Black Bag: Deliciously crafty

Black Bag (2025) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.23.25

Spy flicks don’t come much sleeker, sexier or smarter than this one.

 

Director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp have concocted a tightly plotted, British-based thriller that unfolds over the course of a single week. The execution is mesmerizing, the well-sculpted characters persuasively played by a top-flight cast.

 

George (Michael Fassbender, left) and Freddie (Tom Burke, center) seethe quietly
while their boss, Arthur (Pierce Brosnan) demands a quick result on the search for
a mole known to have stolen a dangerous software cyber-worm.

(As a passing comment, it’s an eyebrow lift to realize that Soderbergh and Koepp also were responsible for the ludicrously overcooked ghost story, Presence, released just a few weeks back. Talk about day and night...!)

Soderbergh controls every aspect of this glossy slice of spyjinks, wearing additional hats as editor and cinematographer (the latter two under his not-at-all-secret aliases of, respectively, Mary Ann Bernard and Peter Andrews). As always, Soderberg loves long tracking shots, and this film opens with an impressive one.

 

Veteran intelligence officer George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), an elite operative at Britain’s closely guarded National Cyber Security Unit (NCSC), is summoned to an off-site meeting by his boss, Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård). A dangerous top-secret software cyber-worm, code-named Severus, has been leaked: likely to Russian agents. Five of George’s colleagues are suspected, and one happens to be his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), a powerful and trusted NCSC agent.

 

She’s also George’s weakness: He’s unwaveringly devoted to her (and everybody at NCSC knows this).

 

He requests two weeks to conduct a thorough investigation.

 

“Thousands of people will die, if Severus gets into the wrong hands,” Meacham explains.

 

“Oh,” George replies. “One week, then.”

 

Koepp’s dialogue remains this crisp throughout, often with an undercurrent of dark humor.

 

Soderbergh then cuts to George at home, meticulously preparing an ambitious meal for a dinner party. His care and precision, with every little menu detail, mirror his similarly clinical and methodical mind: always thinking four or five moves ahead, like a master chess player. But he’s also fastidious: a few tiny splatters of gravy, on a shirt cuff, demands an immediate change of clothes.

 

He catches Kathryn in their bedroom, getting dressed for the gathering. As a couple, they’re elegant, erudite and obviously whip-smart. Their banter is flirty, but also wary; we wonder what they conceal from each other, out of professional necessity, and also — possibly — for personal reasons. 

The Killer: Grimly fascinating

The Killer (2023) • View trailer

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

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.17.23

Given that so many of director David Fincher’s films are cold, brutal and often quite disturbing — Se7en, Panic Roomand Zodiac leap to mind — he’s the obvious choice to helm an adaptation of the long-running graphic novel series by French creators Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon.

 

Surveillance is an exercise in extreme patience, as this career assassin (Michael
Fassbender) has learned, during a long and successful career that often involves
waiting days for the target to show up.

And, given that the primary character is a career assassin, the role similarly is a natural for Michael Fassbender, who excels at ruthless indifference. He radiates a degree of calm that is pure façade: a surface mask that conceals a cobra’s speed with a grizzly’s explosive brute force.

Scripter Andrew Kevin Walker augments the film’s already detached atmosphere by leaving all the characters nameless (except for a few clever and deliberate exceptions). They’re known solely by the “handles” employed by those who inhabit this lethal line of work: The Client, The Lawyer, The Expert, and so forth.

 

Fassbender is The Killer, whom we meet many days into his surveillance of an apartment on the other side of an active Parisian street. He’s holed up in the now-empty offices once occupied by WeWork (rather prescient on Walker’s part, given that the company filed for bankruptcy last week). He’s waiting for The Target to return home, at which point he’ll be executed by our assassin’s wicked-looking rifle.

 

The story is split into distinct acts, each taking the name of its primary focus. Thus, Act 1 — “The Killer” — profiles this man as Fassbender clinically details the rules, strengths, weaknesses, pitfalls, rash assumptions and mistakes that characterize his profession, in a grimly philosophical and nihilistic voice-over that runs nearly half an hour, while we watch him exercise, sleep, eat, yoga and remain focused on the apartment.

