The Beanie Bubble: Bursts with fun

The Beanie Bubble (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.11.23

On June 3, 1999, a massive truck was side-swiped and overturned on Atlanta’s I-285 during rush hour, spilling its contents onto the freeway.

 

The payload: a massive shipment of “Stretchy the Ostrich” Teenie Beanie Babies, bound for a McDonald’s outlet.

 

"Success," insists Ty Warner (Zack Galifianakis), "is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 perecent
presentation." New business partner Robbie (Elizabeth Banks) plays along, when the
two prepare to make a splash at their first collaborative toy fair.

Rather than stop to determine if the driver was all right, or call 911, numerous motorists — according to an Associated Press wire story — “leaned from their cars to scoop up the Beanie Babies with one hand, while they kept rolling with the other hand on the wheel.”

Co-directors Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash open their engaging film with a re-enactment of that chaotic scene, albeit with a bit of dramatic license: full-size Beanies, a wide variety of styles, and drivers exiting their cars to grab an armful.

 

The Beanie Bubble — scripted by Gore, from Zac Bissonnette’s 2015 non-fiction book, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute — is a dramatized account of the toy craze that captivated folks during the latter years of the 20th century, and early 21st. It’s a deliciously scathing indictment of both speculative greed — on par with the 17th century Dutch tulip craze — and the Svengali-like sway an entrepreneur held over three key women in his professional and personal life.

 

Although there’s no doubt Ty Warner was an incredibly gifted businessman with acute market sense, he also exploited and subsequently abandoned talented colleagues who deserved equal credit for his company’s success. Given that two also became lovers, Gore and Kulash’s entertaining film shines a well-deserved light on the fact that success, in this case, required a village of four.

 

Much of this saga’s depiction here is accurate; other key details are — shall we say — massaged. Gore and Kulash are up front about this, opening with a cheeky text block that reads “There are parts of the truth you just can’t make up. The rest, we did.”

 

Their film unfolds in a non-linear fashion, bouncing between multiple timelines that depict how Warner (played here by Zack Galifianakis) meets and soon relies upon Robbie (Elizabeth Banks), Sheila (Sarah Snook) and Maya (Geraldine Viswanathan).

 

Robbie — at loose ends, stuck in an unhappy marriage — enters Warner’s life in 1983, just as his fledgling toy company achieves its first breakthrough: plush cats that are deliberately under-stuffed, to make them more cuddly and lifelike. The two become lovers and partners, with Robbie’s sharp business acumen quite instrumental in building the Ty brand.

 

Banks deftly captures the nuanced thrill of a woman given an opportunity to emerge from an unhappy shell, to become a mover and shaker. Robbie becomes dynamic, playful and (so she believes) firmly in control of what blossoms into an exciting career. She’s also the only person who can stand up to the often imperious Warner; Banks’ steely sideways glance gets plenty of action.

 

Air: A perfect swish

Air (2023) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for frequent profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.7.23

Nothing beats a story well told.

 

Nike’s early effort to partner with basketball’s Michael Jordan seems an unlikely topic for a fact-based mainstream drama, but in director Ben Affleck’s hands, the result is mesmerizing.

 

The magic moment: Nike creative guru Peter Moore (Matthew Mayer, left) outlines his
innovative shoe design plan for sports scout Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon, center) and
marketing VP Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman).

And that remains true, every minute, even though we all know this saga’s outcome.

 

Credit Affleck’s sublime handling of a cast that dazzles in every scene, along with William Goldenberg’s staccato editing and scripter Alex Convery’s sharp, shrewd and thoroughly absorbing script; it positively roars with captivating, Aaron Sorkin-style dialogue that sizzles when delivered by this roster of accomplished scene-stealers.

 

Who knew sports endorsements could be so fascinating?

 

Affleck opens with a lightning-quick montage of iconic early 1980s moments, movies, products, TV commercials and cultural touchstones: the perfect way to establish the struggling effort of distant-third Nike to establish itself as a basketball-branded shoe, running dead last behind Converse and Adidas.

