The Woman in Cabin 10: Mystery at sea

The Woman in Cabin 10 (2025) • View trailer

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

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang 

Although this engaging thriller’s core premise owes a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, the story — co-written by Emma Frost, Joe Shrapnel, Anna Waterhouse and director Simon Stone, loosely based on Ruth Ware’s best-selling 2016 novel — moves in an entirely different direction.

 

While scanning the many photos that Ben (David Ajala) has taken thus far during their
voyage, Laura (Keira Knightley) spots something unexpected.

Seasoned investigative journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock (Keira Knightley), traumatized by a previous assignment that ended horribly, is given a softball story by her editor: tag along during a cruise hosted by gazillionaire Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce) and his wife, Anne (Lisa Loven Kongsli), on their obscenely extravagant luxury superyacht, the Aurora Borealis.

It's something of a farewell trip, because the terminally ill Anne isn’t expected to live much longer. 

 

For the most part, the Bullmers’ guests are an insufferably privileged lot: notably condescending Heidi Heatherley (Hannah Waddingham) and her equally pompous husband, Thomas (David Morrissey); hard-partying Adam Sutherland (Daniel Ings); and long-ago rock star Danny Tyler (Paul Kaye). Even Anne’s physician (Art Malik, as Dr. Robert Mehta) and hovering security consultant (Sigrid Nilssen, as Amanda) are oddly chill.

 

Laura feels like an outsider, an uncomfortable position nobody attempts to correct.

 

She’s further irked when the on-board photographer turns out to be Ben Morgan (David Ajala), with whom she has uncomfortable personal history. Reflexively trying to avoid him, she accidentally backs into Cabin 10 — the one adjacent to hers — and sees a young woman with bright blond hair: a guest who wasn’t present during earlier gatherings.

 

Following dinner that evening, Laura is surprised — and intrigued — when Anne seeks a private audience, and explains that she and her husband have decided to donate their entire fortune to charity.

 

Later that night, Laura is awakened by what sounds like a noisy struggle in the adjacent cabin, followed by a splash. Rushing to her balcony, she sees a woman sinking beneath the waves. She alerts the crew; the yacht stops; Richard and the captain conduct a head-count.

 

Nobody is missing.

 

Worse yet, Richard and several crew members insist that Cabin 10 has been empty the entire time.

Boston Strangler: Riveting true-crime drama

Boston Strangler (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and violent content

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.17.23

Writer/director Matt Ruskin’s new film is an excellent companion to last autumn’s She Said.

 

His fact-based account of the early 1960s serial killer is far more honest than its 1968 big-screen predecessor, with Tony Curtis in the title role; it focused exclusively on a lead detective — played by Henry Fonda — who “single-handedly” obtains the murderer’s confession.

 

After Jean Cole (Carrie Coon, left) and Loretta McLaughlin (Keira Knightley) become the
"public face" of the rapidly developing Boston Strangler story, they're soon flooded by
hundreds of letters from women who insist they've been approached by the killer.

That film is, to put it kindly, a work of fiction very loosely inspired by actual events.

It completely ignored the two newspaper journalists who — most crucially — broke the story; recognized the crucial patterns that pointed to a serial killer (a phrase not even coined, at the time); and doggedly pursued subsequent leads … much to the displeasure of the Boston police.

 

Both were women, of course: Boston Record-American journalists Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole, played here by (respectively) Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon.

 

We’ve lately been enjoying a welcome surfeit of films that shine a long-overdue light on previously unsung women of major consequence, from 2016’s Queen of Katwe and Hidden Figures, to last year’s The Woman King and She Said (all of which make me wonder how many more equally inspiring stories are waiting to be told).

 

Boston Strangler definitely belongs in their company.

 

Knightley’s McLaughlin is introduced as an ambitious journalist thoroughly bored — and frustrated — by the softball society column fluff to which she has been relegated. Efforts to cover meatier material get shot down by her editor, Jack Maclaine (Chris Cooper, appropriately gruff and grizzled), who is sympathetic but unwilling to budge.

