She Said: Impressively inspiring

She Said (2022) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and explicit sexual candor

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.18.22

We assume, when one of the victims finally agrees to share her story with New York Times investigative journalists Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan), that this will be the most harrowing moment of director Maria Schrader’s richly compelling and superbly acted drama.

 

Investigative journalists Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan, far left) and Megan Twohey (Carey
Mulligan), along with assistant managing editor Rebecca Corbett (Patricia Clarkson,
far right), listen with admiration and delight as executive editor Dean Baquet
(Andre Braugher) crisply puts an irate phone caller in his place.

The speaker: nervous, soft-spoken, embarrassed and ashamed, the words emerging haltingly amid tears and choked-off syllables, as she so vividly recalls what happened to her in the privacy of Harvey Weinstein’s hotel suite.

The listener: appalled, silent, eyes growing wider by the second.

 

We viewers: equally stone-silent, sickened and enraged.

 

The story moves on; we exhale shakily, thinking OK, the worst is over.

 

But no: Twohey and Kantor soon reach another victim, sit quietly as another — mercilessly similar — confession emerges, this time made even more intense by the performances, and the way Schrader cuts back and forth between framed one-shots of the two actresses.

 

And then another. Even more awful, in part because of the repetition, the familiarity, the by-now recognized patterns of an apex sexual predator.

 

This is smart and savvy filmmaking. She Said deserves place of pride alongside its all-time best cousins: All the President’s Men and Spotlight.

 

When done persuasively — and Schrader’s film is very persuasive — nothing beats a well-constructed investigative journalism drama. They’re part mystery (just how deep and widespread IS this story?), part puzzle (how does one finesse details, acknowledgments and confessions from people unwilling or unable to talk?) and part building suspense and rage-fueled anticipation (what will it take to nail this bastard?).

 

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s sharp script is based on Twohey, Kantor and Rebecca Corbett’s months-long New York Times investigation into the shocking behavior of Weinstein — and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge Hollywood attitude that tolerated and even conspired to maintain it — and their subsequent 2019 book, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.

 

This film is rigorously authentic: Names are named — to an often surprising degree — dialogue is lifted from transcripts, progress unfolds as it occurred (if, perhaps, accelerated a bit to accommodate a two-hour film).

The Bookshop: A melancholy read

The Bookshop (2017) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Director/scripter Isabel Coixet coaxes moments of sublime cinematic poetry in her thoughtful adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s spare 1978 novel; the setting and characters — the sense of time and place — have been lifted lovingly from the page.

Beware the practiced insincerity of aristocratic hauteur: Not yet realizing that she has
been suckered into the spider's web, Florence (Emily Mortimer, left) thanks Violet
(Patricia Clarkson) for being invited to so lavish a gathering.

It couldn’t have been easy, in this instant-gratification social media era, to convey the unique warmth and comfort that derive from settling down — with no sense of time — to enjoy an absorbing book.

But viewers anticipating a typically light-hearted slice of eccentric, small-town British whimsy — a droll turn along the lines of, say The Closer You Get or The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain — are in for an unpleasant shock. Fitzgerald had much darker, class-conscious fish to fry, and Coixet has honored the subtext that unflinchingly skewers the small-minded malice of old-world aristocrats who — fully aware that they’re an endangered species — are determined to ruin the lives of their “lessers.” Simply because they still can.

To be sure, Coixet wields a brush of many colors; portions of her film are amusing, at times even laugh-out-loud funny. But such levity is subtly, mercilessly asphyxiated by the machinations of cold, calculated villainy; this is dark drama, not romantic comedy, and you will not exit the theater with a smile.

The setting is the small, East Anglican coastal town of Hardborough, Suffolk; the year is 1959. Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), widowed since losing her husband during World War II, decides to open a bookshop in a damp, long-abandoned building known as Old House.

It’s not clear how long Florence has been in Hardborough, although she seems a recent arrival. On the one hand, many of the locals greet her pleasantly enough; she’s familiar with the community, and aware that Old House has lain dormant for seven years. And yet there’s also a sense that she exists slightly out of phase with many of the townsfolk, who remain wary in her presence.

We do get a sense that Florence has emerged from a long period of grief, newly emboldened to give Hardborough its first bookstore as a gift, and as a means of sharing the special sort of magic that Fitzgerald described so well: “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.”

On a personal level, Florence intends the gesture as a means of preserving important memories of her husband: They met at a bookstore, and bonded over their shared devotion to its contents.

Her fatal mistake is the belief that this is a town that wants a bookstore, as much as she thinks it does.

Woe to those foolish enough to stroll public streets with their hearts worn so visibly on one sleeve: naïve idealists destined to become prey.

Maze Runner — The Scorch Trials: A barren wasteland

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated PG-13, for profanity and relentless action violence
By Derrick Bang 

As was the case with last year’s opening entry in this big-screen franchise, this sequel looks great — the special effects are quite impressive — and the acting is solid.

But the storyline remains bonkers-stupid and utterly impenetrable. If last year’s cliff-hanging Maze Runner left us with far more questions than answers, this second installment doesn’t even try to make sense. It’s as if scripter T.S. Nowlin abandoned any effort to parse James Dasher’s complicated source novel, and chose instead to fabricate one superficial chase sequence after another.

