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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Furious,” “Dance Life”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Quincy Tyler Bernadine, Emmy Rossum

“FURIOUS” (Hulu)

Female rage is front and center in the aptly named “Furious,” a female revenge tale that is both cathartic and deeply disturbing.

This eight-part Hulu offering owes a lot to 1987’s “Black Widow,” the Debra Winger/Theresa Russell thriller about a female serial killer who marries wealthy men and then sneakily murders them for their fortunes.

This time around the serial killer is the streetwise Catherine (Lola Petticrew), who as a teen was sex trafficked by rich and powerful men (think Epstein) and now employs an arsenal of characters and disguises to seduce and murder the guys who done her wrong.

On  her tail is Alice Black (Emmy Rossum), a one-time NYPD detective now starting her career with the FBI. Alice serves on a  joint task force with Manhattan cop Danny (Scoot McNairy) and FBI agent Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernadine), who has spent her career down in the basement investigating sex crimes.

The two women are damaged goods.  Alice was frequently physically abused by her former policeman boyfriend (Jake Lacy), while Nora is a raging alcoholic, thanks in part to a job that has her watching and cataloging kiddie porn day after day.

Both women carry a tankful of contempt for the men they work with…well. all men, actually.  Danny is the sole exception, being a soulful guy who has long adored Alice from afar.

The plot of “Furious” centers on the authorities’ efforts to identify and capture the killer. But what really gives the show depth are the deep, soul-shredding performances of the three female leads.

Catherine has been driven borderline crazy by what she endured as a young woman. But neither Alice or Nora is your usual cop-show heroine.  Both are deeply troubled and do things that repel us even as we recognize how they got to this state.

Bernadine’s Nora is particularly effective, displaying a biting sense of humor and a “screw you” attitude toward her patronizing bosses. Despite the overall grimness of the show you’ll find yourself laughing at her savage put-downs.

Lola Petticrew

Even the merciless Catherine is fully rounded.  She survives as a caregiver for a wheelchair-bound young man (comic Steve Way, whose muscular dystrophy forces him to emote through an oxygen mask). On some level theirs is a love story.

Even the smaller roles are exquisitely cast and performed: Campbell Scott and Rob Delaney as two of Catherine’s targets; PeterMcRobbie as a dying industrialist addicted to watching old sex videos of himself and his victims, and Hope Davis as his daughter and partner in crime.

The show’s six writers and four directors display a deft touch in juggling moods, and as a study in the lingering fallout of abuse “Furious” s in a class of its own.

“DANCE LIFE” (Prime Video)

Back in the bad old days dancers ran the risk of being called sissies. If you ever thought that depiction accurate, the Aussie documentary series “Dance Life” will pretty much twist your head around.

Luke Cornish’s five-part series follows first-year dance students at Australia’s Brent Academy, an arts school not unlike that depicted in the “Fame” movie and TV series.

What sticks with you from the show — even more than the spectacularly performed and filmed dance segments — is the students’ devotion to their art through pain, injury and emotional turmoil.

The primary teacher is choreographer and dancer Cassie Bartho, a familiar presence on Down Under dance stages, who combines tough love and a surprising vulnerability in guiding her students through a killer curriculum.

The kids’ stories are varied and frequently moving. One girl dances through a congenital spinal injury. Broken toes and bloody feet are everyday occurrences.

Every viewer will develop his or her own favorites. I found myself being particularly drawn to Emily Smith, whose physique is just about the opposite of your typical reed-thin ballerina. While everyone else is in shorts and halter tops, Emily hides her figure in bulky sweatshirts…clearly she has a bad case of body image. What’s surprising then, are her eruptions of energy in hiphop and breaking routines — she’s like a tsunami of determined movement.

And then there’s Archer Rose, a trans dancer whose willowy figure and long blonde hair make him an icon of sexual ambiguity.

The series follows the kids through training, rehearsals and big public performances. By the time it’s all over you don’t just want to watch them…you want to be them.

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE DOG STARS”: Shoot first

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 30, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin

“THE DOG STARS” My rating: C+ (In theaters)

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

More is less.

