Mortal Engines: High-octane thrills

Mortal Engines (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13 for dramatic intensity and sci-fi action and violence
By Derrick Bang

This one’s relentless.

Director Christian Rivers’ exhilarating adaptation of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines is sci-fi world-building on a scale we’ve not seen since Lord of the Rings and Avatar. This impressively ambitious, post-apocalyptic saga hits the ground running — literally — and doesn’t let up during a bravura 127-minute adventure that barely seems long enough to contain its opulent wonders.

Out of the frying pan, and into the fire? Tom (Robert Sheehan) and Hester (Hera Hilmar,
right) are moments from a fate worse than death, when they're snatched away by the
enigmatic Anna Fang (Jihae). But is this a rescue ... or something more sinister?

Scripters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson have done an impressive job of condensing Reeve’s 2001 young adult novel into a slam-bang romp that faithfully follows roughly half the book and hits most of the key plot beats. (That said, Walsh & Co. deviate seriously during the climax, likely in the interest of anticipating a sequel.)

These events take place a millennium after what has come to be known as the “Sixty Minute War,” when Western nations unleashed a cataclysmic weapon that destroyed much of civilization, while causing planet-wide geological upheaval. Forced to adapt to earthquakes, volcanoes and other instabilities that continued for hundreds of years, metropolitan centers were retrofitted with massive wheels and engines, in order to become mobile “traction cities”: a steampunk method of survival known as Municipal Darwinism.

Countries have vanished; civilization per se has developed into cooperative bands of peaceful small-town traders, constantly on the alert for fast-moving, scavenger settlements.

Along with the biggest threat of all: the massive predator city of London, which hunts, pursues and dismantles (devours) other cities for resources.

All this by way of back-story, because Rivers opens the film without preamble, as the massive bulk of London chases down a small mining community known as Salthook. Production designer Dan Hennah, cinematographer Simon Raby and a huge visual effects team — Ken McGaugh, Kevin Smith, Luke Millar and Dennis Yoo, take a well-deserved bow — swoop the camera in, around and through London’s jaw-dropping hugeness and complexity, layered with bits and bobs clearly snatched from countless earlier captures.

It’s an absolutely amazing, stunning sequence, particularly as many of London’s thousands of residents gather at their city’s layered edges, cheering the pursuit with the bloodthirsty savagery of heartless nationalists (an allusion to current real-world behavior, in which this film frequently indulges).

Salthook has maneuverability and quick turns in its favor, but it can’t compete with London’s stronger engines. The outcome is inevitable, with one of the smaller community’s residents — a young woman with a red scarf concealing part of her face — watching with (we’re surprised) what appears to be mixed feelings.

The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies: At long last, the grand finale!

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense fantasy action violence and some truly scary monsters
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.19.14

Peter Jackson certainly knows how to stage a spectacle.

He’d have had a great time during Hollywood’s Golden Age, choreographing the fabled casts of thousands.

As a massive battle between elves, dwarves, humans and nasty orcs rages about them,
Gandalf (Ian McKellen, left) and Bard (Luke Evans) realize that the ghastly orc armies are
being directed by the orc lord Azog the Defiler, standing on a nearby hilltop. Clearly, he
must be stopped ... but how?

That said, he has become a poor judge of narrative structure. Although this final installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit builds to a rousing, suspenseful, crowd-pleasing climax, this cinematic saga definitely didn’t deserve the three-part presentation that seems to have been dictated entirely by commerce.

Consider the irony: We couldn’t get enough of Jackson’s three-part adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and fans eagerly snapped up the extended-edition DVDs, to savor all the additional scenes left on the cutting-room floor. That adulation was entirely warranted, because those three books are extremely dense.

But The Hobbit lacks that complexity; it’s a shorter, single book, and — more significantly — is aimed at a much younger audience. Granted, Jackson and his fellow scripters — Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and horror maestro Guillermo del Toro — drew from the 125 pages of notes and appendices included with modern editions of The Lord of the Ring ... but, even so, this newest trilogy has suffered from bloat since its first installment. (I still haven’t recovered from the slapstick, Disney-esque dwarf songs in Bilbo’s dining room.)

