The Phantom of the Open: Cheekily spirited

The Phantom of the Open (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Not quite two months ago, The Duke treated us to the delightfully dramatized account of disabled pensioner Kempton Bunton, and 1961’s “mysterious” theft of a famed Goya painting from London’s National Gallery.

 

Maurice Flitcroft may have been even more eccentric.

 

With son Gene (Christian Lees) bringing up the rear as caddy, Maurice Flitcroft
(Mark Rylance) blithely trudges to the next tee, oblivious to the catastophic score
that he's racking up.

In 1976, with no golfing experience, Maurice — by claiming to be a professional — audaciously conned his way into the qualifying competition for that year’s British Open Championship. After all, the event was “open” … right?

His resulting score was — and remains — historic.

 

And, just as Bunton’s eventual court case prompted British law to clarify the distinction between “theft” and “borrowing,” Flitcroft’s escapade thoroughly annoyed the snooty aristocrats who ran the British Open; they quickly changed the rules, in an effort to prevent any further “incursions” by undeserving members of the lay public.

 

Not that that stopped Maurice, during subsequent years.

 

His unlikely saga has been made into a cheeky dramedy — in the irreverent style that British filmmakers do so well — by director Craig Roberts and screenwriter Simon Farnaby, the latter adapting sports journalist Scott Murray’s 2010 non-fiction book of the same title.

 

Their film is highlighted by yet another richly nuanced performance from Mark Rylance, whose impersonation of Flitcroft is flat-out astonishing. 

 

Rylance is, without question, one of today’s finest, most artfully accomplished actors. I’ve no doubt that watching him in everyday mundane tasks — such as purchasing groceries — would be just as captivating as what he does on screen.

 

Roberts and Farnaby begin their film with a prologue that sketches Maurice’s earlier days. He meets and marries Jean (Sally Hawkins), and adopts her son Michael; they subsequently augment the family with twin sons Gene and James. 

 

Years pass. Michael (Jake Davies) has grown up to become the mature, business-minded “sensible” son — read: buttoned-down twit with a stick up his fundament — while Gene and James (twins Christian and Jonah Lees), clearly more in tune with their father’s Walter Mitty nature, have become limber disco dancers.

The Outfit: Well tailored

The Outfit (2022) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

The show must go on, as the venerable saying goes, and two years’ worth of Covid restrictions and limitations forced filmmakers to think way outside the box.

 

Sometimes — as in this case — with remarkably clever results.

 

Leonard (Mark Rylance) and his assistant, Mable (Zoey Deutch), are about to endure
an unusual — and increasingly dangerous — night.

Graham Moore makes a stylish feature directorial debut with The Outfit, a cheeky period crime thriller laden with Hitchcockian touches. Moore and co-scripter Johnathan McClain have concocted a claustrophobic, tension-laden scenario that would succeed equally well as a stage play, but doesn’t feel the slightest bit constrained as a cinematic experience.

(Moore shared an Academy Award for co-scripting 2014’s equally engaging The Imitation Game. He definitely has a way with plot and well-sculpted characters.)

 

The setting is early 1950s Chicago. Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance), a soft-spoken ex-pat Brit, has established a successful corner-shop career as a talented maker of fine suits. (“I’m a cutter,” he patiently insists, more than once, “not a tailor.”) 

 

Moore opens the film with a lengthy sequence as Leonard explains his craft — in voiceover — while we watch how a suit emerges from paper patterns and four different kinds of fabric. Because of the quietly reverential quality of Rylance’s narration, and the fascinating process itself — so esoteric, and highlighted by an old-world attention to precision — this prologue is totally captivating.

 

(If you assume this introduction is insignificant, think again; Leonard’s calmly measured recitation has an ingenious third-act payoff.)

 

Leonard’s customers are greeted by Mable (Zoey Deutch), his receptionist/assistant. Their relationship is friendly and cordial; the affection and mutual respect are obvious … although Leonard, wholly at peace with his place in the world, is amused by Mable’s restlessness.

 

But not everybody coming through the front door is a customer. Numerous daily visitors bypass Mable — she never looks up — and head straight to Leonard’s rear cutting room, where they place sealed packets into a lockbox. The shop is a drop-off point for protection money payments, and the neighborhood is under the thumb of organized crime.

 

As it happens, Leonard’s best customer, Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale), is the local boss.

Don't Look Up: Profoundly unsettling, despite trying too hard

Don't Look Up (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for frequent profanity, sexual candor, graphic nudity and drug use

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.7.22

Ouch.

