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SHORT TAKES: “Predator: Badlands,” “Year 10”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 16, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Elle Fanning

“PREDATOR: BADLANDS” My rating: B- (Hulu)

107 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Having expanded the “Predator” franchise with “Prey” (set among 17th-century Native Americans) and “Predator: Killer of Killers” (an animated omnibus of yarns about predators visiting various cultures) , director Dan Trachtenberg swings for the outfield wall with “Predator: Badlands.”

Imagine your standard issue buddy movie — think “48 Hours” — as an interspecies dramedy.  

Our Nick Nolte character is Dek, a member of the Yaujta race, a warlike bunch who make “Star Trek’s” Klingons look like Teletubbies. Dek is considered the runt of his predator  clan; to prove his worth he decides to travel to the “death planet” Genna, where even the grass can kill you.  His goal is to be the first to bring back the head of the Kalisk, a fearsome creature that has killed every Yaujta warrior who dared confront it.

The Eddie Murphy character is Thia (Elle Fanning), a humanoid robot who lost her legs in an encounter with the Kalisk.  Thia is chatty, ironic, whimsical — everything the grunting, brusque Dek is not.  But she knows the territory and Dek is smart enough to use Thia as a navigational tool and survivalist encyclopedia. He carries her around like a talkative backpack.

There are plenty of encounters with Genna’s deadly life forms.  Along the way the grumpy Dek and Thia become friends of a sort.  They become a trio when they’re adopted by a vaguely simian creature Thia names Bud.

Trachtenberg and co-writers Patrick Aison and Jim Thomas carve out some new ground here while cross referencing other movies and franchises.  For starters, we’re meant to experience the story from the Predator’s point of view. Usually, of course, the Predator is the bad guy.

But Dek can talk (his voice is provided by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi; his physical form apparently is all computer-generated).  We can understand him thanks to subtitles.

And then there’s Thia’s origin story.  She was sent to Gemma with dozens of other humanoid robots as a project of the  Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the villlainous entity of the “Alien” franchise.

Actually Fanning gets two roles here…as the goofy Thia and as her ruthless no-nonsense “sister,” Tessa.  The rest of the robots are all played by Cameron Brown, which makes for some head-messing moments when Dek squares off against dozens of enemies, all of whom share the same face.

I found “Predator: Badlands” intermittently amusing and enjoyed the way the yarn expands the whole Predator/Alien mythology. But like just about every action movie, the final third is devoted to a massive fight sequence. I found my interest waning with the repetitive mayhem.

Still, geeks of the franchise will be in Yaujta heaven with this one.

Alexander Anderson

“YEAR 10” My rating: B- (Prime)

96 minutes | No MPAA rating

The Brit “Year 10” is a pretty good example of imagination trumping a nearly non-existent budget.

Writer/director Ben Codger’s post-apocalyptic drama takes place in the woods (not much required in the way of sets) and features a cast of unknowns.

What really makes “Year 10” memorable is that not one word is spoken in the entire film.  Whether the muteness exhibited by the charactrers is the result of some environmental disaster or a survival technique is never explained, but the result is a movie that works entirely on the images it delivers.

Alexander Anderson plays Charger (we only know his name from the credits) who lives in a camoflaged hut with an old man (Ellis Jones) and a young woman (Emma Cole) who may be his lover.

As the film starts the girl is suffering from a wound that might kill her.  Charger goes out scrounging for antibiotics, a dangerous quest since the woods are patrolled by members of a cannibal gang.

This is, of course, essentially the same world depicted by Cormac McCarthy in his Pulitzer-winning novel The Road. Well, if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.

I found “Year 10” surprisingly involving. I was especially taken with the film’s heavy, the cannibal leader (Luke Massy), a sort of unstoppable malevolent force.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKE: “The Survivor,” “Honey Don’t”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 9, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Ben Foster

“THE SURVIVOR” My rating: B+(HBO Max)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

How have I not discovered “The Survivor” before now?

This 2021 feature has so much going for it:  A famous director (Barry Levinson), a gut-wrenching real-life story and a lead performance by Ben Foster that made me rethink just about everything I’ve ever felt about this actor.

Hertzko “Harry” Haft was a Polish Jew who survived a series of Nazi death camps because of his boxing skills.  Haft fought more than 60 bloody bare-knuckle matches for the entertainment of S.S. officers who placed bets on the outcome.  Haft was betting, too…with his life.  The loser of each match was summarily executed.

Relocated to the States after the war Haft did the only thing he was good at.  For a couple of years he was a professional boxer; he even fought Rocky Marciano.

The script (by Justine Juel Kilmer, based on a nonfiction book by Haft’s son, Alan) alternates between Haft’s post-war life (these scenes are in color) and the horrors of his camp experiences (brilliantly captured by cinematographer George Steel in black-and-white images that uncannily evoke newsreels from the period).

“The Survivor” isn’t a sports movie; nor is it exclusively a Holocaust chronicle. It’s a character study of a man whose psyche was shredded by what he saw and by guilt over what he was forced to do.

Ben Foster is simply shattering in the role.  He appears to have lost 50 pounds for the concentration camp flashbacks; in the present (the film follows him through the 1960s)  he has the beefy look of a boxing pro.  In the latter scenes he’s absolutely believable as a man in a soft-stomached middle age.  It’s a transformation right up there with DeNiro’s in “Raging Bull.”

