“THE ICEMAN” My rating: B- (Opening May 17 at the Barrywoods 24, Cinemark Plaza and Studio 30)
106 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Michael Shannon’s trademark creepiness is put to good use in “The Iceman,” the story of real-life mob assassin Richard Kuklinski, who by the time he was arrested in 1986 was believed to have been responsible for at least 100 murders.
Though originally nicknamed The Iceman for his cool, unemotional work methods, Kuklinski also avoided the authorities by dismembering and freezing the bodies of many of his victims, which made it impossible to pinpoint the time and cause of their deaths.
Ariel Vromen’s film begins in 1964 with the dry, stolid Kuklinski wooing Deborah (Winona Ryder), the neighborhood virgin. He’s totally respectful of her — to the point that he cuts the throat of a barroom pool player who makes fun of her no-sex-until-marriage attitude.
At this stage, though, Kuklinski is a mere amateur. His day job is working in a film lab duplicating porn reels, which is how he encounters mid-level Jersey mobster Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta). Roy recognizes talent and before long Kuklinski has a full-time gig murdering people.
What’s interesting about “The Iceman” is not so much the mayhem — there’s relatively little depicted — but Kuklinski himself. Talk about a compartmentalized life!
“IN THE HOUSE” My rating: B (Opening May 17 at the Tivoli and Glenwood Arts)
105 minutes | MPAA rating: R
It’s not a thriller, exactly, but the French release “In the House” has a way of toying with its audience that reminds of Hitchcock at his most perverse.
And when it’s all over you’re not exactly sure what you’ve seen. Which is exactly the point.
On the outside, anyway, the latest film from writer/director Francois Ozon (“Under the Sand,” “8 Women,” “Swimming Pool,” “Potiche”) doesn’t seem particularly threatening.
It begins in a French high school where middle-aged language arts teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini) finds himself once again confronted by a crop of bonehead students who would rather doze than contemplate Flaubert.
Assigned to write essays on how they spent their weekend, the young dullards respond with four-sentence “compositions.” But there is one ray of hope in this dreary bunch, a young man named Claude (Ernst Umhauer) who turns in a provocative paper about going to the home of fellow student to tutor him in math.
On the surface, this seems unremarkable and innocent.
Yet Germain senses something disturbing and compelling in Claude’s penetration of a pristine suburban home that he has often dreamed of entering. Claude may be there for a legitimate reason — to tutor his mathematically-challenged classmate Rapha (Bastien Ughetto) — but he’s also an interloper, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who takes advantage of the situation to spy on the lives of his economic betters, to violate their privacy.
“STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS” My rating: C+ (Opens wide on May 17)
132 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
Well made and amusingly acted, there’s really nothing you can say against “Star Trek Into Darkness,” except that in the end it really doesn’t matter.
As is usually the case with franchise movies, the pleasure comes in being reunited with old friends. As for actually learning anything, for taking away an emotion or a thought or an idea…well, that’s the purview of other, less busy movies.
J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” reboot three years ago was a hugely clever prequel that introduced us to those iconic characters as young people. Much of the fun came in seeing Kirk, Bones, Spock and the others as Starfleet cadets feeling their way toward maturity.
But to tell the truth, I cannot remember the plots of any of the many “Star Trek” movies I’ve seen over the decades. One had whales, I know, and another had the Borg. Spock died in one of them and came back in another.
But were there messages in any of them? If there were they quickly evaporated. These were momentary diversions — a few laughs, a whole lot of special effects. Nothing to stick to the ribs or the brain.
And so it is with “Star Trek Into Darkness.”
Though no Trekker, I recognize that Abrams and his writers (Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof) are having fun mucking about with the mythology of the series. Indeed, the entire movie may be viewed as a prequel to “The Wrath of Khan.”
“THE GREAT GATSBY” My rating: B- (Opens wide on May 10)
143 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
Let’s admit at the outset that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is above all else a literary masterpiece, which is to say that its power derives from the transformation of the written word into mental images and emotional reactions.
In short, the magic is all in our heads.
Let’s also admit that every effort to film “Gatsby” has, to a greater or lesser extent, failed.
