When Marnie Was There: A poignant slice of Gothic Lite

When Marnie Was There (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, and pointlessly, solely because some characters smoke
By Derrick Bang

As has become a rather quirky custom in recent years, two of the recently announced Academy Award nominees for Best Animated Feature prompted bewildered frowns.

No surprise, since both are all but unknown on these shores.

After a rather clumsy attempt at traversing the flooded marsh, Anna, left, gratefully
accepts some rowing tips from her new best friend, Marnie.

Brazil’s Boy and the World has yet to achieve wide release in the States, although a few Northern California venues are scheduled to open it later this month. Japan’s When Marnie Was There supposedly received “limited release” last spring, after a few festival appearances ... but it sure never played anywhere near our neighborhood.

Fortunately, Marnie is readily available for home viewing, having been released on DVD and Blu-ray on Oct. 6. It’s definitely worth the rental — or purchase — as it’s yet another of Studio Ghibli’s elegant fantasies, with a touching story perfectly told via lush, hand-drawn animation.

More than anything else, Studio Ghibli’s animators always establish a firm sense of place. Our heroine spends the bulk of her saga on the northernmost island of Hokkaido, in a moody, wind-swept marshland that frequently floods with the ocean tide. Grass sways gently; flowers and trees dance in the breeze; water laps along the barren shore.

The film is based on British author Joan G. Robinson’s 1967 novel of the same title, which until Studio Ghibli’s interest had become almost impossible to find (along with most of her other books). Hayao Miyazaki cited it as one of his 50 recommended children’s books, and in late 2013 announced that his studio would bring it to the big screen.

This wide-ranging interest in classic children’s fiction comes as no surprise to longtime Studio Ghibli fans, since 2010’s The Secret World of Arrietty was based on British author Mary Norton’s The Borrowers. That film was co-scripted by Miyazaki and directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi; the latter has directed When Marnie Was There, and adapted it with co-scripters Keiko Niwa and Masashi Ando.

They’ve done a lovely job.

Our young protagonist, Anna, is a typical Studio Ghibli heroine who feels disconnected from the rest of the world. With short hair and plain clothes, she looks more like a boy than a girl: likely a bit of emotional defiance every bit as protectively concealing as the plain face she displays at all times.

“Everyone else is inside: inside some sort of invisible magic circle,” she ponders, during a moment of interior reflection lifted directly from Robinson’s novel. “But I’m outside.”

Love & Mercy: God only knows

Love & Mercy (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.5.15

Brian Wilson’s life story is fascinating enough on its own merits, with enough drama, betrayal and crisis to fuel a lengthy and thoroughly fascinating TV miniseries.

During one of her first encounters with Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti, left), during a
seemingly benign afternoon barbecue, Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) is about to discover
just how cruel this celebrity psychotherapist can be toward Brian Wilson (John Cusack).

That said, director Bill Pohlad and scripters Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner deserve credit for the intriguing manner in which they’ve chosen to depict these events, in an engaging, economical two-hour film that charts the exuberant highs and heartbreaking lows of a musical genius who truly suffered for his art.

Rather than giving this tale an old-fashioned monaural spin, Pohlad and his writers have opted for a brighter, dual-track stereo treatment, with two actors playing Wilson during the strikingly distinct points of his life.

Paul Dano is spot-on as the cheerfully round-faced 1960s-era Brian, who married teenage sweetheart Marilyn Rovell and spearheaded the enormously popular pop/rock band that released an astonishing 10 albums in four short years. John Cusack, in turn, is equally compelling as the heartbreakingly subdued 1980s-era Brian, initially in thrall to control-freak celebrity psychotherapist Eugene Landy (a truly scary Paul Giamatti).

Artistically, this two-tone portrayal makes perfect sense; Brian became an entirely different person when, during the making of the albums “Pet Sounds” and “Smile,” he succumbed to artistic pressure, drug abuse and (probably) legitimate manic-depressive schizoaffective disorders. No surprise, then, that Pohlad should depict the musician’s before-and-after personas with different actors.