Things seem mighty bad, folks ... then again, maybe our heroes should simply stop looking
over the next ridge. Try as he might, Thomas (Dylan O'Briend, second from left) can't stop
leading his friends ‚ from left, Minho (Ki Hong Lee), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster),
Frypan (Dexter Darden) and Teresa (Kaya Scodelario) from one crisis to another.

When our primary protagonist Thomas insists, at one point, that he’s tired of running, I cheerfully agreed: I’m tired of watching him run.

Him and everybody else in this preposterous, kitchen-sink excuse for a sci-fi thriller.

We’d ordinarily be inclined to blame Dasher, since his book logically serves as the source material. But Nowlin’s screenplay bears scant resemblance to Dasher’s novel, perhaps because the filmmakers are trying to condense a five-book (thus far) series into a more compact trilogy. Which would have been a reasonable idea, if Nowlin had the slightest talent for narrative, plot structure or dialogue.

Yep: This is one of those movies with eye-rolling, melodramatically laughable one-liners, invariably delivered with utter sincerity. The cast isn’t at fault; everybody does their best ... but not even seasoned Shakespeareans could wring emotional honesty from these verbal clunkers.

Such dialogue also frequently anticipates moronic behavior. “They’re never gonna stop chasing us,” our heroes lament, having narrowly escaped a massive land- and air-based search party. So what do they do next? They take a long walk across a wholly exposed desert landscape, where — based on what happened just a few scenes earlier — they’d clearly be spotted and captured.

But no: Apparently the bad guys decided not to look that day.

On top of which — and this is Dasher’s fault — I still can’t get beyond his internal technological inconsistencies. Consider the engineering ingenuity and sheer brute manpower that would have been required to build, maintain and operate the massive maze that initially trapped our young heroes. Now ask yourself whether such structures could have been fabricated so quickly — because we now know there were numerous mazes — given the timeline of events as established via maddeningly brief flashbacks.

And, more crucially, to what purpose, precisely? Two films in, and we’ve still no clue as to the original maze’s intent.

On top of which, we’re once again forced to accept a truly dismal picture of human nature under stress: a degree of “civilized” behavior so barbaric, so abhorrent, that it frankly defies description. That’s not merely sad; it’s also loathsome.

Cairo Time: A Charming 'Time'

Cairo Time (2010) • View trailer for Cairo Time
Four stars (out of five) • Rated PG for no particular reason

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.24.10
Buy DVD: Cairo Time • Buy Blu-Ray: Cairo Time [Blu-ray]

Writer/director Ruba Nadda's quiet little character study is thoughtful and spare: a big-screen Hemingway short story ... allowing for the fact that the primary protagonist here is a woman.

But not just any woman: Juliette Grant is played by Patricia Clarkson, a superlative actress generally confined to supporting roles — such as Emma Stone's mother, in Easy A — who absolutely deserves this starring shot. She first caught my attention with back-to-back performances in 2003, in The Station Agent and Pieces of April, the latter bringing her a well-deserved Academy Award nomination.

Although she has been delaying a visit to some of Cairo's
fabled landmarks, in the hopes of sharing them with her
absent husband, Juliette (Patricia Clarkson) finally allows
new friend Tareq (Alexander Siddig) to be her guide: an
oddly intimate gesture typical of the Brief Encounter-style
relationship that evolves during the course of this
cinematic tone-poem.

Clarkson had been busy prior to that, and I wasn't surprised to discover that she had delivered memorable roles in Playing by Heart (1998), The Green Mile (1999) and Far from Heaven (2002). It can be fun, after "suddenly" being struck by somebody's talent, to back-trace and discover that you've been admiring her for years, without quite being aware of it.

All of which brings us to Cairo Time, in which Clarkson shines as an American woman wholly out of her element. Juliette has flown into Cairo to spend a long-overdue vacation with her husband, Mark. They're both workaholics: She has an executive editorial position with a high-tone woman's magazine that's both glossy and superficial; he's a dedicated United Nations relief worker.

Unhappily, he's not at the airport to meet her. Instead, Juliette is collected by Tareq Khalifa (Alexander Siddig), until recently one of her husband's colleagues, who explains that Mark has been "detained" at the Gaza Strip. That word is pregnant with meaning, in this part of the world, but a phone call that evening reassures Juliette that Mark is fine ... but not likely to get away soon.

Elegy: Love among the ruins

Elegy (2008) • View trailer for Elegy
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for nudity, sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.5.08
Buy DVD: Elegy


His 1997 Pulitzer Prize and 2001 American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal notwithstanding, Philip Roth seems doomed — in certain circles, anyway — to be remembered for his scandalous third novel, 1969's Portnoy's Complaint, and for his ongoing obsessions with promiscuity and Jewish angst.