This is  a haunting performance capable of moving the viewer to tears. (Comparisons to Rod Steiger’s great performance in “The Pawnbroker” are apt.) 

I’ve not always been a Foster fan.  Following his solid feature debut (as a suburban Jewish teen in love with a black girl) in Levinson’s “Liberty Heights” he started landing roles as eye-rolling crazies (”3:10 to Yuma,” “30 Days of Night”).  But in recent years he’s shown both range and restraint (“Hell or High Water,” “Leave No Trace”).  How his work in “The Survivor” failed to register with the presenters of the various acting awards is a puzzler.

Vicky Krieps, Ben Foster

Other players include Danny DeVito and John Leguizamo as boxing coaches, Peter Sarsgaard as a sports  journalist, and Vicky Krieps as the Holocaust survivor aid worker who marries Haft.

Sonya Cullingford has a brief but unforgettable scene as Haft’s long-lost first love, with whom he  was reunited just weeks before her death from cancer.

The film’s main flaw is what it leaves out. We see in flashback how Haft escaped from a Nazi work party, but not how he survived on  his own until the end of the war.  That’s a deliberate choice.  According to his son’s book, the fugitive Haft killed three civilians he feared would turn him over to the Germans. The filmmakers obviously feared that showing those murders could turn an audience against their protagonist.

The good news is that this choice doesn’t significantly dilute the film’s power.

Margaret Qualley

“HONEY DON’T” My rating: C+(Netflix)

89 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Since splitting (temporarily, apparently) from his filmmaking sibling Joel, Ethan Coen has created two films centering on lesbian characters.  Margaret Qualley stars in both.

In 2004 ’s “Drive-Away Dolls” Qualley’s character goes on a road trip with luggage that includes a briefcase full of dildos and a severed human head.

In “Honey Don’t” she plays Honey O’Donahue, a lesbian private eye in sun-baked Bakersfield who wears high heels and hosiery with seams down the back.  The entire project (like “…Dolls” it was co-written with Tricia Cooke) plays like a Jim Thompson potboiler directed by a lesbian version of Russ Meyers.

It’s rude, it’s crude, it’s gleefully exploitative.

The cast includes Chris Evans (as the sexually voracious leader of a religious cult), Aubrey Plaza (as a gay cop), Charlie Day (as a horny police detective) and Lera Abova (as a mysterious Vespa-riding assassin).

It’s fun…until it wears out its welcome.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES:  “Secret Mall Apartment,”  “The Rip,” “Smashing Machine”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 29, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Michael Townsend in a recreation of the secret mall apartment

“SECRET MALL APARTMENT” My rating: B+(Netflix)

92 minutes | No MPAA rating

It starts as a quirky news story, the sort of thing morning talk show hosts chat about between the really depressing news items.

In 2007 it was reported that the operators of the Providence Place Mall in Providence, R.I., had discovered a secret apartment in an unoccupied corner of the building.  For four years several local artists had been using it as a sort of clubhouse, occasionally spending the night in the unheated, unairconditioned space.  They had surreptitiously filled the area with thrift-shop furniture, a TV and a PlayStation.

From that tantalizing revelation filmmaker Jeremy Workman has fashioned a documentary that slowly expands to embrace not just the story of the secret apartment but an entire world view.

“Secret Mall Apartment” begins with the building of the mall in 1999.  Thie project encroached on the old buildings that provided studios and living space for local artists (Providence, home of the Rhode Island School of Design, evidently is rich with bohemian types). 

From the beginning the project rubbed many the wrong way.  The effort at gentrification not only displaced citizens, but once completed it was obvious that Providence Place was aimed at the well-heeled, not the struggling locals. And it was a death knell for area mom-and-pop retail outlets.

Curious about this leviathan of caste-conscious capitalism in their midst, eight artists from the neighborhood began exploring the imposing edifice.  Their leader was Michael Townsend, a red-haired string bean who first discovered the secret space and, ironically, became the only one of the squatters who faced criminal charges once the apartment was discovered. (In fact, Townsend refused to divulge the identities of his fellows; this film is the first time they have publicly acknowledged their participation.)

The key word here is “artist.” From the outset Townsend and his buds viewed their invasion of the mall as a sort of performance art — art that quietly defied the voracious system that had disrupted their community.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about all this is that the participants routinely recorded their activities with cheap video cameras purchased at the mall’s Radio Shack.  We can see them in action, struggling to move heavy furniture through crawl spaces and up steep ladders, even building a cinderblock wall (with mysterious locked door) to keep out intruders.

Of course their activities were secret, and some of their capers (like smuggling several tons of construction materials into the building while avoiding mall security) defy comprehension.  But it’s all here on scratchy videotape.

There’s more.  Townsend emerges as a sort of community-minded artist-as-angel.  Even while hanging out at the mall he created his own art form, using colored rolls of masking tape to make playful murals on the walls of a children’s hospital. In time the kids would make their own murals…which could be removed without damaging the paint job.

Very cool. In fact, Townsend turned his masking tape art  into a small business. His attitude permeates the film…playful, modest, unstoppably creative. Nevertheless, he’s been banned from the mall for life.