 

This is about as scathing an indictment of modern American behavior as can be imagined.

 

Hoping to share their dire and tremendously important discovery on national television,
Randall (Leonardo DiCaprio, center right) and Kate (Jennifer Lawrence, far right) little
realize they're about to be trivialized by hosts Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry).

Back in 2015, writer/director Adam McKay stunned us with The Big Short, a wildly entertaining and ferociously mocking blend of drama, quasi-documentary and break-the-fourth-wall cinéma vérité, in service of an economic crash course that brilliantly explained the upper-echelon machinations that drove our country off a financial cliff in 2007.

This time, McKay and co-scripter David Sirota set their sights much higher: the cognitive dissonance and blind stupidity that prompt so many Americans to deny the existence of climate change, safe covid vaccines, the results of the 2020 election, and a great deal more.

 

Willful ignorance runs rampant these days, which gives McKay and Sirota plenty to scream about. While quite a few of this film’s sarcastic bombs hit their target, Don’t Look Up isn’t as artistically tight as The Big Short, and I also miss that earlier film’s inventively cheeky directorial flourishes. Sarcasm and snark once again are in abundance, but McKay’s approach here is more dramatically conventional.

 

Perhaps that’s because the operative metaphor — and its real-world counterpart — are too sobering, too horrifying, for gleeful frivolity.

 

The Big Short was fun, whereas this one is deeply unsettling: mad-as-hell, take-no-prisoners storytelling.

 

Events kick off quietly, as university astronomy professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discover a new comet orbiting our solar system. Their initial excitement dwindles when Kate and a gaggle of fellow grad students watch Randall compute the comet’s trajectory on a white board, to determine whether it’ll be visible when it passes Earth.

 

The film’s most grimly impactful wallop occurs right here, as Randall — fully absorbed by complex mathematical equations — initially fails to register the implication of the zero he has just written on the board. DiCaprio sells this moment: Randall hesitates, starts to shake his head, knows he hasn’t made a mistake … but nonetheless erases the zero and empties the room. Except for Kate.

 

Computing the dimensions of the comet is similarly easy. It’s the size of Mount Everest … and if — when — it strikes Earth, in just over six months, it’ll be a planetary extinction event.

 

Well.

 

The Trial of the Chicago Seven: Unbelievable, but true

The Trial of the Chicago Seven (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, violence and drug use

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.20 

Well, this one couldn’t be more timely.

 

Defense attorney William Kuntsler (Mark Rylance, center) and co-counsel Leonard
Weinglass (center left) do their best to protect the defendants — from left, Bobby Seale
(Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and Rennie Davis
(Alex Sharp) — from the blatantly biased behavior of their courtroom judge.

Writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s Netflix original, a depiction of events during the notorious “Chicago Seven” trial — which lasted five months after beginning Sept. 24, 1969, following the August 1968 riots outside Chicago’s Democratic National Convention — is by turns mesmerizing, astonishing, scandalous and horrifying.

 

While Sorkin makes no claim to rigid, documentary-style authenticity, it’s important to understand that pretty much everything depicted here — even the most outrageous behavior — did indeed take place. The timeline has been manipulated a bit, and Sorkin clearly punches up some of the behind-the-scenes dialogue for dramatic impact.

 

But be advised: Every time you’re inclined to think, Oh, that couldn’t possibly have happened … you’ll be wrong.

 

The often crackling verbal exchanges are volleyed by a powerhouse ensemble cast dominated by four actors: Eddie Redmayne, as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) member Tom Hayden; Sacha Baron Cohen, as Youth International Party (Yippie) co-founder Abbie Hoffman; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, as Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale; and Mark Rylance, as defense attorney and civil rights activist William Kunstler.

 

The latter represented the Seven during their kangaroo-court trial before the incompetent, blatantly racist and deplorably biased Judge Julius Hoffman (a chilling Frank Langella).

 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is just as compelling — albeit in a more calmly determined manner — as lead prosecutor Richard Schultz, hand-picked for this assignment by newly elected President Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell (John Doman, smugly condescending).

 

Jeremy Strong supplies mild comic relief as Yippie co-founder Jerry Rubin, who seems stoned during the lengthy proceeding. The remaining Seven are SDS member Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp); and National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (The MOBE) members David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), John Froines (Danny Flaherty) and Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins).

 

Ready Player One: Game on!

