80 for Brady: Score!

80 for Brady (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for suggestive references, drug content and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.3.23 

This is a nice surprise.

 

Although director Kyle Marvin’s cheerful romp is the silly little comedy one would expect from its premise and publicity, it’s also a delightful showcase for its Hollywood veterans.

 

Four rabid football fans "of a certain age" — from left, Trish (Jane Fonda), Betty
(Sally Field), Lou (Lily Tomlin) and Maura (Rita Moreno) — can't believe they've actually
made it to the Super Bowl.

Scripters Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins shrewdly play to their stars’ strengths, and you’ll likely be surprised by the degree to which you become invested in this story’s outcome.

Add the fact that these events are set against the historic Super Bowl LI, and the result is a “silly comedy” that builds to an exhilarating climax.

 

The setting is Massachusetts in 2017, where longtime friends Lou (Lily Tomlin), Trish (Jane Fonda), Maura (Rita Moreno) and Betty (Sally Field) gather in front of the TV every game day to don team jerseys and watch their beloved Patriots … and, most particularly, quarterback Tom Brady. 

 

This routine has continued for years, ever since getting involved with football helped Lou defeat a bout with cancer. In a nod to sports voodoo — as with baseball players who never change their socks once a streak is established — these four gals diligently mimic their actions prior to a long-ago upset victory: where they were sitting or standing, and what they were saying and doing, down to spilling a bowl of potato chips at a precise moment.

 

Lou is the gutsy ringleader, who insists on the replication of all these details. Trish is glam and feisty; Maura is adventurous and tireless. Betty is smart and down-to-earth: the gang’s pragmatic conscience.

 

Each woman comes with a bit of emotional baggage. Maura hasn’t recovered from the loss of her husband, and — rather than live alone in their home — she has sorta-kinda moved into an assisted living facility, in order to be surrounded by other people.

 

Trish falls in love too quickly, and repeatedly gets her heart broken; Lou constantly worries that her cancer might recur. The precise and practical Betty, although a whiz with math and stats, can’t figure out what to do with her hapless husband (Bob Balaban, as Mark), whose absent-mindedness has become a trial. 

 

Once the game concludes, on this particular afternoon, Lou impulsively decides that they all should attend the upcoming Super Bowl, at Houston’s NRG Stadium.

 

But that’s an impossible proposition. They all live (albeit comfortably) on fixed incomes; obtaining tickets is prohibitively expensive, to say nothing of travel and lodging. 

West Side Story: Totally captivating

West Side Story (2021) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and rather generously, for strong violence, strong profanity, attempted rape and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.10.21

The initial few seconds are crucial.

 

Any faithful presentation of West Side Story must begin with a dark stage or screen, as we hear the call-and-response pair of whistled triplets … followed by a brief pause, and then the vibrant opening bars of Leonard Bernstein’s overture, as the Jets assemble for the first electrifying dance number.

 

This can't end well: Although the school gym is supposed to be neutral territory, the white
kids (left) and Puerto Ricans clearly aren't sizing up each other's dance moves ... even
though this sequence quickly explodes into one of the film's many amazing
production numbers.

Director Steven Spielberg nails it, with this pulsating, big-screen adaptation: honorably faithful to the 1961 film, while also demonstrating its own, equally dynamic personality.

Actually, everybody nails it.

 

Screenwriter Tony Kushner — who earned Oscar nominations for his two previous collaborations with Spielberg, 2005’s Munich and 2012’s Lincoln — retains the essential late 1950s/early ’60s setting, while adding focus to the “urban renewal” (i.e. slum clearance) that puts additional pressure on the Jets and their rivals, the Puerto Rican Sharks. No wonder they jockey ever more furiously for control of their rapidly shrinking turf.

 

Indeed, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski opens the film with slow, sweeping pans past huge wrecking balls that hover over the demolished remnants of several city blocks that now look like a war zone: a deliberately grim reminder that neighborhoods of color invariably are targeted for such development.

 

(In a rather droll touch, Kaminski’s camera also slides past a large sign that heralds the impending creation of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.)

 

The opening “call to arms” is led by Riff (Mike Faist), who propels the expanding cadre of Jets toward an equally large gathering of the Sharks, led by Bernardo (David Alvarez). The unison dance moves are feral, taunting and gracefully balletic; choreographer Justin Peck, of New York City Ballet, clearly quotes Jerome Robbins’ original dances, albeit with even more intensity.

 

Peck’s staging of subsequent numbers, as the story proceeds, is audaciously clever. The show-stopping “America,” always a highlight, has been moved from a nighttime rooftop to the San Juan Hill’s daytime streets, where it explodes into a massive neighborhood block party of store merchants and passersby, in addition to our main characters. It’s a breathtaking sequence that gets progressively bold and colorful, the moves ranging from Robbins-esque ballet to Caribbean pachanga.

 

“I Feel Pretty” is given an ironic twist, as Maria (Rachel Zegler) and the many female members of her late-night cleaning crew cavort amid the mannequins on the ground floor of Gimbels … where all the clothing and accessories are aimed at white patrons. “Cool,” a straight dance piece in the 1961 film, has been transformed into an increasingly angry confrontation between Riff and Tony (Ansel Elgort), as they wrestle for control of a gun while trying to evade the gaping holes on a rotting pier at the edge of the city.

 

It’s a ferociously tense sequence, Spielberg deliberately playing on our fear that the damn thing’s gonna go off at any moment.