 

(“Trust no one.” “Forbid empathy.” “Anticipate, don’t improvise.” “Never yield an advantage.” “Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight.”)

 

Depending on a viewer’s sensibilities, this lengthy monologue will either be fascinating ... or dull and needlessly protracted. (I’m in the former camp.) Something about Fassbender’s presence and serene detachment makes it difficult to look away. Fincher and Walker also manage an undercurrent of very dark humor (which some viewers may not appreciate).

 

This mordant streak also emerges in the numerous arch songs by The Smiths that occupy The Killer’s playlist, and which Fincher alternates with the disquieting score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

 

The Target eventually arrives (at long last, some will think, with relief) and The Killer goes to work. Maddeningly, the man keeps pausing behind the small chunk of wall that separates two large windows. Then the moment comes, and...

 

...it goes wrong.

 

“This is new,” The Killer thinks aloud, with a soupçon of genuine surprise.

Dark Phoenix: Better than average

Dark Phoenix (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for considerable sci-fi violence, disturbing images and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Comic book writers are notorious for adjusting, revising, reworking or even completely undoing the mythic back-stories and details of long-established characters. 

The spooky, otherworldly Vuk (Jessica Chastain, right) insists that she can help the
confused and increasingly overwhelmed Jean (Sophie Turner) control cosmic powers
that are literally off the chart. Naturally, Vuk's motivations are far less than pure...

Nothing is sacrosanct: not even death. If so-and-so perished nobly while saving the universe, s/he can be resurrected five years later via some previously undisclosed loophole. (If all else fails, rely on time travel.)

Putting up with this is difficult enough with comic books, but at least such contrived and manipulative nonsense can be “justified” during multiple issues over the course of many months.

It’s a lot more disconcerting when the newest X-Men entry — Dark Phoenix — makes absolute hash of the continuity established in previous films … or so it seems. Apoplectic fans sputtering “But … but … but!” are advised to pay closer attention to what went down in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Which is how writer/direct Simon Kinberg gets away with the jaw-dropper that hits during this new film’s second act.

It also kinda/sorta justifies — albeit with an eyebrow lift — this film’s more-or-less replication of events already covered in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. Both are based on the iconic Chris Claremont/Dave Cockrum/John Byrne “Dark Phoenix Saga,” which played out in comic book form from 1976 to ’80 (back when only one X-Men comic book hit the stands each month, and boy, those were simpler times).

At its core, this is a common superhero plot device: What happens when a good hero turns bad?

Having proven themselves heroic after events in 2016’s (thoroughly unsatisfying) X-Men: Apocalypse, Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his mutant students happily bask in the unaccustomed glow of public acclaim. Charles has a direct line to the U.S. president; children eagerly purchase dolls and other ephemera related to their favorite X-Man … or X-Woman, as the shape-shifting Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) tartly suggests should be the team’s actual designation, given how frequently the gals save the day.

That’s no mere idle comment. Female characters are front and center in this film, and it’s darn well about time.

Alien: Covenant — Rather disappointing

Alien: Covenant (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for violence, gore, profanity, nudity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang

In space, no one can escape being surrounded by idiots.

The Alien franchise, just shy of four decades old, continues to crank merrily along, of late shepherded by founding director Ridley Scott. To some degree that’s a good thing, because his films always are handsomely mounted, crisply paced and graced with compelling ensemble casts.

Once it becomes obvious that something nasty is prowling on board their massive
colony ship, Daniels (Katherine Waterston) and her synthetic companion Walter
(Michael Fassbender) consider their options.

They’re also usually a great deal smarter than this newest installment.

Alien: Covenant suffers from the same bone-stupid plotting that made the recently released Life — a rather blatant Alien rip-off in its own right — such an infuriating experience. Nobody has a lick of sense, the various characters utterly ignoring chain of command and basic safety protocols, while bickering and squabbling like school kids. As I’ve noted in the past, if these numbskulls represent Humanity’s Finest, then we deserve to be massacred by outer space nasties.