Ready Player One (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, sci-fi action violence, bloody images, suggestive content, partial nudity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.30.18

Pop-culture junkies will love this one.

I haven’t had so much fun with an iconic characters mash-up since Daffy Duck met Donald Duck, in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

As Aech (far left) and Art3mis (far right) listen attentively, Parzival queries the Curator
about a particularly telling incident in the life of the eccentric genius who created the
virtual reality enviroment in which they spend so much time.

While there’s no question that Ready Player One will resonate most with avid video gamers — and folks whose homes are clustered with artifacts from the 1980s — this exuberant sci-fi/fantasy certainly is approachable to mainstream viewers. It’s brash, boisterous and breathtaking by turns, and augmented at all times by the cinematic sense of wonder that Steven Spielberg has brought to his films since, well, seems like forever. (And aren’t we lucky?)

That said, the narrative — co-scripted by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline, from the latter’s popular 2011 novel — relies more on momentum than plot logic and common sense. Viewers are likely to exit the theater with plenty of questions that begin with the phrase “But what about...?” Even so, it’s not entirely soulless eye-candy; a strong cautionary note beats at the heart of this fast-paced thrill ride.

One hopes that civilization won’t come to this ... although I also whispered that fervent prayer after seeing 1982’s Blade Runner the first time. And just as that film has proven prophetic in a variety of disturbing ways, there’s enough current self-indulgent behavior to suggest that the message illuminated by Ready Player One should be taken very seriously.

The year is 2045, and our young hero — Wade Watts, played by Tye Sheridan — lives in “the Stacks”: a rundown vertical trailer park in Columbus, Ohio. (High fives to production designer Adam Stockhausen, for this terrifying vision of the near future’s life on the edge.) He shares this tight space with his grouchy aunt and her nasty, loser boyfriend; unemployment, poverty, overcrowding and utter hopelessness are rampant.

The U.S. government apparently has abandoned any pretense of environmental mitigation, human rights, corporate restraint or beneficial socio-political oversight; “outlying” cities such as Columbus have simply become huge trash heaps of discarded vehicles and other manufacturing refuse. The (rather too vague) impression is that the country has been split between the lucky 5 percent in the tech sector ... and everybody else.

In other words, life in the real world ain’t too good.

Dunkirk: An intense, masterful drama

Dunkirk (2017) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG-13, for intense war violence and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.21.17

Christopher Nolan doesn’t merely spin a crackling good yarn; he tells it in a provocative, wildly imaginative manner.

Thousands of Allied soldiers wait anxiously on the "mole" — a narrow, kilometer-long,
wood-boarded breakwater that pokes precariously out into the cold waters of the
English Channel — while praying they'll be able to board a rescue ship before being
strafed by Luftwaffe Messerschmitts.

His fascination with nonlinear storytelling began with Following and Memento — the latter ingeniously unfolding both forwards and backwards — and ultimately became too much in Inception (a dream within a fantasy within a head trip within a nod to Orson Welles ... quite overcooked, but audacious nonetheless).

Dunkirk does not succumb to such excess, although some viewers may be perplexed by how its three parallel storylines intersect ... until the penny drops, resulting in a richly satisfying — dare I say exhilarating — A-ha! moment.

This film is a masterpiece: a compelling, ingeniously conceived and choreographed slice of suspenseful, nail-biting history transformed into a thoroughly absorbing drama. Everything connects here, starting with the superlative work turned in by a huge ensemble cast composed primarily of unfamiliar faces and a few high-profile character actors.

Nolan both wrote and directed this stunning slice of edge-of-the-seat cinema, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he also came up with the attention-grabbing tag line: “When 400,000 men couldn’t get home ... home came for them.”

Remember being riveted, in 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, by Steven Spielberg’s 20-minute handling of the Normandy Beach landing sequence?

Nolan ups that ante. Dunkirk maintains that level of suspense and peek-between-your-fingers anxiety for its full 106 minutes. You literally dare not blink during his ticking-clock handling of simultaneous narratives that come together brilliantly, in time for a climax that’s no less triumphant, for our prior knowledge of how the story concludes.

The drama comes from the skillfully sketched, ground-level characters, whose fates we most definitely don’t know, history notwithstanding.

This is a snapshot of a seminal event during the early days of World War II: an incident that began with a ghastly military disaster, but concluded with an amazing miracle that demonstrated anew — here’s a lesson worth repeating — how individual civilians absolutely can make a massive, heroic difference.