This gimmick isn’t new. Director Tim Fywell guided Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino through the pre- and post-fame guises of Marilyn Monroe, in 1996’s intriguing “Norma Jean & Marilyn.” Not to be outdone, director Todd Haynes employed half a dozen actors — the most intriguing of whom was Cate Blanchett — to depict various aspects of Bob Dylan’s soul, in 2007’s “I’m Not There.”

Stunt casting for its own sake can be an eye-rolling distraction, of course, but the result is entirely different when the project warrants such treatment. In this case, Pohlad’s finished film is by turns fascinating, informative, tender and distressing; I’ve no doubt he and editor Dino Jonsäter fretted over every frame, and the timing of every sequence, with the same care that Wilson brought to his later albums.

Pohlad cross-cuts between the parallel storylines, enhancing our fascination by bouncing skillfully to the other time stream each time we settle into a given chapter. That can be jarring, even unsettling, but it also mirrors the increasing chaos into which Brian’s life descends.

It Follows: A smart, scary little shocker

It Follows (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for disturbing violent and sexual content, graphic nudity and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Young indie filmmaker David Robert Mitchell acknowledges a debt to horror auteurs John Carpenter and George Romero, and it’s easy to see why: Mitchell’s little chiller, It Follows, is suffused with the original Halloween vibe.

And I mean that in the best possible way.

As the full implications of her terrifying dilemma are explained to Jay (Maika Monroe,
center), her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe) and former boyfriend Greg (Daniel Zovatto) react with
varying degrees of skepticism. Their doubts won't last long...

Mitchell’s film is unsettling and nervous-making, in the manner of 1968’s Night of the Living Dead and 1978’s Halloween, both of which emphasized atmosphere over the gratuitous gore they were (somewhat unfairly) accused of spawning in subsequent rip-offs. Mitchell understands the distinction; rather than gross out the audience, he’s far more interested in sending us home with a desire to leave the lights on all night.

Not to mention regarding the next sidewalk-strolling stranger with a worried eye.

For the most part, Mitchell plays this card skillfully: This is a seriously disturbing suburban nightmare, and editor Julio Perez IV knows precisely how to pace cinematographer Mike Gioulakis’ often disconcerting camera set-ups: a slightly wonky angle here, a worrying overhead shot there, a tense tracking shot taking us to the next scene.

Nor does Mitchell cheat, with cats bursting from darkened closets, or potential victims playing nasty tricks on each other. This narrative is scary not because of in-our-face surprises or frenzied assaults, but because of inexorable, slow-moving doom: the horror of ghastly inevitability.

The setting is a dilapidated neighborhood in suburban Detroit, with homes just distressed enough to suggest residents trying their best to maintain appearances, despite rampant unemployment and fractured families. The occasional empty house signifies a battle lost, just as nearby streets leading toward the city pass entire blocks of shattered structures that look more like the aftermath of the London blitz, than any portion of a modern American metropolis.

The actual time, though, feels ambiguous (and deliberately so, I’m sure). Technology exists, but smart phones aren’t ubiquitous; neither are we far enough back to glimpse LPs and turntables. It’s as if time, like suburban renewal, has skipped this particular enclave, which exists in something of a dreamlike haze.

Which is appropriate, given what’s about to happen.

College-age Jay (Maika Monroe) and her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe) lead a casual lifestyle with their mother, the latter an alcoholic who barely charts her daughters’ comings and goings. Despite this, Jay and Kelly seem to be reasonably well-adjusted, spending most of their time watching old fright flicks with best buds Yara (Olivia Luccardi) and Paul (Keir Gilchrist), who has had an obvious crush on Jay for many years.

While We're Young: Sly social commentary

While We're Young (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang

Getting older is difficult enough, in terms of physical and emotional challenges, without having to worry about the need to remain “relevant.”

In the aftermath of a truly silly consciousness-raising experience, Josh (Ben Stiller) and
Cornelia (Naomi Watts) attempt to make sense of the previous evening, to determine
whether any useful insight might have been achieved. Sadly, they've a ways to go before
any genuinely helpful epiphanies.

Perversely, though, that issue has become more challenging in our modern world, with cultural and technological imperatives changing not by the decade, not even by the year, but at times — seemingly — by the month. More than ever before, it feels like only agile young minds have a hope of keeping up.

