screen, one can readily see — as just the most obviously example — how much this story influenced George Lucas.

Flag Day: Don't raise it

Flag Day (2021) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, drug use and violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

The fact-based story here is compelling and astonishing: the saga of a young woman who survives not only a horrific parent — a pathological liar and toxic “entrepreneur” — but her own dangerous detour into life on the streets, before achieving an epiphany that helps her not only survive, but thrive.

 

Jennifer (Dylan Penn), determing to reform her deadbeat, unreliable father (Sean Penn),
moves in with him and undertakes a serious makeover effort.

Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth’s script is adapted from journalist Jennifer Vogel’s searing 2004 memoir, Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life. Vogel also granted considerable assistance during production, so she clearly approved — and assured the authenticity (for the most part) — of this depiction of her early years.

Scary thought.

 

Director Sean Penn clearly intended this as a showcase for his actress daughter, Dylan, and she does her old man proud; her persuasive, deeply moving performance is all over the emotional map. We grieve for her character. Repeatedly.

 

Too bad Dylan’s old man didn’t return the favor.

 

As director, Sean Penn’s aggressively arty “style” pretty much destroys this film. His unrelenting, tight-tight-tight close-ups and up-the-nostrils angles are insufferable, and he relies on them throughout the entire film. It’s the ultimate insult: the lazy, TV-soap-opera affectation of a director who doesn’t trust his actors to carry a given moment.

 

Penn also favors jittery camerawork — I wondered if cinematographer Daniel Moder had been ordered to bounced on a trampoline — and often detours into blurry, grainy, 16mm “memory moments” intended to mimic sloppy home movies.

 

Just about every time Dylan Penn hits a crucial dramatic scene, her father steals focus by calling too much attention to his self-indulgent directorial tics and hiccups.

 

It’s an impressive job of sabotage … which is pretty damn ironic. How could he not have realized that he was ruining his own daughter’s fine work?

 

After a brief prologue in the early 1990s — which telegraphs the story’s conclusion — we’re introduced to the dysfunctional Vogel family: father John (Sean Penn), wife Patty (Katheryn Winnick) and adolescent children Jennifer (Jadyn Rylee) and Nick (Beckam Crawford). The adult Jennifer (Dylan Penn) narrates the details of their tempestuous upbringing, highlighting the degree to which John’s chronic unreliability exacerbates Patty’s fragile insecurity.

 

It’s the mid-1970s. John blows what little money he makes on flamboyant gestures, and then can’t make rent or put food on the table. Patty knows it’s just a matter of time before they’ll once again throw all their worldly possessions into the beat-up station wagon, and drive to some other Midwestern town, where John will somehow con their way into another short-term home.

Avengers Endgame: Epic in every respect

Avengers Endgame (2019) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, sci-fi action and mild profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.26.19

Like, wow.

When reflecting on what has brought us to this point — 21 cleverly interlocking earlier films, starting with 2008’s Iron Man, all of them stitched together with the meticulous expertise of a master weaver — we can only shake our heads in wonder.

In desperate need of some good news, the remaining Avengers — from left, Natasha
Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Bruce Banner (Mark
Ruffalo) and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) — are startled by what has just descended
from the night sky.

The flow chart alone must’ve been a nightmare.

The Marvel Universe series has delivered impressive highs and regrettable lows, but even the latter have maintained the all-important continuity. And with respect to the former, one team has stood proud since 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier; co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo, allied with co-writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. They subsequently brought us 2016’s Captain America: Civil War and both halves of the all-stops-out Avengers blockbuster that concludes with this skillfully crafted Endgame.

As the saying goes, this one has it all (and them all). Thrills, chills and spills. You’ll laugh; you’ll grit your teeth; you’ll be on the edge of your seat; you’ll cry. Indeed, you may cry a lot, depending on the degree to which you’ve bonded with this galaxy of characters.

Few of today’s so-called epics can justify a protracted length that feels self-indulgent long before the final act. Ergo, the mere thought of this one’s 181 minutes might be intimidating. Don’t worry. Russo & Russo, working closely with editors Jeffrey Ford and Matthew Schmidt, make every minute count. They understand the crucial importance of quieter, character-enhancing moments.

I haven’t been this satisfied with a marathon finale since 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. (And that was even longer, at 201 minutes.)

This isn’t merely a lot of tedious sturm und drang, like most of the grimly dour, landscape-leveling entries from the competing DC universe. Markus and McFeely work on our hearts; the awesomely huge cast makes us care. They believe in these characters; as a result, we can’t help doing the same.

