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Archive for May, 2014

“A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST”: A case of runs on the range

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Seth MacFarlane


Seth MacFarlane

“A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST” My rating: C (Opens wide on March 30)

116 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Mel Brooks needn’t lose any sleep.

The spirit of 1974’s “Blazing Saddles” hovers tauntingly over “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” Seth MacFarlane’s (he produced it, directed it, co-wrote it and stars in it) new comic Western.

“Saddles” is, of course, the blue chip standard for rude cowboy comedy, as hilarious now as the day it was released.

By comparison “A Million Ways…” is a slog. It’s got a couple of wildly comic moments – but only a couple.

The main problem is not that its humor is overwhelmingly puerile (graphic jokes about sex and bodily functions) but that it isn’t much of a movie. Oh, it looks great, with lots of gorgeous wide-screen cinematography of Monument Valley (John Ford/John Wayne country) and a visual style dishing lots of rising crane shots (MacFarlane must have been studying Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West”).

But there’s no there there. And as storytelling it’s a meandering, shapeless affair. It’s not even a particularly good satire of Western movie conventions.

MacFarlane – an astonishingly productive comic force (TV’s “The Family Guy,” “American Dad!” and “The Cleveland Show,” not to mention the 2012 feature “Ted” and hosting the Oscars) – seems most at home in the half-hour (which is to say 22-minute) animated TV format. He struggles to fill this 2-hour film with jokes, and a few hit home. But they’re not in service of a story – or characters – we care about.

And let’s get out in the open MacFarlane’s biggest mistake: Casting himself as the lead character, Albert, a miserable/angry sheep farmer in 1882 Arizona.

MacFarlane has no range. He sports a half-hearted smirk and…and that’s about it. I don’t much like watching him. So there.

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“BELLE”: Everything but passion

Posted in Uncategorized on May 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Sarah Gadon in "Belle"

Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Sarah Gadon in “Belle”

“BELLE” My rating: C+ (Now showing at the Tivoli)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

“Belle” would seem to have everything going for it – except passion.

It’s the fact-based tale of a mulatto girl in 18th century England who was raised by her father’s titled family, negotiated the tricky waters of racism and custom to find an appropriate mate, and played a role in turning the tide against the British slave trade.

What’s more, it’s got a cast that includes respected actors likeTom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Emily Watson, Matthew Goode and Penelope Wilton.

In other words, Jane Austen with a social conscience.

Why, then, did “Belle” leave me cold? I’ve got to blame screenwriter Misan Sagay and director Amma Asante, who took a tale overflowing with dramatic and emotional potential and mummified it. It’s good looking, raises some interesting issues…but never engaged my emotions.

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HOLLYWOOD’s GREATEST YEAR: “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on May 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Bette Davis, Errol Flynn

Bette Davis, Errol Flynn

“The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 31, 2014 in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14W. 10th St.  Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film series Hollywood’s Greatest Year, featuring movies released in 1939.

 

The year 1939 was a very good one for actress Bette Davis.

She had four films released in that 12-month period, all of them now regarded as classics.  She was the high-society deb dying of a brain tumor in “Dark Victory,” the wife of a Mexican statesman in “Juarez,” a spinster who allows her illegitimate daughter to be raised by her cousin in “The Old Maid.”

Davis was nominated for a best actress Oscar for “Dark Victory,” but in my humble opinion she should have received that honor for her work that year as England’s “virgin queen” in “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.”

For here is Bette Davis at her most magnificent, playing a monarch torn between the hubris of ruling a nation and her almost girlish infatuation with a handsome man several years her junior. It’s a monumental, horrifying, and very human performance.

Whether this is an accurate depiction is beside the point. As history “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” leaves much to be desired. As a gaudy slice of colorful melodrama, it’s pretty great.

In particular, the film does a terrific job of re-creating the relationship between Elizabeth I (Davis) and Robert, Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn). Whether factual or not, the on-screen psychology of these two achieves a subtlety and sophistication that is remarkable.

Of course we expect that sort of creativity from Davis, one of the great actresses of her generation.