 

The former had Magic Johnson and Larry Bird; the latter had the “cool” factor that made it the shoe kids wanted to wear. Adidas also had its eyes on draft pick Michael Jordan, a hot-prospect guard from the University of North Carolina.

 

The problem, as former NBA draft pick-turned-Nike exec Howard White (Chris Tucker) explains to colleague and basketball scout Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), is one of image. In a ferociously funny, rat-a-tat lecture delivered in Tucker’s inimitable style, Howard points out that Nike is “known” for making jogging shoes … and no Black kid would be caught dead jogging.

 

Up to this point — as the story begins — Sonny hasn’t had much success recruiting top players to the Oregon-based company’s basketball division. The situation has become so dire, the board of directors is threatening to shutter the basketball division. 

 

“I told you not to take the company public,” Sonny laments, to friend and Nike founder/CEO Phil Knight (Affleck).

 

Sonny — who lives and breathes basketball, and has an instinct for talent — can’t get enthusiastic about any of the other draft pick candidates; he’s interested solely in Jordan. But the rising young star has eyes solely for Adidas, and doesn’t even want to hear from Nike. Nor will Jordan’s shark-in-the-waters agent, David Falk (Chris Messina) — despite a respectful professional kinship with Sonny — do anything to facilitate such a meeting.

 

Sonny shares his frustration with longtime friend and Nike marketing VP Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), who is sympathetic but similarly stymied. And it must be noted that the dynamic between these four men — Sonny, Phil, Howard and Rob — is strained, as is the atmosphere within Nike’s headquarters. 

 

Even so — even when tempers are so frequently frayed — Affleck and Convery never lose track of the camaraderie, friendship and loyalty that bond these guys.

 

Tetris: Game on!

Tetris (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

You wouldn’t think the debut and marketing of a video game could be spun into an absorbing thriller.

 

You’d be wrong.

 

Software entrepreneur Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton, left) initially believes that marketing
Tetris simply will involve securing publication rights from developer Alexey Pajitnov
(Nikita Efremov), but the latter quickly dismisses this naïve notion, pointing out that
things are handled quite differently in the Soviet Union. Translator Sasha
(Sofia Lebedeva) follows this conversation with open curiosity.

Director Jon S. Baird’s Tetris is an audacious account of the mid-1980s struggle for publishing rights for that enormously addictive game. Many of the key players here are actual people — the two most prominent individuals, still with us today, approved the project — although scripter Noah Pink employs serious dramatic license to transform what likely was a dull, grinding saga of dueling litigants into a delightfully cheeky spy flick.

Besides which, we’re dealing primarily with the Soviet Union, during the final few years before its collapse … so who’s to say that some of Pink’s imaginative embellishments don’t hew close to the truth?

 

A brief real-world introduction:

 

In 1984, early-gen hardware and software engineer Alexey Pajitnov — then working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences — developed a puzzle game on the institute’s Electronika 60 computer. Pajitnov titled his “falling blocks” creation Tetris, from a blend of “tetra” (four) and his favorite sport, tennis.

 

The Electronika 60 lacked a graphical interface, so Pajitnov’s first-gen version used simple spaces and brackets. The game caught on like wildfire once he shared it, and soon migrated to every scientific colleague with a computer. With the help of Vadim Gerasimov, a 16-year-old student with mad programming skills, Tetris was adapted for IBM personal computers.

 

But Pajitnov didn’t “own” his creation; the Soviet government did. He therefore couldn’t sell, license or market it. The game nonetheless um, ah, “traveled” to Hungary and Poland, where it came to the attention of international software salesman Robert Stein; he shopped it around the 1987 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show.

 

What happened next was somewhat fishy, because Stein ultimately licensed a game that he didn’t actually own. Soon thereafter, it was spotted by Henk Rogers, a Dutch-born, American-raised entrepreneur living in Japan with his family; he smelled opportunity.

