The Brutalist: A monumental effort

The Brutalist (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, rape, profanity and drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.2.25

This film is impressive in many respects. 

 

Director/co-writer Brady Corbet ambitiously tackles an overwhelming, quite possibly unattainable endeavor much the way this story’s protagonist does.

 

Immigrant architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) has an uphill battle, persuading old-money
movers and shakers that his cutting-edge structure will be an asset to their community.

Alas, Corbet’s reach ultimately exceeds his grasp.

From the very first frame, this film Calls Attention To Itself. Lol Crawley’s cinematographic choice is 70mm VistaVision, a throwback logo and widescreen variant long discarded since its 1950s debut. Sebastian Pardo’s title credits design mimics the shape and style of the Brutalism architectural movement that erupted in Europe and — as in this story — Pennsylvania during that same decade.

 

Further mimicking this Old Hollywood approach, Corbet’s film opens with an overture, then proceeds with a first act — “The Enigma of Arrival” — a 15-minute intermission (with a clock that counts down against a key photograph), followed by a second act — “The Hard Core of Beauty” — and an epilogue.

 

Daniel Blumberg’s wildly eclectic score often clashes — deliberately — with the cacophonous “slabs of noise” from Andy Neil’s sound design. The result is jarring, startling and disorienting, reflecting the central character’s professional, mental and emotional journey.

 

It often feels like this saga is based on actual events, and actual people, but no; aside from acknowledging the post-WWII Brutalism movement itself, Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvoid’s entirely fictitious story and characters are merely suggested by Brutalist architects Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph and Ralph Rapson, with a narrative arc that owes much to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and a soupçon of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

 

László Tóth (Adrien Brody) is introduced in a confusing blur of motion: a Hungarian Holocaust survivor newly arrived in the United States, on a ship laden with fellow immigrants. Tellingly, his first view of the Statue of Liberty is upside-down, and then sideways, as he emerges from the ship’s bowels: a warning that America’s promise of opportunity is skewed.

 

That, coupled with the preceding Goethe quote — “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free” — promises that László’s subsequent journey will not end happily.

The Favourite: Far from it

The Favourite (2018) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R for strong sexual content, profanity and nudity
By Derrick Bang

Director Yorgos Lanthimos relishes his outré sensibilities, as survivors of Dogtooth, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and — most particularly — The Lobster can attest.

Having no desire to return to her formerly penniless existence, Abigail (Emma Stone, left)
does her best to become a valuable part of Queen Anne's entourage ... and, after hours,
an equally essential part of the queen's bed chamber.

The Favourite is cut from the same cloth. While the (more or less) historically accurate setting lends bite to a script laced with delicious bile, snark, betrayal and Machiavellian palace intrigue, the laborious execution quickly becomes tedious. Rarely have 119 minutes passed so agonizingly slowly.

Lanthimos also delights in overwrought directorial self-indulgence, which — through excessive repetition — becomes insufferably annoying. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s fondness for panning “around corners” with a fish-eyed lens is one such affectation; the assortment of thumps, twangs and screeches that passes for a score is even worse. An extended presentation of two plucked notes on guitar (?) persists for what feels like forever, linking several lengthy scenes; one cannot help wanting to dash into the projection booth and eviscerate the audio track.

Tellingly, no composer is credited for anything that approaches actual music. No kidding.

A director who delights in calling so much attention to his tics, hiccups, quirks, whims and eccentricities does his film no favors. Lanthimos’ approach distracts and rips us out of the story; he’s like a little kid who, vying for attention, repeatedly screams, “Don’t pay attention to them; look at me! Look at me!”

Rubbish.

Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara’s script has its basis in fact, with events set during the first decade of the 18th century, midway through the reign of Great Britain’s Queen Anne. She was not a happy or healthy ruler, and was ill-suited to the throne; timidity and chronic ailments made her miserable. Despite 17 (!) pregnancies, she failed to produce a surviving heir, and became the final monarch from the House of Stuart.

