McFarland USA: A genuine heart-warmer

McFarland USA (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for mild dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.20.15

For crowd-pleasing cinema, it’s hard to beat an inspirational underdog sports saga.

Particularly one that’s true. (Well, mostly.)

After yet another frustrating argument at home, the forlorn Thomas (Carlos Pratts, right)
briefly contemplates an extremely foolish way out of his miserable life. Cue the well-timed
arrival of Coach Jim White (Kevin Costner), whose calm and inspirational pep talk is the
stuff of which great underdog sports flicks are made.

Director Niki Caro and the team behind McFarland USA have the formula down cold, with an engaging blend of character drama, cross-cultural tension and stirring competition. Caro is blessed with an eye and ear for the plight of disenfranchised people who sometimes feel like strangers in their own country; she’s the New Zealand-based filmmaker who came to our attention with 2002’s stirring Whale Rider, and followed up with the equally compelling North Country.

Both those films concerned women stymied in their efforts to succeed on their own terms, and forced to battle long-established conventions steeped in predominantly male cultures.

McFarland USA trades gender wars for a gentle analysis of the class structure that exists in this country, and the cynical hopelessness endured by those who live on the wrong side of that divide. Caro and her writers — Christopher Cleveland, Bettina Gilois and Grant Thompson — are smart enough to eschew strident sermons, recognizing that the lessons here will go down more smoothly in an environment of optimism and compassion.

On top of which, the story cleverly rotates the social barrier, by making its central character and his family — products of so-called privileged society — the “outsiders” in an environment that feels completely alien, and has its own longstanding rules of behavior and attitude.

High school football coach Jim White (Kevin Costner) has a history of anger-management issues. Bounced from one school to another, acquiring a dismal reputation along the way, in the autumn of 1987 he bottoms out in California’s San Joaquin Valley agricultural community of McFarland. As he and his family — wife Cheryl (Maria Bello) and daughters Julie (Morgan Saylor) and Jamie (Elsie Fisher) — drive slowly through town, searching for their new home, the latter curiously asks, “Are we in Mexico?”

It’s a brave opening gambit, because the movie succeeds or fails right there: The slightest whiff of censure, disapproval or arrogance, and the story slides into uncomfortably racist territory. But Caro understands the peril involved, and she draws just the right line reading from young Fisher.

The moment passes safely, but is followed by several more; we still unconsciously hold our breath. The living room of the Whites’ new home is dominated by an overpowering image painted directly onto the wall. The elderly woman next door presents them with a “new neighbor” gift: a chicken. The local car culture roars past the house late into each night; roosters blast them out of bed each dawn.

Third Person: Provocative points of view

Third Person (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, nudity and sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.18.14

Writer/director Paul Haggis’ film is too long, too self-indulgent and often too precious.

That said, it’s also intriguing, mysterious, and oddly compelling. And, to a degree, there’s a reason for the many contrivances. Whether the “ultimate answer” justifies the prolonged journey, however, will be up to the taste — and tolerance — of the individual viewer.

Monika (Moran Atias) angrily refuses to share a hotel room with Scott (Adrien Body), and
accusing him of "the obvious" motivations; she chooses instead to make the best of a
bench at the railway station. Of course, this just amplifies Scott's protective instincts, so
he follows and winds up keeping her company for the entire night.

Haggis is a seasoned writer, having cut his teeth on various TV dramas before leaping to the big screen with several high-profile assignments with Clint Eastwood: Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima and most particularly Million Dollar Baby, the latter two garnering Oscar nominations. Haggis also helped revive the James Bond franchise by collaborating on the gritty scripts for Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

Most notably, though, Haggis is known for taking home twin Academy Awards for 2004’s Crash, a victory that remains controversial to this day. Some Best Picture Oscar winners are universally embraced; others divide movie buffs into polarized camps. Crash belongs to the latter group, its interlinked storylines alternately praised as insightful social commentary or ridiculed as puerile left-wing twaddle.

Third Person is an equally personal film that employs a similar template of seemingly disconnected narratives that slide in and around each other. The crossovers aren’t as direct as those in, say, Babel, Love Actually or even Crash; sometimes it’s no more than two people passing each other in a hotel hallway, Haggis’ camera using that excuse to shift quietly from one point of view to the other.