This aggravating film’s script comes courtesy of Jack Paglen, Michael Green, John Logan and Dante Harper, who sacrifice plot logic on the altar of routine gore effects. You’ll find little genuine suspense here; all the alien attacks — whether by the now-familiar ovomorphs, facehuggers, chestbursters or adult xenomorphs — are telegraphed by maddeningly unhurried reveal shots.

Most of these encounters are by-the-book horror flick stuff: Somebody hears something, s-l-o-w-l-y turns around — or peers at something — and whammo! More blood on the screen.

This film offers neither the shock of the opening installment, nor the full-throttle energy of James Cameron’s immediate follow-up, 1986’s Aliens.

Most subsequent films were disappointments of one sort or another, until Scott re-ignited the franchise with 2012’s Prometheus. As a prequel to everything that had come before, the Jon Spaihts/Damon Lindelof script established an intriguing back story that explored the creation of the xenomorphs, the origins of mankind, and the space-faring race of giant “Engineers” who apparently seeded life throughout galaxies. Very high-falutin’ God stuff.

This new film takes place 10 years later — still roughly 20 years prior to the events in Alien (for those who pay attention to such things) — as the deep-space Earth colony ship Covenant makes its way to the distant planet Origae-6. The crew and 2,000 colonists are deep in hyper-sleep, the ship monitored solely by a synthetic android named Walter (Michael Fassbender) and an onboard computer dubbed Mother (voiced by Lorelei King, sounding very much like Sigourney Weaver). Once the journey is complete, the settlers hope to establish a new human outpost.

The Light Between Oceans: Not bright enough

The Light Between Oceans (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.2.16

Embracing an overblown melodrama requires an act of faith on the viewer’s part: a willingness to sympathize with the protagonists — to understand and accept their behavior as reasonable — even if (when) they yield to ill-advised impulses.

After several failed attempts to start a family, Tom (Michael Fassbender) and Isabel (Alicia
Vikander) finally are rewarded with a child of their own ... but in a rather unexpected
manner, and one that will have tragic consequences.

But if they cross the threshold of acceptable conduct — if they betray our trust with an act too bewildering, or heinous — then the film’s hold on us is broken. The spell under which we’ve allowed ourselves to be placed, shatters like a broken mirror.

Such is the case with scripter/director Derek Cianfrance’s adaptation of Australian author M.L. Stedman’s 2012 novel, The Light Between Oceans. Because, despite the best efforts of its two talented stars, there comes a moment beyond which we cannot maintain sangfroid: a plot hiccup that is, indeed, unforgiveable. Compassion, and the patience to put up with anything that follows, are lost forever.

Mind you, the film’s contrived plot and execution require considerable endurance to begin with. Cianfrance’s lackadaisical approach is old-style Hollywood, by way of Thomas Hardy or the Bronte sisters. He and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw favor extremely tight close-ups, and while Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander respond to that challenge, with nuanced expressions, the technique grows tiresome.

So does Alexandre Desplat’s melancholy orchestral score. Mind you, I’ve been an avid fan of Desplat’s work ever since 2003’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, but his despondent themes here hammer the melodrama; the despair is relentless. And with Cianfrance subjecting us to 132 minutes of this morose character study, it’s just too much.

No doubt everything worked in Stedman’s novel; this sort of saga was born for the literary form. But as a film, with a self-indulgent director who prefers long-suffering gazes to expository dialogue, one can’t help feeling that he’s piling on the schmaltz and noble sacrifice with a shovel.

The setting is the remote edge of Western Australia, immediately following World War I. Tom Sherbourne (Fassbender), a shell-shocked veteran, has come to the tiny community of Partaguese in order to accept a posting as keeper of the crucial lighthouse, on the isolated and otherwise uninhabited Janus Rock. The island is miles from land, approachable only by boat, although the light keeper’s house has running water and all essential amenities (handy, that).

Tom is quiet, withdrawn and stoic: unable to understand why he was spared, when so many of his comrades perished on the battlefield. The experience has left him uncomfortable in the company of other people; his seclusion on Janus Rock isn’t merely by way of comfort, but to some degree — in his mind — some sort of necessary, self-imposed punishment, for having survived.