That’s the inescapable lesson of Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars,” an overcooked adaptation of Peter Heller’s end-of-the-world novel.

On the printed page “Dog Stars” is apocalypse on an intimate scale, fueled not by big action moments but by a creeping sense of loss.  But Mark L. Smith’s screenplay pumps things up in an effort to please the lowest common denominator and the results have more in common with your average zombie flick than, say, Cormac McCarthy’s The  Road.

Ten years after a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Hig (Jacob Elori) and Bangley (Josh Brolin) eke out a living on an abandoned airstrip in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Hig is a pilot who has managed to keep one Cessna running; he periodically flies into what’s left of Denver to collect food and other necessities. He seems to be a decent guy. Hig loves his dog and visits a Mennonite community in a nearby valley to deliver food and medicine.

Bangley, on the other hand, is a long-time survivalist (no doubt he’s ex-military) who thrives on isolation. Early on he uses his long-range rifle to kill a couple of teens who have wandered into his domain.   His approach is to shoot first and question the corpses later.

The plot centers on Hig’s determination to reach Grand Junction after hearing a broadcast from that town’s airport.  Forced down by engine trouble, he stumbles upon a father and daughter  (Guy Pearce, Margaret Qualley) who have been living peacefully deep in the mountains.  The old man is suspicious of this interloper but the woman sees in Hig a last chance for a more-or-less normal existence.

The film’s first half is actually pretty good.  Then things go downhill fast.

Screenwriter Smith suddenly changes gears.  All that melancholy moodiness is tossed out on its ear in favor of two huge action sequences.  In one Hig and his newfound friends must outrace a mounted band called the Scavengers to his newly-repaired airplane.  Meanwhile Bangley undergoes  a siege by a small army of tattooed berserkers.

Jacob Elori, Margaret Qualley

Things get even more ridiculous when Hig and his new comrades set down in Grand Junction to find the place a fiefdom presided over by the bonkers Darlene (Allison Janney in scenery-chewing overdrive), who wears a spotless airline hostess outfit from the 1970s  (love the pillbox hat) and has developed an unconventional diet for her doped-up minions. (Use your imagination.)

At one point we’re supposed to believe that three hand grenades have the destructive power of a small thermonuclear device.

“The Dog Stars” at least looks good, thanks to Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography  —  though Italy’s Dolomite Mountains don’t really look much like the American Rockies.

Acting honors go to Brolin for his tough-minded, utterly unsentimental Bangley, whose brusque approach to every action provides the film’s only brief flashes of humor. 

| Robert W. Butler

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“TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA”: Slashing for laughs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 18, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson

“TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA” My rating: B (In theaters on Aug. 21)

112 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There’s so much to unpack in Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” that you practically need a flow chart to keep on top of all its ideas.

As the name implies, it’s a parody of those teen slasher films in which horny adolescents are carved up by a mysterious masked individual.

But it’s also a tale of sexual liberation.  And a visual tour de force.  And a sly look at the process of artistic creation.

And, believe it or not, a showcase for two of the year’s best performances.

That said, it ain’t for everyone. 

Schoenbrun’s previous film, 2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” centered on outsider teens obsessed with a cheesy ’80’s TV horror/fantasy.  It was a somber affair, sad even, but it got under my skin even if I wasn’t quite sure of just what was going on.

“Teenage Sex…,” on the other hand, is a goofy lark, albeit one that draws heavily on Schoenbrun’s own childhood and career.  

Just so you know where we’re coming from here: Schoenbrun is transgender (their early films were made under the name Dan Schoenbrun) and while in the fifth grade they devoted a month to watching every “Nightmare on Elm Street” film.  All that is in evidence in this latest effort.

The setup:  Lesbian filmmaker Kris (Hannah Einbinder) has come to the Pacific Northwest to visit the summer camp that was the setting for her favorite series of horror flicks.  She’s planning a reboot of the “Camp Miasma” franchise, and her goal is to track down the female star of the original film.