 

The message is clear: “This is simply the way of things.”

 

But McLaughlin continues to follow police reports, and becomes intrigued by the murders of three Boston women, aged 56 to 85, during the latter half of June 1962. Lacking any effective inter-departmental means to share information, and with differing jurisdictional oversight in various parts of the city, the police fail to recognize a common element that links the killings: the fact that all three were strangled with nylon stockings or a bathrobe belt.

 

Another odd detail: None of the apartments showed signs of forced entry, suggesting that the victims either knew the killer, or assumed he was a “trusted” figure such as a building maintenance man, or some other service individual. (We roll our eyes, at the thought of such naïve, innocent times.)

 

McLaughlin wants to pursue this lead; Maclaine won’t have it. But he grudgingly agrees to let her profile the three victims — on her own time — to learn if they had anything else in common.

 

Official Secrets: Thou shalt not lie

Official Secrets (2019) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.13.19

This fact-based drama could not be better timed.

More than ever, we must be reminded of the imperative necessity of speaking truth and integrity to power.

Once exposed and arrested, Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) is allowed a brief visit from
her husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri). In a touching act that feels genuine, he brings her a
thick jacket, because he knows the jail cell will be cold.

Along with the value of the Fourth Estate, and its role in exposing the filthy secrets of power-mongers who believe they can get away with anything.

And of the foolishness of reflexively relying on a crutch such as Spell check.

Director Gavin Hood makes smart, thoughtful films that don’t get near enough attention in the mainstream market. Folks who stumbled across 2015’s Eye in the Sky were mesmerized by its intriguing depiction of a wartime conundrum — do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few? — as it related to the potential civilian fatalities that would result from a drone strike targeting a suicide bomber.

Hood’s film had the intensity of an intimate stage drama, and it was comforting (if naïve) to imagine that the civilian/military chain of command actually might ponder such consequences. At the end of the day, though, Eye in the Sky — however provocative — remains a mere philosophical exercise, because it’s fictitious. 

That’s not the case with Official Secrets. 

Hood’s newest film isn’t merely a depiction of actual events; it illuminates an impressively brave act that should be a humiliating footnote in this country’s reckless 2003 invasion of Iraq. Instead, the incident is all but unknown on this side of the pond … which, frankly, is shameful.

It made far more noise in England, where — to this day — people debate whether Katharine Gun is an honorable patriot on par with our own Daniel Ellsberg … or a traitor to her country.

That should be enough to get you into a movie theater. Better still, Hood and his co-scripters — Gregory and Sara Bernstein, adapting Marcia and Thomas Mitchell’s nonfiction book, The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War — have crafted their film with the clever precision of a multi-act suspense thriller.

Somewhere toward the middle, you’ll begin to wonder: How the hell could we not have known about this?

Add a terrific ensemble cast of top-notch British actors, and you couldn’t ask for more.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms: Far from balletic

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.2.18

This isn’t your grandfather’s Nutcracker.

Actually, I’m not sure what to call it.

Having just learned that she's princess of the magical Four Realms, Clara (Mackenzie
Foy, left) is gowned in suitable fashion by Sugar Plum (Keira Knightley), while one of
the palace soldiers guards them attentively.

This Frankenstein’s Monster is a cynical, coldly calculated commodity that lards the gentle Marius Petipa/Lev Ivanov/Tchaikovsky ballet with bits and bobs from Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz and The Chronicles of Narnia, wraps the content-heavy mess with a ribbon of mild steampunk, and — for good measure — adds Harry Potter’s owl as a bow.

Only Disney could concoct such a clumsy, lumbering mess of a movie, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to enhance the corporate brand via ancillary merchandising.

Along with the opportunity to further entice little girls with a new “Disney princess.”

Mind you, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms certainly looks spectacular. The traditional Disney logo — Sleeping Beauty’s castle — appears on the screen; then the camera swoops past its spires and takes us on a breathtaking, owl’s-view ride above and through Victorian-era London, all in a single magnificent tracking shot, until we reach the Stahlbaum residence, home of Clara (Mackenzie Foy), Louise (Ellie Bamber), young Fritz (Tom Sweet) and their father (Matthew Macfadyen).