X-Men: Apocalypse — Thud and blunder

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and quite generously, for gratuitously fleeting profanity and distasteful, soul-crushing violence
By Derrick Bang

Enough, already.

Things were bad enough last summer, when Avengers: Age of Ultron gave us characters capable of re-shaping reality, along with a celestial scheme to return Earth to its Ice Age. Hollywood’s apparent need for superhero movies that forever increase the sense of scale — like a junkie craving ever-stronger fixes — was plain outta control.

When Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, center) is alerted to the presence of an ultra-
powerful mutant, he and his comrades — from left, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), Moira
Mactaggert (Rose Byrne), Alex Summers (Lucas Till) and Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) —
try to determine how best to find this entity.

This newest X-Men entry is even worse, with a villain who literally can re-shape the planet according to whim: a level of power so off the chart that the very notion of this guy being stopped by anybody, let alone young and largely untested mutant heroes, is simply ludicrous.

What, I wonder, could be next? A baddie who’ll pull the Moon out of its orbit? Destroy Saturn and her rings? Extinguish our sun? Annihilate entire galaxies?

It’s impossible to care about any of this film’s sturm und drang, because its screenplay — credited to Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris and director Bryan Singer — doesn’t spend enough time with character development. Worse yet, the little we do get is needlessly grim and mean-spirited: the same problem of tone that infected Batman V Superman a few months back.

The early X-Men films were entertaining by virtue of the wary ensemble dynamic that united such radically different characters into a team, and for the way that everybody’s strange and weird powers were blended into a cohesive fighting unit. That camaraderie is all but lost in this smash-fest, which instead revels in an arrogantly callous level of civilization-snuffing carnage that I’ve not seen since the distasteful 2012, which depicted mass death with all the gravitas of a pinball machine.

Singer’s tone is about the same here, with John Ottman’s bombastic score adding even more portentous fury. And just to seal that atmospheric deal, Ottman’s original themes are augmented, at (ahem) apocalyptic moments, by the equally dour second movement (“Allegretto”) of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

Not much fun to be had, all told, in this 143-minute endurance test.

Macbeth: Macawful

Macbeth (2015) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for strong violence and fleeting sexuality
By Derrick Bang

This is Shakespeare; I knew the guy had to die eventually.

Trouble is, even his death seemed to take forever. Like everything else in this dreadful film.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair ... except that everything about this turkey is foul, including any
sense of an actual relationship between Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) and his wife
(Marion Cotillard).

I’ve seen Macbeth at least a dozen times on stage, TV and the big screen, with the mad king played by the likes of Orson Welles, Jon Finch, Sean Connery (believe it or not, back in 1961) and Ian McKellen, the latter a Royal Shakespeare Company production with Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth (definitely a high point, in productions of “the Scottish play”).

Goodness, I’ve even watched Sam Worthington lumber about in a contemporary update of the play, set amidst criminal gangs in Melbourne (far from a high point).

Do a title search on Macbeth at the Internet Movie Database, and you’ll come up with 95 matches, with adaptations clocking in from — among other countries — Japan, Australia, Russia and India.

Look far and wide, though, and you’ll not find a big-screen Macbeth that is worse than what director Justin Kurzel has unleashed this holiday season. Rarely has this play — or any other — been presented with such plodding, ponderous dreariness, its crackling dialog reduced to monotonous speeches mumbled by actors apparently instructed to utter every line with a complete lack of involvement.

This is Shakespeare, for goodness’ sake; impassioned monologues and overwrought performances are de rigueur. Instead, we get an entire cast that behaves like extras from a George Romero zombie movie, which is to say the slow, shambling walking dead, marked by dull, vacant expressions.

Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are exceptional actors; their Macbeth and Lady Macbeth should have leaped ferociously from the screen. Instead, for reasons known only to Kurzel, they hunch, cower and sulk, often standing motionless and staring into vacuous nothing, muttering their lines so softly, and with such little energy, that we often can’t even hear what they’re saying.