But here’s the cherry on the sundae:  “Secret Mall Apartment” played for a full year in the Providence Place Cinema inside the mall.

What goes around…

Ben Affleck, Matt Damon

THE RIP” My rating: C+(Netflix)
113 minutes | MPAA rating: R


“The Rip” is half a good movie…the first half.


The setup of Joe Carnahan’s thriller finds a unit of Miami cops mourning a fellow officer killed in what looks like a gangland hit.  Now they respond to a tip about strange goings on at a local house.


Members of the team (Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Catalina Sandino Moreno) find the place occupied by a young Hispanic woman (Sasha Calle) who claims to be preparing the house — her late grandmother’s — for sale.


Except that hidden in a  wall the team finds several million dollars in cash.  Clearly the local cartel has been using the place as a sort of safety deposit box.


And then they notice that all the other homes on the street appear to be unoccupied. Creepy.


Protocol requires that the money be counted on the premises…which means the bunch must spend several hours thumbing through stacks of money, all the while awaiting the arrival of well-armed sicarios.  Why doesn’t the team leader (Damon) call for reinforcements?


This is where “The Rip” goes out of control. The screenplay by Carnahan and Michael McGrale postulates that any one of the team may be a traitor.  In fact, there’s a possibility that someone high in the force’s chain of  command may be pulling the strings. No one can be trusted.


The film’s opening moments are an intriguing melding of world-weariness and growing tension.  With the discovery of the cash you can feel the noose tightening. 


But little by little “The Rip” devolves into a b-the-numbers action flick.  The cast is strong, but they’re at the mercy of the material.

Emily Blunt, Dwayne Johnson

“THE SMASHING MACHINE” My rating: B- (HBO Max)
123 minuts | MPAA rating: R


Dwayne Johnson gives what may be a career-high performance in Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine.”


As real life UFC fighter Mark Kerr, the Rock is practically unrecognizable beneath prosthetics and wig.  He seems to effortlessly slip into the persona of a reasonably decent guy who is undone by frustrated ambitions and addiction.


Johnson’s nuanced, pain-wracked perf is only one surprise in “Smashing Machine.” The other is real life UFC star Ryan Bader, astonishingly good as Kerr’s training partner and probable future opponent Mark Coleman.


And then there’s Emily Blunt.  I’m a huge fan, but here she plays Kerr’s on-again, off-again girlfriend Dawn. Talk about a toxic relationship!!  Any film that can make me hate Emily Blunt has much to answer for. Despite the movie’s strong  points, I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth.


| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “F1: The Movie,”  “All of You”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Damson Idris, Brad Pitt

“F1: THE MOVIE” My rating: B- (Apple+)

155 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Joseph Kosinski’s “F1” has just about enough plot to fill a teaspoon.

But it also has one of our most charismatic leading men and a whole shitload of cars roaring around at 200+ m.p.h.

That’s enough for a good time at the movies.  But a nomination for the Best Picture Oscar?  

Anyway, what we’ve got here is Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, an over-the-hill driver who, decades after a career-ending accident, lives out of his van going from race to race like a surf bum or struggling bull rider. He’ll drive whatever is put in front of him…the need for speed cannot be quenched.

As “F1” begins Sonny is recruited by an old pal from back in the day. Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) is a former racer now heading up his own Formula One team. But he’s struggling and needs an edge…one he believes Sonny can provide.

This does not sit well with the team’s other driver, the up-and-coming Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).  He scoffs at the “old man.” They’re oil and water…Joshua is loud and brash while Sonny is self-contained, wryly ironic and largely uncommunicative.

The differences extend even to their training regimen…Joshua takes full advantage of the high-tech toys designed to improve strength and accuracy, while Sonny juggles tennis balls and jogs.

Pitt’s perfect for the role, He doesn’t have to do much emoting; Sonny’s quiet personality radiates intensity.

You can see where this is going.  Little by little the burned-out Sonny will get back in the game; eventually his bend-the-rules style and track smarts impress even the cocky Joshua. Does anyone doubt that by movie’s end they’ll be the perfect team?

A bit of romance is provided by Kerry Condon as Kate, who we’re told is the only woman car designer and engineer in the F1 universe.  Over several years I’ve become a huge Condon fan — she’s a fantastic actress whose unassuming beauty is way more lady-next-door than Hollywood glamourpuss.

But all this human stuff is merely window dressing on the main event. I’m talking about the cars, captured by cinematographer Claudio Miranda with fetishistic appreciation. The film often plants us behind the wheel (you don’t so much get into a Formula One car as put it on) and the race scenes are genuinely pulse-pumping.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the behind-the-scenes world of F1 racing depicted here, but it appears that putting together a competitive team is a technological challenge on the level of a NASA-sponsored trip to Mars.

Given its gruel-thin content, “F1’s” 2 and 1/2-hour running time isn’t warranted.  Still, I don’t regret the time spent on watching it.

Imogen Poots, Brett Goldstein

“ALL OF YOU” My rating: B (Apple+)

98 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The Brit romance “All of You” is far from perfect, but it’s got some of the best dialogue heard in ages while depicting a love story that simmers at low heat.