One crucial element becomes more obvious, as this film proceeds. Despite the fact that Steve Rogers’ Captain America (Chris Evans) has long been teased as the Avengers’ quaintly clichéd rah-rah, always quick to offer corny pep talks, he’s not the heart and soul of this franchise. That position belongs to Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark/Iron Man, who has always — as he does again here — brought just the right dignity and spirit to these ginormous adventures.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado — The sophomore curse strikes

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

2015’s Sicario was an impeccably self-contained story that resolved in just the right manner. Under no circumstances did it require a sequel; conceptually, that would be like demanding a sequel to Casablanca.

When unforeseen events separate them from the rest of
an American mercenary force, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro)
wonders how best to protect Isabel (Isabela Moner) ...
and, indeed, if he should bother.

But Hollywood rarely is guided by art, when commerce stands ready to interfere. Sicario proved unexpectedly successfully, and actor-turned-writer Taylor Sheridan was on a roll, having also delivered the terrific original scripts for 2016’s Hell or High Water and last year’s Wind River.

In fairness, it perhaps could be argued that Benicio Del Toro’s mysterious Alejandro, by far the most intriguing character in Sicario, deserved another look.

Sheridan gave it a good try. At its best, Sicario: Day of the Soldado has the multi-layered, parallel storylines that made 2000’s Traffic so compelling (and which, coincidentally, brought Del Toro an Academy Award). But Sheridan’s writing isn’t nearly as tight this time; a few plot details are fuzzy, and at one point simply daft.

More conspicuously, the film stumbles its way to a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion. The final 10 to 15 minutes feel as if director Stefano Sollima impulsively handed the reins to somebody far less qualified. Director Denis Villeneuve did a far superior job with the first film.

That said, Sheridan certainly cooks up a disturbing premise, which feels like a logical extension of our fear-driven world.

A pair of seemingly unrelated suicide bomber events — one during a foiled illegal immigrant crossing at the Mexico/Texas border, the other in a suburban Kansas big-box store laden with shoppers — leads U.S. intelligence agencies to an alarming conclusion: that Middle East terrorists are being ferried to Mexico by tanker ships “conveniently” ignored by Somali pirates, and then concealed among hopeful immigrants guided across the border by drug cartel traffickers.

Responding to demands from the (unseen) U.S. president that something be done to stop this, Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine) summons CIA Deputy Director Cynthia Foard (Catherine Keener) and her favorite mercenary “fixer,” federal agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). The latter has become darker, scarier and more cynical since the case he shared with Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, in Sicario; he now believes that a desired end justifies any means.

Trafficking has become epidemic, Matt reasons, because of greed-inspired harmony between rival Mexican cartels. Provoke a war between cartels, and that accord will cease in a violent heartbeat; the resulting chaos will put an end to terrorist trafficking. (This conclusion seems unduly optimistic.) And the best way to create an internecine cartel war lies not with killing a king, but with kidnapping a prince.

Or, as it turns out, a princess.

Deadpool 2: Still gleefully gory

Deadpool 2 (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for relentless violence, profanity, gore, sexual candor, tasteless humor and rather bizarre nudity
By Derrick Bang

If it’s true the world is going straight to hell, this film series is pushing us into the abyss.

Having been made an X-Men trainee by the metal-skinned Colossus, Deadpool (Ryan
Reynolds, left) attempts diplomatic persuasion in order to defuse a volatile crisis
involving a rogue mutant. Needless to say, that won't work...

The character of Wade Wilson, known as Deadpool while concealed beneath red and black Spandex, occupies a tasteless subdivision of the Marvel Comics universe. His insolence and appetite for blood-drenched vigilante justice set him apart from superheroes who obey a higher moral calling, and his mutant talent — accelerated regeneration, like a lizard that can re-grow its tail — encourages all manner of gross-out melees.

To its credit (?), the companion film series quite faithfully replicates the vulgar tone, rude banter and hyper-violent carnage. If anything, Deadpool 2 is even more deplorably disgusting than its 2016 predecessor, which — no doubt — will delight the fans who’ve pushed that first film to a ludicrously high IMDB rating of 8.0. 

To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the movie-going public.

Needless to say, these films can’t — shouldn’t — be taken seriously. They must be approached vicariously, enjoyed (endured?) as examples of the sick and/or dark-dark-dark humor typical of Pulp Fiction, Bad Santa and both Kick-Ass entries.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying caveat emptor. If your idea of a good time doesn’t include watching our anti-hero groan and crack wise after literally getting ripped in two, bloody entrails dangling from both halves, better go for some other option at the multiplex.