It’s a dizzying, captivating tour-de-force opening by cinematographer Linus Sandgren, production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, and visual effects maestros Max Wood and Marc Weigert.

Things get even more dazzling when the Stahlbaum family joins the cream of London society at the annual Christmas Eve ball, held in the even more opulent palatial estate of Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman). He’s an eccentric, well-traveled entrepreneur and inventor, who also happens to be Clara’s godfather. She shares his talent for tinkering and fabrication: a gift revealed earlier, in the Stahlbaum attic, where she dazzles Fritz with a complicated, Rube Goldberg-esque mousetrap that (briefly) captures an actual mouse.

But Clara is troubled and saddened: This is the first Christmas without her mother, Marie, who — in the rather harsh Disney tradition — is dead before this story takes place. Consumed by her own grief, Clara fails to register her father’s similarly forlorn bearing (a mood that Macfadyen conveys with a persuasive subtlety the rest of this film lacks).

Ah, but Marie has bequeathed a special gift to Clara this Christmas Eve: an ornate, locked metal egg accompanied by a note that reads “Everything you need is inside.” But the egg requires a golden key that Clara does not possess; she hopes that her godfather will know how to open it. Instead, Drosselmeyer speaks in benevolent riddles and sends her along a ribboned trail to find his gift to her.

At which point, after following the ribbon through his garden hedge labyrinth, and the similar maze of upstairs hallways in his oddly, ever-expanding upstairs wings, she emerges from the hollowed trunk of a massive felled tree in a snow-covered landscape.

Whereupon I turned to Constant Companion and muttered, “C.S. Lewis, here we come.”

Colette: A not entirely satisfying quest for identity

Colette (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for nudity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang

Dick Francis’ fans were astonished to discover, in late 1999, that all the novels by the former champion jockey-turned-thriller author had received “substantial input” from his wife, Mary.

When Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) balks at her husband's demand that
she "ghost" another novel that he can publish under his own name, he locks her in the
study until she begins to produce.

Depending on opinion, said input ranged from research and editing to full-on ghost-writing. I favor the latter theory: Francis’ lone solo effort following Mary’s death on September 9, 2000 — 2006’s Under Orders — was substantially weaker than all that had come before. No surprise, then, that his final four books were collaborations with his son, Felix.

I’ve often thought about Mary Francis, working in absolute secrecy on 38 novels and a baker’s dozen of short stories, over a period of almost four decades. Did she regret being absent from the spotlight that so illuminated her famous husband? Was she amused to know the truth?

Such thoughts resonated anew while watching director/co-scripter Wash Westmoreland’s biographical depiction of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, the French novelist known solely by her last name. Her most popular novel, 1944’s Gigi, was made into a French film five years later, and transformed into a 1951 stage production starring newcomer Audrey Hepburn — chosen by Colette herself — and then, of course, the Academy Award-winning 1958 Hollywood musical with Leslie Caron.

But all that came much, much later. Westmoreland’s film — co-scripted by Richard Glatzer and Rebecca Lenkiewicz — focuses on the roughly two decades Colette was married to Henry Gauthier-Villars, during which time she produced her first four novels … all of which were published under her husband’s name.

And therein lies the tale.

Colette depicts the creation of the young author as her own entity and (more or less) emancipated woman, although it could be argued that Westmoreland is equally obsessed with her budding bisexuality. The film’s second half spends considerable time with enthusiastic bedroom coupling and Colette’s blossoming relationship with the scandalously “butch” Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf, affectionately known as “Missy.”

(In the press notes, Westmoreland waxes enthusiastically about his “progressive casting philosophy” of hiring trans actors for cisgender roles. Methinks his focus is a bit skewed.)

Even so, we never lose sight of the growing degree to which Colette wishes to control her own literary destiny, and free herself from the invisibility of uncredited authorship.