Although the major plot points have been impressively realized, there’s a definite sense of treading water along the way, and extraneous characters we’d be better off without. Notable case in point: the Master of Laketown (Stephen Fry) and his weaselly aide (Mikael Persbrandt), who popped up in the middle installment and return here. They’re no more than stunt casting, particularly in Fry’s case, and their characters seem to have wandered in from a Blackadder installment. Very poor judgment, on Jackson’s part.

More disappointing, though, is the fact that — in this third and final installment — Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins has become a bystander in his own story. That’s a shame on all sorts of levels, not the least of which is the lessened degree to which we’re able to enjoy Freeman’s marvelously subtle performance. I just love the way he twitches his nose, or starts to say something, checks himself, and then decides that silence is the better part of wisdom.

Freeman gets more mileage out of Bilbo’s double-take decisions not to speak, than many of these supporting characters deliver via pages of dialogue.

The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug: More Middle-Earth magic

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for intense fantasy action violence and frightening images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.13.13

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way.

Yes, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas makes a vibrant return during this second chapter in director Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, under circumstances that will raise the eyebrows of J.R.R. Tolkien purists. No matter; It’s hard to complain when Jackson and co-scripters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro integrate this fan-favorite character with such verve.

As Thorin (Richard Armitage, right) explains what Bilbo (Martin Freeman, left) is to do,
once he gets inside the Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, the little hobbit finally, truly realizes
the danger involved. How in the world will he be able to find a single magical gem, amid
a veritable mountain of treasure, without disturbing the ferocious dragon rumored to
sleep beneath all that gold?

We’ve not seen swash so well buckled since the 1987 adaptation of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride.

On the other hand, there’s nary a glimmer of the brooding, owl-eyed Gollum, not even a whispered “My precious” in the soundtrack. The gnarly, nasty little goblin is sorely missed, but — again — it’s hard to complain when his place has been taken by the largest, most impressive fire-breathing dragon ever brought to the big screen. (That would be Smaug.)

Jackson’s Tolkien films never do things in a small way, and that continues to be true here. You’ll once again be amazed by the size and scope of these many settings, whether the forest community of the Wood-elves, or the immense underground Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, deep within Lonely Mountain.

Production designer Dan Hennah continues to have a field day with details large and small, aided and abetted by visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri and the army of talented artists at Weta Digital. The finished work is seamless; it’s truly impossible to determine where physical set design leaves off, and the computer-enhanced magic takes over.

We truly live in an age of cinematic wonder, to see a book this vividly, imaginatively rich brought so successfully to the big screen.

Acting verisimilitude also plays a major role, of course, and Martin Freeman remains the pluperfect hobbit: His Bilbo Baggins experiences (endures?) one of the best character arcs in fantasy fiction. No longer frightened by his own shadow, Bilbo has found his courage but also carries an increasingly dangerous secret: the powerful golden ring that grants its wearer invisibility, while inexorably sucking the soul from that same owner.

Freeman’s Bilbo spends much of this story at war with himself: all too aware of the psychic damage he’s enduring, and yet forced — by increasingly dangerous circumstances — to don the ring again, and again, and again.

Alternatively, Freeman is equally precise with comic timing, as with Bilbo’s fiddly hands and suddenly stricken expression, having engineered a perfect getaway plan for his dwarf friends, when he realizes that he has no means of escape. Despite the scene’s tension, we can’t help but laugh. That’s clever writing, deft direction and subtle acting.

The Hobbit: An impressive journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) • View trailer
4.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for considerable violence, action and relentless dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.14.12

A decade after The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and its stunning — but definitely well-deserved — 11 Academy Awards, director Peter Jackson has lost none of his ability to amaze and delight.

Bilbo (Martin Freeman, center) can't imagine why so many dwarves — including, from
left, Bifur (William Kircher), Dwalin (Graham McTavish), Bofur (James Nesbitt) and Oin
(John Callen) — have decided to join him for dinner on this otherwise average evening.
The poor hobbit is about to find out, which won't ease his mind any.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is breathtaking in every sense of the word: a glorious return to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, with its heroic little folk, their unlikely and often quarrelsome allies, and a host of dire and deadly creatures, each more ghastly than the last.

