Macbeth: Macawful

Macbeth (2015) • View trailer 
One star. Rated R, for strong violence and fleeting sexuality
By Derrick Bang

This is Shakespeare; I knew the guy had to die eventually.

Trouble is, even his death seemed to take forever. Like everything else in this dreadful film.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair ... except that everything about this turkey is foul, including any
sense of an actual relationship between Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) and his wife
(Marion Cotillard).

I’ve seen Macbeth at least a dozen times on stage, TV and the big screen, with the mad king played by the likes of Orson Welles, Jon Finch, Sean Connery (believe it or not, back in 1961) and Ian McKellen, the latter a Royal Shakespeare Company production with Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth (definitely a high point, in productions of “the Scottish play”).

Goodness, I’ve even watched Sam Worthington lumber about in a contemporary update of the play, set amidst criminal gangs in Melbourne (far from a high point).

Do a title search on Macbeth at the Internet Movie Database, and you’ll come up with 95 matches, with adaptations clocking in from — among other countries — Japan, Australia, Russia and India.

Look far and wide, though, and you’ll not find a big-screen Macbeth that is worse than what director Justin Kurzel has unleashed this holiday season. Rarely has this play — or any other — been presented with such plodding, ponderous dreariness, its crackling dialog reduced to monotonous speeches mumbled by actors apparently instructed to utter every line with a complete lack of involvement.

This is Shakespeare, for goodness’ sake; impassioned monologues and overwrought performances are de rigueur. Instead, we get an entire cast that behaves like extras from a George Romero zombie movie, which is to say the slow, shambling walking dead, marked by dull, vacant expressions.

Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are exceptional actors; their Macbeth and Lady Macbeth should have leaped ferociously from the screen. Instead, for reasons known only to Kurzel, they hunch, cower and sulk, often standing motionless and staring into vacuous nothing, muttering their lines so softly, and with such little energy, that we often can’t even hear what they’re saying.

Which, perversely, could be a blessing. Students of Shakespeare will be appalled by the way scripters Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie and Todd Louiso have butchered this play, committing artistic murders far more heinous than any of Macbeth’s on-screen blood-letting. Motivation and (ir)rational thought are abandoned, with far too many key events occurring seemingly at random.

In the Heart of the Sea: Waterlogged

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, startling violence and considerable peril
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.11.15

The ingredients are sure-fire: a fascinating, fact-based narrative; a plot that demands bravery and ghastly sacrifice by the men involved; a solid cast led by Chris Hemsworth, who makes ample use of his steely, blue-eyed resolve; and everything under the capable guidance of seasoned director Ron Howard.

Facing an undeniably vengeful attack by a massive white sperm whale, ship's first mate
Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth, foreground right) does his best to protect his men.
Unfortunately, even he won't be able to prevent what's about to happen...

And yet, In the Heart of the Sea somehow fails to resonate. Too many of the characters are defined solely by one-dimensional tics; the storyline is completely predictable; and the interpersonal squabbles are the stuff of trite cliché, particularly the sniping between Hemsworth’s first mate, Owen Chase, and their ship’s inexperienced and incompetent captain, George Pollard (Benjamin Walker).

On top of which, the thoroughly pointless 3D effects, added after the fact, do no favors to the otherwise exemplary work by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. The entire film is too dark and frequently looks washed out: the inevitable results of poor post-production 3D processing.

Howard’s film too often feels like a routine Boy’s Own Adventure Saga, albeit one granted a first-class budget. Everybody hits their marks like a pro, but the result just isn’t very involving: nowhere near as riveting as, say, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, several big-screen versions of Mutiny on the Bounty, or even the many British TV episodes of Horatio Hornblower.

Scripters Charles Leavitt, Rick Jaff and Amanda Silver also play fast and loose with historical accuracy, despite basing their screenplay on Nathaniel Philbrick’s meticulously researched 2000 book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, which in turn is based on two published accounts by men who survived the incident. The scripters cherry-picked some details, glossed over others, and most particularly “adjusted” both Chase and Pollard for melodramatic intensity.

Perhaps borrowing from a similar technique in 1997’s Titanic, the saga is recounted in flashback via a framing device that finds an aging Thomas Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), long ago the Essex cabin boy, recounting these events to a certain Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw).

