On Swift Horses: More of a slow trot

On Swift Horses (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for nudity, sexual content and occasional profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.27.25

Although director Daniel Minahan draws achingly persuasive performances from the five core characters in this bittersweet melodrama, it’s hard to be satisfied with a story that concludes as this one does.

 

Lee (Will Poulter, left), his bride-to-be Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and his brother
Julius (Jacob Elordi) anticipate an upcoming move to California ... but nothing will
work out as planned.

Bryce Kass’ script captures the melancholy tone of Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel, but film can’t replicate the author’s poetic prose. Absent that — and given that it’s blindingly obvious that we’re about to spend two hours with hopelessly miserable people — this film needs to be more than a mere actor’s showcase.

That said, Minahan and Kass deserve credit for treating gender issues and uncertainty with the same respect and sensitivity that highlight Pufahl’s book.

 

Events begin in the mid-1950s, as brothers Lee (Will Poulter) and Julius (Jacob Elordi) have returned from Korean War service. They gather in the small-town Kansas house that Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) inherited when her mother died. Lee, having long been sweet on Muriel, proposes; she accepts.

 

The long-standing plan — driven by Lee — is that the three of them will move to San Diego, get jobs, and make enough money to eventually buy a house; Julius will be welcome in a second bedroom.

 

However...

 

As this sequence unfolds, the glances that pass between Muriel and Julius are laden with unspoken intensity: hungry, yearning and forlorn. Edgar-Jones and Elordi’s body movements are flirty; the air drips with sexual tension. The snap assumption, at this early stage, is that Muriel will be torn between the two of them.

 

But no; things aren’t that simple. For starters, Julius is gay ... but perhaps not entirely. He’s also much too free-spirited for such a conventional life; he’s a thief and card cheat — which Lee has long known — and thus heads to what he imagines will be a more exciting time in Las Vegas.

 

Yes, this is another story that decisively punctures the surface “wholesomeness” that many people naïvely assume the 1950s represented. Much of what follows takes place within all aspects of the decade’s closeted gay community.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: The fun is gone

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too generously, for nasty action violence, profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.5.23

Writer/director James Gunn has stamped his portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a sense of playful chaos that sets it apart from its numerous superhero colleagues.

 

Star Lord (Chris Pratt, center) and his companions — from left, Mantis (Pom Klementieff),
Groot (Vin Diesel), Drax (Dave Bautista) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) — prepare to face
yet another megalomaniac who wants to re-shape the universe.

But while some of that snarky atmosphere remains present, it’s blemished this time. The character roster has grown too large to grant proper attention to all concerned, and — more crucially — far too much time is spent with the helpless furry victims of vivisection gone horribly awry.

That latter subplot is necessitated by this third entry’s primary focus on Rocket, and the back-story that explains his bio-mechanical enhancements. (I hope nobody thought the MCU includes a planet populated by hyper-intelligent warrior raccoons.) 

 

It’s a solid topic, and two or three brief flashbacks would have been sufficient. But spending great chunks of time as young Rocket befriends three similarly imprisoned but atrociously mutilated critters feels like audience abuse, and leaches the “fun” right outta this film.

 

(If Gunn and co-writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning intended to make a point, they didn’t need a sledge hammer.)

 

The individual responsible for this horror is a longtime Marvel Comics villain dubbed the High Evolutionary, whose deplorable efforts in genetic manipulation date all the way back to a 1966 issue of The Mighty Thor. He’s played with malevolent fury here by Chukwudi Iwuji, and is genuinely scary.

 

But that’s getting ahead a bit. Events actually kick off with the explosive arrival of another familiar Marvel Comics character: golden-hued Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), a Superman-gone-bad who flies into Knowhere spaceport, current base of operations for the Guardians, and damn near takes out the entire team.

 

They are, by way of reminder, gung-ho Starlord, aka Peter Quill (Chris Pratt); the genetically enhanced Nebula (Karen Gillan), adopted daughter of the slain Thanos; the powerful but somewhat dim-bulb Drax (Dave Bautista); Mantis (Pom Klementieff), an empath able to sense and alter another’s emotions; and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), the hyper-intelligent, tree-like organism.