The good news is that Baz Luhrmann’s new version fails less than most. In fact, there are moments when his “Gatsby” flirts with actually being good.
This could be a minority view. A recent advance screening of the film ended with at least one audience member – probably a fellow critic — loudly booing Luhrmann’s efforts . Kansas City audiences are notorious polite; in 40 years of reviewing this was a first.
There were moments in this film, particularly in the early going, where I was tempted to boo, too…or at least roll my eyes and brace myself for the worst.
But despite some missteps and overstatement, Luhrman’s “Gatsby” accomplishes something no other film version has come close to. It makes the mysterious Jay Gatsby a recognizable human being — not just a symbol of American upward mobility and can-do determination, but a flesh-and-blood figure of real yearning and pain and hope.
This happens for two reasons. First, after a breathless, bounce-off-the-walls opening hour, Luhrmann slows things down, lets his story breathe, and lets the feelings of Fitzgerald’s story to come through.
Second, this “Gatsy” works because Leonardo DiCaprio is so good in the title role.
The key is vulnerability. DiCaprio zeroes in on Gatsby’s childlike aspects. Here’s a character who has achieved incredible wealth and worldliness (apparently through criminal enterprise) but who remains a love-struck adolescent when it comes to the woman who got away. DiCaprio’s Gatsby is simultaneously naïve and foolish and weirdly heroic.
I’m too old to be watching superhero movies. Or most of them, anyway.
The itchy feeling that nagged me throughout “The Avengers” came back with double intensity during a preview of “Iron Man 3.” Basically it told me I didn’t care any more.
I didn’t care about the special effects, the lavish extravaganza of destruction, the fanboy-friendly in-jokes.
The things I do care about in movies are nowhere in evidence or so pushed to the periphery they have no weight or impact. Apparently there’s a rule that a comic book movie can’t have anything like genuine feeling, that this would be a violation of the pact with the audience.
It’s getting to be like masturbation. Something to get you through until the real thing comes along.
This is not to say that “Iron Man 3″ — it was directed by action screenplay writer Shane Black — is terrible. As an example of the genre it’s pretty solid stuff. I’s precisely the kind of action-filled eye candy that makes American superhero movies popular around the globe.
It’s just that I don’t care. I now feel about the whole business like I do about Three Stooges shorts. The first one is fun. After that it’s…meeeeh.
“NO PLACE ON EARTH” My rating: B-(Opens May 3 at the Glenwood Arts)
83 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
There’s a hell of a story at the heart of “No Place On Earth.” But I do wish it had been better told.
The facts are pretty amazing. During World War II several Ukrainian Jewish families took shelter from the Nazis in an immense gypsum cave system. After more than a year underground 38 men, women and children emerged to find that the Germans had retreated in the face of the Red Army.
While the men would periodically venture out in search of food and fuel, the women and children remained hidden, thus setting a world record for days spent underground. One girl – now an octogenarian – had forgotten what sunlight was like.
Janet Tobias’ documentary allows these now-elderly individuals to tell their own stories…and that’s both good and bad.
Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko…falling in love in France
“TO THE WONDER” My rating: C(Opens May 3 at the Tivoli)
112 minutes | MPAA rating: R
There’s a temptation to write off “To the Wonder” as a dead-on satiric parody of a Terrence Malick film.
Except that it is a Terrence Malick film.
And since I don’t think Malick is making fun of himself, we are left to struggle with just what this admittedly talented but hugely exasperating filmmaker is up to.
Hell, maybe he’s just perverse.
“To the Wonder” embraces all the elements that irritated people with his previous film, “The Tree of Life” (which I count as one of the great movies of the last decade) and jettisons all the good stuff.
The film may be the ultimate statement in Malick’s war on narrative. It’s visually poetic, yeah — like an artsy fartsy TV commercial where you can never figure out what they’re selling — but also emotionally empty. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the movie is throwing a hearty “fuck you” into our faces.
I’m going to assume Malick is not just giving us the finger here, that he has attempted to make a real piece of art, and that he has failed.
Happens to everyone. Now how about a plot next time?
Here’s what we can say with certainty. “To the Wonder” is about an American man (Ben Affleck) who on a trip to France falls in love with a young woman (Olga Kurylenko) and brings her and her young daughter back to live with him in the U.S.
