Fair Game: Cheaters prosper

Fair Game (2010) • View trailer for Fair Game
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for brief profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang


I can’t imagine how he did it.

You’re wakened in the middle of the night by soft rustling and an empty spot in the bed; you hasten downstairs just in time to catch your wife quietly leaving, suitcase packed. She smiles apologetically, sorry to have bothered you, explains that all the necessary details for the next few days are on a note on the refrigerator.

After her life has been ruined by a heinous news leak, Valerine Plame (Naomi
Watts) and her husband, Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), argue over how best to
"fight back" ... and, indeed, whether it's even possible to successfully wage
a war of words against the White House.

You stare at each other. You finally break the silence, voicing the thoughts that must run through your mind every time this scenario takes place: Where are you going? How long will you be gone? How would I even know if something went wrong?

Her gaze softens; she pauses, then gives the answer that is part rote, part edict, part private joke: “I’m going to Cleveland.”

Except she isn’t, and you both know it.

Valerie Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson, must have repeated this ritual scores of times. She never went to Cleveland; as a member of the CIA’s covert ops team, she’d frequently wind up halfway around the world. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, as leader of the agency’s Joint Task Force on Iraq, she was responsible for infiltrating Saddam Hussein’s weapons program.

Back at home, though, Plame was simply a wife and mother, raising two young twins with Wilson: a former ambassador to Niger, acknowledged hero after facing off Hussein in the immediate wake of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Their friends knew her as a venture capitalist; she tended to remain quiet during the politically charged conversations that took place when they invited folks over for dinner.

Director Doug Liman and screenwriters Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth begin Fair Game quietly, almost casually, sketching the workaday dynamic between Plame (Naomi Watts) and Wilson (Sean Penn). They’re polar opposites in temperament: She’s calm and methodical; he’s brash and impulsive. She knows how and when to remain silent; he can’t help calling somebody an idiot if the conversation moves into “stupid territory.”

Morning Glory: Partly Cloudy

Morning Glory (2010) • View trailer for Morning Glory
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for fleeting profanity and mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang

I’ve got good news for those who’ve waited years for a smart, personable young starlet to inherit the Romantic Comedienne Throne left vacant ever since Meg Ryan flamed out after 1998’s You’ve Got Mail.

Good news, in the form of two words: Rachel McAdams.

Whether appealing to his integrity, brow-beating or begging, the perky and
persuasive Becky (Rachel McAdams) can't get Mike (Harrison Ford) to climb
off his high horse long enough to become an active participant in her
morning TV show.

She fits the job requirement to perfection, and tosses in a few charming ingredients all her own. Her fireball performance in Morning Glory can’t help being the center of attention; hands down, she’s always the most interesting person in the room.

Her career-driven character in this story is endearing despite our frequently wanting to strangle her: playfully erotic while somehow tantalizingly unapproachable; whip-smart and savvy although possessing not the slightest clue about how to put her own best foot forward. Hard-charging, yet vulnerable. Dedicated, determined, loyal and utterly oblivious to negative vibes that would send lesser mortals shrieking to a safer realm.

The “realm” in question here is the dog-eat-dog world of a fourth-ranked television morning show: the happy-chat purgatory that disgorges perky “infotainment” delivered by on-air talking heads surgically unable to stop smiling.

The modern TV creation where actual “news” long ago perished from malnutrition.

Aline Brosh McKenna’s script doesn’t dwell overmuch on network TV’s complicity in the dumbing-down of America, but the implication is felt. The game has changed because the goals have changed: Where once the industry respected and rewarded journalists who dug up and reported stories of merit and substance, and the race reflected a healthy desire to scoop everybody else with the next Watergate or Valerie Plame scandal, now it’s just a sprint to the overnight and weekly ratings … and if that means cooking segments, stupid pet tricks and sending desk anchors out in funny costumes, well, devil take the hindmost.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest: Not Much Sting

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2010) • View trailer for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for violence, profanity and smarmy content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.5.10

Continuity of vision may not be essential when adapting a rigorously interlaced series of books to the big screen … but it’s certainly desirable.