 

Along with Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), who is critically injured during this initial, landscape-leveling battle with Warlock.

Detroit: City in flames

Detroit (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong violence, dramatic intensity, pervasive profanity and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.4.17

Very few dramatic films — as distinguished from documentaries — have left me feeling nauseous, in response to the monstrous behavior of human beings.

Schindler’s List is one; that was a quarter-century ago.

Racist cop Philip Krauss (Will Poulter, center left) gleefully takes charge of the lit-fuse
"interrogation" of half a dozen wholly innocent Algiers Motel residents, using the greater
Detroit riot as an excuse to terrorize and torture them.

Detroit is the most recent; that was a few nights ago.

Director Kathryn Bigelow and journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal both took home well-deserved Academy Awards for 2009’s The Hurt Locker; they re-teamed for 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty, their equally mesmerizing portrayal of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, which concluded with his death during a Navy SEAL raid in May 2011.

The latter film lost some of its luster — and probably a few Oscars — due to political sniping over the accuracy of the CIA’s depicted use of torture (an accusation that still seems specious, given that relevant documents remain classified). That controversy tainted a film that deserves better recognition both as a nail-biting drama, and for having gotten “the important stuff” right.

Bigelow and Boal may run into the same problem with Detroit, which would be an even greater tragedy. Although their riveting new film shines a necessary spotlight on a grievously under-remembered tragedy in American history — the so-called 12th Street Riot, which consumed Detroit, Mich., from July 23-27, 1967 — Boal’s script suffers somewhat from tunnel vision, differs at times from long-established eyewitness accounts, and in one conspicuous case succumbs to flat-out speculation.

We experienced this problem with 2000’s The Perfect Storm, which detailed the real-world fate of the fishing vessel Andrea Gail, lost at sea during the nor’easter that developed in late October 1991. The paradox was obvious: Since everybody on board died, nobody could possibly know what actually happened during the boat’s final hours. That didn’t diminish the film’s impact, but one had to acknowledge the contrivance of its entire third act.

Bigelow and Boal obviously are aware of the liberties taken here, and concerned enough to conclude their film with a text block that acknowledges “necessary” extrapolation.

I hope that’s good enough, because it would be awful if Detroit were caught up in petty arguments over detail, thereby obscuring the incontrovertible, big-picture degree to which clearly innocent, mostly black civilians were brutalized by blatantly racist, thuggish white cops during a particularly ghastly incident triggered during the riot.

The Revenant: Grim survival drama

The Revenant (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for strong gory violence, dramatic intensity, sexual assault and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.8.16

Rarely has the rugged American West been portrayed with such grim, unforgiving brutality.

Hollywood seems to view the holiday season as the time for historical sagas of astonishing survival. Unbroken opened on Christmas Day 2014; In the Heart of the Sea occupied movie theaters during much of this past December. To their company we now add The Revenant, based in part on the gruesome event that defined the life — and legend — of early 19th century American fur trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass.

Seasoned frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) understands that he can't
necessarily trust some of his human companions. He also understands that far more
dangerous creatures roam the wilderness ... and none more volatile than an enraged
mother bear trying to protect her cubs.

This incident, and its aftermath, first hit the big screen in 1971’s Man in the Wilderness, with Richard Harris starring as “Zachary Bass” (the sort of dumb name-shift that made eyes roll, back in the day). Author Michael Punke subsequently employed Glass’ experiences as the backdrop for his fictional 2002 “augmentation” of the trapper’s life, The Revenant; director Alejandro González Iñárritu and co-scripter Mark L. Smith have based this new film on that novel.

While the bloodthirstier elements of Glass’ saga have been heightened here (and in Punke’s novel) for greater melodramatic impact, that isn’t as unreasonable as it might seem. Glass was guilty of exaggerating his exploits during his own lifetime, so we really aren’t able to separate fact from fancy ... except with respect to the seminal incident.