Except that he resides in a treeless, flat, irony-free tract-home subdivision outside Bartlesville, OK. It’s a neighborhood hemmed in on one side by high-tension power lines and on the other by an Interstate. There’s an oil well in the back yard.
Hmmmm…let’s see. Paris…or Oklahoma? Gosh, it’s such a tough call.
It’s enough to make you think this woman hasn’t got a brain in her head. Continue Reading »
“LORE” My rating: B (Opening May 3 at the Tivoli )109 minutes | No MPAA rating
You’re born into a world of privilege and comfort. You grow up thinking you’re superior, that you’re entitled to all the good that comes your way.
And then it ends. Abruptly and forever.
That’s the situation facing five German children in “Lore,” Cate Shortland’s quietly devastating tale of siblings struggling to survive in the last days of World War II.
From the time of their births Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), Liesl (Nele Trebs), Gunther (Andre Frid) and Jurgen (Mika Seidel) have lived a blessed existence as the children of a high-ranking Nazi official.
Now their father (Hans-Jochen Wagner) has returned to kiss them goodbye. The war is lost. The Americans, Russians and British are advancing and Papa’s work in the concentration camps makes him a marked man. Continue Reading »
Hollywood has long been known as the Dream Factory.
But what happens when the dream dies?
That’s the question answered by Billy Wilder’s 1950 film “Sunset Boulevard,” a movie that is simultaneously dramatic and bitterly amusing, one that casts a jaundiced eye on our ideas about Hollywood, glamor, and success.
It will be shown at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, May 5, at the Plaza Library, 4801 Main Street, as part of the Kansas City Public Library’s Movies That Matter series. I’ll provide opening and closing remarks.
It’s free.
This classic follows a financially and morally bankrupt screenwriter (William Holden) as he becomes the kept boy toy of a predatory older woman, former silent movie star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson).
Norma lives on past glory, watches her old movie in her home theater, keeps her former director/husband (Erich von Stroheim) around as her butler/chauffeur, and schemes to return to the stardom that has long passed her by.
It’s one of the most cynical films ever, yet supremely watchable because of the terrific acting (Swanson really was a former silent movie star) and Wilder’s utter control of his medium.
“Sunset Boulevard” is today part of our movie vocabulary (“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up”). It’s become a hit Broadway musical and in 1998 was voted the 12th best American movie of all time in an American Film Institute poll.
Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland and Matthew McConaughey
“MUD” My rating: A- (Opens April 26 at the Leawood, Barrywoods 24, Studio 30, Cinemark Palace)
130 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
Damn that Matthew McConaughey.
Just when you’re comfortable writing him off as a lazy, pretty-boy romcom hack, he decides to start really acting.
Over the last couple of years he’s blown off his easy-going leading-man ways and tackled edgy, multifaceted characters in films like “Bernie,” “Killer Joe,” “The Paperboy” and “Magic Mike.” Even if you don’t like the movies, you’ve gotta love what McConaughey is accomplishing here.
That great run continues with “Mud,” the third feature from Arkansas filmmaker Jeff Nichols.
Nichols writes and directs superlative dramas about working-class folk. His first two efforts — “Shotgun Stories” (about a modern day feud between the brothers of two families) and “Take Shelter” (with Michael Shannon as a disaster-obsessed man who builds an elaborate tornado shelter in his yard) – achieved a sort of gritty poetry.
“Mud” is just as powerful. Maybe moreso.
Unfolding along the waterways of the Arkansas Delta, “Mud” centers on 14-year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and his best bud, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland).
Both kids survive on what their families can scratch out of the river. Ellis helps his father catch and sell crawdads, fish, and turtles. Neck, an orphan, lives in a seedy mobile home court with a slacker uncle (Michael Shannon) who harvests fresh-water oysters with a crude homemade diving helmet. Continue Reading »
“UPSTREAM COLOR” My rating: B (Opening April 26 at the Alamo Draft House)
96 minutes | No MPAA rating
Those who like their narratives neat, concise and uncluttered had best avoid Shane Carruth’s “Upstream Color.” It’s a film for those who found Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” too conventional.