 

Baird’s film begins as Rogers (Taron Egerton), seeking a hit that might save his failing company, Bullet-Proof Software, stumbles across Tetris at a computer expo. He’s transfixed, and immediately sets out to obtain the right to license the game in Japan. Stein (Toby Jones) already has — questionably — sold American rights to video game developer/publisher Spectrum HoloByte, and European rights to Mirrorsoft; Japan remains an open market.

 

But Rogers soon learns that — Stein’s existing deals notwithstanding — the game’s ownership is murky at best, utterly bizarre at worst. The complexity of additional licensing involves not only nation-state rights, but also the proliferation of platforms — at the time, Atari, Commodore 64 and Amiga, among others — and their parent companies.

 

Ergo Rogers, with no shortage of brashness, becomes “the guy who goes to Russia.”

Empire of Light: Radiant

Empire of Light (2022) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, sexual content, dramatic intensity and violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.23.22

Writer/director Sam Mendes’ handsomely mounted, intensely intimate character study is enchanting on so many levels, it’s difficult to know where to begin.

 

In the long-deserted upper level of their majestic cinema palace, Hilary (Olivia Colman)
watches, transfixed, as Stephen (Micheal Ward) gently tends to a pigeon with an
injured wing.

First and foremost, this is a loving valentine to the transformational magic of old-style film palaces: perhaps also a sad farewell to a manner of moviegoing likely to disappear within the next decade.

We’re also reminded, ever so gently, of the healing power of art in general — music, poetry, film itself — and the connective warmth of community, however unusual the “family unit” might be.

 

And this poignant story’s emotional impact comes from the powerhouse starring performance by Olivia Colman, whose bravura work here may be the high point of an already astonishing acting career. (I’ve said this before, about Colman’s work … and, somehow, she always tops herself.)

 

The setting is an English coastal town, where Hilary (Colman) is the shift manager of the Empire, a fading palatial cinema house that still looks quite fancy — to a point — while nonetheless being a shadow of its glory days. 

 

(Filming took place in Margate, a town on the northern shore of Kent, where production designer Mark Tildesley discovered Dreamland: a former cinema and ballroom, with a majestic art deco exterior attached to a seaside fun fair. His transformation of that venue, for this film, is breathtaking.)

 

It’s Christmas Eve, 1980; Hilary arrives for the day’s shift, unlocking doors and cabinets, turning on lights. The rest of the crew soon follows: notably projectionist Norman (Toby Jones), junior manager Neil (Tom Brooke) and 18-year-old worker-bee Janine (Hannah Onslow).

 

Everybody answers to supervising manager Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth), prone to outbursts of temper, and soon revealed as a tight-lipped bully who uses and abuses people. (Firth, a chameleon who could embrace any role, is thoroughly convincing as an unapologetic bastard.)

 

Business is light, despite the allure of top-drawer, second-run fare on the theater’s two screens; we sense that a long time has passed, since the Empire enjoyed anything approaching a full house.

 

Despite her obviously capable skills, Hilary is quiet, withdrawn and oddly muted. It’s as if her eyes have become motion detectors: dark and inert at rest, erupting suddenly with life — and a smile that feels forced, existing only because it’s expected — only when somebody interacts with her.

Minari: An unfinished symphony

Minari (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for thematic elements and a fleeting rude gesture

By Derrick Bang

At its core, writer/director Lee Isaac Chung’s gentle drama is the classic saga of one man’s pursuit of the American dream.

 

It’s also a study of fitting in: finding peace as a family, and as immigrants coming to terms with their place in an unfamiliar land.

 

Jacob (Steven Yeun, left) and his family — clockwise from left, grandmother Soonja
(Yuh-Jung Youn), wife Monica (Yeri Han) and their children Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and
Davis (Alan S. Kim) —contemplate the challenge of transforming native Arkansas
landscape into an operational fruit and vegetable farm.