The initial setup is vaguely science fiction-ish.  Simon (“Ted Lasso’s” Brett Goldstein) and Laura (Imogen Poots) have been besties since college…they’re each other’s closest confidant, a dynamic made possible in part because they are not and never have been lovers.

In the opening passages Laura decides to take advantage of a new high-tech service guaranteed to find your perfect soulmate wherever he or she may be in the world.  Laura’s results hit fairly close to home…she’s hooked up with Lukas (Steven Cree) who, as advertised, seems perfect for her.

Marriage and motherhood follow.  But it’s obvious to those of us watching that Simon, who believes in finding romance the old-fashioned way, suffers from a world-class case of unrequited love.

The question is whether Laura and Simon will ever take the plunge.

The screenplay by Goldstein and director William Bridges centers mostly on encounters between Laura and Simon over the years.  Their dialogue is achingly honest and often bleakly hilarious…they’re so much on one another’s wavelengths that they’ll express thoughts that would drive away many a potential lover.

C’mon…if two people were ever made for each other it’s Simon and Laura.

Those with short attention spans will undoubtedly drift off during the couple’s prolonged bouts of give-and-take.  But Goldstein and Poots are so convincing, so perfectly tuned in to the dialogue and each other, that we’re sucked in.  

Maybe heartbreak is inevitable…but you won’t know until you try.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKE: “Dead Man’s Wire,” “Marty Supreme”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 10, 2026| 2 Comments »

Dacre Montgomery, Bill Skarsgard

“DEAD MAN’S WIRE” My rating: B (In theaters)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The ghost of “Dog Day Afternoon” haunts Gus van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” a criminal yarn about one man’s fight against basically everybody.

Like Sidney Lumet’s 1975 classic, “Dead Man…” is based on a real event, yet another case of life one-upping art.

One morning in 1977, Indianapolis resident Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgard) walked into the headquarters off the Meridian Mortgage Company.  He was a familiar face; the friendly girl at the front desk paid no attention to the long, narrow box Tony carried.

Maybe she figured it contained rolled up blueprints.  After all, Tony was a long-time customer who had borrowed money to design and build a shopping center on property he owned on the edge of town.

Nope.  Inside was a shotgun fitted with a wire loop at the muzzle.  Once in the executive offices Tony confronted Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery), son of the company’s owner.  He slipped the wire noose around Richard’s neck and informed him that any movement would automatically discharge a full load of buckshot into his head.

Then Tony started working the phones, determined to inform the world of the wrongs he had suffered at the hands of the Hall family — especially Richard’s father M.L. (Al Pacino), who was off on a vacation.

The standoff unfolded over several days. Tony talked a local radio DJ (Colman Domingo) into serving as his spokesman and p.r. agent.  Meanwhile the cops — especially hardboiled detective Michael Grable (Cary Elwes) — tried to satisfy Tony’s impossible demands while avoiding mayhem that would be televised nationally.

Austin Kolodney’s screenplay walks a fine line between real tension and oddball humor.  Tony may be crazy, but he talks a good talk, and there flashes of absurdism throughout.  

The key to Skarsgard’s performance is his ability to make us identify with Tony (haven’t all of us felt ripped off at some time by a big impersonal institution?) even as we squirm at the dangerous situation he’s created. 

He’s nicely matched by Montgomery, whom you may recognize from “Stranger Things.” Initially Dick is just a quaking blob of fear, but gradually the character’s survival instinct kicks in and he presents himself as a sort of collaborator.

And Pacino is delightfully hateful as a financial bigwig who would rather sacrifice his own son than cough up the restitution Tony is demanding.

Throughout Van Sant exhibits a master’s hand in modulating the film’s pacing and emotional tones.  

Timothee Chalamet

“MARTY SUPREME” My rating: C+ (In theaters)

149 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Is it possible to love a performance while borderline hating the movie that surrounds it?

In the case of Timothee Chalamet and “Marty Supreme” the answer is perplexed yes.

“Marty Supreme” is director Josh Safdie’s followup to “Uncut Gems,” a film I compared to being screamed at for two hours by an irate New York cab driver. Once again I left more exhausted than exhilarated.

This may be a minority opinion.  My critical brethren seem to adore the very things that turned me off.  Well, you know…horse races.

The screenplay by Sadie and Ronald Bronstein is based (very loosely) on the career of Marty Mauser, a working class New Yorker who in the early 1950s was a rising star in the world of table tennis.

As played by Chalamet, Marty is a juggernaut of ambition and selfishness.  He’s a pretty good Ping Pong player, but his real skill seems to be that of con man and canny manipulator. (Also, he has acne, spectacles and a skinny mustache that makes him look uncomfortably like a very young Robert Crumb.)

As the film begins Marty is working in a his uncle’s shoe store, sleeping with  old (and married) childhood friend  Rachel (Odessa A’zion) and scheming to fly to London for a big ping pong competition.  He’ll lie, cheat, steal…whatever it takes.

Once across the pond he impresses the sport’s fans with his paddle skills; his arrogant personality, on the other hand, keeps him in hot water.  Refusing to bed down at the cheap hotel he’s provided, he cons his way into a suite at the ritziest joint in town.

There he spots one-time movie goddess Kay Stone (Gwyneth  Paltrow) and kicks his seduction machine into high gear.  It’s typical of Marty that while he’s schtupping Kay he’s drumming up financial backing from her vaguely scary deep-pockets husband (“Shark Tank’s” Kevin O’Leary in a way more than adequate acting debut).

