Little Wing: Fails to fly

Little Wing (2024) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for suggestive material, thoughts of suicide, and fleeting profanity

Available via: Paramount+

By Derrick Bang

The term “contrived” can’t begin to cover the whoppers we’re expected to tolerate, in this film’s eye-rollingly ludicrous storyline.

 

Nor could we ever, ever forgive the protagonist’s selfish, bitchy behavior and heinous first-act crime ... even though we’re intended to, during the tear-jerking finale.

 

Jaan (Brian Cox) pauses at the threshold of the house that Kaitlyn (Brooklynn Prince)
shares with her mother and brother, and ponders what to do about the fact that this
girl has wronged him in the worst possible manner.

The only thing that saves this mess from total turkeydom is the fine, persuasive acting by co-stars Brian Cox and Kelly Reilly. This film doesn’t deserve them.

John Gatins’ script supposedly is inspired by Susan Orlean’s January 2006 New Yorker nonfiction article of the same title, but that’s grossly insulting to her; the two have nothing in common, aside from their shared focus on pigeon racing. Gatins deserves sole blame for the mess he has wrought.

 

The setting is present-day Portland, Oregon (where much of this film clearly was filmed). Brooklynn Prince stars as 13-year-old Kaitlyn McKay, depressed following the divorce of her parents, Maddie (Kelly Reilly) and Sean (Jonathan Togo). Both Kaitlyn and her brother Matt (Simon Khan) have remained with their mother.

 

Kaitlyn, angry at almost everything, is in serious danger of flunking eighth grade. She has only one friend, Adam (Che Tafari), loyal to the core. (She doesn’t deserve him.)

 

The final straw: Maddie, unable to afford the mortgage, has put their house up for sale. Kaitlyn loves her home, viewing it as the only tie to happier times, and can’t bear the thought of having to leave.

 

One evening, in an oddly random act of kindness, family friends gift Kaitlyn with a pair of homing pigeons. (We cannot imagine why.) She couldn’t care less, but Adam is inspired to learn more about the birds. Turns out there’s big money in racing, and one of the all-time champions — a white-tufted pigeon dubbed The Granger — is owned by veteran racer Jaan Vari (Cox), who lives in Portland; the bird is valued at $125,000. 

 

Kaitlyn decides to steal it (!), sell it, and use the money to save her home.

 

Okay, fine; teenagers think and do dumb things. But even on that scale, this concept is awfully far Out There.

 

But wait. It gets worse.

 

Kaitlyn badgers Adam into helping with the heist. They figure out where Jaan lives, and — late one night — climb to the roof loft that holds his scores of birds, The Granger among them. It’s wholly unguarded: no protective barrier, no alarm system. (Seriously? A $125,000 superstar, unattended and ready to be plucked by anybody who wanders by? Puh-leaze.)

 

So she steals it. Jaan wakes during the subsequent commotion, and she flees, abandoning Adam to an uncertain fate. He shows up for school the next day with a broken wrist, due to the jump he was forced to make from the bottom ladder of a fire escape. In one of this stupid story’s rare acknowledgments of reasonable human behavior, Adam subsequently shuns Kaitlyn. (Good for him.)

 

Sadly, not for long.

 

A Haunting in Venice: Gothic nonsense

A Haunting in Venice (2023) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.15.23

Agatha Christie must be spinning in her grave.

 

I can’t fault Kenneth Branagh for wanting to play her famed Belgian detective again; it’s a great role, and Branagh fills Hercule Poirot’s patent leather shoes with a delightful blend of aristocratic condescension and shrewd, sharp-eyed deductive analysis. It’s always fun to watch Poirot’s narrow gaze scrutinize the comparative heights of his twin breakfast soft-boiled eggs.

 

Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) initially has no interest in the challenge offered by
longtime friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey). But his curiosity eventually is piqued, and
he agrees to tag along for what becomes a most unusual evening.

But must Branagh continue to work with scripter Michael Green?

Green’s repeated efforts to “improve upon” Christie’s meticulously crafted novels ran 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express off the rails, and his 2022 disembowelment of Death on the Nile went under not only for the third time, but also the fourth and fifth.

 

This time out, Green doesn’t even try to adapt Christie’s Hallowe’en Party. The only thing this film has in common with her 1969 novel is the presence of one character, and he treats her in a manner that will enrage the celebrated author’s fans.

 

Why adapt a famous author’s book, if you’re just going to ruin it?

 

Matters aren’t helped by the fact that Branagh — who also directs — and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos allowed their Gothic sensibilities to run amuck. Branagh’s third Poirot outing is a classic example of style over substance: cockeyed camera angels, darkened hallways, smash-cut close-ups of worried expressions, Hildur Guönadóttir’s shrieking score, and the repeated squawking distraction of a cockatoo that swoops into numerous scenes for no good reason … all of which do nothing to conceal Green’s clumsy plot.

 

The setting is Venice in 1947, as Italy struggles to rebuild itself. Ten years have passed since the events in Death on the Nile, a decade has left Poirot disheartened by the fact that another generation found itself in a war even worse, in some respects, than the “Great War” he endured during his younger days. Poirot has retired and retreated behind the gates of a Venetian appartamento; he employs a bodyguard, Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio), to dissuade anybody wishing to engage his detective services.

 

Even so, Poirot tolerates a visit from longtime associate Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a mystery novelist who has based her series character on him. She offers a puzzle: a supposed medium, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), whose “performance” at a recent séance left her baffled. Ariadne, inclined to accept the notion of communication with the dead, believes that if Mrs. Reynolds can convince Poirot that she’s the “real deal,” then the result will be a certain best-seller about “the woman who stumped Hercule Poirot.”