The guiding hands of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh obviously contributed to the richly textured success of all three Lord of the Rings films. And who but Francis Ford Coppola could have interwoven the two timelines of Godfather Part II so seamlessly into its predecessor?

Although accused of murder and facing the possibility of renewed
imprisonment in a psychiatric ward, Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace) refuses
to compromise the image that has served her so well ... and struts
into the courtroom in full punk regalia.

Vexingly, the Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Girl Who books, although made almost concurrently, are scripted by three different writers and directed by two different individuals. Daniel Alfredson, who helmed the middle installment, has returned for the final chapter in the trilogy.

I don’t understand this revolving-door approach; surely a savvy producer should have recognized the value of artistic continuity. After all, those same guiding hands were smart enough to hang onto Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist – both still in top form, as the emotionally damaged Lisbeth Salander and her hard-charging journalistic champion, Mikael Blomkvist – so why not take similar care behind the scenes?

The unhappy result of such scattershot filmmaking is the realization, now that the trilogy has concluded with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, that Alfredson simply isn’t right for this material. His handling of this film is even less viscerally involving than the previous entry, and Ulf Ryberg’s screenplay is a discouraging disappointment: an overly talky thriller that might have been fine with a different set of characters, but not these characters, darn it!

In fairness, Larsson’s third novel is partly to blame; the author obviously suffered from a (not unreasonable) desire to wrap up his saga with exhaustive detail. But here, again, we perceive the value of more talented hands: Director Niels Arden Oplev and screenwriters Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg brilliantly condensed Larsson’s dense prose while making the first film, wisely concentrating on developing suspense and the character interplay between Lisbeth and Mikael, while downplaying Larsson’s tendency to over-write. (Let’s face it: The second hundred pages or so of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are a truly tedious slog.)

Conviction: Fascinating legal drama anchored by strong acting

Conviction (2010) • View trailer for Conviction
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.28.10

Autumn seems to be the season of docu-dramas, whether the family-friendly triumph of Secretariat or the deliciously snarky profile of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network .

In terms of tone and execution, Conviction slots somewhere between these two, and director Tony Goldwyn's compelling legal drama offers the same high-caliber acting that made The Social Network such a pleasure to watch.

While Betty Ann Waters (Hilary Swank) watches in disbelief and
consternation, her brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell) is led away
 after having been found guilty of a heinous murder. Kenny insists
on his innocence, and Betty Ann believes him ... but what can an
under-educated high school dropout do to help her only sibling?

Conviction is a grittier narrative about less palatable characters, given a finished polish of coarse authenticity by Pamela Gray's straightforward script. This is a story of uncompromising love and stubborn determination: an empowerment saga that would feel much happier under better circumstances ... but Goldwyn and Gray wisely eschew the Hollywood gloss that could have turned their film into a manipulative, tear-jerking fairy tale.

And although the events here are as factual and historically significant as those depicted in Secretariat and The Social Network, very few people will recognize the names of Betty Ann Waters and her older brother, Kenny. More than likely, then, this saga's outcome — although a matter of public record — will come as a surprise to most viewers.


Goldwyn and Gray pepper their first act with a series of flashbacks that allow us to develop a sense of Betty Ann (Bailee Madison) and Kenny (Tobias Campbell) as adolescents in the 1960s: wild children unsupervised by their absentee mother (Karen Young) and with only each other for support, and therefore frequently in trouble with the law in their small-town Massachusetts community.

Waiting for Superman: Teaching point

Waiting for Superman (2010) • View trailer for Waiting for Superman

4 stars (out of five) • Rated PG, for no particular reason

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in the The Davis Enterprise, 10.22.10

If you don't leave the theater feeling outraged — and despondent — then you've not been paying attention.

Documentarian Davis Guggenheim, who helped transform global warming from a dry scientific theory into a hot-button political football with An Inconvenient Truth, has returned to indict another of-the-moment calamity destined to become a similar wedge issue: the absolutely deplorable condition of America's public school system.