 Aside from Marty’s singleminded ambition there’s not much plot here…or rather too many plots.  “Marty Supreme” is always shooting off on some crazed tangent.  

There’s a subplot in which Rachel claims to be preggers by Marty (he’s not happy) and claims she’s being beaten by her husband (Emory Cohen).  In another a lost dog becomes a pawn in a very bloody custody battle.  Marty and a colleague become Ping Pong sharks, descending on suburban towns to challenge the local talent while betting heavily on themselves. They narrowly avoid getting lynched.

There’s murder and mayhem.  (Penn Jillette is virtually unrecognizable as a shot-gun toting, in-bred rural creep.) Close calls.  

And through it all Marty remains unrepentantly self centered.  Chalamet gives a breathless performance — which is a problem because the film never slows down enough to let us catch our breath.  It’s just one instance of bad behavior piled on another.

And this goes on for 2 1/2 hours! Some long films fly by.  This one just kept throwing the same heavy beats over and over again. 

| Robert W. Butler

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“BUGONIA”: Places we’ve never been before

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Emma Stone

“BUGONIA” *My rating: B (Prime, Peacock)

118 minutes | MPAA: R

A new film by Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Lobster,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” “The Favourite,” “Poor Things”) comes with a promise.

It’ll be fascinating.  Terrifically well acted. And very weird.

“Bugonia” more than lives up to that standard, being a sort of extended “Twilight Zone” episode that starts off being about conspiracy obsessions, turns to a battle of wills, and finally goes completely off the cliff into LaLa Land.

Here’s the setup:  Corporate wonder woman Michelle (Lanthimos regular Emma Stone) is kidnapped by Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his childlike cousin Don (AidanDelbis) and held prisoner in the basement of  the semi-rural home where they raise bees.

When Michelle awakens from the knockout drug administered by her captors she finds herself chained.  Weirder still, she’s now hairless and covered with a pasty-white lotion.

Teddy, clearly the brains of the outfit (which may not be saying much), begins interrogating Michelle.  Turns out he’s convinced she’s the vanguard of an alien invasion of Earth.  Teddy’s conspiracy theory is an incredible collection of lunatic ideas, including the notion that the aliens use  hair as a transmission device to contact their fellows.  Thus Michelle’s shaved skull. 

Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis, Jesse Plemons

Michelle, who is well versed in the art of employee manipulation, tries to talk Teddy out of this madness.  When that doesn’t work she plays on the emotions of Don, who is increasingly uncomfortable with their captive’s distress (turns out actor Aidan Delbis is himself on the spectrum, which only makes his performance that much more believable).

With Stone and Plemons we may have the year’s best acting duel, a battle of will and wits in which it’s hard to take a side, given that Michelle is a veritable font of corporate/capitalist contempt and Teddy is well on his way to bonkersdom.

And underlying it all is an escape yarn.  How will Michelle get out of this predicament?

Thematically “Bugonia” (the title refers to an ancient myth about bees being able to spontaneously generate from the carcass of a bull) is a marvelous balancing act.  It’s suspenseful and anxiety-riddled, yet shot through with satiric moments. A real emotional roller coaster.

And the ending…holly crap.  No point in ruining the surprise, but “Bugonia” takes us places we’ve never been before.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Roofman,” “Eden”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »

“ROOFMAN” My rating: B-(Prime, Paramount)

126 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Given its near-fantastical premise and a goofy poster I was expecting “Roofman” to be a lighthearted romp.

Uh, nope.

The latest from director Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine,” “The Place Between the Pines”) is a true-crime yarn whose overarching emotion is one of loss. 

Jeffrey Manchester (portrayed by Channing Tatum) was a former soldier who used his military training to launch an unusual criminal career.  His modus operandi was to break through the roof of a fast food restaurant under cover of darkness, hide in the restroom and then emerge after the employees had arrived.  Although he carried a gun Manchester was unfailingly polite, even apologetic for any trauma he was putting his victims through.

The judge wasn’t impressed by his good manners.  The “Roofman” was sentenced to nearly 40 years in prison. Perhaps even worse, Manchester’s wife divorced him and refused to let his two beloved little girls even visit.

 It took him a few years to hatch an escape plan; eventually Manchester broke out and took up residence in the unoccupied areas of a big box toy store in North Carolina.

Surviving on  a diet of candy swiped at night when nobody was around, Manchester soon had the whole place wired with cameras and monitors so the he could watch everything that was happening from his hidey hole between the walls.  

He eavesdropped on the employees, quickly concluding that the store manager (Peter Dinklage) was a dick. And Roofman was so impressed with the sideline philanthropic  work of just-divorced employee Leigh Wainscott (a superb Kirsten Dunst) that he donated a whole mess of toys (stolen, obviously) to her favored charity.

Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst

A romance springs up between Manchester — who passes himself off as some kind of federal cop doing top secret work — and Leigh.  And why not…this guy is charming, funny, considerate, and manages to bewitch not only Leigh’s impressionable young daughter but also her surly teenager. He even goes to church with them like the good family man he’s desperate to be.

Of course it cannot last. Slowly the noose of justice is tightening.