This film picks up more or less where the first one left off, with the hideously scarred Wade (Ryan Reynolds) having settled into his role as masked mercenary and executioner of grotesquely vile criminal dons, drug kingpins, human traffickers and, well, you get the idea. Alas, that sort of behavior cuts both ways, and Wade gets hit where he lives. Literally.

Thanks to a quasi-alliance established with a few members of the X-Men, Wade is rescued from his subsequent funk by the imposing, metal-skinned Colossus (voiced by Stefan Kapicic), who — with ill-advised optimism — makes Deadpool a trainee member of the team. Their first mission: to quell a crisis at a home for wayward mutant orphans, where a distressed teenage pyrotic named Russell (Julian Dennison) is carrying out his own scorched-earth policy.

Avengers: Infinity War — Too much of a good thing?

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and perhaps generously, for relentless brutal violence and destruction, fleeting profanity and occasional crude references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.27.18

Way back in the day, Universal Studios had the bright idea to gather all of their movie creatures together in a couple of glorious monster mashes — 1944’s House of Frankenstein, and 1945’s House of Dracula — after their individual franchises had run out of steam.

With Thanos due at any moment on the devastated planet titan, our already exhausted
heroes — from left, Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Drax
(Dave Bautista), Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) — prepare for
a final battle.

Marvel Studios has unleashed the same superhero romp for precisely the opposite reason. Having meticulously set the stage each year since 2008’s Iron Man — carefully bringing new characters into an overall continuity akin to what has been crafted in Marvel Comics since 1962 — Avengers: Infinity War is the undeniably awesome result of a shrewd master plan that only gained momentum during the past decade.

No doubt about it: This film is a comic book geek’s dream come true: bigger, better (in some ways) and badder (in other ways) than everything that has come before. Directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo — allied with scripters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, along with the legion of Marvel Comics writers and artists acknowledged in the end credits — have wrought nothing less than dense cinematic myth-making on the scale of Star Trek and Star Wars.

(Needless to say, all of the above owe a huge debt to J.R.R. Tolkien and other veteran sci-fi and fantasy authors.)

Disclosure No. 1: Uninitiated mainstream viewers are likely to have no idea what the heck is going down. To be sure, the broad stroke is obvious: Big, bad Thanos (Josh Brolin, barely recognizable beneath impressive layers of costuming, make-up and CGI) must be stopped by just about everybody else. But the fine points are likely to be lost on anybody who hasn’t avidly devoured every Marvel Studios entry to this point.

Like — for example — why Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers/Captain American (Chris Evans) aren’t talking to each other. Or what U.S. Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) has to do with that. Or why Thor and his fellow Asgardians are journeying between the stars in immense spacecraft. Or why Vision (Paul Bettany) and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) are hiding in Scotland.

Or — most obviously — who the heck some of these characters even are.

Only the Brave: A soaring tribute

Only the Brave (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasional profanity, mild sensuality and fleeting drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.20.17

Everything that makes this fact-based drama compelling — and its qualities are many — also will make it a very difficult experience for Northern California viewers.

Having helped to establish a "border" by digging trenches, cutting back small trees and
shrubs, and lighting controlled back burns, Brendan (Miles Teller, left) and Christopher
(Taylor Kitsch) wait to see if their efforts will help diminish an expanding wildfire.

Serendipity is a curious beast, particularly when cinema collides with the real world. The China Syndrome was disparaged as alarmist fantasy when released on March 16, 1979; twelve days later, the film proved eerily prophetic when Pennsylvania’s Dauphin County experienced its Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

Similarly, the folks at Sony/Columbia couldn’t have known, when they scheduled Only the Brave for release today, that California still would be struggling to contain the worst and deadliest series of firestorms in state history. Director Joseph Kosinski and scripters Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer simply wished to venerate the Granite Mountain Hotshots, whose heroic efforts to battle Arizona’s Yarnell Hill Fire made headlines in late June 2013.

The filmmakers achieved that goal. Only the Brave is intelligently scripted, persuasively acted, and sensitively directed: a thoroughly engaging example of heartstring-tugging melodrama. The gripping narrative blends angst, suspense and humor with a spirit of comradely bonding that succeeds because of the care with which the actors tackle their parts.

Numerous characters populate this story, all of them depicted as distinct individuals: a rare thing, when so many high-profile Hollywood projects feature a few stars who overshadow one-dimensional supporting players, who do little but take up space.