As the film begins, Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is guiding a fur-trapping expedition led by Capt. Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), commander of the trading outpost Fort Kiowa, located on the Missouri River in South Dakota. The group is ambushed by an Arikara war party — once-peaceful Native Americans who, at this point in their history, are thoroughly fed up with having been repeatedly displaced by white settlers — that decimates Henry’s company.

The fleeing survivors regroup, with Henry accepting Glass’ suggestion of the safest — but hardest — route back to the fort. This decision doesn’t sit well with the outspoken John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), mostly because he neither likes nor trusts Glass. The latter doesn’t regard Fitzgerald as worthy of concern, which of course enrages our de facto villain even further.

Fitzgerald also is a vicious racist who despises the presence of Glass’ half-Native teenage son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck). Although father and son are devoted to each other, the boy is withdrawn and fearful: forever traumatized by a childhood event that claimed his mother’s life (and which we experience, in brief chunks, via flashback).

The remaining trappers also include young Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), a name that should be familiar to those who remember their grade-school American history; Bridger would become one of our foremost mountain men and guides.

Son of Rambow: This Son also rises

Son of Rambow (2007) • View trailer for Son of Rambow
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for underage smoking and profanity, and youthful bad behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.29.08
Buy DVD: Son of Rambow • Buy Blu-Ray: Son of Rambow [Blu-ray]


I often wonder why some parents seem to have repressed the casual cruelties of childhood.

Why else would they stack the deck so badly against their own kids?

When one of their home-grown "special effects" — a dog statue fastened to a
massive kite — is carried off by a particularly strong gust of wind, it drags an
increasingly frantic Lee (Will Poulter, left) and Will (Bill Milner) along in its
wake.

Bad enough that 11-year-old Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) has been saddled with such an impossible label by parents who clearly invented the surname as one of the tenets of their overly repressive, whacked-out approach to religion. But then Will's mother — his father having died unexpectedly, years earlier — sends him to public school with strict admonitions against being exposed to any sort of music or television, again due to the puritanical teachings of "The Brethren."

That means Will has to leave his classroom — and sit, isolated, in the hallway — every time the teacher shows an educational film.

Small wonder the boy has taken refuge in his imagination, and has meticulously scribbled flip-book images and other colorful drawings in the margins and every inch of white space of his massive Bible.

The setting is the depressed working-class England of 1982. Writer/director Garth Jennings deftly sketches this portrait of a lost and lonely little boy in the opening scenes of Son of Rambow, a movie whose goofy title — while absolutely appropriate — gives little indication of the bittersweet joys to be contained within.

Deliberately filmed with a low-tech style that mimics the story soon to be told, Jennings' charming, frequently hilarious and often heartbreaking coming-of-age saga bears strong echoes of other gleefully eccentric films that came out at roughly the time this story is set: 1981's Gregory's Girl and 1985's My Life As a Dog.

Will's home life is sepulchral: The house is quiet as a tomb, he shares his bedroom with an infirm grandmother, and his younger sister has naught but jigsaw puzzles for entertainment. All three of these women dress as if they live in an Amish community, and Will's mother (Jessica Stevenson) has an unhealthy willingness to take her marching orders from Joshua (Neil Dudgeon), a member of The Brethren who clearly wishes to become part of this fractured family.

Everything changes in a heartbeat for Will one day, when one of his enforced school hallway sojourns causes him to be noticed by the institution's rebellious tear- away, Lee Carter (Will Poulter).

Aggressively disliked by everybody and clearly proud of the mischief he creates, Lee sees Will as an easy mark for persecution ... but, oddly, that particular desire fades rather quickly in the larger, much more aggressive boy.

Will's too trusting, too easy a target. More to the point, Will's so delighted to have been noticed by anybody that he immediately regards "Lee Carter" — Will always uses the other boy's full name — as a friend, despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

And that, Lee quickly realizes, is far more valuable than a victim.

We soon discover that Lee's behavior is a product of similar loneliness: He lives with his contemptuous older brother, Lawrence (Ed Westwick), in the lavish back rooms of a massive estate mostly used as a home for the elderly. Lawrence has no time for Lee, just as their rich, jet-setting (and forever absent) parents have no time for either son.

