One Night Only: A delightfully sexy romp

One Night Only (2026) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for frequent profanity, sexual candor and surprisingly little nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Although one first must accept this film’s ridiculously unlikely premise, what follows is an unexpectedly delightful romantic comedy, highlighted by Travis Braun’s continuously cheeky script and two stars who share a Periodic Table’s worth of chemistry.

 

Allie (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner) bump into each other — not for the
first time — when they independently find the only bodega in all of New York City
that still has one precious condom for sale.

Think of this as a gentler, (somewhat) kinder response to the one-night-of-legal-crime franchise that began with 2013’s The Purge.

The setting is New York City, the time some point is the very near future. Thanks to the efforts of an ultra-conservative D.C. faction, three years earlier the “Mandate” became law, which outlawed premarital sex. Enforcement was established via the mandatory placement of biometric tattoos on everybody’s wrist, which signal authorities when unsanctioned canoodling takes place.

 

The ban is lifted for just 12 hours, one night each year ... and these events begin shortly before the kick-off.

 

Braun and director Will Gluck employ this gimmick as an ingenious means of overcoming the most persistent challenge in romantic comedies: how to credibly keep separating two people obviously destined for each others, without relying on clichés such as miscommunication or missed connections.

 

It’s a cheeky step up from the suspenseful “ball drop” on New Year’s Eve: Who will you kiss?

 

Throw in The Big Apple as a bustling, effervescent backdrop, and the result —unexpectedly — is delightful.

 

Owen (Callum Turner) is a hardworking pizza shop owner and hopeless, old-school romantic who has planned — down to the tiniest detail — how to spend this night with longtime fiancée Malika (Maya Hawke). Alas, their “favorite restaurant” preamble self-destructs when she abruptly confesses that she wants to take advantage of the moment ... by sleeping with somebody else.

 

Allie (Monica Barbaro), a talented singer whose stage fright has relegated her to the anonymity of studio work, has made a career of turning familiar pop songs into jingles for glossy pharmaceutical medications with impossible-to-pronounce names (a very funny touch). She’s a hopeless romantic with a vivid fantasy life, ready to Embrace The Moment with encouragement from best friend Arya (Quintessa Swindell) and “wing woman” Jacinta (King Princess).

 

Their goal: a genuine connection with a “quality” guy, and true love.

Crime 101: Slick and suspenseful

Crime 101 (2025) • View trailer

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

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This is a solid, methodical crime thriller, very much in the mold of classics such as 1971’s The French Connection, 2010’s The Town, and director Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) and Collateral (2004).

 

During their first date, Maya (Monica Barbaro) becomes increasingly puzzled when
Mike (Chris Hemsworth) is unable — or unwilling — to share personal details about
his childhood, friends and family members.

Director/scripter Bart Layton delivers a similarly clinical, semi-detached atmosphere, along with an intriguing roster of characters, each deftly portrayed by the excellent ensemble cast. Layton also benefits from his source material: the 2021 novella by respected crime author Don Winslow.

The best line from that novella, which firmly establishes the milieu in which these individuals operate: “Laws are made to be broken, with rules that are made to be followed.”

 

The on-screen result is a treat.

 

Layton doesn’t waste time with any back-story. We briefly meet our three primary characters as each greets a new day: Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), cool, calm and collected; Sharon Coombs (Halle Berry), exhausted from another night of fitful sleep; and Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), rumpled, flustered and unhappy.

 

Matters then focus on Mike, as he begins another of his precision-planned heists of jewels being transported to underworld buyers. He intercepts and takes the place of a guard, which grants him access to the actual transfer point, orchestrated by the shady jeweler (Payman Maadi, as Sammy Kassem). Davis brandishes a gun, sufficient to frighten everyone into cooperation; clearly, variations of this approach have succeeded many times before.

 

But this time things go slightly awry, because an intermediary brought along a younger, unseasoned companion who behaves rashly.

 

Clearly shaken, Mike nonetheless keeps his rendezvous with his fence and “sponsor,” known only as Money (Nick Nolte). They discuss Mike’s next scoped-out job, involving the robbery of a posh Santa Barbara jewelry store. But Mike has had second thoughts, concerned by too many variables.

 

Meanwhile, high-end claims adjuster Sharon Coombs (Halle Berry), dressed to kill, is doing her best to sweet-talk über-rich Beverly Hills asshole Monroe (Tate Donovan) into allowing her company to insure and protect all the flagrantly expensive elements of his upcoming marriage to his trophy fiancée, Adrienne (Andra Nechita). 

 

Sharon has long been promised partnership at her firm, but she’s beginning to realize that her smarmy boss, Mark (Paul Adelstein), has been dangling this hope while using her as glamorous “bait” on wealthy clients. And, on the north end of 50, Sharon worries that she may be reaching her sell-by date … particularly when Mark augments his team with a much younger cutie.

 

When Kassem calls the police; Lou catches the case with his partner, Tillman (Corey Hawkins). Recognizing the modus operandi, Lou is convinced that this is the latest job by the same individual responsible for a couple dozen earlier, similar heists, all of them committed at stores along the 101 freeway. But he’s alone is this belief, and his ongoing obsession has diminished the respect he once possessed, as a capable investigator.