In this regard — actually, in all respects — the film’s strongest asset is the gifted starring performance by Keira Knightley. She smoothly navigates the transition from naïve country girl to an accomplished sophisticate wholly at ease among the snooty, avant-garde intellectuals with whom her husband socialized. 

Collateral Beauty: Only mildly appealing

Collateral Beauty (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for thematic elements and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Overt sentimentality is a tough sell in this cynical era, so director David Frankel is to be congratulated: For the most part, his film manages to be sincerely poignant, without sliding too much into eye-rolling schmaltz.

While trying to finish a quiet, isolated dinner, Howard (Will Smith) is surprised — and
quickly annoyed — to be confronted by the personification of Love (Keira Knightley),
unaware that she's actually an actress hired to deceive him.

Allan Loeb’s original script is an audacious blend of It’s a Wonderful Life and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, reconfigured for modern times. That’s risky for all sorts of reasons, most notably because “borrowing” from such beloved classics invites comparisons that make most such endeavors fall short. Whether this update succeeds will be up to each viewer’s tolerance for Frank Capra-style melodrama (known as “Capra-corn,” back in the day).

This also is an unusual effort from a writer best known for slapstick moron comedies such as The Switch, The Dilemma and (God help us) Here Comes the Boom. But Loeb apparently has a more serious side, and he wrestles with some fairly weighty concepts here. It’s easy to see why the result piqued the interest of star Will Smith, who has demonstrated a fondness for holiday-timed melodramas such as The Pursuit of Happyness and Seven Pounds.

Smith is very good at morose angst; he suffers persuasively, radiating anguish with an intensity that can be painful to watch. We definitely feel for the guy, in such storylines, and — as a given narrative progresses — we become invested in his search for salvation, closure, relief or whatever else seems just beyond his reach.

He stars here as Howard, a charismatic New York advertising executive with a flair for inspiring both clients and staff. We meet him giving a warm pep talk to the employees of his successful firm: a moment enjoyed equally by his longtime business partners — and friends — Whit (Edward Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet) and Simon (Michael Peña).

But that was then. Flash-forward a few years later, as the story actually begins, and personal tragedy — the death of his young daughter — has reduced Howard to a disheveled, morose and perpetually silent shadow of his former self. He shows up to work each day solely to build elaborate domino mazes, ultimately knocking down each creation, then starting another. The business, left without its captain, has been sliding into oblivion.

Whit, Claire and Simon don’t know what to do. Every means of engaging Howard has been ignored or rebuffed, and — because he owns controlling shares of their company — they can’t even act on a friendly takeover offer. (We assume it’s friendly. Loeb’s script is a bit sketchy on certain important details: a failing that becomes more noticeable as the story proceeds.)

Everest: Grim, heroic tragedy

Everest (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Human grit and determination know no bounds, even to the point of neglecting experienced judgment and common sense, in pursuit of ... what, precisely? Bragging rights?

Seems a pretty thin return for risking one’s life.

Granted clear skies and ideal climbing conditions, the members of two teams — from left,
Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal), Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly) and Beck Weathers (Josh
Brolin) — begin their final assault on Everest's summit. Alas, conditions won't remain
mild for long...

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest persuasively conveys the jovial, devil-may-care resolve and physical grit that characterize those bent on conquering Earth’s highest and most dangerous summit. The international cast is convincing, particularly while depicting the 24/7 adrenaline rush that fuels such folks during the weeks of preparation leading up to an ascent.

But this isn’t action-oriented melodrama, in the mold of (for example) Sylvester Stallone’s laughably improbable Cliffhanger. Scripters William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy have based this film’s narrative on the ill-fated 1996 Everest expeditions that turned tragic with the arrival of a particularly nasty blizzard. Allowing for modest artistic license — and with Nicholson and Beaufoy doing their best to adapt sometimes conflicting accounts from the five (!) books written between 1997 and 2014 — the resulting story feels both authentic and even-handed.

But if some of this film looks familiar, there’s good reason: We’ve been here before. The 1998 IMAX documentary of the same title, the giant-screen format’s biggest hit to date, devoted a chunk of its 45-minute running time to this catastrophe; indeed, Kormákur’s new film references the presence of the IMAX production team.

