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“LORE”: Un-drinking the Kool-Aid

May 2, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

Saskia

Saskia Rosendahl, Kai Malina in “Lore”

Lore-3

“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 »

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Movies That Matter: “SUNSET BOULEVARD”

April 26, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

SUNSET BOULEVARDHollywood 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.

SunsetBoulevardfilmposterIt’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.

See you there.

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE ANGEL’S SHARE”: Redemption in whisky

April 25, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

Paul Brannigan

Paul Brannigan

“THE ANGEL’S SHARE”  My rating: B+ (Opens April 26 at the Tivoli)

101 minutes | No MPAA rating            

The players rarely seem to be acting in Ken Loach films, usually because so many of them have never before been in a movie. But even when he casts old pros, the performances Loach gets are natural, unforced, and of an astonishingly high order.

Loach, now in his 70s and the dean of Britain’s left-leaning ashcan filmmakers, does it again in “The Angel’s Share,” a gentle comedy — with some very dramatic moments –about a bunch of kids from the Scottish underclass who become connoisseurs of fine whisky and then come up with a plan to steal some priceless century-old single malt.

We meet Robbie (Paul Brannigan, who in real life is a social worker) in a courtroom where he’s on trial for beating a fellow hooligan within an inch of his life. For reasons that not even he quite understands, Robbie gets 300 hours of community service instead of jail time. This is important since his girlfriend Leonie (Siobhan Reilly) is about to have his baby. Robbie makes a vow to stick to the straight and narrow and build a real life for his child.

But that’s not easy. During his days of carousing and coke-snorting Robbie has made many enemies who are still seeking revenge. Among them are Leonie’s uncles, who beat him senseless when he shows up at the hospital to see his new son. Moreover, his criminal record makes getting even a menial job impossible.

Continue Reading »

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“THE NUMBERS STATION”: Working for the Company

April 25, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

numbers“THE NUMBERS STATION” My rating: C+ (Opens April 27 at the Studio 30,  )
88 minutes | MPAA rating: R
 
It’s a minor affair, but Kasper Barfoed’s “The Numbers Station” reminds me of a John LeCarre espionage tale, the kind where characters with issues run up against a monolithic and unyielding system.The premise behind F. Scott Frazier’s screenplay finds CIA killer Emerson (John Cusack) stationed at a bunker deep in the Finnish countryside. After years as an effective killing machine, Emerson has balked on an assignment and has been sent to a low-stress, low-priority outpost to get his act together.You can probably guess that his new gig won’t be low stress for long.This facility is a numbers station, a shortwave broadcast center in a kind of missile silo. Numbers stations (they really exist) transmit seemingly random spoken words and numbers. Presumably these coded messages are aimed at spies in various countries and contain instructions, orders, warnings and other  top-secret information.Emerson’s job is to provide security for Katherine (Malin Akerman), a civilian employee of the CIA who reads the nonsensical  codes over the air. Continue Reading »

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“MUD”: Damn that McConaughey

April 25, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

sksksk N A and Matthew McConaughey

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 »

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“UPSTREAM COLOR”: Unseen terrors

April 25, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

Shane Carruth, ddddd

Shane Carruth, Amy Seimetz in “Upstream Color”

“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.

Continue Reading »

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“THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES”: Half a great movie

April 12, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

Ryan Gosling

Ryan Gosling

“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

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.

Continue Reading »

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