Jackson and his numerous production teams certainly had nothing to prove, when it comes to world-building; their Lord of the Rings trilogy delivered the true “sense of wonder” that made 21st century filmgoers appreciate what it must have been like, a century ago, when audiences first glimpsed the moving images of primitive one-reelers. We can only lament that Tolkien himself never had the opportunity to witness the grand and glorious means by which Jackson brought his imaginative prose to the big screen.

And yet, amazingly, Jackson has upped the ante again with this first installment of The Hobbit (with two more to follow, in successive Decembers, as before). All the realms of Middle Earth are back, as if we’d never left them; one imagines that some massive chunk of Jackson’s New Zealand simply has remained, wholly transformed, for all this time.

All this said, questions have been raised.

Turning Lord of the Rings into three expansive films made sense: one for each book. But The Hobbit is a single, much slimmer volume, with a kid-friendly story that (by design) lacks the narrative complexity of Tolkien’s heftier trilogy. Pundits have wondered whether the decision to turn THIS saga into a nine-hour experience might be more than a little self-indulgent.

Ah, but Jackson and his co-scripters — veteran Middle Earth colleagues Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, along with newcomer Guillermo del Toro, a masterful fantasist in his own right — had a secret weapon. We tend to forget that Tolkien concluded his Lord of the Rings trilogy with 125 pages of notes and appendices that also added considerable back-story to The Hobbit: more than enough to justify this unexpectedly ambitious big-screen adaptation.

Additionally, as James Cameron did with Avatar, Jackson has taken advantage of technological advancements to deliver a whole-immersion experience that’s almost too real at times ... and definitely will startle folks (about which, more in a moment).

The Adventures of Tintin: Thrills, spills and great 3D frills

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG, for plenty of peril and action violence
By Derrick Bang


Director Steven Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson respectfully honor their source material during the opening scene of The Adventures of Tintin, which finds the intrepid boy reporter having himself sketched by a street artist ... who bears an uncanny resemblance to the character’s Belgian creator.

A "simple" plane ride is anything but, when intrepid boy reporter Tintin is
involved; our young hero and his faithful canine sidekick, Snowy, barely
survive a crash-landing in the desert. The bigger question: Will the nasty
jolt stir long-forgotten memories in Tintin's companion, Captain Haddock, so
that they can get on with their treasure quest?

Better still, the finished drawing — granted a nod of approval by its subject — is Tintin, as illustrated for close to half a century, from 1929 to ’75, by Georges Prosper Remi, better known by his pen name Hergé.

It’s a brilliant prologue by Spielberg and scripters Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, because it immediately connects Hergé’s style and vision with this film’s motion-control characters. Call it a hand-off: much the way George Lazenby faced the camera after his pre-credits escapade in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and, acknowledging his having taken over the role of James Bond from Sean Connery, cheerfully quipped, “This never happened to the other fella!”

Spielberg actually begins The Adventures of Tintin with a smashing title credits sequence: very much in the vein of both Hergé’s work and the equally memorable opening credits to 2002’s Catch Me if You Can. As was the case with that earlier Spielberg romp, soundtrack maestro John Williams delivers another deliciously retro title theme, echoing the “cool jazz” mode of his emerging career in the late 1950s and early ’60s. (Williams, let us remember, was the pianist in Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn sessions.)

I place a lot of weight on opening credits, as slick credits often signal great things ahead. That’s absolutely the case here: The Adventures of Tintin is a marvelous mash-up of comic book thrills, movie serial clichés and — most particularly — ferociously clever animation that allows exhilarating action sequence “camera angles” that simply wouldn’t be possible in a live-action film.

And yet this rich, suspenseful fantasy feels very much like a live-action film, thanks to next-gen motion-control visual effects geniuses Joe Letteri, Scott E. Anderson and Jamie Beard. The “dead eye problem” — which turned the children of The Polar Express into creepy zombies — is no longer an issue; Spielberg also wisely avoided the trap of using animated characters who resemble the film’s “stars,” which made Jim Carrey’s version of A Christmas Carol equally weird, for different reasons.

No, with the exception of that initial tip of the hat to Hergé, these characters look like fully dimensioned versions of their graphic novel selves, and definitely not like the actors voicing the parts. Tintin and his spectacularly resourceful dog, Snowy, are realized superbly; I’m also impressed by the fidelity with which bumbling inspectors Thomson and Thompson have been brought to life.