But is “keeping up” really that important?

Intellectual obsolescence is the core issue of Noah Baumbach’s newest character study, but the writer/director actually has much more on his mind. Part comedy, part drama and all biting social commentary, While We’re Young is a perceptive take on 21st century fortysomethings who worry that life is passing them by ... or, worse yet, long ago left town on the last bus.

Mid-life crises are nothing new, of course; every generation crosses this more-or-less halfway point with varying degrees of the same angst. But Hollywood didn’t really discover the genre until 1955’s The Seven Year Itch, and most of the topic’s classics are more recent: 1973’s Save the Tiger, 1979’s Manhattan, 1999’s American Beauty and 2004’s Sideways come quickly to mind.

While We’re Young definitely belongs in their company. Baumbach has an unerring ear for troubled interpersonal dynamics, dating back to his Oscar-nominated script for 2005’s The Squid and the Whale. That said, some of his subsequent films — however insightful — spent too much time with unpalatable or downright mean-spirited characters; it’s difficult to embrace any message when delivered by, say, the misanthropic title character in Greenberg.

But Baumbach’s approach has been gentler of late, starting with the forlorn misfit played so winningly by Greta Gerwig, in 2012’s Frances Ha. Maybe it’s because Baumbach is gaining maturity not merely as a filmmaker, but also as a person; it can’t be accidental that he’s the same age as his protagonists in While We’re Young, definitely his kindest — and therefore more approachable — film to date.

We meet Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) as they nervously try to interact with a newborn: not theirs, as we quickly discover, but the first child of best friends Fletcher and Marina (Adam Horovitz and Maria Dizzia). As displayed so expressively by Watts — Cornelia tries, but doesn’t quite succeed, to hide her agitation — this moment is a crisis, and not merely because it revives painful memories of their own failed attempts to have children.

No, it’s a crossroads. Just as marriage leaves still-single friends feeling isolated, new parents with kids instantaneously join yet another social clique that simply doesn’t allow for childless members ... no matter how polite the lip-service.

Just like that, Josh and Cornelia feel left out.

Two Days, One Night: Every worker's nightmare

Two Days, One Night (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.20.15

This one’s brutal.

Writer/directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have uncorked an absorbing splash of cinema verité that is no less gripping for its low-budget origins: a working-class calamity that feels like it could happen to a friend, a neighbor ... or even you.

Having just learned that she has been voted out of a job by most of her own co-workers,
Sandra (Marion Cotillard, center) persuades the company owner (Baptiste Sornin) to hold
a second ballot. She now has two days, with the help of best friend Juliette (Catherine
Salée), to persuade a majority of their colleagues to change their minds.

The disturbing script is a sly update of classic psychological short stories such as Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” or Richard Matheson’s “Button, Button.” Both explore the superficiality of morality and personal integrity: the point at which seemingly good people will cave, their ethics forgotten in the face of temptation, reward ... or fear.

The Belgian Dardenne brothers’ Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night) revolves around a similarly ghastly quandary, in this case as it affects the victim.

We meet Sandra (Marion Cotillard), a working-class Belgian mother, just as she has completed a medical leave of absence. The cause remains unspecified, but clues point to a nervous breakdown of some sort; she’s clearly fragile, emotionally shattered. She’s resting at home, regaining her strength after (perhaps) her first day back at work on the production floor at Solwal, a small company that manufactures solar panels.

The phone rings, with grim news from her co-worker and best friend, Juliette (Catherine Salée). The company owner, Mr. Dumont (Baptiste Sornin), has decided that things have been almost as efficient during Sandra’s absence. Wanting to be “fair,” he has put the matter to a vote among Sandra’s blue-collar colleagues: If they agree to work harder in her continued — permanent — absence, each will receive a bonus of 1,000 Euros.

In other words, if they vote for the bonus, Sandra will be fired.

The vote goes 14 to 2, against. This is the news that Juliette — one of Sandra’s lone supporters — has just called to share, this late Friday afternoon.

Sandra is frantic; she and her husband, Manu (Fabrizio Rongione), need their combined incomes to meet mortgage payments on the home they’ve recently purchased, in a triumphant step up from public housing. It’s impossible to chart the profusion of emotions that cross Sandra’s face, as she tries to absorb what has happened, and the implications behind this catastrophe.