The screenplay by Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn is less caper flick than character study.  You can’t help liking Jeffrey Manchester, but his unthinking acceptance of criminality and  the emotional wreckage he’s likely to leave behind are more than a little worrisome.  Tatum nicely limns both sides of his personality.

The real revelation here is Dunst, who gives a heartbreaking perf as a woman who thinks that at long last the right man has come along.  An Oscar nomination is not out of the question.

“Roofman” features a whole bunch of heavy hitters in its supporting cast — LaKeith Stanfield, Emory Cohen, Juno Temple, Uzo Aruba and Ben Mendelsohn — but Tatum and Dunst are front and center giving the yarn its emotional oomph.

Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby

“EDEN” My rating: C (Netflix)

129 minutes | MPAA: R

There’s undoubtedly a good movie to be made from the mad story of Friedrich Ritter, but “Eden” isn’t it.

The latest from Ron Howard examines one of the weirder utopian experiments of the last century.

In 1929 German physician Friedrich Ritter traveled with his mistress Dore Strauch to the uninhabited island of Floreana in the Galapagos. His idea was to reinvent civilization on a small scale, drawing as inspiration Nietzsche’s notion of the Superman.

For the first couple of years Ritter and Strauch (portrayed in the film by Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby) got by mostly on supplies periodically dropped off by cargo vessels; Ritter devoted his days to typing out a manifesto summing up his ideas. Today we’d call him a crackpot.

As long as it was just the two of them their little settlement seemed copacetic enough.  And then they got visitors. Murder and mayhem ensued,

Howard and Noah Pink’s screenplay begins with the unannounced arrival of Heinz Wittmer and his wife Margret (Daniel Bruhl, Sydney Sweeney).  Inspired by sensational news reports of Ritter’s experiment, Wittmer quit his civil service job, sold everything, and shipped off with his young bride to Galapagos.

Daniel Bruhl, Sydney Sweeney

They get a chilly welcome from the arrogant Ritter, who resents the intrusion and leaves them on their own to negotiate the rigors of island life (marauding boars, unproductive soil, very little water). Against the odds, the Wittmers hang in there.  If they’re not thriving, at least they figured out how to survive.

Enter Baroness Eloise von Wagner (Ana de Armas), a party girl who arrives with three sex-slave boytoys and a mad idea to build a luxury resort in Ritter’s little realm.  She  is arrogant and entitled, uses sex as a coercive force and isn’t above stealing food and supplies from her neighbors.

The minute the Baroness arrives the movie goes off the rails. One can’t entirely blame De Armas, who has shown her chops in films as varied as “Blonde” and “Knives Out.” As written, the character is almost comically stupid and throughly maddening…I’m not sure any actress could pull it off.  

The real surprise here is Sweeney, who leaves her sex-kitten image far behind to play a rather plain and unsophisticated hausfrau who must deal with everything from giving birth alone to fighting off a pack of dogs. Turns out she’s got game (both the character and the actress).

“Eden” looks good (the cinematographer is Mathias Herndl) and there are some moments of involving physical action, but far from making a big statement the film seems satisfied with silliness.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Song Sung Blue,” “Blue Moon”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Kate Hudson, Hugh Jackman

“SONG SUNG BLUE” My rating: B (In theaters)

133 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

The phrase “audience pleaser” might very well have been coined to describe “Song Sung Blue,” a ridiculously entertaining comedy-drama-musical from the chameleonic Craig Brewer.

First off…this is not a Neil Diamond biopic, despite the trailers featuring a shaggy and sequined Hugh Jackman crooning hits from the Diamond catalog.

Jackman is playing a real-life character,  Mike Sardina, a Milwaukee native who in the ‘90s became something of a local celeb as a Neil Diamond interpreter (not an imitator…there’s a difference). 

With his wife Claire (played by Kate Hudson, who has snagged a Golden Globe nomination) Mike created an act called Lightning and Thunder. Their regional fame was such that one time they actually opened for Pearl Jam.

When we first meet Mike and Claire they’re part of a celebrity sound-alike show.  Claire does a Patsy Cline act, while Mike has been hired to sing Don Ho hits.  Except that once on stage he starts singing Neil Diamond, with whom he has been obsessed for years.

Brewer’s amusing screenplay follows the couple’s courtship (they’re both blue collar, divorced with teenage daughters) and the development of the act. (Playing members of their entourage are Michael Imperioli, Fisher Stevens and Jim Belushi.)

It’s pleasantly romantic and affectionately amusing…but things really come to life in the musical numbers.  Mike’s Neil Diamond addiction is so weighty that along with “Crackling Rosie” and “Sweet Caroline” he tosses in semi-obscure Diamond songs that many  of us have never heard.

Expect “Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits” to climb the charts in the film’s wake.

In its latter passages “Song Sung Blue” takes a somber turn, first with a disfiguring auto accident and finally with something even more sobering. But somehow Neil Diamond’s music helps navigate the bumps in Mike and Claire’s lives.

Laughter, song and tears.  It’s a satisfying package.

Margaret Qualley, Ethan Hawke

“BLUE MOON” My rating: B+ (Various PPV services)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Ethan Hawke has always been watchable, but in recent years his work (“First Reformed,” “Juliet, Naked” and the streaming series “The Good Lord Bird” and “The Lowdown”) has taken on near-legendary weight.