More recently, documentarian David Breashears’ Storm Over Everest focused exclusively on this 1996 climb.

But even the most successful documentaries never achieve the mainstream penetration of a big-budget, Hollywood-type production, and there’s no denying that these events cried for just such treatment. Kormákur’s heartfelt drama likely will be the final word on this subject, and it’s a worthy historical document.

More than once, in fact, I was reminded of British director Charles Frend’s superlative 1948 drama, Scott of the Antarctic, with John Mills starring as the British explorer whose team tried to become the first to reach the South Pole. Kormákur’s new film is in worthy company.

The Imitation Game: What price genius?

The Imitation Game (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for mature content and occasional sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Mankind has an unfortunate tendency to devour its champions. Always has, likely always will.

We’re also not very tolerant of those who are different, whether in appearance or behavior. During times of crisis, such eccentricities are regarded even more suspiciously.

Despite indifference and outright hostility from some of his Bletchley Park colleagues,
Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) proceeds doggedly with the creation and
construction of a massive "thinking machine" that he hopes will break the German
"Enigma code" that has frustrated Allied efforts for so long.

Norwegian-born director Morten Tyldum’s handling of The Imitation Game employs shaming and ostracization as dramatic plot points: issues every bit as significant as the WWII-era predicament that brings young mathematician Alan Turing to the unusual code-breaking operation at Buckinghamshire’s Bletchley Park.

As scripted by Graham Moore and depicted by star Benedict Cumberbatch, Turing is a social outcast by virtue of his utter obliviousness to decorum and protocol. He affects a level of bland arrogance that infuriates everybody, yet remains utterly bewildered by how he is perceived by others.

This characterization places Turing squarely “on the spectrum,” to acknowledge the phrase du jour ... and I can’t help feeling that this artistic decision may have been propelled more by our current fascination with such characters — think Hugh Laurie’s Dr. Gregory House, or Cumberbatch’s own modern spin on Sherlock Holmes — than by authenticity.

This film’s opening credits are a bit deceptive, implying that Moore concocted this screenplay on his own. Only when we hit the closing credits can sharp-eyed viewers spot, in tiny print, a reference to Moore’s script being adapted from Andrew Hodges’ 1983 biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma. And while Hodges drew upon ample sources to confirm Turing’s impatience with bureaucracy and the grinding sluggishness of the military chain of command, Moore’s decision to re-cast this as full-blown autism is ... well ... historically suspect.

That said, it allows Cumberbatch to inhabit another of his fascinating, eccentricity-laden characters: a fresh performance that never ceases to be both fascinating and entertaining. Tyldum clearly recognizes this, choosing to open his film with Turing’s initial interview in the office of Bletchley Park Commander Alastair Denniston (Charles Dance). It’s a hilarious, impeccably timed display of rat-a-tat dialogue between an increasingly annoyed Denniston and the calmly indifferent Turing.

Indeed, such unruffled disdain later leads to the film’s funniest line, when one of Turing’s colleagues comments, in the aftermath of a particularly blunt display, “Popular in school, were you?”

Likely not, but that’s hardly the point; Turing’s unlikely presence at Bletchley Park, juxtaposed against the increasingly importance of his work, is what makes this film so engaging.

Begin Again: A melody-laden charmer

Begin Again (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.4.14

It’s a bit rough around the edges at first, the approach uncertain, the artist perhaps nervous and worried about looking foolish.

A needless concern.

With Dan (Mark Ruffalo, far right) acting as an on-the-fly director, Greta (Keira Knightley)
performs one of her songs in a New York City alley, accompanied by several talented
instrumentalists, and watched by a gaggle of neighborhood children.

I could be discussing the first song we see performed by Greta (Keira Knightley), reluctantly and a bit shyly, in front of an indifferent bar crowd. But I’m actually talking about this film itself: Perhaps writer/director John Carney is that clever, to have mirrored Greta’s stumbling debut before the public eye, with our reaction to the manner in which her story unfolds.