Anne was quite pliable, and had the misfortune to rule just as Great Britain was embracing an acrimonious two-party political system, with the Whigs and Tories squabbling over how best to handle an ongoing war with France. It’s perhaps fortunate that Anne’s most trusted confidante was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, who — it has been strongly suggested — essentially ruled from behind the scenes. Although clearly governed by her own agenda, and inclined toward decisions and acts that favored her husband — John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough — Lady Sarah was intelligent, astute and decisive.

She also may have been Anne’s lover, and this is the film’s jumping-off point; Davis and McNamara boldly run with that sexual element. 

Colette: A not entirely satisfying quest for identity

Colette (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for nudity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang

Dick Francis’ fans were astonished to discover, in late 1999, that all the novels by the former champion jockey-turned-thriller author had received “substantial input” from his wife, Mary.

When Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) balks at her husband's demand that
she "ghost" another novel that he can publish under his own name, he locks her in the
study until she begins to produce.

Depending on opinion, said input ranged from research and editing to full-on ghost-writing. I favor the latter theory: Francis’ lone solo effort following Mary’s death on September 9, 2000 — 2006’s Under Orders — was substantially weaker than all that had come before. No surprise, then, that his final four books were collaborations with his son, Felix.

I’ve often thought about Mary Francis, working in absolute secrecy on 38 novels and a baker’s dozen of short stories, over a period of almost four decades. Did she regret being absent from the spotlight that so illuminated her famous husband? Was she amused to know the truth?

Such thoughts resonated anew while watching director/co-scripter Wash Westmoreland’s biographical depiction of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, the French novelist known solely by her last name. Her most popular novel, 1944’s Gigi, was made into a French film five years later, and transformed into a 1951 stage production starring newcomer Audrey Hepburn — chosen by Colette herself — and then, of course, the Academy Award-winning 1958 Hollywood musical with Leslie Caron.

But all that came much, much later. Westmoreland’s film — co-scripted by Richard Glatzer and Rebecca Lenkiewicz — focuses on the roughly two decades Colette was married to Henry Gauthier-Villars, during which time she produced her first four novels … all of which were published under her husband’s name.

And therein lies the tale.

Colette depicts the creation of the young author as her own entity and (more or less) emancipated woman, although it could be argued that Westmoreland is equally obsessed with her budding bisexuality. The film’s second half spends considerable time with enthusiastic bedroom coupling and Colette’s blossoming relationship with the scandalously “butch” Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf, affectionately known as “Missy.”

(In the press notes, Westmoreland waxes enthusiastically about his “progressive casting philosophy” of hiring trans actors for cisgender roles. Methinks his focus is a bit skewed.)

Even so, we never lose sight of the growing degree to which Colette wishes to control her own literary destiny, and free herself from the invisibility of uncredited authorship.

In this regard — actually, in all respects — the film’s strongest asset is the gifted starring performance by Keira Knightley. She smoothly navigates the transition from naïve country girl to an accomplished sophisticate wholly at ease among the snooty, avant-garde intellectuals with whom her husband socialized. 

The Bookshop: A melancholy read

The Bookshop (2017) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

Director/scripter Isabel Coixet coaxes moments of sublime cinematic poetry in her thoughtful adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s spare 1978 novel; the setting and characters — the sense of time and place — have been lifted lovingly from the page.

Beware the practiced insincerity of aristocratic hauteur: Not yet realizing that she has
been suckered into the spider's web, Florence (Emily Mortimer, left) thanks Violet
(Patricia Clarkson) for being invited to so lavish a gathering.

It couldn’t have been easy, in this instant-gratification social media era, to convey the unique warmth and comfort that derive from settling down — with no sense of time — to enjoy an absorbing book.

But viewers anticipating a typically light-hearted slice of eccentric, small-town British whimsy — a droll turn along the lines of, say The Closer You Get or The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain — are in for an unpleasant shock. Fitzgerald had much darker, class-conscious fish to fry, and Coixet has honored the subtext that unflinchingly skewers the small-minded malice of old-world aristocrats who — fully aware that they’re an endangered species — are determined to ruin the lives of their “lessers.” Simply because they still can.