Which, perversely, could be a blessing. Students of Shakespeare will be appalled by the way scripters Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie and Todd Louiso have butchered this play, committing artistic murders far more heinous than any of Macbeth’s on-screen blood-letting. Motivation and (ir)rational thought are abandoned, with far too many key events occurring seemingly at random.

Steve Jobs: A tarnished Apple

Steve Jobs (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.15

The ensemble cast is strong, impeccably directed and well-suited to each role.

The dialog is rat-a-tat enthralling: classic Aaron Sorkin arguments and badinage, with verbal zingers and snarky rejoinders landing like physical blows, recipients wincing in pain or retreating behind wary glances. It’s the stuff that made The Social Network and TV’s West Wing and The Newsroom so spellbinding: the intelligent, sharp-edged and fast-paced discourse that we’re neither clever enough, nor quick-witted enough, to deliver in real life.

Struggling to find some way to connect with the young daughter whose paternity he denies,
Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) encourages Lisa (Makenzie Moss) to play with a
spanking-new Macintosh computer. "You can't break it," he promises.

It feels more like an intimate, minimalist stage play, and in fact Sorkin has structured it that way, with three distinct acts. I was reminded, more than once, of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, made into a similarly mesmerizing 1992 film.

But those characters were fictitious, if familiar archetypes that we’d likely find in the rapacious atmosphere of a high-end, nail-the-deal-no-matter-what real estate office.

Steve Jobs, in contrast, profiles the actual Apple guru, with ample attention paid to the close advisors circling his incandescent star. (He doesn’t appear to have any actual friends.)

And not once, not for a second, did I feel that Sorkin and director Danny Boyle had come anywhere close to capturing the actual Steve Jobs. This relentlessly distracting fact ruins the entire film. Although clearly a sort of “truthiness” — the script is adapted from Walter Isaacson’s thoroughly researched biography of Jobs — this drama seems to exist in a parallel universe where Sorkin has indulged in his own myth-making.

Goodness knows, Jobs was highly skilled at crafting and stage-managing the persona he displayed in public. And, in the interest of full disclosure, Sorkin has described this film as an “impressionistic portrait” of Jobs: an abstraction concocted to surround the Apple guru with the same six characters, at three crucial points in his career, and let them “bang on each other.”

A “heightened version of real life,” Boyle adds, in the press notes.

Balderdash. Those quotes sound like a defensive excuse: an effort to get ahead of the negative publicity destined to emerge — and it definitely has — after Jobs’ actual associates begin to complain, quite noisily, that Sorkin’s so-called portrait is pure hooey.

The degree to which this does or doesn’t prove off-putting will depend on each viewer’s allegiance to truth, and/or a sense of the real-world Jobs. Taken purely on its own merits, Boyle and Sorkin’s film deserves all the descriptive accolades cited in my opening paragraphs; it is riveting.

But even if we give Boyle and Sorkin the benefit of that particular doubt, we cannot escape one glaringly obvious problem: The Steve Jobs depicted here is a relentless, abusive, unapologetic bully. Michael Fassbender’s nuanced performance notwithstanding, there’s no trace of the persuasive, charismatic futurist who inspired and demanded greatness from his associates and staff.

This big-screen Jobs is just a cruel bastard. He couldn’t inspire anybody to change a light bulb, let alone deliver the miracles that routinely emerged from Apple. And all viewers, even clueless tech luddites, will understand the utter wrongness of this dynamic.

That said, one cannot argue with Sorkin’s clever narrative structure.

X-Men: Days of Future Past — One for the ages

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for nonstop action violence, considerable grim content and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.23.14

This one cooks.

The X-Men film series has earned high marks from its debut back in 2000, notwithstanding the frustrating rival studio issues that prevent these characters from operating within the larger tapestry of the “Marvel Universe” project that includes Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the Avengers.

After learning that black-ops types plan to conduct dangerous — even lethal — medical
experiments on some helpless mutants, a furious Raven (Jennifer Lawrence, second
from right) gets quite irate with the goons responsible, while helping the others escape.

Director Bryan Singer got Marvel’s “merry mutants” off to an excellent start with the first two films, and he returns here, batteries fully charged, for a rip-snortin’ adventure that satisfies on every level.