Cotillard earned a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for this role, and it’s easy to see why; she slips persuasively into Sandra’s skin. Because of both her performance and the script’s real-world honesty, we quickly forget that we’re watching a drama; it feels much more like a documentary. An awful one, at that.

Still Alice: Profoundly moving

Still Alice (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Rare performances transcend acting; we cease being aware of the celebrity star, or the idiosyncrasies of craft and talent, and instead unreservedly accept the character being portrayed.

As her mother (Julianne Moore, right) slides ever further into the helplessness of
Alzheimer's, Lydia (Kristen Stewart) finds that the minor issues that prompted a partial
estrangement no longer matter, and she subsequently becomes her Mom's constant
companion and most sympathetic friend.

Such is the case with Julianne Moore’s riveting, persuasive and heartbreaking work in Still Alice, directed and scripted by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, from neuroscientist Lisa Genova’s 2009 debut novel of the same title. Calling the film a vital document of our time seems both pretentious and insufficient, and yet the label is accurate; thoughtful, gracefully constructed dramas of this nature do more to enhance the national (perhaps global?) consciousness than a wealth of news stories or TV documentaries.

And if Moore wins the Academy Award for Best Actress — which she certainly deserves — then this little indie film may get the additional exposure that it also deserves.

She stars here as Alice Howland, a respected university linguistics professor who enjoys a loving and comfortable life with her husband, John (Alec Baldwin). They’re at the peak of their respective careers, and have raised three children: Anna (Kate Bosworth), Tom (Hunter Parrish) and Lydia (Kristen Stewart). Life seems ideal.

And then, gradually, Alice realizes that she’s misplacing things to a degree that feels somewhere north of “normal.”

Her mild concern erupts into full-blown terror when, during a routine morning jog across campus, she suddenly doesn’t know where she is, and has no idea where she’s going.

She immediately seeks medical consultation; the eventual diagnosis is Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease. Knowing full well what that involves, Alice faces the certainty of slowly losing all her memories and perception: everything revolving around her professional work, and ultimately even the basic recognition of best friends and family members.

What follows is not easy to watch, to say the least. Glatzer and Westmoreland carefully (and wisely) eschew any sort of “movie-making” technique, preferring instead to depict Alice’s increasing disorientation in a quiet, cinema-verité manner that is shattering, even as she fights heroically to salvage ever-smaller pieces of herself.

The title is significant, because it speaks to this struggle: More than anything else, Alice wants her family, friends and colleagues to understand that she’s still herself. But there can be no last-minute reprieves: no deus ex machina medical miracles that will pull her back from the brink. Although Glatzer and Westmoreland conclude their film with what could be termed one of Alice’s “last best days,” we understand what is to come.

The 2014 Oscar Shorts: Petite delights

The 2014 Oscar Shorts (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, and suitable for all ages
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.6.15

Much as I anticipate this annual opportunity to focus on big-screen “short stories,” the 2014 Academy Award nominees — as a group — are a bit disappointing.

To be sure, both the live-action and animated categories offer several strong nominees. But others are unsatisfying, even puzzling. The respective nominating committees sometimes focus more on form than content — chiefly with animated shorts — and that’s particularly true this year.

As a result, you’re unlikely to greet the entire road-show package with the same delight and enthusiasm generated by those from previous years; the 2014 nominees are noteworthy more for isolated pockets of excellence, rather than overall superiority.

To cases, then, starting with the live-action nominees:

Irish director Michael Lennox’s Boogaloo and Graham is charming, thanks to Ronan Blaney’s droll script and fine performances by the film’s two young stars. Riley Hamilton and Aaron Lynch play Jamesy and Malachy, the sons of working-class parents (Martin McCann and Charlene McKenna) who maintain an uneasy co-existence with occupational British soldiers in 1978 Belfast.

The boys have little to call their own, and therefore are thrilled when their soft-hearted father surprises them with two baby chicks. The boys name their new pets Boogaloo and Graham, and soon amuse their neighbors by “leashing” the birds and taking them for walks. But as the chicks grow into chickens, their mother becomes increasingly annoyed by the bother, and eventually issues an ultimatum.