Because, in both cases, the talent involved can’t help but win us over.

Begin Again is the newest offering from the Irish filmmaker who charmed us so thoroughly with the saga of a Dublin busker in 2006’s Once, a film cherished just as much for its music — and that marvelous, Academy Award-winning song, “Falling Slowly” —  as for the gently romantic manner in which its story unfolded.

Carney’s new film once again revolves around music, but the setting and tone are both different and somewhat grittier. This narrative has a villain, but it’s an entity rather than an individual: the music industry, depicted as the instrument by which pure expression is quashed, either benignly or overtly. Remaining true to one’s dreams, passions and (reasonable) expectations is the ideal here: a goal too easily corrupted, as we shall see, by outside forces conscious only of the bottom line.

Those who adore New York for its cornucopia of emotions and experiences will delight in Carney’s rapturous depiction: a Big Apple we’ve not seen idolized so passionately since Woody Allen’s Manhattan, back in 1979. This is a New York of joyous romance, much like the Paris of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie: the city as we imagine it, based on cinematic valentines like this one.

The story opens in the aforementioned East Village bar, as the unwilling Greta is dragged to the stage for one song: a brief musical interlude noticed by nobody except Dan (Mark Ruffalo), whose presence — in that bar, at that moment — is explained during the first of Carney’s clever flashbacks. Dan, once a lauded record label exec, has fallen on hard times prompted by a crisis in his personal life; the result is growing friction with his longtime partner, Saul (Mos Def), which climaxes in yet another humiliation.

Dan also drinks too much, and has been doing so for too long. But his radar remains unimpaired: He’s drawn, moth to flame, by this hesitant performance by a British singer/songwriter who’d rather be anywhere else.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit — Engaging spy hijinks

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for action violence and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

This is the most fun I’ve had with a spy thriller since 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy ... and possibly since 1975’s Three Days of the Condor.

Jack Ryan (Chris Pine, left) doesn't miss much, so he's not surprised when Thomas
Harper (Kevin Costner), having monitored the younger man's hospital convalescence,
formally introduces himself and makes a tantalizing offer: Would Ryan like to join the
CIA? Needless to say, there'd be no movie if Ryan declined...

Actually, the Condor comparison may be more apt, since this re-boot of Tom Clancy’s intrepid CIA analyst — played in previous films by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck — places a greater emphasis on Ryan’s analytical skills, while making him a reluctant secret agent. The resulting action dynamic evokes fond memories of Robert Redford’s similarly desperate efforts, in Condor, to make the most of a set of circumstances far outside his comfort zone.

Not that star Chris Pine’s fresh take on Jack Ryan is wholly inexperienced when it comes to field work, as was the case with Redford’s character. As seems obligatory these days, with “rookie” covert operatives, this re-imagined Ryan is a former Marine with plenty of hoo-rah grit and hand-to-hand combat skills, in addition to his university book-learnin’.

Indeed, we’re introduced to a college-age Ryan attending classes at the London School of Economics, on the fateful day when terrorists take out New York’s Twin Towers. Galvanized into serving his country, Ryan becomes a Marine and nearly loses his life. Convalescence and subsequent physical therapy bring two people into his orbit: flirty, kind-hearted med student Cathy Muller (Keira Knightley), and stoic man of mystery Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner).

The former, we can be sure, will become this story’s obligatory love interest; the latter, armed with Costner’s devilish smile, is the CIA recruiter who brings Ryan into the fold. But not, Harper insists, until the younger man returns to school and obtains his degree. The CIA wants Ryan to be Wall Street-savvy, the better to ferret out nasty back-room dealings that might endanger the U.S. economy.

Flash-forward to the present day, with Ryan comfortably ensconced at a high-profile Wall Street firm where nobody knows of his actual career. “Nobody” includes Cathy, now a main squeeze of many years’ standing, who has become a pediatric eye surgeon. Thus far, Cathy hasn’t had any reason to wonder about her lover’s candor — Ryan has taken the CIA secrecy pledge very seriously — but, naturally, that’s about to change.