It’s a cute touch — and Gleeson and Whishaw display more acting chemistry than can be found in the film’s primary storyline — but it’s totally bogus. Although these events definitely helped inspire the 1851 publication of Moby-Dick, Melville wouldn’t have needed to approach Nickerson for “the truth of the matter.” Chase’s own account of the tragedy was published in 1821, shortly after his rescue and return to his home in Nantucket.

Ah, well. Picky, picky, picky, right?

Trumbo: The writer as triumphant gadfly

Trumbo(2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and coarse sexual candor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.4.15

You have to love ironic serendipity.

When Trumbo was scripted, and then green-lighted for production, and then filmed — with much of its dialog lifted directly from legendary Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s actual speeches and testimony, and delivered so superbly by star Bryan Cranston — nobody could have anticipated that this impeccably mounted and rigorously authentic drama would be released just as our country is poised to repeat the same ghastly mistake made with Japanese American citizens during World War II, and the so-called “Communist sympathizers” who were blacklisted during the 1950s.

Packed tightly into a movie theater filled with eager patrons, Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston)
and his wife, Cleo (Diane Lane), await the film's all-important credits.

One of whom — Trumbo — is the subject of director Jay Roach’s heartfelt and thoroughly mesmerizing film.

Mesmerizing for two reasons: because of scripter John McNamara’s skillful adaptation of veteran journalist Bruce Cook’s 1976 biography, written with Trumbo’s full cooperation; and because of Cranston’s richly nuanced portrayal of the feisty novelist, screenwriter and social agitator.

No question: Trumbo was a character, and Cranston captures the famed scribe’s numerous eccentricities, righteous indignation and insufferable idealism. Trumbo fought the good fight, and lived to talk about it; his thorn-in-the-side persistence — assisted, at just the right moment, by a few Hollywood heavyweights — helped break the blacklist, and put an end to the ultimately ineffectual scare-mongering tactics that emanated from the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Roach and McNamara re-create this shameful bit of American history with the same darkly droll tinge of humor with which Trumbo peppered both his casual conversation and his screenplays. Actually, that’s an misstatement; Trumbo’s conversation rarely was casual, and Cranston gleefully chews into McNamara’s dialog — and Trumbo’s own words — with the enthusiasm of a hyena tearing at a carcass.

We’ve been down this road before, notably with 1976’s The Front — made with numerous individuals, both in front of and behind the camera, who had been smeared by the blacklist — 1991’s Guilty by Suspicion and 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck.

The latter was highlighted by David Strathairn’s eerily authentic portrayal of broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow. Cranston takes a slightly different approach with Trumbo, nailing the man’s behavior and wonderfully rich verbal vitriol, without really trying to imitate him. As easily observed in the period photos and news clips that appear during the closing credits, Cranston doesn’t really look much like Trumbo.

By my, he sure sounds and acts like him.

The Good Dinosaur: Jurassic lark

The Good Dinosaur (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.27.15

Time and again, the folks at Pixar have demonstrated a talent for wildly imaginative, outside-the-box storytelling.

The secret lives of toys. The source of our nightmares, and our emotions. Superheroes with family and identity crises. The fate of a tiny, semi-sentient robot left alone to clean up a polluted Earth.

Arlo (far right) and his tiny "pet," Spot, find themselves in the middle of a range war, when
a trio of cattle ranchers led by Butch (second from left) take on a pack of rustling
velociraptors.

And now, perhaps, the best and biggest “what if” of all: What if that huge asteroid hadn’t hit Earth, roughly 65 million years ago?

According to Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur, at least some of the massive saurians would have established an agrarian society, homesteading and raising families much like 19th century American settlers. Indeed, this whole narrative is a playful riff on classic Western archetypes, from the aforementioned farmers to nastier aggressors lurking in outlying regions, with an actual “cattle” round-up thrown in for good measure.

At the same time, traditional family values have been grafted onto dinosaurs, often with droll intent, in the time-honored fashion of countless earlier animated Disney films that have anthropomorphized everything from elephants to Dalmatians. Indeed, much about The Good Dinosaur feels less like “standard” Pixar fare — if there is such a thing — and more like the coming-of-age plot beats of traditional Disney animated storytelling.

