Creed III: Punches at its weight

Creed III (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense sports action, violence and profanity-laced song lyrics

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.3.23

This spin-off boxing series finally dances on its own two feet, having outgrown its Rocky Balboa roots.

 

Nice to see.

 

The calm before the impending storm: Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) enjoys some quality
time with his wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and their daughter Amara
(Mila Davis-Kent)

The script — from Ryan Coogler, Keegan Coogler and Zach Baylin — delivers a satisfying blend of intimate family drama and riveting pugilistic action, along with a mystery that keeps folks guessing for awhile.

Star Michael B. Jordan also makes his directorial debut here. While he deserves credit for mounting a satisfying sports drama, he also has himself frequently framed in tight close-up by cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau (a frequent vanity misstep by actors-turned-first-time-directors).

 

And although this series always has threatened to drown in soggy melodrama, this newest entry again skates close to the edge, but (happily) doesn’t descend into slushy sentimentality.

 

The core plot stands on its own, but viewers unfamiliar with the two earlier films may be puzzled by some of the family dynamics, notably the (apparently) strained relationship between Adonis Creed (Jordan) and his beloved mother, Mary-Anne (Phylicia Rashad). 

 

The film opens on a flashback that expands on our hero’s origin. It’s 2002, and 15-year-old Adonis (Thaddeus J. Mixson) sneaks out of his house late on evening, in order to watch his slightly older best friend, Damian Anderson (Spence Moore II), win a key boxing match. The two bonded during the two years they lived in a juvenile center, when Damian schooled Adonis in the “sweet science.”

 

Following Damian’s victory, while stopping for snacks at a convenience store, — a suddenly enraged Adonis starts beating on an older guy who exits the place. (And we think, what the heck?)

 

Cue two sudden cuts: the first showcasing the adult Adonis winning the bout that makes him World Heavyweight Champion, and then — just as quickly — several years later, to the present day. Adonis has retired and now runs the Delphi Boxing Academy with his former cornerman, Tony “Little Duke” Burton (Wood Harris). Current champ Felix Chavez (Jose Benavidez) is in residence, as Delphi’s star boxer.

 

Adonis shares his lavish Bel Air home with loving wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson), whose previous life as a pop performer has blossomed into an equally successful career as a music producer. They dote on young daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent, absolutely adorable), whose deafness hasn’t harmed her spirit.

 

Jordan and Davis-Kent share marvelous chemistry, and this story’s father/daughter sequences are totally charming. Amara worships her father, and wants to learn more about boxing … to Bianca’s dismay. Particularly since the little girl tends to settle school disagreements with a punch.

 

(Davis-Kent actually is deaf, which adds a solid touch of authenticy to her performance.)

Thor: Love and Thunder — A mighty bore

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for sci-fi violence, occasional profanity, suggestive content and partial nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.8.22

A bit of levity is welcome in a superhero film; otherwise, the thrashing, bashing and smashing would become tedious.

 

But too much levity is just as bad, and this film crosses that line. And then some.

 

When the malevolent Gorr floods New Asgard with all manner of icky, shadowy monsters,
even Thor (Chris Hemsworth) quickly feels overwhelmed.

The fourth Thor entry is a relentlessly silly clown show, and the blame clearly belongs to director/co-writer Taika Waititi; he pushes the inane dialogue and burlesque atmosphere even further than he did with 2017’s mostly silly Thor: Ragnarok.

In Waititi’s hands, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is little more than a strutting buffoon.

 

Granted, a touch of Shakespearean egotism is appropriate; we are dealing with a near-omnipotent Norse God. Conceit comes with the territory. Director Kenneth Branagh — perfect for the assignment — better understood the balance, when he helmed the first film, back in 2011.

 

Waititi immediately shows his hand, during a prologue that finds Thor still allied with the Guardians of the Galaxy (with whom he departed Earth, following the events in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, for those not up to date). The Guardians are trying to protect blue-skinned Indigarrians from an invading force determined to take over the planet; Thor sits out the battle until things turn dire, at which point he and his lightning-spitting battle axe make short work of the entire enemy army.

 

Much to the annoyance of the exhausted Guardians, who’ve clearly had enough of this swaggering narcissist. As we also will, very quickly.

 

That’s bad enough; far worse is the collateral destruction of the Indigarrians’ holiest of holies, which Waititi and co-scripter Jennifer Kaytin Robinson discard as a cheap laugh.

 

That’s unforgiveable … and a dire indication of things to come.

 

The “big bad” this time is Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale, almost unrecognized beneath make-up), a once-pious individual who renounced worship after the death of his entire species. Rage and despair allowed Gorr to be infected by the malevolent spirit of a god-killing sword, and he has since been systematically eliminating gods, universe by universe.

 

Next stop: New Asgard, on Earth.