Still, it makes more sense than Carruth’s previous (and first) feature effort, the 2004 time travel oddity ” Primer.”
“Making sense” is a relative thing when dealing with Carruth. Narratively “Upstream Color” defies cateogrization or easy explanation. You could call it science fiction. Or maybe not.
You could say the movie makes no sense.
And yet it makes sense emotionally.
Here’s what I can say with certainty about the fragmentary story: A young woman named Kris (Amy Seimetz) is abducted and subjected to some sort of mind-control therapy. In a zombie-like state she returns to her home with a flat-voiced handler (Thiago Martins) who has her memorize Thoreau’s “On Walden Pond.” Kris is told that her mother has been kidnapped and she must come up with a ransom.
When she finally emerges from her stupor she imagines (or is it really happening?) that maggot-like worms are wriggling just under her skin. She is disoriented, lost.
Kris loses her job because of her unexplained absense, and is distressed to find that her bank account has been emptied. She is shown footage of herself making the withdrawl, but remembers none of it.
She harbors a vague sense of having been violated. Her OB/GYN tells her that her sexual organs have been damaged, rearranged, and that she will never have children.
“THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES” My rating:B(Opens April 12 at the Tivoli and Glenwood Arts)
140 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Derek Cianfrance’s “The Place Beyond the Pines” is actually two movies sharing several characters.
One of the movies, the first one, is borderline brilliant. The second not so much.
The brilliance of Part I is largely due to Ryan Gosling, who re-amazes every time he tackles a new role.
Here he is Luke, a bleached-blond motorcycle daredevil with a seedy (is there any other kind?) traveling carnival.
He’s in Schenectady, NY, doing his act, which consists of him riding his bike at top speed inside a big steel mesh ball. This is an apt
Eva Mendes
metaphor for his life – moments of terrifying excitement as centrifugal force allows him to ride upside down on the ball’s interior…but his path is a tight circle that never really takes him anywhere.
Luke discovers that Romina (Eva Mendes), the local woman with whom he spent a night the previous summer, has given birth to his son. He surreptitiously follows her and her new guy (Mahershala Ali) to a church where the three-month-old baby is baptized.
Standing alone at the rear of the sanctuary, the heavily tattooed Luke finds himself incredibly moved by the ceremony and the knowledge that he is now a parent. Gosling expresses all this without saying a word…but you can see every thought and feeling on his features. It’s astoundingly moving.
The race-redefining rise of Jackie Robinson from the Negro Leagues to the long-segregated majors is the best American sports story ever.
So I wish I could report that the new movie “42” is among the greatest sports movies ever.
It isn’t.
Oh, it’s not a bust. Newcomer Chadwick Boseman gives a star-making performance as the young Jackie and the picture establishes an authentic sense of time and place. It shows all the racist b.s. Robinson had to put up with as the first black man to play in Major League Baseball.
It’s just that this effort from writer/director Brian Helgeland (whose resume runs from penning the screenplay for “L.A. Confidential” to directing the brutal noir thriller “Payback”) is is generally effective but rarely inspired. It’s so sincere and straightforward that artistry hardly figures into the equation.
Helgeland clearly wanted his movie to bring Robinson’s story to a younger generation that most likely never heard of the Dodgers’ No. 42. He hasn’t dumbed things down, exactly, but it’s a conservative approach — more a teaching moment than a fully-committed cinematic immersion.
The movie does a good job of delivering the sailiant points of the Jackie Robinson legend, but overall it’s a cautious movie, one that goes out of its way to be nonthreatening, to hold the young viewers’ hands, to guide them through a world they are ignorant of or have avoided learning about.
The film boils down to a conspiracy between two men.
Even with its flaws “The Sapphires” is a charmer. Heck, the flaws even make it more loveable.
This Down Under comedy from Aussie TV director Wayne Blair is based on real events: In 1968 a quartet of aboriginal women went on tour in Vietnam performing soul music for American troops .
“The Sapphires” (that’s the name they gave themselves) isn’t a terribly polished effort…and that’s a good thing. There’s a slightly ragged, hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show quality to the proceedings. Most of the performances are low-keyed and unforced – borderline nonprofessional, in fact – but that only makes the experience more realistic.