Then there’s also the matter of the rather unusual “pet” nipping at the edges of everything else here: a narrative element likely to make ultra-conservative, man-is-the-center-of-everything types choke on their Cheerios.

If all this sounds like rather a lot for one film, well ... yes, that’s an issue. “The Good Dinosaur” feels a bit overcooked, and it lacks the tight focus that marks Pixar’s best films. I’m always wary of scripts credited to multiple authors, and this one acknowledges five writers — Peter Sohn, Erik Benson, Meg LeFauve, Kelsey Mann and Bob Peterson — with Sohn also in the director’s chair.

At times, this saga doesn’t quite know how to find its legs, much like the title character.

Brooklyn: Endearing coming-of-age drama

Brooklyn (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and rather harshly, for brief sensuality
By Derrick Bang

There’s a moment in this film when Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) pauses at the top of the stairs in her home in tiny Enniscorthy, Ireland.

Director John Crowley holds on this hushed and wordless tableau, as Eilis thoroughly scans her bedroom, and the room immediately adjoining. Ronan’s expression is intent and focused, her carefully composed gaze a blend of determination and regret.

Eilis (Saoirse Ronan, second from right) listens warily as Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters, center
rear) responds to some thinly veiled gibes from Patty (Emily Bett Rickards, far left) and
Diana (Eve Macklin, second from left). Given half a chance, Eilis knows, Patty and Diana
will make fun of her.

And we understand that she’s memorizing these rooms — this childhood haven where she grew up — certain in the knowledge that she’ll never return. The realization is heartbreaking: one of the most poignant leave-takings I’ve ever seen on the big screen.

Brooklyn is filled with emotionally powerful moments, most given additional heft by Ronan’s exquisitely sensitive performance. She has the added benefit of excellent material; Colm Tóibín’s acclaimed 2009 novel of the same title has been deftly adapted by Nick Hornby, an excellent novelist and screenwriter (About a Boy, An Education) with a strong sense of dialogue and interpersonal dynamics.

This is a gentle, simple tale: also an ironically timely one, given the current national — and international — furor regarding immigrants. Crowley and Hornby couldn’t have anticipated such real-world turbulence during production, and therefore cannot be credited (or blamed) for deliberately creating subtle advocacy cinema.

At the same time, it’s nice to be reminded of the American values that have made our “land of the free, home of the brave” such a cherished destination for so many people from throughout the world, and for so long.

Occasional cultural references pinpoint this story in 1952 and ’53. Eilis has spent her entire life in Enniscorthy; we meet her during a final shift at a local all-purpose shop run by Miss “Nettles” Kelly (Brid Brennan), a condescending harridan who clearly enjoys embarrassing her less refined customers.

Work is scarce throughout Ireland, and under ordinary circumstances Eilis’ prospects would be extremely limited. But she’s lucky; her older sister Rose (Fiona Glascott), with assistance from Catholic priests on both sides of the Atlantic, has arranged for Eilis to emigrate to Brooklyn, New York.

Departure is bittersweet at best; although Eilis is excited, the bond with her sister is strong, as is a shared concern for their somewhat frail and lonely mother (Jane Brennan), who never fully recovered from her husband’s death.

The ocean journey, though not without incident, is cleverly condensed by Hornby; it also sets up a “passing it forward” encounter that comes to fruition, quite poignantly, toward the end of the film.

Room: Claustrophobic chiller

Room (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang

Tightly enclosed, confined-location dramas seem to have become a minor rage.

It may have started back in 2002, when Colin Farrell was trapped in Phone Booth. More recently, though, we’ve agonized while Ryan Reynolds tried to escape from an underground coffin, in Buried; and played invisible back-seat passenger while Tom Hardy spent 85 minutes in a car, in Locke.

Nothing goes to waste, in the tiny, isolated space that represents the entire universe for
Ma (Brie Larson) and young Jack (Jacob Tremblay). Thus, after gathering enough
egg shells, they naturally appoint their "home" with a decorative chain.

On a superficial level, Room would appear to belong in their company. But I actually wonder if scripter Emma Donoghue — who adapted her own best-selling 2010 novel — is familiar with Ray Bradbury’s similarly chilling “Jack-in-the-Box,” which debuted in the fantasy master’s 1947 short story collection Dark Carnival.