To be sure, Coixet wields a brush of many colors; portions of her film are amusing, at times even laugh-out-loud funny. But such levity is subtly, mercilessly asphyxiated by the machinations of cold, calculated villainy; this is dark drama, not romantic comedy, and you will not exit the theater with a smile.

The setting is the small, East Anglican coastal town of Hardborough, Suffolk; the year is 1959. Florence Green (Emily Mortimer), widowed since losing her husband during World War II, decides to open a bookshop in a damp, long-abandoned building known as Old House.

It’s not clear how long Florence has been in Hardborough, although she seems a recent arrival. On the one hand, many of the locals greet her pleasantly enough; she’s familiar with the community, and aware that Old House has lain dormant for seven years. And yet there’s also a sense that she exists slightly out of phase with many of the townsfolk, who remain wary in her presence.

We do get a sense that Florence has emerged from a long period of grief, newly emboldened to give Hardborough its first bookstore as a gift, and as a means of sharing the special sort of magic that Fitzgerald described so well: “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life, and as such it must surely be a necessary commodity.”

On a personal level, Florence intends the gesture as a means of preserving important memories of her husband: They met at a bookstore, and bonded over their shared devotion to its contents.

Her fatal mistake is the belief that this is a town that wants a bookstore, as much as she thinks it does.

Woe to those foolish enough to stroll public streets with their hearts worn so visibly on one sleeve: naïve idealists destined to become prey.

Phantom Thread: A clumsily stitched melodrama

Phantom Thread (2017) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

I simply cannot fathom the waves of critical adulation lapping onto the shores of this dramatic snooze of a film.

Having decided that Alma (Vicky Krieps) is to become his new lover and muse, celebrated
fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) naturally insists on creating a
dress for her.

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson may have framed every scene with the care and precision that Reynolds Woodcock employs while making his haute couture dresses and gowns, but the story and characters remain unpalatable, the pacing lethargic, and the result about as appealing as waiting for paint to dry.

In short — although the viewing experience seems to last forever — Phantom Thread is a crushing bore.

Anderson’s films are always challenging at best; they range from weirdly captivating (Inherent Vice, Boogie Nights), to distastefully bizarre (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia), to utterly unwatchable (The Master). His characters invariably are grotesque burlesques: parodies of actual people, exaggerated to make a peculiar narrative point that rarely has anything to do with the actual human condition.

Based on his artistic output, Anderson feels like a misanthrope.

Phantom Thread is no different. Despite the luxurious world in which these people inhabit, laced with beautiful things, their souls are ugly and cruel. They deserve each other ... which I suspect is Anderson’s ultimate point, but hardly an epiphany on which to hang a 130-minute movie.

The setting is post-WWII London in the 1950s, at the House of Woodcock, where the imperious Reynolds (Daniel Day-Lewis) lives and designs at the center of British fashion: lavishly expensive creations coveted by royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and their ilk. The firm’s mostly silent staff caters to every caprice and demand of their fussy, fastidious and anal-retentive lord and master; the stiffly condescending Reynolds expects no less.

Business matters and other “unpleasant details” are handled by his starch-collared sister Cyril (Lesley Manville); such details include hustling each of his casual lovers out the door, once he tires of their companionship ... which, we gather, is a frequent occurrence. Each, during her short stay, supplies a smidgen of inspiration drawn from personality and physique; each departs having been transformed, to a degree, into a “better” version of herself.

Reynolds also is an unrepentant sexist pig: a coldly calculating martinet who doesn’t even seem to like his most loyal and devoted clients. The dynamic feels like an uncomfortable gothic mash-up of Pygmalion and Rebecca, with Manville’s Cyril standing in as the chilly, omnipresent Mrs. Danvers.

Wonder Wheel: Far from wonderful

Wonder Wheel (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and sexuality
By Derrick Bang

Toward the conclusion of Woody Allen’s newest dive into the pool of mid-century nostalgia, Kate Winslet’s Ginny — having descended into full-blown Norma Desmond madness — responds to an accusation by petulantly whining, “Oh, God; spare me the bad drama.”

My feelings precisely.

As the summer progresses, Mickey (Justin Timberlake) begins to realize that Ginny
(Kate Winslet) is placing far too much emotional weight on their clandestine affair.