I’m not sure that plot contrivance works in this day and age; it seems highly unlikely that Ryan could have concealed his shadowy activities for so long. People who live together generally know each other’s movements better than that, and the resulting “trouble” caused by this secret seems a mite silly ... even when Pine does his best to sell the notion with his unabashed charm and Boy Scout enthusiasm.

But it’s not a major problem, and the subterfuge does prompt several cute exchanges between Pine and Knightley, both of whom deliver plenty of captivating star wattage.

Anna Karenina: A tale oddly told

Anna Karenina (2012) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: R, and rather harshly, for mild sexuality and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.30.12

Artistic vision is captivating — or clever — to the point at which it calls too much attention to itself, and interferes with the story.

Try as she might, Anna (Keira Knightley) cannot shake her growing infatuation with the
dashing Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The resulting affair will prove scandalous in
every respect ... not that this heavily stylized film makes us care a whit.

In effect, the tail then wags the dog; we’re too frequently aware of the artifice, at the expense of plot and character development. Empathy and identification become difficult, if not impossible.

Director Joe Wright’s handling of Leo Tolstoy’s venerable Anna Karenina is radiant and ferociously inventive, thanks to Seamus McGarvey’s luminescent cinematography and, most notably, Sarah Greenwood’s brilliant production design. The film is a thing of great artistic beauty, and we cannot help being enchanted — initially — by its sheer, magnificent theatricality.

But the artifice soon becomes tiresome, which exposes the oddly flat and vexingly mannered performances. Celebrated playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard undoubtedly deserves equal credit (or blame) for this vision; I’m disappointed, however, that this abbreviated, heavily stylized handling of Tolstoy lacks the narrative snap and sparkling dialogue that brought Stoppard a well-deserved Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love. (He also was nominated, along with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown, for writing 1985’s Brazil.)

Indeed, despite all the bosom-heaving melodrama present in Tolstoy’s novel, this newest adaptation of Anna Karenina is a curiously bloodless affair.

Wright’s approach best can be described as a stylized blend of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge (absent the music), Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and the popular stage farce Noises Off. Luhrmann’s flamboyant musical told its story as the characters improbably broke into song; Greenaway’s saga unfolded as the camera tracked horizontally, apparently seamlessly, between events taking place in various settings ... as if characters wandered into and out of fully dressed stages in half a dozen impossibly connected theaters.

Toss in Noises Off, for its behind-the-scenes antics — the stuff we’re never supposed to see — and the result is, well, fascinating. For a time.

The primary set piece, then, is a once-beautiful but now decaying theater, intended to represent the aristocratic rot of 1870s Russian high society; this building’s various sections, dressed appropriately, serve as the story’s many locales. We find Anna (Keira Knightley) and her husband, Karenin (Jude Law), at home in one corner of the massive stage; as Anna — for example — exits the room, she wanders “backstage” between curtains, scrim and backdrops, perhaps changing her wardrobe in order to be properly garbed as she enters the setting for the next scene.

Never Let Me Go: This one won't let you go

Never Let Me Go (2010) • View trailer for Never Let Me Go

4 stars (out of five) • Rated R for brief nudity, sexual candor and unsettling dramatic intensity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.14.10

Science-fiction isn't solely robots and space ships; some of the genre's best entries aren't even recognized as such. A story's speculative elements can be concealed beneath a cloak of social commentary, character interaction or even comedy.

Despite plenty of adolescent "play-acting training," Kathy
(Carey Mulligan, left), Ruth (Keira Knightley) and Tommy
(Andrew Garfield) are completely paralyzed by the process
of ordering a meal during their first visit to a restaurant;
they wind up requesting the same items simply because
this decision requires less thought. But why does this
"ritual" intimidate them so?

1951's The Man in the White Suit, ostensibly one of Alec Guinness' numerous British comedies of that decade, concerns a scientist who develops a fabric that repels dirt and won't tear; clothes made of this material never need to be replaced. Unexpectedly, though, the story's frivolous elements are overshadowed when blue-collar workers in the British garment industry go on a rampage, correctly deducting that their jobs are in jeopardy.