Except that there is more going on here, as we eventually discover.

Perhaps sensitive to the warring camps he created with Crash, Haggis avoids even a whiff of political content this time, focusing instead on interpersonal relationships and issues of trust. All the characters here are in various stages of flirtation, love or rejection, their behavior determined by anger, frustration and impatience.

And by hope. Hope for understanding; hope that things will get better; hope that past transgressions can be surmounted, catalogued and forgiven.

Julia (Mila Kunis) can’t get her life together, much to the vexation of her attorney, Theresa (Maria Bello). Forever between jobs and frequently down to pocket change, Julia nonetheless hopes to regain visitation rights with the 6-year-old son living full-time with his father Rick (James Franco), a famed New York artist, and his girlfriend Sam (Loan Chabanol). We’ve no idea what Julia did, to be shunned so thoroughly by her ex; her flakiness alone doesn’t seem sufficient cause for such total banishment.

Prisoners: We cannot escape our nature

Prisoners (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity, torture and disturbing violent content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.20.13

Revenge thrillers have become a violent — often tawdry — Hollywood staple.

Not this one.

When Alex (Paul Dano, on his back) is released for lack of evidence, Keller (Hugh
Jackman) angrily confronts the younger man, convinced that he knows more than he's
telling about the disappearance of two little girls. Given time to think and plan, Keller
will continue this "conversation" in a less public setting, and with a decidedly more
dangerous intensity.

Prisoners is a brooding, atmospheric slow burn: part character drama, part mystery, part thriller ... and all-consuming. It has a distinctly European feel despite the small-town Americana setting: very much in the unsettling mode of French director George Sluizer’s 1988 chiller, Spoorloos, which he remade five years later with an American cast, as The Vanishing.

Prisoners comes from the capable hands of Québec-born director Denis Villeneuve, whose résumé includes tension-laden dramas such as Maelstrom and Polytechnique, and who garnered an Oscar nomination for 2010’s Incendies. Point being, Villeneuve has a superb sense of atmosphere and a knack for making the most innocent scene feel enshrouded by a blanket of malevolence.

He also has a gift for drawing persuasively authentic performances from his actors, and that’s certainly the case here. While the entire cast is compelling, stars Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal are sensational. Both are gifted actors; both have been fine before. Under Villeneuve’s capable guidance, they’re even better.

The story opens on a cold, overcast Thanksgiving Day in a working-class Pennsylvania suburb: the kind of town where kids set up lemonade stands. The homes and yards are tidy but looking a bit distressed: fading paint and weather-beaten vehicles a testament to folks barely hanging on during the tough economy.

Out in the nearby woods, Keller Dover (Jackman) offers a solemn prayer to God before encouraging teenage son Ralph (Dylan Minnette) to squeeze the trigger and claim his first deer. It’s a clean shot; as they drive the carcass home, Keller — a survivalist by nature — explains that they must be prepared at all times, must be their own strongest advocates, must expect to take charge when others inevitably fail.

Keller collects his wife, Grace (Maria Bello), and their 6-year-old daughter, Anna (Erin Gerasimovich); the family strolls up the street to celebrate the holiday with best friends Franklin and Nancy Birch (Terrence Howard, Viola Davis). Ralph pairs off with teenage Eliza (Zoë Soul), who disapproves of the elder Dover’s fondness for hunting; Anna and 7-year-old Joy (Kyla Drew Simmons) play together with the exuberance of small children.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins’ camera ... hovers. We feel nervous: can’t explain why. Even as the adults relax after the huge meal, Franklin sharing his lamentable trumpet skills, the utter normality of this staunchly American ritual — playing out, we know, in similar homes across the entire country — is pregnant with building tension.

And yet it’s simply an ordinary celebratory tableau. All is right with the world.

Until, suddenly, it isn’t.

The Company Men: Downsize this

The Company Men (2010) • View trailer for The Company Men
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang


Although made with good intentions and well performed by an earnest cast, The Company Men ultimately drowns beneath writer/director John Wells’ soggy sentimentality and contrived character dynamics.

Not to mention a Pollyanna “resolution” that will infuriate anybody suffering long-term unemployment as a result of the current economic downtown. At the risk of inserting a major spoiler, we all should be lucky enough to catch the attention of a well-heeled sugar daddy.