The result of which leads to a particularly ingenious conclusion.

The British actually have a tendency to stand out in this category, with A-list stars often lending their talents; I still remember how much I enjoyed Martin Freeman and Tom Hollander, in last year’s The Voorman Problem. They’re matched this year by Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent, both sensational in director Mat Kirby’s The Phone Call.

Hawkins, Oscar-nominated for 2013’s Blue Jasmine, stars as Heather, a shy young woman employed at a telephone crisis center, where she can’t work up the nerve to chat with the good-looking guy (Edward Hogg) who handles one of the other phones. But such idle thoughts are forgotten when she receives a call from a distraught old man named Stan (Jim Broadbent), who can barely speak through his misery.

To Heather’s mounting terror, Stan admits to having taken an overdose of pills, but he refuses to divulge any helpful information regarding his whereabouts. We never see Broadbent: just hear his voice on the phone, or from a point within his home where he’s not quite in view ... but he’s easy to recognize, and he’s mesmerizing.

As is Hawkins. Kirby keeps her face in tight close-up, and the actress works this scenario with heart-stopping conviction. Her emotional intensity is absolutely shattering.

Kirby co-wrote this script with James Lucas, and they build their 21-minute film to a very powerful conclusion.

A Most Violent Year: Does corruption inevitably devour idealism?

A Most Violent Year (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity and violence
By Derrick Bang

Writer/director J.C. Chandor burst on the scene with 2011’s riveting Margin Call, a fictionalized depiction of how one Wall Street investment firm — Lehman Brothers, in all but name — likely kick-started the 2008 U.S. financial crisis. Although primarily a talking-heads discussion among analysts looking to save their own careers, the dialogue and character interaction unfolded with the crisp intensity of a David Mamet play: in other words, not the slightest bit boring.

As things begin, Abel (Oscar Isaac) and his wife, Anna (Jessica Chastain), are full of
optimism about a waterfront property deal that will help expand their heating-oil business.
But life — and organized crime — are about to throw several nasty barriers in their way,
testing Abel's integrity to the limit.

Chandor obviously enjoys the challenge of creating and then dissecting characters under pressure, and in A Most Violent Year he has found another grim “historical moment” in which to build and populate a drama undoubtedly typical of the time and place. And if his new film lacks the razor’s-edge focus and intensity of Margin Call, it nonetheless belongs in the worthy company of thoughtful organized crime dramas such as the Godfather trilogy and Once Upon a Time in America.

Indeed, watching Chandor’s new film, I frequently was reminded of Al Pacino’s iconic line from Godfather 3: “Just when I thought I was out ... they pull me back in.”

Except that Violent Year’s Abel Morales is trying desperately to remain out in the first place, as events conspire to make that impossible.

The story takes place during a single winter month in 1981 New York: a time when Big Apple mayhem had hit ghastly levels, between gang killings, mob family violence, record-breaking robberies, vandalized subway cars and all manner of street crime. Chandor’s characters never stray too far from a radio during the course of his film, and the constant litany of reported murders and vicious misconduct becomes something of a sidebar soundtrack to Alex Ebert’s somber orchestral score.

Against this grim backdrop, we meet Abel (Oscar Isaac) en route to the most important financial transaction of his career: a negotiation to buy some waterfront property that would significant boost the long-term growth of his fledgling heating-oil business. He gets the deal, but it comes with a daunting kicker: This down payment must be followed by the full balance within 30 days, no extensions, or the arrangement is off ... and the initial deposit forfeited.

Sadly, Abel already is in trouble; his trucks have been getting hijacked brazenly, in broad daylight and on busy city streets, by gun-toting thugs who beat up the defenseless drivers. The union boss wants the drivers armed, even if illegally; Abel, angrily defending the “kinder, gentler, better” image that he has worked hard to create, refuses.

Song of the Sea: An enchanted fable

Song of the Sea (2014) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG, for mild peril and fleeting Irish profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.30.15

There’s an irritating tendency to believe that quality animated films come only from the United States, an arrogant assumption that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has attempted to address — with varying success — since granting such features their own Oscar category in 2001.