Flynn, on the other hand, was not what you’d call a “thinking” actor, being more accustomed to flourishing a saber and swinging from ropes than mining the finer points of human motivation.

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“CHEF”: Back to basics

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

 

** and Jon Favreau in "Chef"

Emjay Anthony and Jon Favreau in “Chef”

“CHEF” My rating: B (Opening wide on May 22)

115 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The title character of “Chef” works in a hugely lucrative but artistically stifling high-end L.A. restaurant. He has a meltdown and goes off looking to regain his muse of cooking.

Interestingly enough, “Chef “ was written, directed by, and stars Jon Favreau, who first burst onto the scene as an indie auteur (“Swingers,” “Made”) before finding mucho money and Tinseltown clout cranking out superhero movies for the Marvel folk (“Iron Man”).

“Chef” can be seen as Favreau’s return to down-home cooking/filmmaking. Despite its impressively deep cast, it’s a relatively simple, modestly budgeted affair, less a banquet than a delicate palate cleanser.

Nothing earthshaking happens here. No deep emotions are plumbed or existential dilemmas explored.

But if  the film is superficial, it is often slyly funny, has a real handle on the restaurant biz and its denizens, genuinely likes its characters, and tries to look on the sunny side. In short,  a pleasant couple of hours at the movies.

Carl Casper (Favreau) is top chef at one of Hollywood’s most in-demand eateries. But he’s hit a creative dead end. The joint’s owner (Dustin Hoffman) doesn’t want to tinker with success and consistently nixes Carl’s attempts at an edgier menu.

When a powerful food blogger (Oliver Platt) pans the place as old hat and unimaginative, Carl has a very public meltdown that is recorded by dozens of customers, making him an Internet sensation.  But while being the raving chef raises Carl’s profile, it gets him fired and makes him unemployable.

He’s got no choice but to start over. (more…)

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“THE HORNET’S NEST”: Grunt’s-eye view

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

110331-A-1728B-285“THE HORNET’S NEST”  My rating: A- (Opens May 23 at the Cinemark Merriam)

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Let’s not mince words. Mike and Carlos Boettcher’s “The Hornet’s Nest” is on the short list of the greatest combat documentaries of all time.

It’s an experience that will scare you, inspire you and quite likely leave you in tears. And no matter what your views on the origins, prosecution or morality of the War on Terror, it will leave you awed by the dedication and bravery of our fighting men.

TV journalist Mike Boettcher has spent nearly three decades shooting and reporting on wars around the world. His dedication to the job led to the breakup of his marriage and long separations from his children.

As “The Hornet’s Nest” begins, Mike and his now-grown son Carlos team up to record the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan for ABC News. Mike tells us he is both gratified and wary…it will serve as an opportunity to bond with the son whose childhood he missed, but it will also put that son in harm’s way.

That parent/child dynamic, which percolates just below the film’s surface, gives a bit of personal urgency to “The Hornet’s Nest” – particularly when Mike believes that Carlos has been killed or wounded by Taliban snipers. But it really isn’t the documentary’s driving force.

The real subjects are the uniformed men (some seem mere boys) who go about their dirty jobs in front of the Boettchers’ cameras.

A few soldiers appear in talking-head interviews, but “The Hornet’s Nest” is less about individuals than about how a military unit goes about its job.

The men with whom the Boettchers are embedded are consummate professionals – well trained, motivated, and dedicated to the job. Even in horrifyingly scary situations, they maintain an almost superhuman calm. They may swear, but they don’t panic.

Why do they do it? Mike Boettcher tells us that once in the field, questions of politics and policy are irrelevant. These men fight for each other, he says.  It’s Shakespeare’s “band of brothers” in desert camouflage.

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HOLLYWOOD’s GREATEST YEAR: “Juarez”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Bette Davis, Brian Ahern

Bette Davis, Brian Ahern

“Juarez” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 24, 2014 in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14W. 10th St.  Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film series Hollywood’s Greatest Year, featuring movies released in 1939.

 

The makers of “Juarez” went out of their way to ensure the film would be as historically accurate as possible.

