Butler's Cinema Scene

“REMEMBERING GENE WILDER” My rating: B+ (Netflix)

Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel in “The Producers”

“REMEMBERING GENE WILDER” My rating: B+ (Netflix)

92 minutes | No MPAA rating

I’d almost forgotten what a wonderful performer Gene Wilder was.

But then I caught Ron Frank’s documentary “Remembering Gene Wilder” and it all came rushing back.

The film makes the case that Wilder was a comic genius…and given that he was the instigator of “Young Frankenstein” and wrote the original screenplay, you won’t hear me arguing.

But there’s so much more, from his first high-visibility gig as a kidnapped bank employee in “Bonnie and Clyde,” to his landmark work with Mel Brooks (“The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein”), his comic collaborations with Richard Pryor and especially his turn as the star of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.”

He appears to have been a very nice man, an impression reinforced by his two marriages (the first to Gilda Radner, who died from cancer).

Plenty of colleagues and friends show up to share memories — Brooks, Alan Alda, Harry Connick Jr., Carol Kane, Eric McCormick — but the backbone of the piece are the clips from Wilder’s films. They’re so good you end up making a list of the man’s features that need to be revisited.

Isabel Deroy-Olson, Lily Gladstone

“FANCY DANCE” My rating: C+ (Apple+)

90 minutes } MPAA rating: R

Perhaps seven or eight years ago — pre-“Reservation Dogs” — Erica Tremblay’s “Fancy Dance” might have seemed like a revelation.

Now it carries a whiff of been-there-done-that, an aroma not dispelled even by Lily Gladstone’s slow-burning lead performance.

Filmed mostly on Indian land in Oklahoma, the film centers on Jax (Gladstone), who has become the caregiver for teenaged Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), her niece. Loki’s mom vanished a couple of weeks earlier.

Jax suspects foul play, but the indifferent authorities are dragging their feet; meanwhile she tries to keep Roki’s hopes up that the girl’s mom will appear in time for the mother/daughter dance at the upcoming tribal powwow.

For much of its running time “Fancy Dance” is a study of poverty and dead ends. Jax has a long history of trouble with the law and she’s already got Roki boosting needed food and other items from local merchants.

Need a ride? Steal a car. Pretty simple.

Things come to a head when the child welfare people move to place Roki in foster care. An outraged Jax snatches the girl and together they go on the run.

As a snapshot of reservation life, “Fancy Dance” seems accurate if not exactly revelatory. Similarly, the theme of missing indigenous women isn’t exactly fresh, having been tackled in the most recent season of “True Detective” and in the striking feature “Catch the Fair One.”

Still, you’ve got Gladstone, hot off her triumph in “Killers of the Flower Moon” and possessor of the saddest pair of eyes in current cinema. Even when the film loses momentum, her presence keeps us watching.

Mads Mikkelson

“THE PROMISED LAND”  My rating: B (Hulu)

127 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The difference between actor and movie star is nicely delineated  in the career of Mads Mikkelson, who appears to care not a whit about his image while always on the lookout for  unexpected characters.

Viking berserker. Alcoholic high school teacher.  James Bond villain. Drug pusher.

The guy doesn’t care if we like his characters. In fact, I often think he goes out of his way to glom onto the off-putting.

In the period piece “The Promised Land” Mikkelsen plays a highly fictionalized version of the real-life Ludvig Kahlen,  who after 25 years as a soldier (rising from private to captain) retires to his native Denmark with a crazy dream of turning the barren Jutland heath into a paradise.

Kahlen is not a warm, fuzzy guy.  He’s humorless. Stiff.  Ill at ease in social situations. And so invested in the idea of achieving legitimacy through an agricultural miracle that he has no time for anything that might get in his way…especially other people.

Written and directed by Nikolaj Arcel, “The Promised Land”  melds several genres to satisfying effect.

There’s the whole man-against-nature thing, with Kahlen battling the elements to survive brutal winters, improve the nutrient-poor soil and bring in a crop of potatoes, a vegetable at the time (mid-1700s) unknown to the Danes but capable of growing just about anywhere.

Even more daunting is the opposition of local landowner Frederik De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg),  the Danish equivalent of a Deep South plantation owner who rapes, beats and even kills the peasants under his thumb. (He’s a hateful prick…the model might very well have been Tim Roth’s arrogant sadist from “Rob Roy.”) De Schinkel is not thrilled with the idea of this plebeian newcomer improving the “unimprovable” land under his very nose, going so far as to form a marauding hit squad of murderers plucked from prison.

Finally there’s the human side of the equation. Despite his loner personality, Kahlen slowly finds himself part of a makeshift family along with a housemaid who has fled De Schinkel’s predatory grasp (Amanda Collin) and an orphaned child (Melina Hagberg) reared by forest-dwelling bandits.  

So what’s it going to be…stick with his master plan or succumb to the temptations of human interaction?

Terrific cinematography (Rasmus Videbaek) and utterly convincing production design (Jette Lehmann) mark this intimate epic, which ends on a much more positive note than the one experienced by the real-life Kahlen…but then, that’s why we go to the movies.

| Robert W. Butler