Ben, left, unfairly blames his younger sister Saoirse for the absence of their mother, who
apparently died in childbirth. But their father, Conor, knows the actual truth ... and it's a
secret that he hopes to preserve, lest it also affect his little girl.

Although domestic efforts still tend to win the award — and that’s also annoying — the competition nonetheless has granted welcome exposure to foreign talents such as Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville), Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud (Persepolis) and Hayao Miyazaki (nominated three times, and a winner for Spirited Away).

But a sidebar problem also has emerged: It can be hard to see some of the nominees, particularly prior to the Academy Awards broadcast. As I’ve noted previously, the Academy’s animation branch can be congratulated for recognizing talent outside the United States, but that cultural generosity hasn’t been embraced by American movie distributors ... or, for that matter, by American movie viewers.

In 2011, A Cat in Paris and Chico and Rita had almost no distribution throughout the United States. One of last year’s nominees, Ernest & Celestine, never was released in our local area, having been granted only limited national release and exposure at some film festivals. And although nothing could have stopped the Frozen juggernaut — which inevitably included the Oscar in this category — Ernest & Celestine is a far better film on every level.

Which brings us to this year, and similar frustrations. Studio Ghibli’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya played a few film festivals in October and had very limited release in the rest of the country ... but only in a compromised version that inserted a new American voice cast (another practice that I deem horrifying). Good luck finding it.

Irish director Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea played for two qualifying weeks in late December, in New York, and has remained off the radar since then ... until now. The film is making spotty appearances nationwide, and, starting today, we’ve been granted one screen at an outlying Roseville multiplex.

Trust me: It’ll be worth the drive.

And don’t wait, because I doubt it’ll stay there very long.

Moore may be remembered for having helmed the delightful Secret of the Kells back in 2009, which also earned an Oscar nod. He and his crew began work on Song of the Sea that same year, and the lengthy production time will be understood the moment you experience the luxurious, absolutely gorgeous hand-drawn art that fills every frame.

Black Sea: No treasure here

Black Sea (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and violence
By Derrick Bang

Something’s rotten in the state of cinema...

Back in the day of classic Hollywood “disaster movies” — a cycle that began with 1970’s Airport — the survival rate was roughly an audience-acceptable 50 percent. This issue revolved around key characters; in 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure, we lost Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Roddy McDowall, Leslie Nielsen and Stella Stevens, while Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Pamela Sue Martin, Jack Albertson, Carol Lynley and Eric Shea made it to daylight.

Frustrated by the mutual hostility that divides his Russian and British crew members,
Robinson (Jude Law, center) angrily orders the men to get along ... while promising that
this clandestine submarine mission will make them all very, very rich.

In 1974’s The Towering Inferno, Robert Wagner, Jennifer Jones, Robert Vaughn, Richard Chamberlain and Susan Flannery got toasted, while the survivors included William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Fred Astaire. (Paul Newman and Steve McQueen weren’t in the building.) And so it went, with Earthquake, the various Airport sequels and others.

More to the point, many of those who perish do so heroically or tragically, in some cases while saving others. We feel for them. Yes, all such films have their villains, but no more than one or two ... and they always get their just desserts.

Things have changed.

These days, disaster/survival films have become slaughter films: mainstream cousins of the countless “dead teen” horror flicks that erupted in the wake of 1980’s Friday the 13th. Most of the characters are nameless, faceless and two-dimensional, just like all those doomed teens: stick figures present solely to be killed, under unpleasant and often ludicrous circumstances. Nobility and self-sacrifice are absent, replaced instead by venal and brutish behavior.

If we’re lucky, one person might survive, as in 2011’s odious Sanctum, which raised the bar for acceptable mainstream butchery. Alternatively, nobody survives, as with 2012’s The Grey. Heroic effort proves futile.

Which, in my mind, makes such films rather pointless.

And deplorably mean-spirited.

I’d hate to think this attitude shift reflects our national psyche; if it does, we’re in a lot of trouble.

All of which brings us to Black Sea, ostensibly an action thriller from director Kevin Macdonald, best known for absorbing dramas such as The Last King of Scotland and State of Play. I say “ostensibly” because you shouldn’t believe the promotional slant; this is actually a disaster movie. Which is to say, in the current vogue, a slaughter-fest.

