Butler's Cinema Scene

Denis Lavant…as a sewer-dwelling mutant

“HOLY MOTORS” My rating: B (Opening Dec. 28 at the Tivoli)
115 minutes |No  MPAA rating

 I won’t try to tell you that I understand what’s going on in Leos Carax’s brain-scratching “Holy Motors.”

But like a handful of other impenetrable, out-there films (I’m thinking especially of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”), this spectacularly weird entry gnaws its way into your head and takes up residence without ever laying its cards out on the table.

I found it exhilarating. No doubt many will find it maddening.

Both responses are perfectly valid.

“Holy Motors” follows one day in the life of Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant).  We meet him leaving an ultra-modern residence in the Paris suburbs.  He’s a gray-haired, middle-aged man in an expensive business suit, and as a slew of frolicking children calling him “Papa” wave bye-bye and wish him a good day, Oscar walks down his driveway and enters a white stretch limo driven by Celine (Edith Scob), a quietly elegant woman in her early 70s.

Once ensconced in the back of the limo, Oscar picks up a folder which holds information on his next “assignment.” Soon he has shucked his hair (it’s a wig…he’s bald underneath) and clothing and transformed himself – with the help of makeup, costumes and props stashed in the car – into a crippled crone who spends an hour on a Paris bridge begging for coins.

Next it’s off to a film studio.  Oscar pulls on a form-fitting black motion-capture suit (the kind peppered with ping pong balls) and enters a dark soundstage where he goes through a series of martial arts movements and engages in an erotic dance with a similarly-suited female contortionist.

Then it’s off to Pere Lachaise Cemetery where Oscar (having fashioned himself into a hideous, flower-eating madman) kidnaps an American fashion model (Eva Mendes) from a photo shoot and takes her, Quasimodo style, to a room deep in the city’s sewers.

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“THE BIG PICTURE” My rating: B (Opens Dec. 14 a the Tivoli)

114 minutes | MPAA rating: NR

“The Big Picture” isn’t a crime movie, exactly, although someone is murdered in it.

Eric Lartigau’s film reminds me a lot of Patricia Highsmith’s brand of psychological thriller (the “Ripley” stories), where character study outweighs mayhem.

Our protagonist is Paul (Romain Duris), a Paris attorney with a wife, a couple of cute kids, and a house in the ‘burbs.

Paul once aspired to be a fine arts photographer, but marriage and fatherhood steered him toward the law, a gig lucrative enough that he now can afford his own state-of-the-art photo studio in the basement…not that he ever really does more than hang out down there.

Lately Paul’s been feeling lots of pressure. His law partner (Catherine Deneuve) announces she is dying of an unspecified illness. And his wife Sara (Marina Fois) seems to be slipping away as well.  Their marriage is circling the drain.

The first 40 minutes of “The Big Picture” establishes the parameters of Paul’s unfulfilling existence.

His suspicion that Sara is having an affair leads to a confrontation with a mutual friend, Gregoire (Eric Ruf), a struggling photographer who unlike Paul chose to follow his muse even if there’s no payoff in sight.

Insults are hurled. Blows are exchanged. And suddenly Paul finds himself standing over Gregoire’s corpse.

At this point “The Big Picture” becomes almost an entirely different movie.  After a few moments of panic, Paul gets to work. He puts the body in the trunk of Gregoire’s car and cleans up the blood. He uses the dead man’s email to send out news that Gregoire will be out of the country on assignment.

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“HITCHCOCK” My rating: B (Opening Dec. 7 at the Cinemark Plaza and Glenwood Arts)

98 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

In the new film “Hitchcock” a pretty young thing addresses the famous “Master of Suspense” as “Mr. Hitchcock.”

Responds the great man (Anthony Hopkins): “You may call me Hitch.  Hold the cock.”

Ah, the cheeky, naughty, proper-on-the-outside, twisted-on-the-inside Alfred Hitchcock.

“Hitchcock” isn’t your conventional biopic. Rather than attempting to capture a full life, the new film from Sacha Gervasi (whose only previous directing credit was the delightful rock documentary “Anvil: The Story of Anvil”) maintains a narrow focus. It centers on just one year: 1959.

At the time the British-born auteur was shattering tradition and precedent, taking some very big risks, and giving the world “Psycho,” a film that would revive his flagging finances, rejuvenate his reputation, and (for better or worse) redefine what was acceptable to put on a movie screen (for instance, toilets).

Oh, yeah, with its notorious shower scene “Psycho” also launched a new cinema genre, the slasher film.

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“SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK”  My rating: B+  (Opening wide on Oct. 21)

122 minutes | MPAA rating: R

With “Silver Linings Playbook”  director David O. Russell (“Three Kings,” “I Heart Huckabees,” “The Fighter”) has made a screwball comedy about mental illness that is simultaneously very funny and dead serious about the pain inherent in such a diagnosis.

This movie shouldn’t work. It could have fatally derailed at any one of several junctures.

And yet thanks to a stupendous cast and Russell’s almost supernatural ability to juggle scenes, moods and  characters, the film emerges as a small triumph.