 

Ah, yes … New Asgard. The actual Asgard, Thor’s celestial realm — along with most of his fellow warriors — was destroyed during Thor: Ragnarok. The remaining Asgardians have made a home in New Asgard, which has blossomed into an excruciatingly cutesy Norse theme park.

 

Look closely, and you’ll spot Matt Damon, Sam Neill, Melissa McCarthy and Hemsworth’s brother Luke, as a quartet of so-wooden-they-warp stage actors.

Sylvie's Love: Out of tune

Sylvie's Love (2020) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, which is needlessly harsh, for mild sexual content

By Derrick Bang

At first blush, Sylvie’s Love — an Amazon Prime original — is a charming romantic drama, very much in the cinematic style of its late 1950s/early 1960s setting.

 

Having discovered their shared interest in quality jazz, Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) and
Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha) can't help wondering if they have other things in common ...
such as a mutual attraction.

We rarely get a film so richly, thoroughly immersed in that period’s jazz scene. The incredibly busy soundtrack is laden with classics — “Waltz for Debby,” “Summertime,” “My Little Suede Shoes,” Sarah Vaughan’s “One Mint Julep” and many, many others — along with era-appropriate originals by score composer Fabrice Lecomte, drolly titled “B-Bop,” “B-Blue” and “B-Loved.”

 

Stars Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha are enchanting together, and we’re easily charmed as their characters meet and begin what becomes a challenging relationship. Nothing is particularly novel about writer/director Eugene Ashe’s narrative, but his film nonetheless delivers an affectionately retro, comfortably familiar vibe.

 

Until he hits us with a thoroughly ridiculous and wholly unwarranted left turn, as we near the story’s conclusion. Which, frankly, ruins everything.

 

I don’t often see a filmmaker sabotage his own work so catastrophically.

 

Following a fleeting (and rather pointless) flash-forward, the story opens during the hot Harlem summer of 1957. Sylvie (Thompson) fills her days helping at her father’s music store — Mr. Jay’s Records — although she actually spends more time glued to a TV set: not as a casual viewer, but as the careful observer of what goes into the production of a show, because she hopes one day to establish a career in television.

 

Robert (Asomugha) plays tenor sax in a bebop quartet led by the less talented — but much better known — Dickie Brewster (Tone Bell). Robert chafes at the artistic limitations, but, well, a gig is a gig.

 

Needing to supplement his income, Robert applies for a job at Mr. Jay’s Records, after seeing a “help wanted” sign in the window. He and Sylvie share a flirty meet-cute moment, but she’s unavailable; she’s waiting for her fiancé to return from war service.

 

“Unavailable” doesn’t meet “uninterested,” of course, and — as the days pass — nature takes its course. This romantic inevitability is given swooning intensity by pop tunes such as Doris Day’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” the Drifters’ “Fools Fall in Love” and Louis Armstrong’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”

 

Men in Black International: Mindless fun

Men in Black International (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for goofy sci-fi action and mild profanity
By Derrick Bang

It’s nice to know that the Men — and Women — in Black continue to protect Earth from the scum of the universe.

Confronted by sinister alien assassins with apparently unlimited powers, M (Tessa
Thompson) and H (Chris Hemsworth) do their best with a hilariously expanding roster
of firepower.

Nice to know, as well, that key elements of the franchise work just as well today, as they did in Lowell Cunningham’s 1990 comic book, the initial 1997-2012 film series, and the 1997-2001 animated TV series.

(Clearly, Earth has been under siege by a lotta scummy aliens.)

On the other hand, aspects of this new film’s Matt Holloway/Art Marcum script are vague and under-developed, and far too much time is devoted to snarky banter between stars Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, and not nearly enough time to the often artfully camouflaged ETs that populated the earlier films.

In a word, Holloway and Marcum are lazy. They too frequently rely on our familiarity with this franchise, as if that’s enough on which to float a rather simplistic plot. They get away with this, to a degree, because the premise is so amusing in its own right.

They also wisely reprise the gimmick that fueled the first film: the initiation of a novice MIB operative, which allows us to enjoy the agency’s demented environment through her astonished eyes. 

The rookie in question is Molly (Thompson), who as a small girl witnessed her parents having their memories wiped by the pen-like Neuralyzer, in order to forget the presence of MIB operatives searching for a rogue ET. Molly never forgot this fascinating incident, along with her own close encounter of the third kind. She grew up to become a dedicated scholar and resourceful sleuth, determined to identify and locate the agency (CIA? FBI?) to which those immaculately garbed individuals belong.

She ultimately succeeds — clever gal — much to the displeasure of Agent O (Emma Thompson), whose initial impulse is to use the Neuralyzer on this intruder. But O can’t help being impressed by Molly’s perspicacity and spunk. And besides, the agency could use a few more women. (More than a few, I should think.)