And an insufferably dumb one, at that.

Inherent Vice: A very bad trip

Inherent Vice (2014) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity, graphic nudity, sexual content, constant drug use and occasional violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.23.15

This deranged flick is best imagined as an unholy love child spawned by Chinatown and every Sam Spade novel Dashiell Hammett never wrote.

Glimpsed through a peyote haze.

Private detective Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix, left) and maritime lawyer Sauncho
Smilax (Benicio Del Toro) watch from an oceanside restaurant as a suspicious
schooner — recently re-christened the Golden Fang — makes its way into port,
its purpose certain to be illicit.

Thomas Pynchon is challenging under the best of circumstances, which also can be said of director/scripter Paul Thomas Anderson, whose oeuvre features aggressively peculiar films such as Magnolia, There Will Be Blood and The Master. Put these two eclectic minds together, and the results are far from the best of circumstances.

At its better moments, Anderson’s take on Pynchon’s Inherent Vice is a funny pastiche of 1940s film noir atmosphere and attitude, filtered through the drug-hazed cheesecloth of 1970s hippiefied Los Angeles. The characters are manic, the dialog heightened far beyond stratospheric visibility, and the unfolding plot a crazy-quilt conspiracy that gets more flamboyantly, hilariously preposterous by the minute.

You can’t help admiring the self-indulgent audacity ... except, well, too much rapidly becomes way too much. The stoner somnambulance through which every character delivers his lines becomes trés tedious, and a tedious film wears out its welcome long before the clock winds down on its 148-minute running time.

Anderson, it should be noted, never makes short films. He should consider doing so.

Pynchon’s 2009 novel exists in the same seemingly random, psychedelic fever that was typical of Richard Brautigan’s work in the 1960s and ’70s. If so-called “free jazz” is music without melody, then Brautigan’s prose was words without context: sentences strung together solely to befuddle and amuse. Brautigan was adored by the counter-counter set, who no doubt found his books far more compelling when read aloud under the influence of LSD.

Inherent Vice is similarly haphazard, with bizarre characters wandering into our protagonist’s landscape like the pink elephants that haunt somebody enduring delirium tremens. We must consider Pynchon’s history: As we’re reminded in a delightful December analysis in the Los Angeles Times, Pynchon’s third novel, 1973’s Gravity’s Rainbow, won the National Book Award ... “and caused the Pulitzer Committee to cancel that year’s fiction prize after it found the book ‘unreadable’ and ‘obscene.’ ”

Inherent Vice is somewhat more coherent, but that’s not saying much. Indeed, it could be argued that the entire story is a marijuana-induced nightmare experienced by main character Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix): In other words, nothing that we see is real. The film dares us to imagine this from the very first scene, as Doc views the unexpected arrival of former girlfriend Shasta Fay (Katherine Wilson) with surprise, and she murmurs, almost to herself, “Thinks he’s hallucinating.”

That notion likely will make the film work better for some viewers, but it’s too easy an explanation. More complicated is the possibility that some of what we see is real ... and some isn’t.

I’ve serious doubts, for example, about the actual existence of Sortilège (Joanna Newsom), who both narrates this saga — providing indispensable linking commentary that helps us over the rough spots — and serves as Doc’s sounding board. Eventually, it seems odd that nobody else seems to interact with Sortilège, suggesting that she’s the personification of Doc arguing with himself.

Perhaps.

American Sniper: Well-focused drama

American Sniper (2014) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong and disturbing war violence, and frequent profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.16.15

What price a man’s soul?

Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper is the thoughtful study of Texas-born good ol’ boy Chris Kyle, who, sparked by a flash of patriotism, impulsively abandoned an amiably deadbeat lifestyle to train as a Navy SEAL. And not just any SEAL, as it turned out, but a deadly accurate sharpshooter eventually credited with 160 confirmed kills (out of 255 probables) during his service in the Iraqi war.