The Warner Bros. research department amassed a 300-volume library of volumes about Mexico in the mid-19th century. Two historians were hired to vet the script being written by Aeneas MacKenzie. When MacKenzie was finished he had a screenplay long enough for two films, so other writers (especially John Huston, who was yet to make his directing debut) were called in to trim it.

Paul Muni

Paul Muni

Well, “Juarez” may be historically accurate. But this 1939 release is also an inflated bore, a history lesson in which the history smothers all the drama.

For starters the film has no center. It’s named after Benito Juarez, who served five terms as president of Mexico and who was the leader of the revolution that overthrew the French-imposed reign of Emperor Maximilian.

The studio brass thought they had a sure thing in Paul Muni, the Oscar-winning actor who was famous for disappearing into the roles of real-life figures like Louis Pasteur and Emile Zola.

But Muni’s Juarez is wooden and stiff, less a human being than a stuffed owl. You’ve got to admire the makeup job that transforms him into a Mexican Indian (it took two hours in the makeup chair every morning), but this performance is borderline robotic.

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HOLLYWOOD’s GREATEST YEAR: “Stanley and Livingstone”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

 

Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan in "Stanley and Livingstone"

Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan in “Stanley and Livingstone”

“Stanley and Livingstone” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 17, 2014 in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14W. 10th St.  Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film series Hollywood’s Greatest Year, featuring movies released in 1939.

 

In 1871 the American newspaper reporter Henry Stanley nearly died searching Africa for the “lost” Scottish missionary David Livingstone. It is one of those real-life adventures seemingly made to order for the movies.

And despite a couple of cheesy “Hollywood” touches, 1939’s “Stanley and Livingstone” is a hugely satisfying adventure yarn.

Spencer Tracy plays Stanley,  sent by his publisher, James Gordon Bennett Jr. of The New York Herald, to find out what had happened to Livingstone, missing for four years in Africa’s vast interior.

An investigation by a British newspaper had concluded that Livingstone was dead, but Bennett wasn’t buying it. Besides, Bennett was pathologically anti-British, and he was willing to invest much time, money, and manpower in proving that the English newspaper got it all wrong.

And so Stanley mounted an expedition, enduring searing heat, driving rain, disease, starvation, and attacks by hostile tribes.

Tracy and co-star Walter Brennan (as a folksy Wild West Indian fighter who accompanies Stanley on the trek) never had to leave the comfort of the 20th Century Fox back lot to make the film. And yet the picture is crammed with stupendously authentic scenes set in Africa.

For that you can credit Mrs. Martin Johnson, identified in the film’s credits as the technical director in charge of the safari sequences shot in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda.

Osa Johnson was the widow of Martin Johnson (1884-1937), a native of Chanute, Kansas. In the 1920s and ‘30s the Johnsons became household names for their exotic documentaries filmed in the world’s most far-flung and oft-times dangerous locales. The Johnsons were real-life adventurers whose exploits are celebrated in the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute.

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“STAGE FRIGHT”: Musical slice and dice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on May 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

Stage_Fright_red_band_trailer“STAGE FRIGHT”  My rating: C (Opens May 9 at the Screenland Armour)

92 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Stage Fright” tries to meld two radically different genres — the slasher film and the  summer camp musical.

As you’d expect, the results are pretty schizoid.

Writer/director Jerome Sable’s horror-comedy begins with the premiere performance of a Broadway musical called “The Haunting of the Opera” (apologies to Andrew Lloyd Webber). Leading lady Kylie Swanson (Minnie Driver) slays the opening-night crowd, only to be herself slain backstage by a masked, knife-wielding psycho. Her young son and daughter, Buddy and Camilla, barely escape with their lives.

Now, a decade later, the teenaged Buddy (Douglas Smith) and Camilla (Allie MacDonald)  work in the kitchen of  the summer musical youth camp run by their mother’s old producer and one-time lover, Roger McCall (“Rocky Horror” alum Meat Loaf).