The Lovely Bones: Broken

The Lovely Bones (2009) • View trailer for The Lovely Bones
2.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity and a very grim storyline
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.21.10
Buy DVD: The Lovely Bones • Buy Blu-Ray: The Lovely Bones (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

Likening herself to a snapshot — a moment frozen in time — young Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), during her concluding voice-over in The Lovely Bones, laments that she was here but for a moment ... and then gone.

If only the same could be said of the film itself.

Susie (Saoirse Ronan) enjoys helping her father (Mark Wahlberg) with his
hobby of building ships in bottles, even as she playfully teases him about it;
he describes the way in which such a painstaking hobby instills the discipline
of seeing things through, and -- waving a hand vaguely toward shelves filled
with bottled tiny ships -- promises that "One day, all this will be yours."
His daughter, with a horrified glance, can't be sure it's a promise or a threat...

Director Peter Jackson's adaptation of Alice Sebold's grim novel — which Jackson scripted with longtime collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens — is a dull, dreary and dispiriting slog. It feels like a self-indulgent vanity project that got entirely out of hand. Jackson obviously wanted to make portentous statements about death and the despair of a human soul left with no means to take care of unfinished business ... but all this gets lost amid leaden pacing, irritating plot points and monotonous, hippy-trippy images of the afterlife.

Seeing this film immediately on the heels of Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus made for an interesting comparison. Both films are a mess, in different ways, but Gilliam's chaotic dreamscapes at least have the benefit of being relevant to his storyline. The luxurious realms in which Susie finds herself trapped, in great contrast, pointlessly interrupt the flow of a (potentially) more interesting narrative.

I'm reminded of old-style movie musicals, where the actors would break away from a dramatic moment, often quite jarringly, in order to launch into a song. You'll get just as irritated here, each time Jackson cuts to Susie's fixation with the same damned gazebo.

And it's a shame, because The Lovely Bones begins well. We're fully involved with these characters up to the moment Susie's life is snuffed, and quite horribly; things fall apart only later — and this is the bulk of the overlong 135-minute film — when the girl refuses to "move on," preferring instead to find out to what degree she can, or should, hang around and attempt to influence matters back in the mortal world.

District 9: An enthusiastic 10

District 9 (2009) • View trailer for District 9
Five stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, violence and gobs o' gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.21.09
Buy DVD: District 9• Buy Blu-Ray: District 9 [Blu-ray]

This one has it all.

Part scathing social commentary, part eye-popping speculative fiction, part kick-ass action flick, South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp's District 9 is a ferociously engaging film: the sort of impressively original work that shapes popular entertainment for years to come.

Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley, left), assigned to serve "eviction
notices" to the unappealing aliens that have been crammed into a slum for 20
years, naively believes that the "virtue" of his task will be enough to ensure
his safety while within the fenced compound known as District 9.

Blomkamp and cinematographer Trent Opaloch also make excellent use of the "found footage" style of filmmaking that has become so common these days; this drama unfolds as a blend of faux documentary, on-the-street guerrilla footage and — when necessary — "traditional" camerawork that allows us access to scenes that couldn't be obtained any other way.

Point-of-view purists may kick up a fuss, but who cares? Blomkamp and editor Julian Clarke assemble all the pieces brilliantly: You'll be hooked from the very first scenes.

It's important to note that some genuine thought and planning went into this manner of storytelling; it's not just the usual irritating excuse for jiggly camerawork that mars most recent flicks taking this approach. Blomkamp puts us right into this pell-mell saga, and gives it a sense of immediacy that makes District 9 the genius cinematic equivalent of what Orson Welles did so cleverly with radio, back when he frightened the hell out of listeners with his 1938 adaptation of War of the Worlds.

More to the point, this sucker moves.

Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell waste no time in setting the stage, beginning their tale with a series of on-camera interviews apparently being conducted after the fact: This both establishes the necessary back-story, while suggesting that these events — whatever they were — went very badly.

The time is an unspecified point in our near future, the setting Johannesburg, where for 20 years the city's residents have lived uneasily alongside a rather unusual refugee camp. Two decades earlier, a huge extra-terrestrial "mother ship" came to rest above Johannesburg and then ... did nothing. With the world's eyes on this South African metropolis, local forces finally broke into the vessel and discovered countless malnourished aliens, all apparently too helpless to do anything.