The BFG: A colossal triumph

The BFG (2016) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG, for fantasy peril and some scary scenes
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.1.16

Roald Dahl’s children’s books are cherished for all sorts of reasons, including his ability to concoct astounding creatures and astonishing realms that require a reader’s imagination, because such wonders couldn’t possibly be replicated on the big screen.

After gaining the trust of her immense new friend (Mark Rylance), Sophie (Ruby Barnhill)
learns of his skill at catching and bottling "dream stuff," which then can be used to help
London's denizens sleep more peacefully.

At least, not until quite recently.

Dahl has done quite well by Hollywood over the years, with fabulous adaptations of The Witches, James and the Giant Peach and Fantastic Mr. Fox, not to mention a couple of quite popular renditions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The many talented individuals behind those films notwithstanding, nothing approaches the pure magic — the jaw-dropping sense of wonder — delivered by director Steven Spielberg and an amazing team of collaborators, in The BFG.

Back in the day, the producers of Christopher Reeve’s first Superman film promised that we’d believe a man can fly. Well, Spielberg and his crew make us believe that giants stride the earth. The verisimilitude is so natural, so persuasive, that we often disregard the boring technicalities of special effects, choosing instead to accept the fantastic at face value: no small thing, in these jaded times.

Everything is orchestrated to perfection: the late Melissa Mathison’s poignant, deftly sculpted screenplay (her final completed assignment); Janusz Kaminski’s lavish cinematography, rich with warm color tones that enhance the film’s cozy atmosphere; the ingenious production design and set decoration by Rick Carter and Elizabeth Wilcox; and — most particularly — John Williams’ delicately intricate score.

Williams, recently the first composer to be honored with the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award, is no stranger to ornately layered soundtracks and iconic character themes. But even in a lengthy career distinguished by scores of memorable scores, this one is one of his finest.

Williams’ music for The BFG is all-encompassing; it feels as if every scene, every character, has its own theme. His score plays like a continuous, massive symphony that brings Spielberg’s handling of this gentle parable to even greater emotional heights.

Dahl published his book in 1982, and Spielberg’s film is set in the same decade. It opens with a slow pan of late-night London, Kaminski employing some sort of cinematographic trick that makes the streets, vehicles and buildings seem somehow smaller than usual: almost like an immense, three-quarter-size fairy tale village. We glide into an orphanage, where the matron’s final rounds are watched, surreptitiously, by 10-year-old Sophie (Ruby Barnhill).

Bridge of Spies: Riveting Cold War thriller

Bridge of Spies (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.16.15

Atticus Finch lives.

Harper Lee is known to have based the iconic hero of To Kill a Mockingbird on her own father, Alabama lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee, who — like the book’s character — represented unpopular defendants in a highly publicized (and politicized) trial.

As the trial that might send Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance, left) to the gas chamber proceeds,
defense attorney James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is surprised to see his client remain so
calm. "Aren't you worried?" Donovan asks. Abel's response becomes the film's best
signature line.

How ironic, then, that at the same time Harper Lee was fine-tuning the novel that would make her famous, newspaper headlines across the United States pilloried the country’s most-hated lawyer, James Donovan, who had bravely accepted the assignment to defend captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

I can’t help wondering if any of Donovan’s characteristics wandered into Lee’s depiction of Atticus.

Donovan’s name and historical significance have remained buried for decades, although Abel might ring a few bells. Sirens are likely to go off, however, when both men are linked to American pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was captured after his U-2 spy plane was blasted out of the sky during a photographic reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union.

The interlinked saga involving Donovan, Abel and Powers has been resurrected and transformed into a thoughtful, fascinating and thoroughly absorbing period drama by director Steven Spielberg and scripters Matt Charman, Joel and Ethan Coen. It’s Cold War-era spyjinks right out of John Le Carre, except that these events actually took place: yet another reminder that truth can be far stranger than fiction.

(The film credits make no mention of Donovan’s well-received 1964 memoir, Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers, which I find odd; it’s impossible to imagine that Charman and the Coen brothers didn’t read that book.)

Spielberg’s film is anchored by a commanding performance from Tom Hanks, who channels every dedicated and deeply honorable character ever played by Henry Fonda and James Stewart. At the same time, Hanks brings his own wry, subtle humor to this depiction of Donovan: a capable and hard-working family man caught up in events far beyond his imagining.

(Or so we’re led to believe. Given Donovan’s WWII service as General Counsel at the Office of Strategic Services, he may not have been as “ordinary” as this film suggests. But this portrayal makes for a better story.)