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HOLLYWOOD’s GREATEST YEAR: “The Story of Alexander Graham Bell”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Henry Fonda as Thomas Watson and Don Ameche as Alexander Graham Bell

Henry Fonda as Thomas Watson and Don Ameche as Alexander Graham Bell

“The Story of Alexander Graham Bell” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 10, 2014 in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14W. 10th St.  Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film series Hollywood’s Greatest Year, featuring movies released in 1939.

 

Every now and then an actor becomes inseparable from a role.

Anthony Quinn will always be Zorba the Greek. Mention Christopher Reeve, and you can’t help envisioning him wearing Superman’s cape.

And Don Ameche will always be Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone.

Here’s a sobering thought: So popular was the 1939 release “The Story of Alexander Graham Bell” that for nearly 20 years after it was common to substitute the word “Ameche” for “telephone.”

As in: “They’re installing a new Ameche in my den.” Or: “You’re wanted on the Ameche.”

It was an impressive display of the culture-molding potential of a hit movie.

The film unfolds mostly in the 1870s and ‘80s when the Scottish-born Bell was struggling to perfect the technology that would allow the transmission of sound over copper wire (a widely-held misconception was that telephone wires were hollow, carrying sound like water through a pipe).

It’s a classic tale of a starving genius. Bell and his cohort, engineer Thomas Watson (Henry Fonda), live in a series of mildewed garrets and practically succumb to hunger before their big breakthrough.

The film does a pretty good job of laying out the basics of Bell’s story – his interest in teaching the deaf to speak (his mother was hearing impaired), his marriage to a deaf woman (played by the gorgeous Loretta Young).

It all leads up to the moment when Watson hears Bell’s voice over the telephone line requesting “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” (Actually, Bell really did need Watson’s help. He had accidently spilled a vial of acid on his trousers and his legs were burning.)

graham 2Ameche launched his film career in 1935, and in the four years leading up to “The Story of Alexander Graham Bell” he had been very busy, appearing in more than a dozen films, usually as the second male lead. His biggest hit of this period was In Old Chicago, a spectacular recreation of the 1871 fire in which Ameche played a member of the O’Leary family, whose cow was blamed for kicking over a lantern and setting off the conflagration.

At the same time Ameche was omnipresent on the radio, serving as a master of ceremonies on a slew of programs. By the time he turned 30 he was a household word.

Whether he was much of an actor, though, is still debated. Ameche was considered versatile…but that may have been mostly because his rather bland performance style lent itself to a wide variety of roles. With his moustache and friendly manner he was a dapper presence – but nobody was going to cast him as, say, a villain. (At least not for another 40 years.)

In “Alexander Graham Bell” Ameche provides a comforting and hugely earnest anchor, but the real acting chores fall to his supporting players. Comic relief is provided by Fonda as the kvetching Watson, and stuffy Charles Coburn as Bell’s father-in-law, a man who directs the lives of his family members according to a carefully thought-out timetable.

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“HATESHIP LOVESHIP”: The dignity of little things

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on May 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce

Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce

“HATESHIP LOVESHIP” My rating: B (Now playing at the Screenland Armour)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It seems that inside every comic genius there lurks a tragedian just itching to break out.

The latest funny person to make the leap into seriousness is former “SNL” star Kristen Wiig, who in “Hateship Loveship” excels at poartraying a lonely woman who risks all on a last desperate attempt at happiness.

Wiig plays Johanna, who as the film begins is a care-giver for an old lady in small-town Iowa. Johanna has no family and has been with the old lady since she was 15 — or more than half her life. As a result she is emotionally and intellectually naive, not to mention painfully shy.

With her employer’s death Johanna finds a new job in the household of lawyer McCauley (Nick Nolte), a widower caring for his teenage granddauther Sabitha  (Hailee Steinfeld, an Oscar nominee for the Coens’ “True Grit”). Her arrival coincides with a rare visit by Sabitha’s father Ken (Guy Pearce), an alcoholic and druggie whose irresponsible driving led to the death of his wife.

Now Ken is trying to convince his father-in-law to invest in his latest get-rich-quick scheme, refurbishing a run-down motel in Chicago. McCauley isn’t buying; besides, he’s never forgiven Ken for the death of his daughter.

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