Lee spends all his home time serving as cook, cleaner and general dogsbody for his brother, whom he worships ... a fact that doesn't seem to register with Lawrence, who delights solely in ordering the punk kid about.

Such orders include sneaking a bulky video camera (1982, remember) into a movie theater and bringing home an illegal bootleg copy of First Blood. But the movie inspires Lee in an entirely different direction; he decides to "borrow" the camera — Lawrence never pays attention anyway — and make his own homegrown adaptation.

Will, for his part, chances to see the entire film while visiting Lee's home for the first time. To say that it changes the boy's life would be an understatement; of all the flicks to serve as his entry to pop culture, this one doesn't just open his eyes. It sears his very brain, as if somebody had forced a branding iron into his head.

And he cheerfully agrees to be the star of Lee's fledgling movie ... which obviously means sneaking out of the house, ditching services with The Brethren and breathing not a word of such behavior to his mother.

These early sequences are hilarious, as Lee fabricates ever-more-dangerous stunts to inflict on Will, but always with available junk or machinery; the other boy, made fearless by his new awareness of the world, accepts all challenges. (My favorite occurs when Will lets himself get hurled backwards after taking the full, close-up force of a farm's industrial sprinkler blast to the chest.)

Much as this plotline drives Son of Rambow, Jennings' film has additional joys in its side-stories. As with Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl, a host of supporting school characters wander through this narrative, none more crucial than the French foreign-exchange students who arrive just as Lee and Will are becoming inseparable.

Most of these newcomers are quiet and uncertain, but one departs the bus with a flourish: the jaw-droppingly exotic Didier (Jules Sitruk), dressed with such deliberately aggressive ambiguity that it's difficult to determine that he's a boy.

But he's more than boy enough for all the upper-level girls in Lee and Will's school, who soon are standing in line for an opportunity to lock lips with this guy who seems to be from another planet ... a process stage-managed by Didier's new posse of adoring British lads.

Didier eventually learns of the movie being made, and circumstances allow him to believe that the amiable Will is the driving force, rather than the belligerent Lee. Suddenly wafted into a level of acceptance that makes him giddy, Will allows himself to be seduced by this new popularity ... a change of dynamic that does not go unnoticed by the increasingly abandoned Lee.

Although it seems I've spent a great deal of time on plot exposition, I've barely scratched the surface; what follows plays on the nature of friendship, family and the constant struggle to fit in. Jennings' script wanders a bit, and his focus strays; toward the middle, the film briefly loses its way as Didier's character becomes too prominent.

But for the most part, this tender saga is dead-on with respect to its depiction of that seminal moment when two little boys take their first step toward maturity.

The film's raw, realistic and kitchen-sink approach — which makes the story seem that much more real — is amplified by Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith's decision to cast total unknowns as their leads. Neither Milner nor Poulter had acted before, and their fresh performances here are unerringly natural.

Poulter is every inch the combative little scamp, but he's also up for the tougher scenes, when Lee's true emotions finally come flooding out. Milner, for his part, wanders forlornly through the early scenes as though drugged: Then, watching his inner light begin to blaze — his eyes and mouth taking on new animation — is as magical as seeing a spring flower unfold.

Jennings and Goldsmith, collectively known as "Hammer & Tongs," have an interesting history. They've collaborated on countless British TV commercials and music videos, and they planned Son of Rambow as their feature film debut. But fate and a thumping big budget intervened, and they found themselves tagged to bring Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the big screen.

Although not entirely successful with Adams' fans, Hitchhiker was a quite respectable entry to the movie biz, so Jennings and Goldsmith then returned to their original project. No doubt the Son of Rambow that has emerged now benefits from their greater experience, and Jennings certainly builds his story to a great payoff.

A couple of great payoffs, actually. The obvious one is a real tear-jerker, but the subtler one is much more satisfying: our unexpected realization that nerd-dom is only in the eye of the beholder, and that — as always — one man's trash is another man's treasure.

I'd love to think Son of Rambow will enjoy the slowly building momentum My Life As a Dog experienced two decades ago, but Paramount Vantage isn't throwing much money into the publicity campaign.

That leaves it up to us...