The setting is the 1980s. Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) has just moved his family from California to a 50-acre plot of farmland in rural Arkansas, purchased with all the money that he made during 10 years as a chicken sexer. Mindful of the ever-increasing arrival of Korean immigrants to this part of the United States, Jacob envisions a soon-to-be-thriving business growing and selling fresh Korean fruits and vegetables.

 

His wife Monica (Yeri Han) thinks he has lost his mind.

 

Chung opens his film as Jacob slowly leads his family down a country road; Monica is behind him, driving the truck with all their belongings. Jacob turns into an open field, and parks in front of a large mobile home where they’re now to live. Monica makes no effort to conceal her dismay. Her reaction is magnified by the absence of steps leading to the front door that stands four feet above the ground: a droll touch that deftly amplifies the insanity of what Jacob has gotten them into.

 

(The place does have electricity, although this detail is glossed over. Chung is occasionally sloppy that way.)

 

Worse yet — as they discover a few days later, during a torrential rain — a mobile home isn’t the smartest dwelling in a region known for tornadoes.

 

This cuts to the heart of Jacob’s personality, and his determination to By God Make This Work, despite being wholly ignorant of the region and so many other things. He’s also heedless of the fact that the land’s previous tenant — presumably a better-informed local — went bankrupt trying. 

 

Ergo, as but one example, Jacob refuses to spend money on a dowser, insisting that he can find a well on his own.

 

There’s a certain nobility to Jacob’s stubbornness, and Yeun exudes an aura of quiet dignity and unyielding persistence. Han’s performance, in turn, is richly nuanced: On the one hand, she admires and loves her husband, and clearly wants to have faith in his grand plan … but, on the other hand, she feels it’s foolish, reckless and possibly even hazardous to their children. She’s also anxious about their isolation, and where her own life and marriage go, moving forward.

 

Conversely, Jacob holds firm to the notion that ultimately their children will benefit from his dream. 

 

Eventually. Once the dust settles.

Just Mercy: A real-world horror story

Just Mercy (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and racial epithets
By Derrick Bang

Effective advocacy cinema should enlighten, inspire or outrage.

And, in some cases, prompt grief.

Summoned back to court to hear the results of an appeal for a new trial by defense
attorney Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan, left), he and wrongly incarcerated
Death Row inmate Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) await the judge's announcement.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy manages all of the above, and then some. This thoroughly absorbing — and progressively infuriating — drama is an impressively faithful depiction of the jaw-dropping ordeal endured by Walter McMillian, who in June 1987 was arrested for a murder he couldn’t possibly have committed, sentenced to death during a patently absurd trial, and subsequently spent six years on Death Row.

In late 1988, the case came to the attention of freshly minted Harvard lawyer Bryan Stevenson, newly arrived in Alabama to partner with Eva Ansley, with whom he’d co-found the Equal Justice Initiative. (Since 1994, the Republican-controlled Alabama has been the only state that refuses to provide legal assistance to death row prisoners.)

Stevenson’s growing involvement in McMillian’s nightmare fuels the drama in Cretton’s film; he co-wrote the script with Andrew Lanham, based on Stevenson’s 2014 memoir of the same title. The result is must-see cinema, thanks also to powerhouse performances from Michael B. Jordan (Stevenson) and Jamie Foxx (McMillian), along with equally solid work from a roster of shrewdly cast supporting players.

At its core, this saga is about repugnant racism, corruption and the hideous abuse of power by smugly arrogant white men who know they can get away with anything. The villains in this drama are headed by Michael Harding’s chilling portrayal of Sheriff Tom Tate, who — as the film opens — has been under mounting pressure to find the person who shot and killed 18-year-old dry-cleaning clerk Ronda Morrison (white, of course) on November 1, 1986.