 

(It must be mentioned that, in Christie’s canon, Ariadne is a friend who helps Poirot in seven novels, and would never, ever bait him so callously. But we move on…)

 

Clearly stung by the notion that he could be fooled by such an obvious charlatan, Poirot accepts the challenge. The setting for the next séance proves foreboding: the crumbling palazzo owned by retired opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly). The place is believed haunted by the ghosts of young orphans who met a terrible fate therein, decades earlier.

 

Worse yet, it’s also where Rowena’s beloved daughter Alicia died one year ago, having apparently jumped from her upstairs bedroom window and drowned in the canal below.

 

It also happens to be Halloween. A particularly stormy and wind-swept Halloween. What could be better?

Calvary: Affirmation of faith

Calvary (2014) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor, drug use and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.15.14

This one should be required viewing for all filmmakers, particularly those residing in Hollywood.

During a conversation more candid than they've had for a long time, Fiona (Kelly Reilly)
admits that she'd be shattered if something ever happened to her father (Brendan Gleeson).
Sadly, this comes as disturbing news to the priest, who carries the knowledge of his own,
likely very impending mortality.

Not merely because writer/director John Michael McDonagh has delivered a powerful drama fueled by Brendan Gleeson’s heartbreaking and impeccably subtle starring performance — about which, more in a moment — but because McDonagh flawlessly demonstrates the proper way to breathe complex life into every single supporting character, even those glimpsed only briefly.

Too many lazy screenwriters give us one, perhaps two, maybe even three compelling characters; the rest, invariably, are little more than scenery. Wallpaper with a few lines of dialogue, but certainly nothing approximating actual people.

McDonagh, in great contrast, populates his newest film with what seems an entire small town’s worth of men, women and children who matter. Nor is this merely a function of crafting compelling personalities; McDonagh and casting director Jina Jay also found actors able to breathe life into each of these characters.

Every supporting player is introduced in a vignette that feels like its own mini-movie, with the quiet, sometimes raw power we’d expect from a live stage drama. Half an hour into this film, we’re transfixed, thinking Goodness ... this is how it should be done. And why doesn’t it get done this way more often?

All that said, Calvary is a deeply melancholy and quite disturbing drama that builds to a shattering conclusion: not an easy story to experience, and a difficult film to recommend capriciously.

It’s also a very brave film, with a narrative — and a revelatory point of view — all but ignored at a time when strident media overload indicts people and institutions, based on guilt by association.

Father James (Gleeson) is a Catholic priest in the tiny hamlet of Easkey, County Sligo, on Ireland’s craggy, wind-battered West Coast. The rugged pastoral setting, gloriously illuminated by cinematographer Larry Smith, is both verdant and curiously lonely, much of the action taking place against the brooding Knocknarea, a massive, table-shaped hill that dominates this land.

Father James is a good man: benevolent and patient, yet unwilling to suffer fools at all, let alone gladly. His sharply perceptive observations are perhaps his most visible flaw; he resents people who dissemble or otherwise avoid truths — mild or painful — and he’s not shy about saying as much.

Flight: Absolutely soars

Flight (2012) • View trailer
4.5 stars. Rating: R, for drug and alcohol abuse, profanity, nudity, sexuality and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

I can hear Rod Serling’s laconic précis, were he summoned across the bridge of time to introduce this story:

“Portrait of a man, going down for the third time ... and he doesn’t know it.”

Whip (Denzel Washington) likes Nicole (Kelly Reilly) at first sight, and the attraction is
mutual. Unfortunately, she's a recovering addict, and he remains an unrepentant
alcoholic. She's knows he'd be bad for her — perhaps even fatal — but does she
have the strength to resist him?

Flight will catch people by surprise, the same way Million Dollar Baby took its sharp turn in the third act. Advance publicity has centered on the horrific, mid-flight plane crisis, and the suggestion that something “unexpected” turns up during the subsequent investigation.

But John Gatins’ superb, richly nuanced script is much, much deeper than that; indeed, it probes into the very soul of a profoundly flawed man who expects a single heroic act to compensate for a lifetime of ill-advised behavior. Gatins’ narrative also takes intriguing detours, the first one so disorienting — as a new character is introduced — that you’ll briefly wonder if somebody added a reel from an entirely different film.

Let it be said, as well, that Flight gives Denzel Washington yet another opportunity to demonstrate his amazing range and subtlety. He’s simply fascinating to watch, even when at rest ... because that’s the thing; he never is truly at rest. His fingers twitch; his eyes dart through double-takes; he radiates the nervous tension of a caged animal waiting to bolt.

We can’t take our eyes off him. Don’t want to.

Director Robert Zemeckis, having finally shaken his obsession with motion-capture animation — The Polar Express, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol — returns to the probing, tightly focused, intensely intimate character drama that he delivered so well in Cast Away and Contact. This new film is a raw, unflinchingly uncomfortable portrait of a man who takes for granted his ability to remain in control, a politician’s superficial smile on his face, despite the deeply rooted rage and despair that threaten to overwhelm him.

At the same time, Zemeckis, Gatins and Washington deliver an unnervingly grim study of an alcoholic: a drama so memorable that it deserves to be placed alongside earlier classics such as The Lost Weekend, The Days of Wine and Roses and Leaving Las Vegas.

Probably not what people will expect, if they’re drawn to this film by the poster art that shows a capable, if mildly anxious Washington, resplendent in his airline captain’s uniform. Like I said, this one will surprise you.