Longtime comic book fans, who’ve followed these characters since their debut back in September 1963, can point to three periods of writer/artist genius during the series’ half-century history. Old-timers still cite the Roy Thomas/Neal Adams run, despite its brevity, as the highlight of 1969 and early ’70. The subsequent generation scoffs at that choice, pointing instead to the bravura Chris Claremont/Jim Lee run from 1989 through ’91.

In between, though, we enjoyed four years of greatness from late 1977 through early ’81, thanks to Claremont’s imaginative stories and artist/co-author John Byrne’s artwork. And that run produced a two-parter, “Days of Future Past,” which remains one of the all-time best comic book stories, anywhere ... not to mention one of the most ingenious time-travel narratives ever concocted (and cited as such in a recent issue of the British pop culture magazine SFX).

Fan reaction was guarded, when word broke that this new X-Men film would adapt that classic tale. Doing it justice would be difficult enough; carefully sliding it into the big-screen mythos already established by the first three films and 2011’s X-Men: First Class, even harder. Screenwriters Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn therefore deserve considerable credit, because they pulled it off. And then some.

Failing to give Claremont and Byrne a “story by” acknowledgment, however, is utterly indefensible. And I rather doubt that Claremont was mollified by his eyeblink cameo.

To a degree, this film also has been shaped by the wattage of its primary stars, most notably Jennifer Lawrence, who has become huge since first playing the shape-shifting Raven/Mystique in First Class. Hugh Jackman’s ultra-cool Wolverine also is front and center, as are James McAvoy’s angst-ridden Charlie Xavier and Michael Fassbender’s smoothly malevolent Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto.

But wait, I hear you cry. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen also appear in this adventure ... and aren’t they also Xavier and Magneto?

Well, yes ... and that’s the nature of time-travel stories. Done properly, we get to eat our cake, and have it, too. And this is one tasty treat.

12 Years a Slave: A brilliant, timeless drama

12 Years a Slave (2013) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rating: R, for grim violence, brutality, nudity and brief sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.15.13

Some films transcend their big-screen confines.

The story is so compelling, the direction so deft, the performances so persuasively real, that we cease to see the screen or the acting, and simply become immersed in the experience.

As Epps (Michael Fassbender, center) expresses far too much appreciation for the
cotton-picking skills of Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o), Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) gradually
recognizes the unpalatable, one-sided "understanding" between this master and his
attractive slave ... but, of course, can neither do or say anything.

12 Years a Slave is such a film.

I remember, years back, getting wholly caught up in a stage production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. At one point, the fragile Laura Wingfield stepped outside the front door and onto the porch of the simple but effective set, and I grew concerned; she wasn’t dressed warmly enough, and surely she’d get cold out there, late at night.

That’s how invested I was in British director Steve McQueen’s sensitive, unflinching and utterly mesmerizing handling of this film.

John Ridley’s note-perfect screenplay is adapted from Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave, a rare 19th century memoir by a man who lived what he wrote — no, make that endured and survived — and what we now see on the screen. Northup’s saga is brutal, horrifying, even unbelievable at times. We civilized, 21st century citizens of the world cannot comprehend men — and women — behaving so callously, so cruelly to their fellow men and women.

Horrific times, we think, seeking solace. Nearly two centuries ago. Surely, we’ve become better in the meantime.

But then I reflect on the Nazi persecution of the Jews, with the often willing participation of “good Germans,” and I reflect on young Malala Yousafzai, nearly killed by Taliban thugs who’ve promised to keep trying, just as they bomb schoolchildren and continue to maim and behead others who’d encourage education, and I realize what McQueen clearly intends to demonstrate.

This film isn’t a portal to another time, another place. Sadly, it’s a mirror to the here and now.

The year is 1841, in pre-Civil War United States; we meet Solomon Northup (a simply astonishing performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor) as a dignified gentleman living with his family in Saratoga, N.Y. He walks assuredly among his white peers, treated with respect whether on the street or conducting business in a shop.