For reasons this film never makes clear — partly because there didn’t seem to bea reason — seven months later Tate arrests McMillian, a pulpwood worker shown felling trees in a brief sequence prior to the fateful traffic stop. (The poetic image of blue sky shimmering through gently wafting pine needles, as McMillian glances reverently heavenward, will prove important later.) Tate’s choice seems governed solely by his belief that McMillian looks like a black guy who’d gun down a helpless white woman.

This arrest, surrounded by white cops with rifles and pistols drawn, gives Harding his first flat-out scary moment. (Several others will follow, the actor often radiating lethal menace without saying a word.)

The Old Man and the Gun: Quite a pistol!

The Old Man and the Gun (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Right from the start, we’re obviously in the hands of a savvy filmmaker.

It’s not merely the grace and charismatic star wattage with which Robert Redford strolls into the opening scene, although writer/director David Lowery deserves credit for stepping back and letting the 82-year-old actor — his blue eyes still sparkling with charm — carry the moment with the on-screen magnetism that has made him a Hollywood icon for more than half a century.

Having successfully eluded police pursuit after robbing a bank, Forrest Tucker (Robert
Redford) furthers his camouflage as "just a guy" by stopping to help a stranded
motorist (Sissy Spacek).

No, it’s what happens next, when Redford’s Forrest Tucker — having just robbed a bank with the calm, congenial politeness of somebody purchasing a movie theater ticket — hops into his getaway car. Cinematographer Joe Anderson tracks the vehicle as it crisply takes a few corners. Ambient sounds are accompanied by our eavesdropping on police scanner chatter, as all officers are alerted to be on the lookout for a white sedan.

Tucker’s car heads toward the camera, then turns left (our right) and vanishes into some sort of alleyway. Anderson, positioned at the foreground of this city block, slowly pans along the cross-street, momentarily focusing on two children playing. In the background, we hear the sounds of a car stopping, the door opening and closing as somebody exits, a pause, and then another car door opening and closing, and the sound of a different engine roaring into life.

Anderson’s camera slides along and reaches the hard-packed dirt of a vacant lot — all of this having been one continuous shot — just as Tucker bursts onto the street, now driving a fresh vehicle.

Absolutely brilliant use of the cinematic medium.

I settled back, knowing we were in for a treat. Lowery doesn’t disappoint.

The Old Man and the Gun is a mildly — but only mildly — romanticized dramedy based on the audacious life of Forrest Tucker, a career criminal first arrested for car theft in Stuart, Florida, in 1936. He was 15 years old. Over a span of decades that found him in prison as often as out, he ultimately developed a method enhanced by his advancing age, and rehearsed with the care and precision of a Royal Shakespearean actor.

Frightened tellers nonetheless commented on the old guy’s almost apologetic deference, and the fact that he smiled with such equanimity. They practically wanted to help him rob their bank. It was early 1980, and the George Burns/Art Carney crime dramedy Going in Style still was playing in movie theaters. As a result, when police officers in Texas and Oklahoma compared notes regarding a series of similar bank hold-ups, the as-yet-unidentified Tucker was dubbed head of “The Over-the-Hill Gang.”

(Actually, The Over-the-Hill Gang is an occasionally charming 1969 Walter Brennan Western. But I digress.)

Clearly, Tucker’s life was made for the movies. I’m surprised it took so long.

Call Me By Your Name: An incandescent depiction of love

Call Me By Your Name(2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for nudity, frank sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.2.18

One cannot imagine more perfect circumstances under which to fall in love.

Or a more lyrical and sensitive depiction of same.

Meals at the Perlman home invariably take place outside, surrounded by the estate's lush
orchards: genial gatherings during which Professor Perlman and his wife (Michael
Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar, left) make newcomer Oliver (Armie Hammer, second from
right) feel at home, while their teenage son Elio (Timothée Chalamet) keeps his
thoughts to himself.

