Birds of Prey: Claws for alarm

Birds of Prey (2020) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity and violence, gore and brief drug use
By Derrick Bang

Margot Robbie’s mischievous grin, triple-dog-dare-ya gaze and pugnacious insolence are the main attraction in Birds of Prey, an unapologetically vulgar super-villain romp on par with Marvel’s Deadpool entries.

With the odds stacked impossibly against them, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie, center)
persuades her companions — from left, ex-cop Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), Mafia
princess Helena Bertinelli (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and nightclub singer Dinah Lance
(Jurnee Smollett-Bell) — to band together, in order to protext young Cassandra Cain
(Ella Jay Basco, rear).

Fans of the latter will know precisely what they’re getting, with this similarly outré dip in the DC Comics universe.

During decades of myth-making, both comic book franchises occasionally have introduced villains who — thanks to reader enthusiasm for the character — have “reformed” and become forces of virtue. To a degree. 

Sometimes not much of a degree.

It’s hard to imagine Harley Quinn truly abandoning her bad-ass behavior; the best one could expect is that she becomes a lesser scoundrel while pursuing a much more heinous adversary (for her own reasons, of course, as opposed to anything having to do with the greater good).

Harley is, after all, the Joker’s equally homicidal girlfriend: firmly established, cinematically, in 2016’s Suicide Squad. But things change, and — as related during a droll animated prologue in this new film — Harley and her “Puddin’ ” have parted ways. (He threw her out.) Once past the initial heartbreak stage — Robbie camping it up as a pouting, alcohol-hazed, jilted lover — this “emancipation” initially seems like a good thing.

Ah, but absent the Joker’s protective embrace, Harley has become fair game for every thug and plug-ugly she once humiliated.

And that’s mere sidebar to Christina Hodson’s relentlessly snarky script. Robbie’s Harley narrates this saga in aggressively non-linear fashion, frequently backing up to fill in a key detail, and often breaking the fourth wall to address us directly in her delightfully sing-songy, working-class Brooklyn accent. This approach isn’t as confusing as it sounds, because the story isn’t that deep.

The nefariously narcissistic Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor), mercurial owner of the popular Black Mask nightclub, is a bloodthirsty villain who has set his sights on the Bertinelli Diamond: not for the gem itself, but because it’s encrypted with essential information about that now-deceased Mafia family’s immense financial estate. Backed by such wealth, Sionis could rule Gotham City’s underworld.

The little bauble has been located, and Sionis sends his ghoulish right-hand-man, Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), to fetch it. Alas, he falls victim to young pickpocket Cassandra “Cass” Cain (Ella Jay Basco), who — bad luck all around — is caught in the act by Gotham City Police Department Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez). Result: One young felon in a GCPD jail cell.

Not wanting the gem to be found, she quite logically swallows it.

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.”

Pineapple Express: A total lemon

Pineapple Express (2008) • View trailer for Pineapple Express
One star (out of five). Rating: R, for drug use, violence and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.14.08
Buy DVD: Pineapple Express • Buy Blu-Ray: Pineapple Express (Unrated + BD Live) [Blu-ray]


Alas, the Judd Apatow Express has been derailed.

Whether functioning as producer, writer or director, Apatow's recent efforts as a one-man movie machine have fallen into three categories: the good (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up), the enjoyably bad (Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and the profoundly ugly (Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Drillbit Taylor, You Don't Mess with the Zohan).

Convinced that they've been identified to a dangerous drug baron, Saul (James
Franco, left) and Dale (Seth Rogen, right) confront a mid-level supplier — Danny
McBride, as Red — and bind him with duct tape in an effort to persuade him to
admit whether he ratted them out.

Pineapple Express is almost worse than Zohan.

This leaden, interminable stoner comedy is like a lousy Cheech & Chong flick with violence tossed into the mix. It's aimless, plotless, pointless and atrociously acted, and looks for all the world as if the actors turned up on the set each day as genuinely stoned as the characters being played.

Such work being done, I hasten to add, after the so-called writers — Apatow, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg — contributed their effort while flying similarly high.

It's the sole explanation, because only a reefer-hazed arrested adolescent could imagine that this low-rent turkey was even coherent, let alone funny. It appears to have been made on a budget of $1.79, with no money spent on clothing, set design or even credible gunfire effects.

Director David Gordon Green — such a comedown from 2003's All the Real Girls and last year's intriguing (if failed) Snow Angels — apparently selected some chance alleyway, ugly tract house or deserted section of woods, the cast showed up in scruffy street clothes, everybody improvised on the spot, and another five minutes of footage were in the can.

Repeat 22 times, assemble the results completely at random, and you have a movie.

Well ... this movie, anyway.

The story, such as it is:

Rogen stars as wily process server Dale Denton, a scruffy mutt of a guy who mostly enjoys his job because he can listen to talk radio while staying stoned most of the time. He gets his weed from the mopey Saul Silver (James Franco), who impresses our hero on this day with a primo product: a rare new strain of pot dubbed Pineapple Express.

En route to serving his next summons, and while toking on this latest acquisition, Dale is astonished to see his target — Gary Cole, as Ted Jones — murder somebody with the assistance of a corrupt female police officer (Rosie Perez). In a panic, Dale tosses the roach and drives away, returning to Saul's apartment to explain what just went down.

Ah, but Ted turns out to be a truly dangerous drug lord, and the source of Pineapple Express, which he immediately recognizes from the abandoned roach. He sends two goons — Craig Robinson and Kevin Corrigan, doing a frankly insulting riff on John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, from Pulp Fiction — to pressure the only guy who'd taken delivery of said product (Danny McBride, as Red) into revealing the identify of the only guy he sold it to.

That would be Saul.