And if the filmmakers display an occasionally heavy hand in serving up some social issues, at least the movie has more on its mind than just chucking us under the chin.
Best of all, at the center as the group’s hustling manager is Irish import Chris O’Dowd, a master of drollery who steals his every scene.
Even in a cast heavy with comedy talent, O’Dowd stood out in 2011’s “Bridesmaids” (he was the funny/sweet and wholly original state trooper who stalked Kristen Wiig’s character). In “The Sapphires” he cements the deal.
As Dave Lovelace, a pop music fanatic and all-around reprobate, he’s a slacker before there was a name for them, a deep pool of generally useless musical trivia, and an earnest romantic when the right woman comes along.
“LORE” My rating: B (Opening May 3 at )109 minutes | No MPAA rating
You’re born into a world of privilege and comfort. You grow up thinking you’re superior, that you’re entitled to all the good that comes your way.
And then it ends. Abruptly and forever.
That’s the situation facing five German children in “Lore,” Cate Shortland’s quietly devastating tale of siblings struggling to survive in the last days of World War II.
From the time of their births Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), Liesl (Nele Trebs), Gunther (Andre Frid) and Jurgen (Mika Seidel) have lived a blessed existence as the children of a high-ranking Nazi official.
Now their father (Hans-Jochen Wagner) has returned to kiss them goodbye. The war is lost. The Americans, Russians and British are advancing and Papa’s work in the concentration camps makes him a marked man.Continue Reading »
“OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL” My rating: C+(Opening wide on March 8)
130 minutes | MPAA rating: PG
1939’s “The Wizard of Oz” was a movie for kids that – by virtue of its wit, music, and the universal emotions it evokes – has become a movie for everyone.
Seventy decades from now, “Oz the Great and Powerful” will remain just a movie for kids.
Providing it is remembered at all.
This non-musical 3-D prequel from Disney and director Sam Raimi (the “Spider-Man” franchise) has some terrific visuals and a few moments of effective humor, but overall it’s a letdown. And not just when compared to the Judy Garland classic.
The yarn centers on Oz (James Franco), a turn-of-the-century stage magician working the Kansas fair circuit. He’s a scrambilng, womanizing con artist who, blown by a tornado into the Land of Oz, finds himself hailed as the wizard who will free the realm from the depredations of an evil witch.
Think Han Solo undergoing a metamorphosis from selfish space smuggler to fervent revolutionary warrior.
Billy Connolly, Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay and Pauline Collins
“QUARTET” My rating: B-(Opens January 25 at the Tivoli and Glenwood Arts)
98 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
“Quartet,” the movies’ latest exercise in geriaxploitation, is about old folks living in a not-for-profit British community for retired musicians.
It’s “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” with operatic solos instead of sitars and tablas.
It’s also the feature film directing debut of actor Dustin Hoffman, who doesn’t appear on the screen but proves himself more than capable of calling the shots behind the camera. “Quartet” isn’t astoundingly cinematic, but Hoffman clearly knows how to work with actors.
Of course it helps to have an A-list cast of graying Brit thesps on hand.
Set in a formerly grand English country house which now has been divided up into apartments, Ronald Harwood’s screenplay (based on his stage play) centers on the arrival of Jean Horton (Maggie Smith), a once world-famous soprano whose shaky finances have forced her to give up her London townhouse. Now she’s come to Beecham House to live among her aged peers.
Not that she’s looking forward to it. Group living is a real comedown for the imperious Jean, who spends the first few days taking her meals in her room and listening to old LPs of her performances. There’s a touch of the imperious Lady Violet Crawley (of “Downton Abbey,” natch) in Smith’s performance, but also a welcome vulnerability.
You know how librarians and literature professors are always coming up with lists of the books you must have read to be a well-rounded, literate individual?
Well, the Kansas City Public Library is doing the same thing for movie literacy.
“Movies That Matter” is a 20-film free film series featuring masterpieces of world cinema. They will be presented at 1:30 p.m. on Sundays from September 2012 to May 2013 in the Truman Forum, a 220-seat auditorium in the basement level of the Plaza Branch Library at 4801 Main Street.