Our troubled hero is Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), back in his parents’ suburban Philadelphia home after several months in a psych ward. Pat is a manic depressive who, even in repose, seems to be engaged in an internal wrestling match with his demons.

A school teacher before he discovered his wife was having an affair (Pat beat her lover nearly to death), he returns to “normal” life filled with energy, ambition and a determination to win back both his job and his spouse.  He is desperately, unnaturally optimistic, looking for a silver lining in even the most disheartening setbacks.

He’ll need all the optimism he can muster. His former co-workers are terrified of him and his wife has taken out a restraining order.  And he’s still a very sick puppy, a guy with no filters on his behavior. (Pat goes berserk whenever he hears a particular Stevie Wonder song he associates with his wife’s infidelity).

Pat’s parents provide his old room, if not conventional  stability. Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro) is a laid-off blue-collar type who has launched a new career as a bookie. He’s obsessed (that’s the only word for it) with the Eagles, and on game days follows an exacting ritual which he believes makes his team invulnerable.  He watches the contests on TV, having been banned from the stadium for brawling.

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“THE SESSIONS” My rating: A (Opening Nov. 9 at the )

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“My penis speaks to me.”

Mark O’Brien, a devout but conflicted Roman Catholic, is confessing to his parish priest.  

Mark  has been paralyzed from the neck down ever since contracting polio as a child. He spends all but three or four hours of every day in an iron lung and can only go to church by being strapped onto a gurney pushed by one of his care-givers.

Mark can feel his body, he just can’t move it. And now, at age 38, he’s determined to finally have sex with a woman.

“I’m getting close to my ‘use by’ date,” he explains, introducing his plan to hire a sex surrogate to take his virginity.

Mark O’Brien (1950-1999) has already been the subjects of an Oscar-winning documentary, 1997’s “Breathing Lessons.”

“The Sessions” takes a fictional approach to a particular aspect of O’Brien’s life, and in tackling an eyebrow-raising situation with humor, compassion and insight writer/director Ben Lewin has given us a film less about disabilities than about the human condition.

(Lewin, a veteran of nearly 40 years in television and documentaries, knows of which he speaks. He gets around on crutches, the result of his own boyhood brush with polio).

Mark is played by John Hawkes, who was so effective a couple of years back as a coiled-spring Ozarks meth head in “Winter’s Bone.” Here he cannot act with his body at all, spending most of the movie flat on his back and unmoving.

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Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aaron Paul

“SMASHED” My rating: C+ (Opening Nov. 9 at the Cinemark Palace and Glenwood at Red Bridge)

85 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Kate Hannah loves her job as an elementary school teacher.  She connects with the kids. She’s energetic, happy, eager.

And drunk.

So drunk that she pukes in front of her first graders. So ashamed that she claims it was morning sickness. Now she has to endure the travesty of a baby shower from her fellow teachers.

“Smashed” is a sort of update of “The Days of Wine and Roses,” starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Kate and Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”) as her husband,  Charlie.

As rendered by writer/director James Ponsoldt (whose first feature was 2006’s “Off the Black” with Nick Nolte as an alcoholic…is there a trend here?), “Smashed” is solid but unspectacular. It really breaks no new ground — but then perhaps every generation needs its own addiction story.

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Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman

“THE PAPERBOY” My rating: C- (Opening Oct. 26 at the Glenwood at Red Bridge)

107 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“The Paperboy” is a big ol’ heaping plate of Southern-fried sleaze. It’s just full of empty calories. If only it tasted better.

Director Lee Daniels’ followup to his celebrated “Precious” is a slog through small-town Florida circa 1969. It’s a mystery…sort of. It’s a lurid Jim Thompson-ish wallow in lust. It’s a commentary on the bad old days when black folks were pretty much just considered “the help.”

Most of all, though, “The Paperboy” is a live skinning of redneck stereotypes, with the clichés laid on so thick you almost feel sorry for the thick-browed Honey Boo Boo-ed recipients of Daniels’ scorn.

Miami newspaper hotshot Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) returns to his tawdry little home town to investigate the conviction of a local swamp rat in the murder of a lawman. Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack, looking very much the worse for wear) now sits on Death Row.

But since his trial the swamp-slogging Hillary has become the obsession of white trash hottie Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), who has collected tons of overlooked evidence that suggests Hillary was framed. She’s determined to get her man out of the hooscow and into her bed.

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Elizabeth Olsen, Josh Radnor

“LIBERAL ARTS” My rating: B (Opening Oct. 19 at the Tivoli)

97 minutes l MPAA rating: PG-13

Elizabeth Olsen figures prominently in “Liberal Arts,” which is the first clue that this might be a pretty good film. (I think Olsen is the cat’s pajamas and that no movie in which she participates is a lost cause.)

Then you realize that this triple-threat effort (writer, director, star) from Josh Radnor has a lot more than just Olsen going for it.

Radnor is a regular on TV’s “How I Met Your Mother,” but his film is blessedly free of sitcom-y moments.

It’s a funny, thoughtful, and tasteful movie — and it had better be, given that it centers on one of the oldest, most queaze-inducing premises out there: the older-man/younger-woman movie.  This is a genre that can easily slide into EWWWWW territory.

But Radnor pulls it off effortlessly.

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