Although unemployed and facing no prospects, Bobby (Ben Affleck, right)
breezily refuses an offer of work from his blue-collar brother-in-law, Jack
(Kevin Costner), which merely reinforces the latter's belief that his sister
married a world-class idiot.

Wells tries to eat his cake and have it: utterly impossible, when dealing with a subject this grave, this immediate, this ripped from the headlines. If Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) and Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper) are intended to represent men downsized and left feeling impotent by the loss of their stature as primary family bread-winners, then Wells must remain true to this premise. Instead, he eventually opts for a jarring fairy tale outcome apparently intended to send people from the theaters with optimistic smiles.

Nonsense. While it’s true we usually seek solace and escapism from the movies, we also expect consistency and fair play on the part of the filmmaker. 2009’s Up in the Air felt real, and made shrewd, perceptive statements about the widening divide between greedy corporate CEOs and rank-and-file employees; The Company Men is trite, dishonest and ultimately insulting.

The story begins as Bobby, smugly confident of the good life he has provided for his family, arrives at work after an early morning round of golf, only to discover that he has been swept up in a fresh round of layoffs at GTX, a large manufacturing conglomerate with more than 60,000 employees (although not for long). Bobby simply cannot – will not – believe it: This can’t be happening to him.

Still, he’s bright, cocky and talented; he breezily insists, when joining the ranks at a local professional job placement service – funded for a few months, as part of the GTX severance package – that he’ll be “outta here in a few days.”

His wife, Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt, delivering this film’s most sensitive performance), knows better. Although resolutely in her husband’s corner, she knows he’s but one of thousands of middle-age MBAs seeking new placement; she advises selling his beloved Porsche, canceling the country club membership and cutting back on “routine” expenses that have left them with absolutely no cushion.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor -- Crumbling Saga

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) • View trailer for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for plenty of grody action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.1.08
Buy DVD: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor • Buy Blu-Ray: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Deluxe Edition) [Blu-ray]

I have learned, over the years, to diminish my expectations when movies open in a particular manner:

• In a psychiatrist's office (only bad thrillers and horror flicks do this);

• With a voice-over prologue inserted to compensate for eleventh-hour editing that rendered the storyline incomprehensible;

Facing a veritable army of re-animated terra cotta soldiers, Rick and Evelyn
O'Connell (Brendan Fraser and Maria Bello) are relived (?) when their small band
of defenders is joined by thousands of revenge-seeking skeletons long-buried
beneath the Great Wall of China.

• With an extended flashback sequence that begins to feel longer than the film itself.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor falls into the latter category, although this is by no means its only flaw.

Action director Rob Cohen — taking over this franchise from creator Stephen Sommers, who helmed the first two entries — has delivered precisely the cartoon one would expect from the guy who brought us The Fast and the Furious and XXX. Cohen behaves like a second-unit stunt director; he rarely wastes time with trifles such as plot logic or characterization, preferring instead to charge from one frantic chase or fight scene to the next.

His films are breathless examples of cinematic whiplash, which I suppose is fine for the video game set, but less so for everybody else. Cohen obviously never learned the wisdom of pacing, or of balancing the frantic stuff with calmer scenes, so that viewers might relax for a moment and then better appreciate the next thrilling rush.

A nonstop diet of anything becomes tiresome, and that's the major problem with this Mummy: It never lets up, and that's boring. Older fans will recall that this misjudgment also plagued Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which similarly went from one crazed action sequence to the next, with nary a pause for reflection or — God forbid — character development.

Then, too, scripters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar subscribe to the mistaken notion that anything goes in fantasy, and that consistency therefore is nothing more than a word in the dictionary, somewhere between clumsy and crummy. That's a newbie writing mistake, because of course the opposite is true: If we're to care a whit for the heroes and villains in fantasies, then they must be granted consistent strengths and weaknesses.

It simply doesn't work, as is the case here, when the villain can surmount any situation by suddenly whipping up some new power, such as morphing into a three-headed dragon. Nor is the situation helped by the sudden appearance of a magical knife — the only weapon that can defeat him! — that springs up out of nowhere, introduced by one character as an afterthought apparently inserted into the fifth draft of page 35.

Mostly, though, this Mummy doesn't work because too many key actors can't inhabit the movie.