Francisco, a Bronx first-grader, has trouble reading; his
mother, wanting to help, repeatedly sends messages to
her son's teacher. Her notes and calls are ignored, and so
she eventually decides to trust her son's fate to a lottery,
hoping she can get him into a charter school.

As he did with his previous film, Guggenheim skillfully blends discouraging statistics and damning news events to build a persuasive case: Despite their claims to the contrary, hidebound adults looking out only for themselves are defending the indefensible, and in so doing shortchanging children from California to Maine.

Make no mistake: This behavior will come back to haunt us, and rather rapidly. Several of our largest high-tech Silicon Valley companies — we're talking Microsoft-level giants — already are forced to hire outside this country in order to get enough employees, because our schools aren't graduating enough sufficiently skilled students.

That's flat-out scary.

Hereafter: Too much here, too little after

Hereafter (2010) • View trailer for Hereafter

Three stars (out of five) • Rated PG-13 for dramatic intensity and brief profanity

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.21.10

Heartfelt attempts to deal with the afterlife, and with contacting the dead, are a risky proposition on the big screen.

Marcus (alternately twins George and Frankie McLaren) wants his
 mother (Lyndsey Marshal) to kick her drug and alcohol addictions,
but she simply isn't strong enough. With the threat of a foster
home just one social worker visit away, the boy becomes
increasingly frantic. 

Too much sentiment, no matter how well-intentioned, and the effort collapses: definitely the fate of 1998's adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel, What Dreams May Come, also undone by one of Robin Williams' too-earnest performances.

Douglas Trumbull's Brainstorm, back in 1983, foundered beneath too much gadget-laden techno-babble. 1980's thoughtful Resurrection, while not exactly an afterlife story, skirted the subject's edges with enough intelligence to raise intriguing questions.

Director Peter Jackson's recent adaptation of The Lovely Bones got lost in the needlessly ostentatious afterlife landscape inhabited by the dead young girl who tried to watch over her family from beyond; the resulting storyline, coupled with a truly unacceptable conclusion, got lost in the visual excess.

All this said, I've no doubt that such films can comfort viewers predisposed to believe in the power of devotion, as a means to retain a link to loved ones who've moved beyond our mortal realm. Patrons of a more cynical bent, alternatively, are likely to scoff and raise eyebrows.

Our world, these days, seems inhabited by far more of the latter.

RED: Risible, Energetic and Delightful

RED (2010) • View trailer for RED

3.5 stars (out of five) • Rated PG-13 for brief profanity and plenty of violence

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.15.10

Some concepts are can't-miss, and that's certainly the case with RED, based on the deliciously snarky graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner.

Screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber maintain an appropriately wry tone, and the dry, deadpan one-liners are delivered with panache by veteran scene-stealers such as Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren.

Victoria (Helen Mirren) speaks softly, but carries a very big
gun, which she's not shy about using. She's also quite good
at keeping the paranoid Marvin (John Malkovich) focused
on the task at hand, which grows ever more complicated as
these retired black-ops agents find themselves targeted by
well-trained -- and much younger -- CIA assassins.

Director Robert Schwentke maintains a brisk pace, moving things along rapidly enough to compensate for the plot's comic book-style sensibilities. The narrative is jes' plain silly right outta the gate, but the overall tone is so whimsical that you're unlikely to mind.

Things begin mildly as Frank Moses (Willis), living a calm suburban life, makes another in a long line of calls to a cheerful bureaucratic drone named Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker). Frank has fallen in like with Sarah's telephone voice, and so keeps shredding checks that her company is supposed to send him, just so he can claim that "It still hasn't arrived" as an excuse to call her again.

Sarah, for her part, finds Frank far more charming than the losers she keeps dating.

Frank's sedentary life takes a noisy turn late one night, when ninja-garbed assassins do their best to put numerous holes in him. They fail, which leads Frank — clearly not your average civilian retiree, as we're learning — to travel hastily to Kansas City, in order to protect Sarah. Frank realizes that his thus-far-unspecified enemies probably tapped his phone, and therefore are likely to kidnap Sarah as a bargaining chip.

So Frank kidnaps her first. Duct tape and all.