With Goat-Winston (Kyle Gallner, background) keeping an eye on the surrounding
buildings, Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) peers through the scope of his sniper rifle and
wonders what to do about the young woman and little boy who have just emerged from
a street-level doorway. Are they harmless ... or should they be taken out?

Eastwood — 84 years young, and still going strong — hasn’t helmed many straight biographies during his lengthy career; we can point to Bird and J. Edgar, along with White Hunter, Black Heart, the latter a thinly veiled account of director John Huston’s off-camera activities while making The African Queen.

Despite working with different scripters, each of these films focused on the emotional and spiritual toll exacted by a man’s career and lifestyle. It could be argued that Eastwood’s magnum opus, in this regard, is the wholly fictional Unforgiven, particularly when protagonist Bill Munny observes, “It’s a hell of a thing, killin’ a man. Take away all he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.”

Scripter Jason Hall emphasizes this notion throughout American Sniper, drawing heavily from the 2012 autobiography that Kyle wrote, assisted by Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice. It’s a helluva story on numerous levels, starting with the fact that individuals really can make a massive difference, even within the military chain of command. Kyle couldn’t possibly know how many scores (hundreds?) of American soldiers he saved, during his career as — you have to love this eyebrow-lifting accolade — the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history.

And yet, on the surface, Bradley Cooper’s understated performance as Kyle eschews such celebrity; the man repeatedly insists that he abides by the simple ethos of God, country and family, and always in that order. On top of which, his responsibility as a childhood guardian to younger brother Jeff instilled the importance of looking after one’s own, and — later, on the battlefield — never leaving a man behind.

But Cooper’s work here is deceptive, as is the layering that Eastwood encourages from his star. At first blush, Kyle seems superficial and bland: determined solely to do a good job on behalf of his fellow soldiers, and seemingly unmoved by the consequences of his actions. But that’s a lie, of course, as becomes increasingly obvious during the course of a military career that runs from 1999 through 2009.

Selma: The march resonates anew

Selma (2014) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG-13, laudably but a bit generously, despite considerable grim violence, dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.9.15

The images are sickening, their motivation heinous.

Having led a group of peaceful protestors during a voting rights march that concludes in
front of the Selma County courthouse steps, Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo, center
rear) and his followers wait to see what will happen next. It won't be pretty...

Only two decades removed from the post-WWII revelations of how atrociously German-based Jewish citizens had been treated by their own countrymen — up to brutal slaughter — the United States was turning an equally blind eye toward the similarly appalling behavior of Alabama cops who, protected by the imprimatur of authority, assaulted and killed their black neighbors with the gleeful enthusiasm of jack-booted Nazi thugs.

If that isn’t sufficient irony, consider this: Much of America first learned of these contemptible circumstances on March 7, 1965 — remembered, to this day, as our own “Bloody Sunday” — when ABC interrupted an evening movie to show live footage of peaceful black citizens being tear-gassed and beaten by state and local cops in Selma, Ala. The film in question? The television premiere of Judgment at Nuremberg.

The source of all this white-cracker rage?

The audacity of these black citizens, who insisted on exercising their right to vote. The situation was particularly pernicious in Alabama, and notably in Selma, where only 130 of its roughly 15,000 black residents had successfully become voters. Most had been foiled by local registrars who routinely demanded answers to absurdly difficult civics questions.

Director Ava DuVernay opens her riveting new film, Selma, with just such an encounter. A quietly dignified Annie Lee Cooper (Oprah Winfrey) makes what we realize is the most recent of many such trips to the county registrar’s office, only to be thwarted anew by a sneering white clerk who, irritated by her correct answers to his first two questions, responds with an impossible third.

It’s a brilliantly clever prologue by DuVernay and scripter Paul Webb, and not merely for the unsettling calm with which the scene is staged: the immediate implication that this is disenfranchised business as usual. DuVernay also secures calmly understated performances from both actors: the determined but wearily pragmatic Winfrey on one side, the pugnacious Clay Chappell on the other.

It’s a landmark cinematic moment: a scene destined to be memorialized, and oft resurrected, for decades to come.

And it succinctly depicts the fetid racist swamp into which Martin Luther King Jr. waded in early 1965, fresh from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and having been named “Man of the Year” by Time Magazine, which dubbed him “the American Gandhi.”