“Blue Moon” cements his rep as one of our best actors.

Here Hawke plays Lorenz Hart, the famed lyricist who with writing partner Richard Rodgers created his own chapter in the Great American Songbook (“Where or When,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “(I’ll Take) Manhattan” and of course “Blue Moon”).

Written by Robert Kaplow (and based in part on Hart’s correspondence) and directed by Richard Linklater (his second excellent film of the season after “Nouvelle Vague”), the film opens in 1943 with the debut of “Oklahoma!” on Broadway. 

 The show obviously is going to be  huge success, which utterly demoralizes one member of the audience. Lorenz Hart (Hawke) realizes his old collaborator Rodgers (Andrew Scott) is now joined at hip to a different lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein. And he’s sick about it.

“Blue Moon” unfolds mostly in the bar of Sardi’s restaurant, where Hart has fled to drown his sorrows while members of the “Oklahoma!” crew gather to read the reviews.  The film’s first 30 minutes are a virtual monologue as Hart bitches to the bartender (Bobby Cannavale) and cajoles his way into a drink or two (he’s supposed to be on the wagon — in fact, Hart’s boozing and unreliability contributed to Rodgers leaving for more stable pastures).

So Hart grumbles about how “Oklahoma!” caters to the audience’s sappiest instincts…he’s even pissed at the exclamation point in the title. He’s catty, whiney and sad…all while putting on a show of aloof indifference and intellectual superiority.

His harangue also gives us a chance to marvel at Hawke’s transformation. His Hart sports a desperate combover that isn’t fooling anyone.  And through some cinematic trickery the five-foot-ten Hawke has been reduced to Hart’s sawed-off five feet. Even women tower over him.

Hart spends a good part of the evening describing the college coed with whom he’s in love…which sounds like wishful thinking since he’s so obviously gay.  This dream girl (Margaret Qualley) only wants Hart as a friend and mentor. Yet more rejection.

A good deal of the pleasure of “Blue Moon” comes from its attention to detail. The cast of characters includes New Yorker writer E.B. White, the famed photographer Weegee, an adolescent Steven Sondheim, and college boy George Roy Hill (who would go on to direct films like “The World of Henry Orient,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Sting” and “The World According to Garp”).

The supporting perfs are all fine, but this is strictly Hawke’s show.  He fills every frame with anger and anxiety and yearning.  It would be easy enough to dislike his “Larry” Hart, but just when you think you’ve had enough he says something so witty, so pithy, so heart-breaking that you crumble.

He gets my vote for the year’s best performance.

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE SECRET AGENT”: Fear and defiance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Wagner Moura

“THE SECRET AGENT” My rating: B+ (At the AMC Town Center)

161 minutes | MPAA rating: R

A shroud of dread lies draped over “The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonca Filho’s epic yet intimate dive into the reactionary world of Brazil in the 1970s.

We’re put ill at ease in the very first scene.  Armando (Wagner Moura) stops his yellow VW Beetle at a rural gas station to fill up.  Lying in the drive is a human body.  The station operator says the dead guy tried to steal some motor oil and was shot by the night attendant.  He’s been waiting for two days for the cops to pick up the body.

Two officers show up, but are indifferent to the festering corpse.  Instead they start hassling Armando, demanding identification and going over his car in search of contraband or some violation.  When the fuzz find nothing wrong they hit up Armando for a “contribution” to a police charity.

It’s a long scene and an unnerving one.  We’re pretty sure that Armando is on the run and avoiding the law, but just what he’s done is a mystery.

The title “The Secret Agent” is meant ironically.  For while Armando is a fugitive and an opponent of Brazil’s right-wing government, he’s no spy. He hasn’t been trained to kill. He’s just a guy who has run afoul of the powers that be and is hoping to find refuge in his hometown of Recife.

Tania Maria

He’s taken in by the elderly, chain-smoking Dona Sebastiana (Tania Maria) who manages an apartment complex where other fugitives like Armando hunker down while awaiting a chance to escape the country.

The shadowy organization that had set up this little conclave for political dissidents also has pulled strings to get Marcello a job in the records department at police headquarters where, uncomfortably enough, he finds himself befriended by the utterly corrupt head cop.

He also finds a few moments with his young son, who in Armando’s absence is being raised by Don Alexandre (Carlos Francisco), father of Armando’s late wife.  Alexandre is the projectionist at a big movie house that currently is showing “Jaws” (the year is 1977).  In fact, sharks keep popping up in “The Secret Agent,” with the cops investigating the discovery of a human leg inside a dead shark that has washed up on shore.

Among the other characters are a pair of hit men (Roney Villa, Gabriel Leone) who have been contracted by an aspiring right-wing plutocrat to track down and kill Armando. 

At certain points “The Secret Agent” dips into surrealism. There’s a sequence in which the severed leg comes to life and begins hopping around, kicking lovers trysting in a park. And one of the residents of Dona Sebastiana’s little commune is a cat with two heads.

In the present we meet a college researcher (Laura Lufesi) whose assignment is to sleuth out the fates of various “disappeared” individuals from nearly 50 years ago.  One of her main sources is an old audio tape of an interview Armando made with a sympathetic journalist; now she sets off to find Armando’s grown son (also played by Wagner Moura).