Pure sci-fi, but with a pretty powerful message.

Margaret Atwood's highly disturbing The Handmaid's Tale was made into an equally unsettling 1990 film; the story is set in an unspecified future, when radical, racist, religious elements have taken control of our country. Natasha Richardson stars as one of the many young, healthy white women who are brainwashed into bearing children that will become a new "pure" generation.

Atwood's novel, clearly an angry response to those wanting to roll back the clock on women's rights, feels even more relevant 20 years later, as we routinely hear of Islamic radicals who would deny women any rights ... and not just their women, but all women.

Science-fiction ... or uncanny prescience? That's when the genre truly makes its mark.

All of which brings us to Never Let Me Go, adapted by Alex Garland from Kazuo Ishiguro's unsettling 2005 novel, and brought to brilliant, heartbreaking life by actors Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield. Director Mark Romanek draws memorable performances from his three stars, while quietly indicting those who regard some living things as inferior to the rest of us.

The Duchess: Bird in a cage

The Duchess (2008) • View trailer for The Duchess
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for sexual candor, sensuality and rape
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.9.08
Buy DVD: The Duchess • Buy Blu-Ray: The Duchess [Blu-ray]

Ah, the good ol' days, in Merry Olde England ... when men were men, and women were chattel.

Both a sumptuous period piece and a meaty dramatic vehicle for Keira Knightley, The Duchess also is, above all else, a terribly sad story. This fascinating glimpse of Georgiana Spencer, the famed 18th century Duchess of Devonshire, reveals that even London's most admired and imitated woman had no actual rights in an era when an aristocrat's wife existed for precisely one purpose: procreation.

The setting is benign, but appearances can be deceiving: Georgiana (Keira
Knightley, far right), having given birth to two daughters, gets no sympathy
even from her mother (Charlotte Rampling, far left) when the Duke of
Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) openly takes his wife's best friend, Bess (Hayley
Atwell) as a live-in mistress.

British director Saul Dibb's film — scripted by Dibb, Jeffrey Hatcher and Anders Thomas Jensen, and adapted from Amanda Foreman's acclaimed biography — casually and coldly presents an environment so repressed, so callous and so outrageously unfair, that modern viewers are apt to greet many of these details with disbelieving horror.

(Worse still, some cretins in last week's Sacramento preview audience, under the mistaken notion that such particulars were exaggerated for comic effect, snickered and laughed openly at all the wrong moments. Rarely have I wished more ferociously for a time machine, and the means to cast such Philistines back a few centuries ... on a one-way trip.)

Bad enough that the spirited and obviously intelligent Georgiana, far more passionate about the politics of the day than her blandly taciturn husband — a memorably malignant performance by Ralph Fiennes, about whom more in a moment — was forced to do little but sit and listen as the members of her beloved Whig party debated issues such as citizen freedom.

Worse still, for the "crime" of having borne her husband two daughters, that Georgiana had no choice but to tolerate her husband's decision to maintain an open ménage à trois with her best and only friend, Lady Elizabeth "Bess" Foster (Hayley Atwell), who was allowed — at the Duke's insistence — to live with them, as a sort of at-will courtesan, for the rest of the Duchess' life.

The first dinner scene, after this arrangement is set in stone — with the Duke and Duchess at opposite ends of an imposingly long table, and Elizabeth at the midpoint of one side, between them — is a chill nightmare.

"I demanded only two things from you, when we married," the Duke coldly tells Georgiana, on more than one occasion, "loyalty and an heir."

Blessed with a petite frame and figure that seem right at home in this era of tiny shoes and corseted waists, Knightley is introduced as 17-year-old Georgiana and several friends place a friendly wager on which of half a dozen eager young gentlemen will win a footrace. She exchanges significant glances with the winner, Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), but whatever might have come to pass evaporates in the wake of a meeting between Georgiana's mother (Charlotte Rampling) and William Cavendish, the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who barter the girl's finer points as if she were a horse.