Director Luca Guadagnino’s sweetly poignant Call Me by Your Name captures the jokey, nervous, wary and (ultimately) full-throttle rush of falling in love: not of first love, necessarily, but rather of true love. The bond that proves life-changing: the one that we instinctively know, deep down, will be remembered — savored — forever, regardless of how long it lasts.

Credibly conveying this flurry of complex emotions on the big screen isn’t easy, because — in real life — so much of such intimate surrender is private, and wordless. Movies are great when it comes to playful eroticism or naked lust, but attempts to convey genuine passion — and goodness, such attempts are legion — too often are cluttered with relentless (and unnecessary) dialog.

Guadagnino and scripter James Ivory understood this, and deftly rose to the challenge of adapting André Aciman’s 2007 novel. Ivory just collected a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for his efforts.

The setting is Northern Italy; the year is 1983, before computers and Smart phones would become ubiquitous thieves of shared personal time. Professor Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg), a distinguished scholar in the field of Greco-Roman culture, traditionally spends summers with his wife, Annella (Amira Casar), and their son, Elio (Timothée Chalamet), in the family’s 17th century villa.

It’s a long, lazy busman’s holiday of sorts, with research interrupted frequently by biking, outdoor sports, swims in the nearby lake, and languid, wine-fueled meals. Seventeen-year-old Elio, an accomplished pianist, takes after his father; the boy reads voraciously, transcribes music, and flirts with the numerous local girls, most notably Marzia (Esther Garrel). Clothing is sparse; sex is in the air.

The villa is surrounded by trees, all laden with fruit as ripe as the lithe young bodies.

As is his custom, Perlman invites a graduate student to share his research during a six-week sojourn. This summer’s arrival is 24-year-old Oliver (Armie Hammer), who is pursuing his doctorate.

Oliver is hip, flip and immediately — confidently — at ease in these new surroundings. Elio, amused and annoyed by this brash newcomer, manifests teenage aloofness and mild condescension. Oliver, in turn, responds with slightly mocking indifference.

Or maybe something else is going on.

Atomic Blonde: A noisy bomb

Atomic Blonde (2017) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for strong violence, nudity, sexuality and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.28.17

British author Antony Johnston obviously grew up reading John Le Carré, because his 2012 graphic novel — The Coldest City, with moody art by Sam Hart — is laden with the sort of spycraft that George Smiley would have recognized: bleak cynicism, operatives known only by code names, squabbling between Intelligence Agency factions, cut-outs, traitors and double-crosses.

It's just another day in the office for Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), as she tries
to prevent KGB thugs from reaching — and killing — the defecting East German
intelligence officer under her protection.

The story takes place in Berlin in November 1989, immediately before and after East and West are unified. An undercover MI6 agent is killed trying to bring invaluable information back to the British: a list believed to identify every espionage agent working on both sides of the wall. Veteran undercover operative Lorraine Broughton is sent to Berlin, to retrieve the list and identify her colleague’s killer; her task is complicated by the chaos of mass demonstrations calling for unification, while KGB loyalists resist with increasing viciousness.

Definitely a hook on which to hang a slick, thoughtful espionage saga.

Too bad director David Leitch and scripter Kurt Johnstad didn’t see it that way.

They’ve essentially re-cast 2014’s loathsomely violent John Wick with a female lead, and the briefest of nods to genre spycraft. (No surprise there, since Leitch was an uncredited co-director on the first Wick.) The distinction is immediately obvious with a name change — Atomic Blonde — that more accurately reflects star Charlize Theron’s luminously white hairstyle, and the luxuriously wild outfits that she wears so well: most of them also vibrant white, with striking black accoutrements. Costume designer Cindy Evans, take a bow.

The Berlin setting is persuasively reproduced by production designer David Scheunemann; cinematographer Jonathan Sela deserves equal credit for gritty street scenes, strobe-lit nightclubs and shadow-laden noir tableaus. No question: This film looks terrific, and feels like the ideal backdrop for cloak-and-dagger subterfuge.