 

Lou is an old-style cop, who trusts his instincts and believes in following even the tiniest of leads. This attitude has made him a dinosaur, increasingly at odds with a boss who prefers clearing cases off the department ledgers, to actually solving who perpetrated them.

A Complete Unknown: Not come Oscar time!

A Complete Unknown (2024) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

Director James Mangold’s mesmerizing depiction of Bob Dylan’s early years is laden with electrifying moments.

 

Early on, Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) is the self-assured, veteran stage performer,
and Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) is just a nervous kid ... but that dynamic changes
quickly, and quite dramatically.

The first comes quickly, when a scruffy 19-year-old leaves Minnesota for New York’s Greenwich Village, with little more than a guitar and the clothes he wore, in order to visit Woody Guthrie, with whom he had become obsessed after reading the legendary folk singer’s autobiography.

It’s January 1961: a quietly intimate moment in the hospital room where Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) has long been under care for Huntington’s disease (for which there was no treatment, at the time). His frequent visitor is Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), who has learned how to understand his longtime friend’s mostly unintelligible attempts at speech. Young Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) appears in the doorway; Seeger invites him inside.

 

Guthrie spots the guitar slung against Dylan’s back, and gestures for a song.

 

The young man obliges.

 

Like ... wow.

 

Movie magic at its finest.

 

A similarly powerful scene comes much later; it involves a cigarette passed between two people standing on opposite sides of a chain-link fence: unexpectedly sweet, intimate ... and sad.

 

Mangold and co-scripter Jay Cocks based their film on Elijah Wood’s 2015 non-fiction book, Dylan Goes Electric: Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night that Split the Sixties. The result is rigorously authentic to actual events — warts and all — allowing for occasional fabrications for dramatic purposes. The time frame is brief, from early 1961 to the galvanic, game-changing evening of July 25, 1965, during Dylan’s closing set at that year’s Newport Folk Festival.

 

To say that Chalamet fully inhabits this performance is the worst of understatements. It isn’t merely an uncanny replication of Dylan’s look, posture, mannerisms and the cadence of his mumbled, almost whispered speaking voice. Chalamet also sings and performs more than 40 songs during the course of this rhapsodic film, often sounding more like Dylan than the man himself.

 

The dramatic arc here will be familiar to those who’ve followed the careers of artists who burst explosively onto the scene, and then become pigeon-holed. Some are content to stay in such boxes, cheerfully riding the money machine; others — the genuinely talented — chafe at public expectations.

 

The resulting weight can be crippling. What, if anything, does an artist owe his public?

Top Gun: Maverick — Top thrills

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action, and some strong language

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.27.22

When all the cylinders fire properly, it’s hard to beat a star-driven action melodrama.

 

Although this rip-roaring sequel to 1986’s Top Gun has been shaped to Tom Cruise’s outsized personality, there’s no denying the resulting entertainment value. This is classic Hollywood filmmaking: larger-than-life characters with just enough individuality to distinguish one from the next; a couple shades of interpersonal angst — and conflict — to touch the heartstrings; and all manner of heroic derring-do.

 

When his hot-shot students contemptuously snicker over Maverick's (Tom Cruise)
calm insistense that they still have a lot to learn, it doesn't take long for this "old guy"
to prove who really has the right stuff.

I’m generally concerned when the opening credits cite as many as five writers — in this case, Peter Craig, Justin Marks, Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie — but this isn’t a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. Their story is cleverly structured into three distinct acts, each with specific goals and relationship arcs that blend with the high-octane fighter jet action.

Director Joseph Kosinski and editor Eddie Hamilton keep a steady hand on the throttle, and their tension-fueled ride never lets up.

 

Granted, this is one of those silly stories where everybody is known by colorful monikers, rather than their actual names. Ya gotta just roll with that.

 

In a refreshing nod to real time, more than three decades have passed since Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) established himself as one of the Navy’s top aviators. He has continued to push the envelope as a brave — and somewhat reckless — test pilot, nimbly dodging an advancement in rank that would ground him.

 

“It’s not what I am,” he admits, at one point. “It’s who I am.”

 

Each time a fresh act of insubordination has threatened to get him kicked out of the Navy, Maverick has been rescued by former nemesis-turned-wingman Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer), now a 4-star admiral with the clout to protect his longtime friend.

 

But even Iceman may not be able to save Maverick from the high-tech progress that includes robotic and remote-controlled fighter jets that won’t require flesh-and-blood pilots. 

 

“The future is coming,” barks Rear Adm. Chester “Hammer” Cain (Ed Harris, in a fleeting cameo), “and you’re not in it.”

 

Nonsense, Maverick replies. A mission’s success always will come down to the split-second reflexes of the pilot on the scene.

 

As if to test this belief, Maverick abruptly is sent back to “Top Gun” school, where he liaises with Adm. Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm) and Adm. Solomon “Warlock” Bates (Charles Parnell). Assuming he’s about to get a mission, Maverick is chastened to learn that he’ll be teaching a dozen much younger Top Gun graduates: the elite “best of the best.”