That would be Billy (Gillian Anderson), who dropped off the map after her screen debut and for 30 years has been living as a recluse in a cabin at the long-abandoned summer camp.

Einbinder and Anderson dominate what is essentially a two-character film.  As she showed in her Emmy-winning work in “Hacks,” Einbinder is a comic engine. Here she lacks the killer one-liners that fueled “Hacks,” but makes up for it in dorky earnestness and her fan-boy mania. Kris is a post-modern intellectual, but when it comes to her unfulfilled sexual and emotional needs she’s comically childlike.

Anderson’s Billy, on the other hand, comes off a bit like a turbaned Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard,” albeit with a molasses-tinged southern accent. Sexy but weird.

Schoenbrun’s screenplay has Kris staying at the snowbound camp so as to coax Billy into signing up for her new movie.  Along the way they watch the original “Camp Miasma,” which introduced Little Death, a killer in a white hazmat suit and a head-covering mask that looks like an air duct vent.

So basically we’ve got two movies here.  The one about Kris and Billy, and then the one they’re watching on an old 16mm film projector. “Teenage Sex…” is forever shifting between the two.

Little Death

All this comes to a head when Little Death rises from the lake bottom where he/she/it has been hibernating and gets to work slashing.  Simultaneously the uptight Kris at last finds sexual liberation in Billy’s arms.

The name “Little Death” (the character is portrayed by trans actor Jack Haven, who starred in “I Saw the TV Glow” under the name Brigette Lundy-Pain) is an English translation of the French term le petite mort, a reference to  post-orgasmic bliss.

So the threat posed by Little Death drives Kris to sexual fulfillment.

Or maybe not.  Perhaps all this is just happening in Kris’ fevered mind.  

While some of “Teenage Sex…” has been shot in a real summer camp, other scenes play out against stagey  backdrops done in such a way that you have to look twice to be sure whether it’s a real forest or just painted canvas. I think it’s Shoenbrun’s way of telling us not to trust everything we see — especially when it comes to the over-the-top gore of Little Death’s killing spree.

The film is also a sort of cautionary comedy about artistic struggle.  There’s a marvelous scene which has Kris dealing with three of her producers on a Zoom call…Dylan Baker is spot on as a crass philistine who hasn’t time for Kris’ intellectual navel-gazing.  He’s the kind of guy who just wants a movie with tits and blood. A demand, by the way, that Shoenbrun slyly satisfies.

Not everything here works.  The movie-within-a-movie sequences, for example, so accurately mimic those old slasher flicks that, like the originals, they’re boring between bloodbaths. Is bad acting bad acting, even if it’s a parody of bad acting?

And Schoenbrun’s fragmented narrative style is bound to alienate literal-minded audiences. What can I say?  Dreams and nightmares don’t always make sense.  But the weirder they get the more we remember them. And  it’ll be hard to forget “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.”

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE ODYSSEY”: Long strange trip

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 13, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Matt Damon

“THE ODYSSEY” My rating: B (In theaters)

172 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Didn’t love it.

Didn’t hate it.

What can I say, folks? So much hyperbole — both positive and negative — has been heaved at Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” that it’s just about impossible to approach this epic with anything like a completely open mind.

What I took away from my experience was a sense of awe at the technical precision on display (there’s not a shot in the film that doesn’t seem to have been labored over ), a real sense of a  journey that covers two decades, some riveting set pieces and a frustrating lack of emotional involvement.  (I mean, the most intense feeling is delivered by a dying dog.)

The film is peppered with familiar faces, but most of the characters are barely skin deep. 

It doesn’t feel like the film has a real point of view…yet it never feels like a slog.  There’s always something interesting to look at.

Noland has never worn his heart on his sleeve.  Most of his non-“Batman” films — from “Memento” through “The Prestige,” “Inception” and “Oppenheimer” — have been about ideas. Human emotions tend to take a back seat.

In this case it’s all about the journey.  This is both the yarn’s strength and, for dramatic purposes, its big drawback.  Homer’s poem is no well-made drama.  It’s a series of encounters — sirens, Titans, cyclops, whirlpool — without a gripping through line (except, of course, the desire of Matt Damon’s Odysseus to get back home).