Wonder Wheel is Allen’s homage to shrill, over-the-top melodrama: a contrived piffle that seeks to outdo the likes of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sunset Boulevard, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and their ilk. On top of which, the story is told by a character who — having informed us that he’s a budding poet and playwright given to florid exaggeration — clearly is an unreliable narrator.

Even allowing for all that, Allen’s film wallows in a swamp of soggy excess that surpasses the worst afternoon television soaps.

Which is a shame, because there’s much to recommend Wonder Wheel, starting with Vittorio Storaro’s gorgeous cinematography and Santa Loquasto’s impeccable period production design, which deliver a level of visual opulence rarely seen since Douglas Sirk’s lavish 1950s melodramas (Magnificent Obsession, Imitation of Life and others).

Even though all these characters recognize that their Coney Island home is past its prime, things still look terrific, in a fading-glory sort of way. The film takes its title from the massive Ferris wheel always standing vigil in the background, like a silent Greek chorus.

Ginny, pushing 40 and prone to migraines, works a dead-end job as a waitress in the Boardwalk clam shack. She’s married to Humpty (Jim Belushi), a recovering alcoholic who manages the merry-go-round in the amusement arcade. They live in a ramshackle apartment directly above the shooting gallery, the incessant pop-pop-pops frequently aggravating her debilitating headaches.

They bicker, snipe, squabble and quarrel in the manner of Ralph and Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners — also very 1950s — but with very little mitigating affection. It’s the second marriage for both, and we sense they’ve remained together mostly due to weary resignation.

They do a poor job of managing her bratty adolescent son, Richie (Jack Gore), a bad-seed monster and budding pyromaniac who loves setting fires below the wooden boardwalk. Everything concerning this little twerp seems to have migrated in from an entirely different film; his presence adds nothing to the core narrative, and his dangerous “hobby” is just sorta cast adrift during the third act ... rather sloppy, even for Allen.

The Beguiled: Not beguiling enough

The Beguiled (2017) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, and rather harshly, for fleeting sexuality
By Derrick Bang

As a setting, Southern Gothic is a character in its own right: drooping, moss-draped trees enclosing antebellum mansions, their white paint edged with gray and slightly peeling; a keening, high-pitched whine of insects driven into a constant frenzy by shimmering heat; the miasma of humidity so unrelenting that everything — flora, fauna and dwellings — sags beneath a soggy layer of warm moisture, and the mere act of drawing breath is a weary challenge.

Sensing that Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) is self-conscious about her appearance,
McBurney (Colin Farrell) lavishes praise about her features and deportment, knowing
full well that she'll melt under such flattery.

A sense that evil spirits prowl during a night so enveloping that stars and fireflies do little to keep the darkness at bay.

Director/scripter Sofia Coppola’s fresh adaptation of Thomas Cullinan’s The Beguiled certainly wins points for atmosphere. Cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd frames every inch of production designer Anne Ross’ tableaus — interior and exterior — with the reverence of a painter agonizing over each individual brush stroke.

The characters in this unsettling morality play also are well cast, with Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Colin Farrell delivering a level of quiet intensity more frequently experienced with a live Broadway performance. Which also feels appropriate, given that the story’s claustrophobic setting could be realized equally well on a theater stage.

Coppola directs her cast with a sure hand, coaxing performances that fascinate just as much for their protracted silences, as for carefully selected snatches of dialog. Kidman, in particular, conveys a wealth of emotion during moments of circumspect silence.

If only Coppola’s script equaled the rest of her film’s carefully assembled elements.

The tale unfolds in 1864, midway through the Civil War, within the confines of the Farnsworth Seminary, a Southern girls’ boarding school nestled deep in the Virginia woods. The institution is run by Miss Martha (Kidman) and her colleague Edwina (Dunst); they share classroom instruction and the daily reading of prayers.

The student population has dwindled to five, all girls with nowhere else to go. Amy (Oona Laurence), Jane (Angourie Rice), Marie (Addison Riecke) and Emily (Emma Howard) are adolescent, vulnerable and trusting; teenage Alicia (Elle Fanning), hastening the onset of a womanhood she has no means of embracing, carries a whiff of temptress about her.