But Leitch has no finer sensibilities. His film is flashy trash: violent, tawdry and depressingly nihilistic. Midway through this two-hour exercise in brutality, it becomes impossible to keep track of who’s good, bad or in between; Johnstad’s script keeps changing its mind, seemingly on every other page.

Sing Street: A joyful noise

Sing Street (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic candor, profanity, underage smoking and other questionable teen behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.29.16

I’m in love.

Much the way the young star of this indie charmer worships the mysterious girl who lives across the street from his school, I adore the filmmaking chops of Irish writer/director John Carney.

Having worked up the courage to chat up the intriguing girl (Lucy Boynton) who often
stands across the street from his school, Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) concocts an
improbable scheme to get her attention. The problem, then, is making good on his
grandiose claims...

He came to our attention Stateside with 2007’s endearing Once, and its music-laden saga of a Dublin busker and Czech immigrant who meet and then bond over their shared love of songwriting and performing. Stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová fell in love during production, and it showed; nothing could have been sweeter than their Academy Awards performance of the film’s signature tune, “Falling Slowly,” which deservedly galloped home with an Oscar.

Carney detoured with a couple of less successful projects before returning to the music world with 2013’s equally appealing Begin Again, which found washed up, Manhattan-based music exec Mark Ruffalo embracing one last career shot by encouraging the efforts of fledgling singer/songwriter Keira Knightley. As with Once, the action unfolds against a backdrop of catchy, radio-ready new songs: another instant soundtrack hit for delighted fans.

Pleasant as it was, though, a certain something was missing from Begin Again: something that has become obvious with the arrival of Sing Street. As a writer, Carney clearly has the most fun exploring his Irish roots; this new film’s hard-scrabble, working-class Dublin setting affords a rich tapestry of young angst and earthy ensemble dynamics.

Carney sets his story in the 1980s, as a bleak employment depression sends ferryloads of young Irish citizens to London, in the (often vain) hope of landing a steady paycheck. Against this backdrop, 15-year-old Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) finds life at home increasingly distressing. Parents Robert (Aidan Gillen) and Penny (Maria Doyle Kennedy) are heading for a messy divorce, heedless of the impact the process is having on Conor, his sister Ann (Kelly Thornton) and their older brother Brendan (Jack Reynor).

Financial stress contributes to the trauma, and one immediate change affects Conor personally. To save money, he’s moved from his posh Jesuit private school to an inner-city comprehensive: Synge Street School, laden with cigarette-smoking bullies barely kept under control by mostly ineffectual priests. The one exception is the smugly authoritarian Brother Baxter (Don Wycherley), a tyrannical monster who takes pleasure in humiliating his students.

Barely into his first day, Conor runs afoul of both Brother Baxter and the hulking Barry (Ian Kenny), a vicious older student likely passed from one grade to the next, just so his previous instructors can get rid of him.

Everybody Wants Some: College daze

Everybody Wants Some (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity, drug use, sexual candor and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

Boys will be boys ... and it’s a wonder girls will have anything to do with them.

Texas-born writer/director Richard Linklater hearkens back to his cinematic roots with this new laid-back comedy, which he regards as a “spiritual sequel” to his career-making 1993 hit, Dazed and Confused. That film, set in May 1976, followed the antics of small-town high school kids during their final day of class; this one spends three days in September 1980, during the long weekend preceding the first day of college.

Having commandeered a table at the local disco, Jake (Blake Jenner, center) and his new
friends — from left, Finn (Glen Powell), Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), Dale (J. Quinton
Johnson) and Plummer (Temple Baker) — assess the field to determine which young
ladies are worth pursuing.

The goals — getting drunk, stoned and indulging in recreational sex — haven’t changed, nor has the execution: Although Linklater typically begins with carefully dialogued scripts, he encourages his cast members to expand and improvise, as they become more “in tune” with their characters. The result feels spontaneous and organic, like a well-rehearsed play that has grown from humbler origins.