There’s enough going on in “The Secret Agent” to warrant multiples viewings, but even a cursory glimpse will cement Moura’s place as one of the great actors of his generation. It’s a terrifically human performance, one of fear, resolution, love and  defiance.

 | Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Sorry, Baby,” “Nobody 2,” “Ballad of a Small Player”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Naomi Ackie, Eva Victor

“SORRY, BABY”  My rating: A- (HBO Max)

103 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Every once in a while you encounter a film so achingly on target that you instinctively realize that it had to be torn from someone’s personal experience.

So it is with “Sorry, Baby,” Eva Victor’s hauntingly beautiful film about the aftermath of a sexual assault.

The words “sexual assault” will be enough to scare off many viewers.  But while Victor’s semi-autobiographical film (she wrote, directed and stars in it) addresses trauma, it’s more about the healing aftermath.

It starts unremarkably enough with our protagonist, Agnes (Victor), being visited by her old college roommate, Lydia (Naomi Ackie).  They’re several years out of school, but while Lydia has moved to the big city and settled down (she’s gay,  not that it’s a big deal) Agnes has hung around their New England college town.  In fact, she’s now a bigwig in the English Department.

These opening scenes radiate the easy familiarity of old friends reconnecting. But soon the talk drifts back to their senior year and an unpleasant incident. In a flashback we view Agnes’ interaction with Decker (Louis Cancelmi), one of her professors.  He seems like a standup guy…until he isn’t.

Victor wisely refrains from showing the assault.  Instead we get a long shot of the teacher’s home, where the two are meeting to discuss her thesis. Agnes goes inside, and the unmoving camera records the home’s facade as the sun dims, night falls, and lights go on inside. Apparently several hours have passed before Agnes stumbles out, walks to her car and drives away in a fog of humiliation and disbelief.

In a balancing act for the ages, Victor seasons this traumatic incident with satiric flashes.  When she meets with school officials to discuss the incident, she’s told that it’s not their problem.  Decker turned in his resignation just before the assault.  This news is delivered by a couple of women administrators whose clumsy efforts at sympathy are undermined by their panicked sense of institutional preservation.

“Sorry, Baby” rises and falls with Victor’s performance.  Her Agnes is tall, gawky and unremarkable (though, weirdly enough, by film’s end I saw her as beautiful).  She’s intellectually solid but emotionally tentative.  She often masks her feelings with oddball comments and an ironic aura.

Not that she doesn’t get some solid help from the other players.  Ackie is the best friend everyone wishes they had.  Lucas Hedges shines as the vaguely nerdy neighbor with whom the post-assault Agnes has a sweetly goofy love affair.  And veteran actor John Carroll Lynch nearly steals the film as a  sandwich shop operator who takes a grieving Agnes (whom he has never met before) under his caring wing.

The world can be cruel.  But simple decency  goes a long way.

Bob Odenkirk

“NOBODY 2” My rating: C+(Peacock)

89 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Nobody” (2021) was an unexpected sleeper, a hyperviolent, darkly funny yarn about a nondescript family man (Bob Odenkirk) whose secret job is that of assassin.

Now we’ve got a second installment and it’s pretty much the same thing all over again…minus the sense of discovery that made the first film so enjoyable.

Imagine “National Lampoon’s Vacation” mated with “Pulp Fiction.”  Odenkirk’s Hutch Mansell takes the family (Connie Nielsen is the Missus) to the cheesy amusement park he enjoyed as a boy.  

Except he finds the place now is a front for a drug operation run by a sociopathic grand dame (Sharon Stone) and administered by a corrupt local sheriff (John Ortiz).

Much mayhem ensues.  

Except this time the brew of comedy and over-the-top violence falls to the law of diminishing returns.  (Although I did enjoy the addition of Christopher Lloyd as Hutch’s father, himself a retired black ops type.)

Colin Farrell

“BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER” My rating: B (Netflix)

101 minutes | MPAA rating 

“The Banshees of Inisherin.” “Sugar.” “The Penguin.”

Yeah, Colin Farrell has been on a roll. And it continues  (sort of) with “Ballad of a Small Player,” which works a bit too hard to breathe new life into the gambler-at-the-end-of-his-luck yarn.

Farrell is Lord Doyle, a polished gent who floats through the casinos of neon-lit Macau as if he owns the joints. He sophisticated, generous, impeccably dressed.

It’s all a sham.  In truth he’s a common hustler who’s developed an impressive fictional character. Lord Doyle (he’s not a lord and Doyle is not his actual name) is so good at role playing that he has credit at all the tables.

That is, until his losses get so big that they can no longer be ignored. 

Scripted by Rowan Joffe and Lawrence Osborne and directed by Edward Berger (“All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Conclave”), “Ballad…” attempts to make up for a lack of originality (really, it’s just another movie about a desperate gambling addict searching for a big score) with a heightened visual sense and an almost operatic sense of melodrama.

But it’s worth sticking with to watch Farrell navigate Lord Doyle’s existential dilemma. Toss in Tilda Swinton as a comically stuffy investigator hot on his trail and Fala Chen as the casino hostess who provides  a love interest, and you’ve got a good-looking if not terribly deep outing.

| Robert W. Butler

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