The movies range from silent comedies to hard-hitting dramas, samurai flicks, existential Swedish costume epics, Hollywood screwball hilarity, an MGM musical and the first-ever animated feature.
“Movies That Matter” was programmed by yours truly. I’ll also be doing five-minute illustrated introductions before each film and a recap after each screening.
I’ll admit up front that this is a very personal, subjective list of movies. These are films that, above all, matter to me. Mo matter how often I see them, they remain entertaining, thought provoking, deeply moving.
A few of them, I believe, have actually changed my life…or at least the way I look at life.
Great filmmakers – like great painters or poets or composers – use their art to share with us their perceptions of existence. When all the pieces come together (and in the complex and collaborative world of film it doesn’t happen all that often), the results can lift us out of ourselves and transport us to brave new worlds.
These movies matter precisely because of their ability to open up our eyes, our ears, our minds, and our emotions. Each has its own personality, and these personalities are as unique as those of our friends and family members.
Once you’ve met them, they don’t go away. They’re with you forever.
| Robert W. Butler
THE SCHEDULE:
CITIZEN KANE (USA; 1941) Sunday, Sept. 2, 2012
The greatness of Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” comes at the viewer from every direction.
Technically it is a masterpiece of inventive filmmaking, employing dramatic lighting and sound effects, seemingly impossible camera angles and movements, deep focus, and more special effects than any Hollywood picture up to that time.
Narratively “Kane”is a puzzle, depicting the life of a famous and powerful man through the often-contradictory memories of those who loved or despised him.
It offers Orson Welles – only 24 when he co-wrote, starred in, and directed the movie – in the performance of a lifetime, playing a character from the age of 25 to nearly 80.
And the story of the film’s creation – and its near destruction by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose career and private life inspired the character of Charles Foster Kane – is one of the great behind-the-scenes tales in all of Hollywood history.
THE GENERAL (USA: 1926) Sunday, September 16, 2012
Upon its release Buster Keaton’s “The General” was dismissed as a critical and commercial failure. Continue Reading »
“HYDE PARK ON HUDSON” My rating: B(Opens wide on Jan. 4)
94 minutes | MPAA rating: R
The natural reaction upon learning that comedy legend Bill Murray is portraying Franklin Roosevelt is to expect some sort of farce, perhaps a feature-length version of a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
Nope. Murray’s carefully-contained performance in “Hyde Park on Hudson” is the real deal, an attempt to present an historically plausible FDR. This does not mean that Murray and the film are solemn and humorless; merely that they story they tell is bigger than one star turn.
Actually, this piece of history from director Roger Michell (“Notting Hill,” “Changing Lanes”) is several stories mashed together (not unpleasantly).
It begins with Daisy Suckley (the ever-superb Laura Linney), spinsterish sixth cousin of the President, receiving an invitation – a plea, actually – to leave her wooded rural home in upstate New York and visit the summer Presidential compound in nearby Hyde Park.
Franklin, she is told, is restless (actually he’s driving his staff nuts) and could use some fresh companionship.
Through Daisy’s eyes we are introduced to the President’s near and dear. Most of them are very strong women: The First Lady, Eleanor (Olivia Williams, looking very horsey with a mouthful of prosthetic teeth), who spends most of her time at a sort of all-woman commune. Also FDR’s assistant Missy LeHand (Elizabeth Marvel), who knows her boss so well she can anticipate his whims. And the President’s mother (Elizabeth Wilson), whose main job is to serve as official hostess (Eleanor’s rarely around) and nag her son about drinking and his health.
Though surrounded by women devoted to him, Franklin makes Daisy feel like a co-conspirator in defying their dictates. He proudly shows off his stamp collection (he has found it useful in repelling blowhards). He engages Daisy in long conversations. He takes her racing down country roads in an open-air touring car equipped with hand controls (the president was paralyzed from the waist down after a bout with polio).
And, on one such ride, after ditching his Secret Service escort, Franklin parks in a flower-dappled meadow and places Daisy’s hand on his crotch. Evidently he’s not entirely paralyzed.
From this introduction (all of this takes place in the first 20 minutes) you expect “Hyde Park on Hudson” to be the Franklin-and-Daisy story.