These seven have become a family, Miss Martha just as much a surrogate mother as a formal teacher. The dynamic, with its daily rituals, feels timeless; they may have sheltered in this vast mansion for mere months, or perhaps years. (The action actually takes place at the Louisiana-based Madewood Plantation House, also borrowed by Beyoncé for her “Sorry” music video.)

My Cousin Rachel: Relatively dreary

My Cousin Rachel (2017) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for sexuality and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

Oi ... such a yawn.

This fresh adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel is a true Masterpiece Theater melodrama: sweeping English countrysides, coastlines and quaint villages; slow, silent glances exchanged between artificially polite aristocrats; and soft-spoken dialog pregnant with implication.

Having come to believe that his earlier impression of Rachel (Rachel Weisz) was
unjustified, Philip (Sam Claflin) decides to show her the letter — from his deceased
guardian — that prompted such mistrust.

But absent Jane Austen’s verbal wit and sparkle, or the suspense and directorial snap that Alfred Hitchcock brought to his 1940 handling of Du Maurier’s Rebecca, this period piece is a rather dull affair ... particularly since Sam Claflin’s protagonist is such a callow, foolish and unforgivably whimpering weenie.

It’s impossible to sympathize with somebody so relentlessly naïve, and who possesses so little personality. He’s like unfinished clay, at the mercy of whoever chooses to mold him.

Nor does director/scripter Roger Michell — who did so much better with Venus and Notting Hill — bring much to these proceedings.

Du Maurier had a habit of giving her protagonists no more than their first names, and thus this saga focuses on Philip (Claflin), orphaned since childhood and raised by his guardian, Ambrose Ashley. The boy grows up on a large country estate on the Cornish coast, where the only women permitted within the walls are the many farm dogs. (Surrey’s West Horsley Place, a lucky find, has just the right mid-19th century ambiance.)

Such details are revealed in a brief narrative flashback, as a grown Philip returns home following a university education that left no significant impression. He finds the estate bereft of its owner, Ambrose’s “health issues” having sent him on a lengthy trip to Italy’s warmer climate. Contact is maintained via letters that Philip shares with his godfather, Nick Kendall (Iain Glen), and Kendall’s daughter, Louise (Holliday Grainger).

Louise is sweet on Philip, but he’s oblivious to such affection, having no experience in such matters (to a degree that becomes increasingly difficult to credit).

The letters continue; Ambrose writes of meeting and marrying a distant mutual cousin named Rachel. They remain in Italy, and then the tone of his letters changes; it seems clear that Rachel has some sort of unhealthy hold over Ambrose. A final letter begs for Philip’s presence, with haste ... but his arrival in Florence is too late. Ambrose has died, and Rachel has left; all such details are revealed during a curt exchange with Rainaldi (Pierfrancesco Favino), a “friend” of Rachel’s whom Ambrose clearly mistrusted.

Back in Cornwall, Philip learns from Kendall that Ambrose never changed his will; Philip remains sole heir to the estate, which will come to him upon his rapidly approaching 25th birthday. This scarcely cheers the young man, enraged over his belief that Rachel somehow caused the death of his beloved guardian. When she sends word of an impending visit, Kendall and Louise caution against “rash” behavior.

They need not have worried. Even in widow’s black, Rachel (Rachel Weisz) is a vision. Philip, cowed by her politeness, deferential manner and apparent fragility, retreats to the cordiality demanded by his upbringing.

Which — right there — is a transition that Claflin can’t begin to sell. Righteous rage to cowed silence, in the blink of an eye? Seriously?

I think not.

And, in turn, all subsequent developments become contrived and equally unpersuasive.

The Finest Hours: Waterlogged

The Finest Hours (2016) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

I’ll never understand Hollywood.

The actual account of one brave Coast Guard crew’s mission to rescue survivors of the maimed T2 oil tanker SS Pendleton, undertaken during a raging nor’easter off the New England coast on Feb. 18, 1952, is the stuff of unbelievable legend: a saga of bravery, luck and utterly amazing persistence.