Molly is assigned a code name — M — and sent to London, where she encounters the legendary H (Hemsworth), who once famously saved Earth from a hyper-aggressive species known as The Hive, while armed solely with his wits and a De-Atomizer. Alas, H has become a preening, puffed-up parody of his former self: much too infatuated with his own reputation. He’s also prone to reckless behavior that skirts the edge of MIB’s most crucial rule: Never allow the public to witness any bizarre otherworldly activity or tech.

Annihilation: Slow death

Annihilation (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, gore, profanity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.23.18

Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.

Author/editor/literary critic Jeff VanderMeer apparently prefers cellular madness.

After narrowly surviving an encounter with an unexpectedly oversized alligator, cellular
biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) is disturbed to find that its mouth contains far too
many rows of teeth.

His Nebula Award-winning 2014 novel, Annihilation, is — to say the least — a challenging but thoroughly fascinating read.

Director/scripter Alex Garland’s big-screen adaptation is thoughtful, absorbing, unsettling and even scary. For a time.

Unfortunately, he lets everything go to hell in the third act. And I don’t mean that in a positive way.

Certain science fiction films suffer from this problem: a terrific premise and suspenseful development, with — ultimately — nowhere to go. Garland’s take on Annihilation reminds me strongly of 1974’s Phase IV, a low-budget little flick that began with a similarly captivating premise but concluded with a nonsensically metaphysical climax (literally) that only could have been concocted by somebody on mind-altering substances.

The major problem here is that Garland was hell-bent on delivering a resolution that’s wholly at odds with VanderMeer’s novel ... which is only the first book in a trilogy. Garland’s “solution” to this dilemma isn’t merely unsatisfying; it makes total hash of what takes place during the first two acts.

Garland is best known as the writer/director behind 2014’s brilliant Ex Machina, a deliciously unsettling sci-fi saga that holds together superbly, up to a disturbing final scene that perfectly enhances everything that has come before. Too bad he couldn’t bring that rigorous logic and plot coherence to this one.

Former soldier-turned-cellular biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) has mourned the loss of her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac), for a full year. Flashbacks and passing remarks reveal that he’s active military, subject to abrupt special-ops missions that he’s not able to share with his wife. Now long missing after having deployed on ... something ... Lena reluctantly believes him dead.

Until he turns up in their bedroom one day, disoriented and with no apparent memory of how he got there, or where he has been, or who he was with, or ... anything.

Thor: Ragnarok — Thud and blunder

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for intense sci-fi action and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.3.17

Thor has succumbed to a case of the sillies.

Perhaps concerned by the grim sturm und drang that has turned so many recent superhero epics into dreary slogs, Marvel Studios has authorized a rather drastic realignment of its cinematic God of Thunder. They shifted too far in the opposite direction: The results here feel more like a new try-out team for Guardians of the Galaxy.

Having rather miraculously survived their first gladiatorial punch-out, Thor (Chris
Hemsworth) and the Hulk discover they've been forced to become unlikely roommates
in an oddly appointed cell.

Granted, the myth-specific costumes and flowery Shakespearean dialogue drew snickers in the first two Thor films, but they nonetheless let viewers know that none of it was to be taken seriously. The tone was light, particularly with respect to the sniping between Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his half-brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), whose villainy never was as dire as he would have preferred.

But Thor: Ragnarok is a full-blown comedy interrupted only occasionally by super-heroics, and that’s an unfortunate miscalculation. The film’s three credited writers — Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost — seem far more interested in replicating the playful banter and witty one-liners that were characteristic of 1930s and ’40s screwball comedies, little realizing that crafting such repartee, and making it sound organic, requires far more skill than is on display here.

Delivering such dialogue also demands a level of thespic skill that Hemsworth sadly lacks. Co-stars Cate Blanchett, Anthony Hopkins and Hiddleston have the acting background required to chew up the scenery, but Hemsworth is far outside his comfort zone. Too many of his line readings smack of desperation.

Worse yet, the core plot — highlighted by Blanchett’s marvelously malevolent über-villainess, Hela — gets sidetracked by an interminable second act that piles on the dumb-bunny gags. It’s sad to see Thor become an object of ridicule in his own series.

The film’s subtitle — ragnarok, also known in Norse mythology as “twilight of the gods” — refers to a final apocalyptic battle that (depending on interpretation) concludes with the destruction of the world, or the universe, or godly realms. For this story, the threat is to Thor’s ancestral home of Asgard, gateway to the “nine realms” that include Midgard (Earth).

Thor seems to have this threat well in hand during a prologue; he handily defeats Surtur, an immense fire demon who is the fabled harbinger of ragnarok. But Loki once again has been up to no good, back in Asgard, having usurped the throne and stripped their father Odin (Hopkins) of his magical power. In this weakened state, he’s no longer able to secure the enchanted prison that has long protected the nine realms from Hela (Blanchett), goddess of death ... and — surprise, surprise — Thor and Loki’s hitherto unknown older sister.