A few similarities are striking, but possibly coincidental. And Donoghue definitely takes her narrative into a vastly different direction, which is more in keeping with modern-day horrors. In fact, she acknowledges being inspired by the ghastly, real-life behavior of Josef Fritzl, an Austrian man whose conduct was exposed in 2008. (Research at your own peril.)

Most striking, though, are the starring performances by Brie Larson and young Jacob Tremblay, who carry the first half of this disturbing tale almost entirely on their own. Dublin-born director Lenny Abrahamson draws quite intense performances from both, and Tremblay is particularly fine: thoroughly credible as a just-turned 5-year-old boy forced to experience the world — actually, “a” world — in a manner no child should have to endure.

A typical dawn awakens Jack (Tremblay), introduced in tight close-up as he quietly shrugs out of sheet and blanket; the camera pulls back to reveal that he shares the bed with his mother (Larson), whom he calls “Ma.” She rises, prepares breakfast, and we note the presence of the bed, a sink, a toilet, a bathtub, a wardrobe, table and chairs, and a rudimentary kitchen ... all in the same 11-by-11-foot space.

The morning progresses through various activities designed to keep Jack engaged. We take in Ma’s behavior: overly bright and cheerful, with an exaggerated enthusiasm that cannot fully conceal the weary, beaten resignation in her eyes. Details pile atop each other: the sallow complexions of these two people, the way in which Jack exhibits no curiosity about anything beyond these four walls...

...these four walls which are the extent of their entire universe.

Spotlight: The Fourth Estate Rules!

Spotlight (2015) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.20.15

Crusading newspaper journalists have been a cinema staple ever since the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur stage play The Front Page first hit the big screen in 1931, but true classics are rare.

The Devil is in the details: Michael (Mark Ruffalo, center) and Sacha (Rachel McAdams)
grow increasingly excited — and horrified — as a fairly simple computer search by Matt
(Brian d'Arcy) reveals that they're likely dealing with far more than just five or six
pedophile priests.

Meet John Doe, The Big Carnival, Deadline USA and Absence of Malice come to mind, and they all have one thing in common: They’re fictitious stories.

Memorable films based on actual reporters who pursued real-world scoops are more scarce, in part because few screenwriters can spin compelling drama from the day-after-grinding-day research slog that precedes a “breaking” news story, which (to the outside world) seems to come out of nowhere. The gold standard in this category remains All the President’s Men, in great part due to screenwriter William Goldman’s superb, Oscar-winning adaptation of the Bob Woodward/Carl Bernstein book.

Goldman now has equally talented company: Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, who’ve done a masterful job with Spotlight — McCarthy also serving as director — and its depiction of the four Boston Globe reporters who won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for their astonishing series of stories exposing the long-term cover-up of child abuse by members of the Boston Catholic Church clergy.

As was the case with All the President’s Men, Spotlight isn’t merely an engaging — even suspenseful — drama, fueled by excellent performances from a well-selected ensemble cast; it’s a valuable historical document that details a frankly heinous abuse of trust and power. It’s simultaneously cathartic and horrific: a crisply condensed depiction of an extremely complicated story that expands so far beyond initial expectations, that — were it fiction — it likely wouldn’t be believed.

But it’s not fiction; it’s grim, infuriating and relentlessly heartbreaking fact.

Not to mention another reminder of the significant service performed by newspapers and their dedicated staffs, and the frankly alarming hole we’ll be in, as a country, if the Fourth Estate is allowed to be replaced by the frivolous, empty-calorie content of “web journalism” (an oxymoron if ever one existed).

McCarthy is an actor who burst on the filmmaking scene when he wrote and directed 2003’s The Station Agent, one of the finest, quirkiest dramedies of the new century. Singer has a wealth of TV scripting credits in his still-brief career, notably The West Wing and Fringe, and he made the jump to movies with the 2013 Julian Assange dramatization, The Fifth Estate.

Both McCarthy and Singer have an ear for realistic dialog, and particularly the careful “dance” that takes place during painfully raw and intimate conversations. This film is laden with such scenes — some quite difficult to watch — and all handled masterfully both by the film’s stars, and by lesser cast members appearing perhaps only briefly.