Although, even here, we get a flash of underlying tension: a flicker of ... something ... in the eyes of one white aristocrat who registers Solomon’s presence, his station, and says nothing, but silently speaks volumes.

The Counselor: Guilty as charged

The Counselor (2013) • View trailer 
No stars (turkey). Rating: R, for graphic violence, grisly images, profanity and strong sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.25.13

Cormac McCarthy apparently felt that 2009’s big-screen adaptation of his novel The Road wasn’t sufficiently bleak, violent or morally depraved, so he upped his game with the original screenplay for this glossy bit of rubbish.

Despite repeated, protracted and viciously descriptive warnings from Westray (Brad Pitt,
left), our imbecilic title character (Michael Fassbender) stubbornly insists on getting
involved with a massive shipment of illegal drugs. After all, what could go wrong?

Rarely have so many A-list stars been involved in such a lamentable waste of time.

The Counselor isn’t merely set in a world of abominable behavior; McCarthy’s characters are cheerfully pragmatic about it. No act too vile to contemplate? They don’t merely contemplate; they discuss barbarism with the thoughtful ease of two fellows comparing cigar brands in a gentlemen’s club. Then, having laboriously exhausted the subject, director Ridley Scott ensures that we’ll eventually get to watch each degenerate act.

McCarthy has a Pulitzer Prize to his credit, for the aforementioned The Road, and rumor suggests that he’s under consideration for a Nobel Prize for literature. The characters in his novels often struggle with moral ambiguity in an increasingly cynical world, although we’re generally able to sympathize with a well-meaning protagonist, whether John Grady Cole in All the Pretty Horses, or Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in the grimmer No Country for Old Men (adapted into a sensational 2007 film by Joel and Ethan Coen).

But there’s nobody to like in The Counselor; indeed, it’s difficult to even understand most of the characters who populate this deadly dull study of ill-advised acts and their horrible consequences. Everybody is morally compromised at best, or sociopathic, or indifferently brutal. Everybody except the token innocent, that is, who may as well be wearing a sign that reads “Sacrificial Lamb.”

Mind you, a roster of degenerates isn’t necessarily bad in and of itself; Quentin Tarantino has a way of extracting wonderfully dark entertainment from the vicious swine who inhabit, say, Pulp Fiction or Inglourious Basterds. But that’s precisely the point: Tarantino characters are engaging for the way they revel in their bad behavior, whereas the increasingly tiresome players in this drama give new meaning to the word “boring.”

Haywire: Trust nobody

Haywire (2012) • View trailer
3.5 stars. Rating: R, and needlessly, for action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.20.12


Movies are all about make-believe: our willing suspension of skepticism in exchange for a good time. We tolerate the impossible — varying degrees of the impossible, depending on the genre — because it’s part of the fantasy.

Although her team's human target has been rescued and safely stowed away,
Mallory (Gina Carano) is a consummate professional who hates loose ends. She
therefore pursues the one antagonist who dashes off, even though his escape can't
compromise her efforts. Cue an energetic foot chase with lots of running.

Unfortunately, like a drug addiction that requires an ever-increasing dosage, filmmakers are forever seeking new ways to up the ante and further impress us: to once again deliver a fresh jolt of eyebrow-raising amazement.

Consider the action hero. Back in 1963, the climactic fist-fight between James Bond and Red Grant, in the close confines of a train compartment in From Russia with Love, set a new standard for brutal, claustrophobic mano a mano combat. For the next several decades, film fans and movie stuntmen alike cited that scene as one of the finest ever caught on camera. Indeed, director Terence Young’s work was potent enough to bother British film censors.

Flash-forward to 2007’s The Bourne Ultimatum, when director Paul Greengrass and editor Christopher Rouse staged an even more jaw-dropping skirmish in London’s Waterloo Station: a melee involving Jason Bourne and several antagonists that was so ferociously intense, viewers actually applauded as the scene concluded. It, too, felt real.

That’s the key: credibility.

