Butler's Cinema Scene

“HOLLAND” My rating: C (Prime)

Nicole Kidman

“HOLLAND” My rating: C (Prime)

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Three very good actors obviously saw interesting possibilties in “Holland.”

I can’t.

Mimi Cave’s film flounders in a stylistic miasma.  Not quite comedy. Not quite thriller. No edge. No commitment.

Andrew Sodroski’s screenplay unfolds in Holland, Michigan, a burg whose identity is centered in its Dutch heritage.Think Colonial Williamsburg only with a full-scale windmill, a tulip festival and lots of Hans Brinker cosplay.

Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman) is a mentally and emotionally fragile housewife and high school home ec teacher. Hubby Fred (the ever excellent Matthew Macfadyen) is the very image of midwestern blandness —an optometrist by trade, a civic booster and a model train enthusiast with an entire Lionel-scale world constructed in the garage.

Early on Nancy begins to suspect the Fred’s out-of-town travel to medical conferences is cover for an affair.  Driven by bizarre dreams, she teams up with lonely fellow teacher Dave (Gael Garcia Bernal) to catch hubby in the act; along the way the bumbling educators/amateur gumshoes fall into each other’s arms.

For a good hour “Holland” treads water. Perhaps what’s intended here is a sort of satiric “Blue Velvet” atmosphere of cozy domesticity masking buried perversion…but Cave is no David Lynch.

Finally, in its last quarter, “Holland” delivers a head smacking revelation about Fred.  No, not extramarital sex.  Something way worse.

But by then I was beyond caring.  If only “Holland” had really gone for it, pushed the weird buttons with a vengeance. I might have gotten with the program.

Sour Vane Brean

“NUMBER 24” My rating: B (Netflix)

111 minutes | No MPAA rating

Movies about the resistance to the Nazis during WW2 suddenly seem way too relevant.

“Number 24” chronicles the real-life adventures of Gunner Sonsteby, who while still a teen launched Norway’s most successful career of anti-German sabotage.

John Andreas Anderson’s film starts with the 90-year-old Sonsteby (Erik Hivju) addressing an assembly of high school students. 

The film then flashes back to the war years where young Gunnar (Sour Vane Brean), now idenfited as Number 24,  is recruited by the resistance. He helps publish an underground newspaper. He “borrows” plates from the federal mint with which to print currency. He assumes four separate identities and never spends more than two nights in any one place. He spies on German troop movements.

The secret to his success at least in part is due to his colorlessness.  Gunnar is bland, easy to overlook. Hard to imagine as a saboteur.  In fact, his longevity is so remarkable that at one point his handlers wonder if he isn’t a double agent.

Ultimately resistance work comes down to doing bad things for the right reasons. In this case Gunnar must plan the assassination of a childhood friend who has become a collaborator.

In the future he must justify his actions to the man’s great-granddaughter.

“Number 24” is a modest triumph, low-keyed but consistently effective.

“SATURDAY NIGHT” My rating: C+ (Netflix)

119 minutes } MPAA rating: R)

Furiously frantic but not particularly funny, “Saturday Night”appears on the 50th anniversary of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” to depict the machinations surrounding the show’s first-ever broadcast.

Unfolding in two chaotic hours, Jason Reitman’s film is a veritable avalanche of familiar characters, situations, skits and backstage intrigue plucked from the show’s rich mythology.  For boomers who grew up on SNL it’s a cultural Where’s Waldo?

But even for them it quickly wears out its welcome. The film is populated not with characters but with caricatures. The only figure to hold center stage is Gabriel LaBelle’s Lorne Michaels, the young producer risking all on a new idea of TV comedy.

Some of the impersonations are dead on. Nicholas Braun is perfect as one of the first guests, wacko comic Andy Kaufman. J.K. Simmons chews scenery as Milton Berle (who I don’t think was there for the first broadcast but here shows up anyway to literally wave his dick). Jon Batiste has a nice turn as musical guest Billy Preston. Paul Rust is a dead ringer for Paul Shaffer.

Others are hit and miss. Matthew Rhys cannot channel opening night host George Carlin. The SNL regulars — Belushi, Aykroyd, Curtin, Newman, Chase, Morris, Radner —are adequate but none knocked me out (or got much of a chance to).

Given the slipshod way in which the first show came together it’s a miracle there was ever a second, but we all know how that worked out.

| Robert W. Butler