But that is merely the first chapter in playwright Richard Nelson’s screenplay.
The bulk of the story concerns the 1939 visit to America of King George VI (the stammering protagonist of “The King’s Speech”) and his wife, Queen Elizabeth. Not only was this the first time a British monarch had set foot in America, it was a desperate time in George’s reign. War with Germany seemed inevitable and His Majesty badly needed American aid to prepare for the conflict. But most Yanks were isolationists unwilling to get involved in a European war.
Nelson does a terrific job of presenting the two sides in this historic encounter. Being Yanks, the White House regulars are bowled over by the very idea of meeting royalty, but at the same time are astonishingly plebeian in their tastes (they plan a picnic for Their Majesties featuring hot dogs and Native American tribal dances).
For their part, the King (Samuel West) and Queen (Olivia Coleman) are nursing badly frayed nerves. Away from the comforts of home they feel insecure and clownish. They’re determined to make a good impression, but are sadly out of practice when it comes to being “just folks.” Nelson has written for them a wonderful marital spat that’s doubly tense because it takes place in a bedroom at FDR’s Hyde Park home, a structure with paper-thin walls.
And in the film’s best passage Nelson delivers an astonishingly satisfying late-night exchange between FDR and George. Murray’s Franklin is at his charming best here, recognizing the younger man’s acute discomfort and loosening things up with alcohol, humor, and a fatherly demeanor.
It’s funny, inspiring and unexpectedly touching, not in the least because of Franklin’s willingness to show his own vulnerability by pulling himself out of his wheelchair and painfully making his way around the room supported only by his arms.
Just two world leaders, trying to get on like drinking buddies.
Eventually (and somewhat abruptly) the movie returns to the long-ignored Daisy, who is about to learn a disheartening lesson in Presidential romantic politics.
A diverting bit of history with some soap on the side, “Hyde Park on Hudson” is lightweight but satisfying. And while I can’t claim to have ever forgotten that this was Bill Murray (this isn’t a total immersion on the level of Daniel Day-Lewis’ Lincoln), the comic actor does a credible and occasionally exemplary job.
“Girls, when I met you you were doing all country and western thing and that's fine -- we all make mistakes. But here is what we learn from that mistake. Country and western music is about loss. Soul music is also about loss. But the difference is in country and western music, they've lost, they've given up and they are just all whining about it. In soul music they are struggling to get it back, they haven't given up.-- Dave Lovelace (Chris O'Dowd) in "The Sapphires"
"“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
Sam Riley, speaking the words of Jack Kerouac in "On the Road" (2012)
FREE MOVIES
DUCK SOUP 6:30 5-13 KC Central Library
LES MISERABLES 6:00 5-16 KCK West Wyandotte Library
ROLE MODELS 8:45 5-17 KC Central Library
BLAZING SADDLES 1:30 5-18 KC Central Library
METROPOLIS 1:30 5-19 Plaza Library
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT 6:30 5-20 KC Central LIbrary
PROMISED LAND 6:30 5-23 KCK West Wyandotte Library
THE GRADUATE 1:30 5-25 KC Central LIbrary
RISE OF THE GUARDIANS 2:00 5-25 KCK South Library
DINOSAUR 6:30 5-28 KCK West Wyandotte Library
JURASSIC PARK 6:00 5-29 KCK South Library
ANNIE HALL 1:00 5-31 KCK South Library
OUT IDIOT BROTHER 8:45 6-21 KC Central Library
THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX 1:00 6-24 KC Central Library
JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH 1:00 7-8 KC Central LIbrary
I LOVE YOU MAN 8:45 7-19 KC Central LIbrary
DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS 8:45 8-16 KC Central Library
WANDERLUST 8:45 9-20 KC Central Library
MOVIE QUOTE
"“Things will go on, and then one day it will all be over.” An elderly
Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) in “Amour.”
Movie quote:
"If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder." Robin (Ben Mendelsohn) in "The Place Beyond the Pines" (2013)
Movie Quote
“Your enemy will be out in force. But you cannot meet him on his own low ground." Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) in "42"
“THE ICEMAN” My rating: B- (Opening May 17 at the Barrywoods 24, Cinemark Plaza and Studio 30)