Trouble is, many directors push the envelope too far, particularly in the action thriller genre. Escalate the violence too much — turn the obligatory fight scenes into cartoons, with heroes and villains somehow enduring bone-crushing punishment — and we simply scoff and roll our eyes over the sheer stupidity of the whole thing. (Exhibit A, with a bullet: last year’s laughably idiotic Sucker Punch.)

Director Steven Soderbergh understands this: recognizes how “inflated thrills” have ruined many otherwise decent pictures. Haywire is his captivating, energized response: a spy drama with action scenes — very much in the mold of From Russia with Love, which he cites in his film’s press notes — rather than a wall-to-wall action flick with minimal story and progressively sillier fight scenes.

Soderbergh wants us to believe that the action elements in this film are punishing but reasonable: not so acrobatic or dangerous that a human being couldn’t possibly handle them.

His secret weapon: mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano, whose fighting styles include Muay Thai, karate, jiu jitsu, judo, wrestling, boxing, sambo, kick-boxing and kung fu ... all in a taut and unexpectedly hot bod. At first glance, during deceptively calm moments, she’s precisely the sort of individual who’d be underestimated right up to the moment she’d flip across the room, slam you to the floor and crush the air out of you — permanently — with a vicious, leg-twisting headlock.

Jane Eyre: Deliciously swooning melodrama

Jane Eyre (2011) • View trailer for Jane Eyre
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and quite stupidly, for dramatic intensity and a fleeting nude image
By Derrick Bang


Folks who love their romances brooding and gothic will adore director Cary Fukunaga's new take on Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. I haven't seen so much angst and despair — nor so many dismal moors and long-suffering stares — since Merle Oberon chased Laurence Olivier in 1939's Wuthering Heights.

That was sister Emily Bronte's novel, of course, but Charlotte certainly penned an equally memorable saga of tortured love.

Jane (Mia Wasikowska) can't help being attracted to Rochester (Michael
Fassbender), even though she knows the very thought of embarking in a
relationship with the man is impossible, given the divide of their social
stations. But what is love, if not an emotion determined to surmount any
potential obstacle?

I'm frankly surprised, at a time when Jane Austen's books have enjoyed such renewed popularity, that we've not sooner re-visited either or both of the Bronte sisters. To be sure, a typical Austen heroine has more dash and sharp-tongued wit than an average Bronte heroine, but the latter should not be dismissed as silent wallflowers. This new Jane Eyre offers plenty of spirited feminine pluck, thanks both to Mia Wasikowska's sensitive performance and Moira Buffini's impressively nuanced script. The book runs roughly 400 pages, and capturing all that depth in a two-hour film is no small accomplishment; Buffini — who also scripted the charming Tamara Drewe — does a fine job.

Then, too, Michael Fassbender's Edward Rochester just might get swooning female viewers to forget Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy, in 1995's Pride and Prejudice. Fassbender's tempestuous Rochester is a haunted soul for the ages.

Fukunaga's one irritating misstep is the decision to open his film at the story's first climax — the conclusion of the third of this saga's five major acts — and then reveal what came before through a series of lengthy flashbacks. This sort of structural conceit, if employed unnecessarily, bespeaks a director who fears that his audience demands a splashy first scene, in order to settle into the story. That's utter nonsense, particularly given the drama at hand as Bronte's book begins.

Then, too, Fukunaga compounds the error later on, by showing us those opening scenes again, when Buffini's screenplay catches up to them. What, did they think we had forgotten so quickly?

That pesky annoyance aside, we quickly settle into the unhappy tale of poor Jane, orphaned as a child and initially raised by her Aunt Sarah (the hissably waspish Sally Hawkins, who recently starred in Made in Dagenham), who despises the girl. As soon as decorum permits, Jane — a heartbreaking performance, at this early age, by Amelia Clarkson — is shipped off to the foreboding Lowood School for Girls.

Additionally, Aunt Sarah makes it clear that "it" — not "she" — will remain at Lowood during all holidays. Needless to say, this is the sort of institution where the staff appears to live quite well on the tuition fees, while the scores of young girls must make do with cold rooms, minimal clothing and meager meals.

We generally associate this sort of hard-luck orphan with Charles Dickens ... and, in truth, Oliver Twist didn't have it any harder.