At its core, this is a war movie: Instead of man against man, it’s man against nature. Josh Brolin’s Eric Marsh has a telling line, early on, when he leads his team to a mountaintop forest overlook, and encourages the newest recruits to savor the view in the manner of civilian innocents, who admires the majestic ocean of gently swaying green.

Because after having endured a battle against flame, Marsh warns, the next time “You’ll only see fuel.”

Hail, Caesar! — A block, a stone, a worse than senseless thing

Hail, Caesar! (2016) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for mildly suggestive content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.5.16

A new Coen brothers film usually is cause for celebration.

Not this time.

Capitol Pictures studio head Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) has just learned that his
water ballet star, DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), is pregnant. She's also
unmarried: a potentially juicy scandal waiting to be scooped up by hovering
Hollywood gossip columnists.

Hail, Caesar! is a classic study of wretched excess: a labored, overcooked, star-heavy production that isn’t nearly as funny as everybody seems to think.

I’m reminded of Steven Spielberg’s 1941, also a bloated period comedy made at a point when the then-young director thought he could do no wrong. It, too, is an overwrought mess that mostly wastes the talents of a cast that was impressive for its time.

Spielberg’s 1941 attempted to mine humor from a WWII-era storyline that proposed a Japanese submarine invasion off the California coast. Hail, Caesar!, set in Hollywood during the “nifty fifties” — when, terrified by the arrival of television, the motion picture industry’s glorious façade was beginning to show visible cracks — attempts to mine humor from (among other things) a Communist submarine invasion off the California coast.

A moment which, it must be mentioned, climaxes the film’s most protracted and thoroughly inane subplot.

At its core, though, the Coen brothers’ script is a day-in-the-life study of Hollywood studio chief Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), who confronts various crises — large and small — during a typical 24 hours. His soundstages are laden with sets and stars for numerous films in various stages of production, and all are typical of the time period:

• A sophisticated drawing room melodrama, where disgruntled, mildly prissy director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) has just been saddled with corn-pone singing cowboy star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) as his new young protagonist;

• A sailors-at-sea musical, with song-and-dance superstar Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) channeling Gene Kelly;

• A waterlogged, Busby Berkeley-style extravaganza, headlined by swimming sensation DeeAnna Moran (Scarlet Johansson); and, most particularly...

• A biblical epic featuring famed studio leading man Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), as a Roman centurion who undergoes a moral conversion after encountering no less than Jesus himself.

Sicario: Bleak depiction of the failed war on drugs

Sicario (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong violence, grisly images and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Mexico probably won’t think very highly of this film.

Indeed, a formal state department complaint wouldn’t be surprising.

When Kate (Emily Blunt) demands to know more about the increasingly complicated and
morally questionable government "mission" in which she has agreed to participate, she
gets only vague answers from Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro, left) and Matt (Josh Brolin).

But first-time writer Taylor Sheridan can’t be blamed for responding to the increasingly grim headlines that keep erupting south of the border, and it’s not as if any of the events depicted in this drama exaggerate reality. The truth probably remains worse.

And Taylor’s “needs must” notion of a possible U.S. response is more than tantalizing; it feels utterly reasonable. And, frankly, scary.

Better still, Taylor has found the perfect colleague in Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, who most recently mesmerized us with 2013’s scary kidnap drama, Prisoners. Villeneuve’s films aren’t merely suspenseful; they’re nervous-making to a degree that prompts disquieting nightmares for days (weeks?) to follow.

He applies the same touch to Sicario, a ripped-from-current-events drama that paints a discouraging portrait of the escalating narcotics border war between the United States and Mexico: a war that we’re clearly losing, as portions of Mexico slide ever closer to becoming failed states. Assuming they haven’t already failed.

We meet our protagonist, Arizona FBI agent and kidnap-response team leader Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), during a raid on an outwardly ordinary suburban home in an average American neighborhood. Kate, steadfast partner/friend Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya) and their colleagues encounter resistance and gunfire: an oddly protective response, given the apparently empty house.

But it isn’t empty, as Kate soon discovers. In fact, the residence — clandestinely owned by the leader of a Mexican drug cartel — is a shocking horror.

Back at base, Kate is surprised to find herself profiled by a pair of outsiders: Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), introduced as some sort of State Department task force leader; and a quiet, shadowy individual known only as Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). Both offer Kate the opportunity to join them in a bold operation designed to “make a statement” and truly do something about a situation that continues to escalate beyond control.

Think carefully before answering, Kate’s boss (the always reliable Victor Garber) warns her. The unspoken implication: The operation might exceed jurisdictional boundaries.

No matter. Kate’s in.