Mindful of sexual harassment issues, college professor David Kepesh (Ben
Kingsley) always waits until the end of term before throwing a party for his
students. He always hopes to find at least one who will be properly intoxicated
by his worldly presence, but gets more than he bargained for with Consuela
Castillo (Penélope Cruz), who, during their initial conversation, reduces him to
schoolboy clumsiness. Fortunately, things will improve from here...

And, more recently, for succumbing to a perfectly natural desire to explore tales of aging men indulging in affairs with much younger women, which puts Roth in the equally excellent literary company of, say, John Updike. One cannot really fault a male literary lion who, upon reaching "a certain age," worries about his increasing obsolescence. Eventually (with luck), we all will.

Elegy, exquisitely adapted by screenwriter Nicholas Meyer from Roth's short novel, 2001's The Dying Animal, is the saga of a celebrated man of letters and cultural observer who, thanks to the proximity to young people granted by his day job as a college professor, embarks on a passionate affair with a former student.

The encounter proves revealing in many respects: some anticipated, others quite surprising.

But branding this film as nothing more than an "old guy beds Penélope Cruz" fantasy is an unjust snub that overlooks some phenomenal acting, the core truths of Roth's story and director Isabel Coixet's obviously sincere desire to respect both halves of this May/December romance.

David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) is, as he constantly reminds Consuela Castillo (Cruz), 30 years her senior. This seems all the explanation required to describe the apparent folly of allowing a pleasant one-night encounter to blossom into a relationship, but he's merely lying to himself; the truth of the matter — and we see this in Cruz's luminously expressive gaze — is that Consuela loves him and couldn't care less about the age gap.

He's the one with the hang-up, but the whole "age thing" is just an excuse.

Following an unsuccessful youthful marriage, Kepesh has spent the rest of his life trolling for deliberately short-term affairs, due — we're quickly led to believe — to his desire to live according to the sybaritic lifestyle that he believes is mankind's "normal" predilection. He repeatedly espouses this theory when interviewed, and during debates with his longtime best friend, poet George O'Hearn (Dennis Hopper).

In a film laden with revealing exchanges of dialogue, by the way, none are better than these comradely encounters between David and George. Kingsley and Hopper share a relaxed comfort that feels completely natural; we can't help wondering if this scripted familiarity is equally strong off-camera.

George obviously has David's number, and David knows it ... but puts up with it.

David fears intimacy and actual human contact, and believes himself incapable of both, because he intellectually insists mankind isn't wired for it. He admires early American hedonist Thomas Morton and has, in fact, over-analyzed the art of lovemaking to such an absurd degree that he has stripped love itself from the equation.

Married Life: Rather unhappy

Married Life (2008) • View trailer for Married Life
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and rather harshly, for disquieting plot elements
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.3.08
Buy DVD: Married Life • Buy Blu-Ray: Married Life (+ BD Live) [Blu-ray]

Married Life isn't tastelessly whimsical enough to be taken as a black comedy, but it's also too arch to be regarded as a serious psychological drama.

Blame director/co-writer Ira Sachs, who can't seem to make up his mind.

Having been introduced to Kay (Rachel McAdams), his very married best
friend's lover on the side, the swinish Richard (Pierce Brosnan) decides that he
wants this enchanting creature for himself. He thus begins taking her out on
the town; Kay's enjoyment of this new attention naturally calls her intentions
into question. Ultimately, though, these characters — and all the others in
this film — are too blasé for us to care one way or the other.

The problem also can be traced to Pierce Brosnan, whose raised-eyebrow performance and mordant off-camera narration belong in another film. (Let's face it: Nobody smirks like Brosnan.) Every appearance of his deviously roguish character hints at snarky behavior to come, but he's the only one operating in that realm.

Co-stars Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson and Rachel McAdams remain resolutely straight, and we wait in vain for some ingenious plot twists to erupt in the third act.

But they never come.

Indeed, enduring this increasingly dull and dour film to its bitter conclusion produces nothing but disappointment: We slogged through all that for this?

Sachs and co-writer Oren Moverman, adapting a little-known novel by John Bingham — whose major claim to fame, these days, was to have served as the real-life model for John Le Carre's George Smiley — apparently wish to establish a premise and then build a level of playful suspense that Alfred Hitchcock would have admired. They never quite succeed; these characters are too staid to generate any tension.

And despite ample directorial inferences, they're ultimately revealed to have no hidden depths whatsoever: They're merely what they seem ... which isn't all that interesting.

The setting is the late 1940s; the tale is told by Richard (Brosnan), whose off-stage observations are an immediate clue that he's relating the story after the fact. His tone is mildly irreverent; our curiosity is piqued.

Richard's best friend, Harry (Cooper), has been happily married to Pat (Clarkson) for years. They've built a home, a family and a life together. He's some sort of unspecified executive: successful if colorless. She's a housewife: perhaps too intelligent to be content sitting around a house all day, but she accepts her lot uncomplainingly.

The era and general atmosphere seem to have been lifted from a John Cheever story: Everybody dresses too well (even under casual circumstances) and smokes too much, and cocktails are de rigueur after a day at the office, or when friends come over for dinner. Production designer Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski really nails the oppressively whitebread, Leave It to Beaver ambiance: that exaggeration of "normal" intended to conceal darker behavior.