That said, such riffing isn’t always successful. Many of the guys here feel goofily authentic, their conversation and antics what we’d expect from early ’80s college jocks. A few, however, are way over the top, the young actors in question trying much too hard. By the same token, some of the unstructured interactions sorta drift off into space, never really justifying their existence.

At just a few minutes shy of two full hours, Everybody Wants Some also starts to feel a bit tedious, its episodic nature gradually wearing out its welcome. Better that Linklater and editor Sandra Adair had trimmed more judiciously, and left us wanting more.

Even so, it’s hard to resist the film’s larkish charm, and that of its young cast. At its best moments — which is most of the time — Linklater’s unabashedly autobiographical ode to his own college experience is both fun and funny.

The setting is Southeast Texas State University, where incoming freshman Jake Bradford (Blake Jenner) has left his small-town roots to become one of the newest members of STU’s baseball team. That allows him the best of all possible perks: a room in one of the school’s two frat-like “baseball houses,” far removed from the cramped, apartment-like dorms in which most new students are shoveled.

Jake quickly finds himself one of the low men in a pecking order dominated by seniors McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin) and Roper (Ryan Guzman), who view it as their responsibility to squash the prima donna instincts of newbies who may have been star athletes in high school, but now are no more than scramblers amid peers who all were stars at their respective schools.

McFarland USA: A genuine heart-warmer

McFarland USA (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG, for mild dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.20.15

For crowd-pleasing cinema, it’s hard to beat an inspirational underdog sports saga.

Particularly one that’s true. (Well, mostly.)

After yet another frustrating argument at home, the forlorn Thomas (Carlos Pratts, right)
briefly contemplates an extremely foolish way out of his miserable life. Cue the well-timed
arrival of Coach Jim White (Kevin Costner), whose calm and inspirational pep talk is the
stuff of which great underdog sports flicks are made.

Director Niki Caro and the team behind McFarland USA have the formula down cold, with an engaging blend of character drama, cross-cultural tension and stirring competition. Caro is blessed with an eye and ear for the plight of disenfranchised people who sometimes feel like strangers in their own country; she’s the New Zealand-based filmmaker who came to our attention with 2002’s stirring Whale Rider, and followed up with the equally compelling North Country.

Both those films concerned women stymied in their efforts to succeed on their own terms, and forced to battle long-established conventions steeped in predominantly male cultures.

McFarland USA trades gender wars for a gentle analysis of the class structure that exists in this country, and the cynical hopelessness endured by those who live on the wrong side of that divide. Caro and her writers — Christopher Cleveland, Bettina Gilois and Grant Thompson — are smart enough to eschew strident sermons, recognizing that the lessons here will go down more smoothly in an environment of optimism and compassion.

On top of which, the story cleverly rotates the social barrier, by making its central character and his family — products of so-called privileged society — the “outsiders” in an environment that feels completely alien, and has its own longstanding rules of behavior and attitude.

High school football coach Jim White (Kevin Costner) has a history of anger-management issues. Bounced from one school to another, acquiring a dismal reputation along the way, in the autumn of 1987 he bottoms out in California’s San Joaquin Valley agricultural community of McFarland. As he and his family — wife Cheryl (Maria Bello) and daughters Julie (Morgan Saylor) and Jamie (Elsie Fisher) — drive slowly through town, searching for their new home, the latter curiously asks, “Are we in Mexico?”

It’s a brave opening gambit, because the movie succeeds or fails right there: The slightest whiff of censure, disapproval or arrogance, and the story slides into uncomfortably racist territory. But Caro understands the peril involved, and she draws just the right line reading from young Fisher.

The moment passes safely, but is followed by several more; we still unconsciously hold our breath. The living room of the Whites’ new home is dominated by an overpowering image painted directly onto the wall. The elderly woman next door presents them with a “new neighbor” gift: a chicken. The local car culture roars past the house late into each night; roosters blast them out of bed each dawn.