With Seaman Richard Livesey (Ben Foster, left) scanning into the darkness, Coast Guard
Boatswain's Mate First Class Bernie Webber (Chris Pine) struggles to control their small
rescue vessel amid a raging nor'easter, as they try to find the remnants of a
shattered tanker.

Give it to Disney, and it turns into an overcooked, eye-rolling, melodramatic mess.

Granted, the ocean-bound storm sequences are awesome and persuasive, the depiction of the crippled SS Pendleton — literally torn in half by the storm — grimly unsettling on all sorts of levels.

The problem is with character behavior and interpersonal dynamics, as concocted by scripters Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson. Rarely have so many people behaved so childishly, so stupidly, so TV soap opera-ishly.

And so bewilderingly.

For starters, it’s impossible to get a bead on our primary hero, Coast Guard Boatswain’s Mate First Class Bernie Webber (Chris Pine), who overplays a blend of shyness, uncertainty and self-censure to the point that he seems incapable of completing a sentence, let alone piloting a vessel. A failed previous mission apparently has left him riddled with guilt, but that scarcely explains the degree to which he’s belittled, teased and dismissed by both the local veteran fishermen, and his Coast Guard colleagues at the Chatham, Mass., Lifeboat Station.

Then there’s his feckless boss, Daniel Cuff (Eric Bana), assumed to be incompetent because his accent brands him as having come from “somewhere else.” The accusation likely has merit, because Bana plays the role with utter bewilderment, as if Cuff doesn’t even understand how to use the station equipment. We’re supposed to believe this?

But nobody can top the childish histrionics of Holliday Grainger’s Miriam, who frequently behaves like a 5-year-old having a temper tantrum. A confrontation between Miriam and Cuff is so howlingly awful, orchestrated so poorly by director Craig Gillespie, that it must be seen to be disbelieved.

We can’t really fault Grainger, who’s obviously limited to her scripted lines, and the “guidance” from Gillespie. Miriam nonetheless remains the worst “devoted gal left behind” that I’ve seen in many, many years.

Carol: Nothing to sing about

Carol (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for nudity and intimate sexuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.15.16

Intimate dramas work best when we understand and empathize with the primary characters: when we feel like we know them.

Even during their first meeting, Therese (Rooney Mara, left) can't help noticing the
smoldering, come-hither gaze that Carol (Cate Blanchett) delivers with a shameless
lack of subtlety.

Despite the scrupulous care with which director Todd Haynes has assembled his new film, it’s almost impossible to become involved with the storyline. The narrative is slow, the tone is sweepingly luxurious, and the performances are overstated: all intentional, since Haynes is imitating the opulent 1950s melodramas made by director Douglas Sirk (Magnificent Obsession, Written on the Wind, Imitation of Life and many others).

Which would be fine, if playwright Phyllis Nagy had done a better job with her adaptation of The Price of Salt, the Patricia Highsmith novel on which this film is based.

Granted, Cate Blanchett delivers another of her carefully sculpted performances as protagonist Carol Aird (although I’d argue that Blanchett did the “anguished socialite” shtick much better in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine).

But despite the film’s title, Carol isn’t the most important character in this story, as Highsmith made abundantly clear in her novel. That would be the younger Therese Belivet, who remains an utter cipher as portrayed by co-star Rooney Mara. It’s not entirely her fault; she hits the higher emotional notes reasonably well. But Mara’s Therese has too much “down time,” when she simply stares vacantly toward the camera, as if waiting for Haynes’ next instruction.

More to the point, we know nothing about Therese: her background, the reason she’s so arbitrarily bitchy toward longtime boyfriend Richard (Jake Lacy, who does his best in a thankless role), or — most crucially — why she’s so suddenly infatuated with Carol. We get none of the essential back-story present in Highsmith’s novel.

OK, fine; Therese is trying to “find herself.” But that isn’t good enough; Mara doesn’t sell her half of the dynamic, and therefore the entire film sinks beneath the weight of its own flamboyantly breathy ambiance.

The Revenant: Grim survival drama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.