Nolan’s screenplay seems unsure of just what to make of the ancient Greeks’ world view.  There’s much talk of what Zeus expects of men (in breaking that moral code Odysseus carries the burden of guilt), but the gods themselves rarely make an appearance. Zendaya does show up periodically as the goddess Athena, engaging Odysseus in conversation…but it’s pretty clear she’s a figment of his imagination. At least, none of his comrades seem to notice her.


Like just about every Nolan film, “The Odyssey” messes with time.  The film is arranged non-chronologically. The yarn drifts back and forth between Odysseus’ long voyage, the siege of Troy, his life before the Trojan war, and the travails experienced back in Ithaca by his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland).  It’s one of the smarter things Nolan has done to the material, with the past present and future all seeming to unfurl simultaneously. It keeps you slightly off balance and paying close attention.

Highlights?  Well the segment with the cyclops is genuinely awesome.  So is the vision of the Trojan horse, the wooden statue in which Odysseus and his men secret themselves in order to enter the city.

Damon is certainly watchable as our hero, but I rarely got a sense of Odysseus’ inner life. 

Hathaway has a few moments of genuine fierceness as Odysseus’ abandoned queen. Samantha Morton is riveting as Circe, the man-hating witch who transform’s Odysseys’ crew into swine.  John Leguizamo is quite good as the aged blind herdsman whose loyalty to his master spans the years.

Anne Hathaway

Absolutely loved Ruth De Jong’s art direction, especially Odysseus’ hilltop palace in Ithica and the cave where worshippers pay homage to Athena. 

Ludwig Goransson’s musical score is a hugely effective blend of sonic rumblings and primitive-sounding  whistles and drums.

Didn’t like much of the sound mix, which rendered at least half the dialogue unintelligible. 

Also, Nolan’s appropriation of modern language — did the ancient Greeks really use phrases like “okay” and refer to their fathers as “my dad”? — took me out of the moment.

And while we’re at it, very little of Nolan’s dialogue was memorable.  The Odyssey is great poetry, yet there’s nothing the least poetic about these conversations.

Bottom line: I don’t regret devoting three hours to watching ”The Odyssey.”

And I’m in no hurry to repeat the experience.

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SHORT TAKES: “Obsession,” “The Long Walk,” “The Devil Wears Prada 2”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 7, 2026| 1 Comment »

India Navarette, Michael Johnston

“OBSESSION” My rating: B (Peacock)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Curry Baker’s “Obsession” (he wrote, directed and edited) has been getting lots of love, and not just from horror geeks.

It deserves it.

The setup is as old as the Midas myth…a wish comes true but brings with it unexpected consequences. The delivery, though, is a slow-burn dose of creepiness featuring a couple of killer performances.

Bear (Michael Johnston, who looks like he could be Daniel Radcliffe’s little bro) has long been infatuated with his co-worker Nikki (India Navarette) but fears scaring her off  if he reveals his feelings. Bear’s pretty unsure of himself…he might still be a virgin.

But one day at a funky gift shop he picks up a novelty item called the One Wish Willow.  According to the label on the box if you take out the stick inside, snap it in two, and make a wish…well, that wish will come true.

So he wishes that Nikki would love him more than anyone else in the world.

Oh-oh.

Baker’s screenplay is a model of careful observation and unexpected eruptions.

Nikki does indeed announce her love for Bear, and they are almost immediately in a passionate romance.  She moves into his house.  She caters to his every whim.

So far, so good.

But in short order her love has turned oppressive. She’s a whimpering mess when not in his presence. She even tries to seal his front door with masking tape to keep him at home. On her day off she stands unmoving in his living room, a sickly smile of hopeful anticipation frozen on her face and a puddle of urine at her feet, until he comes back from work. 

She gets jealous — murderously so.

“Obsession” is creepy as hell.  It’s also weirdly funny.  A desperate Bear calls up the manufacturer of the One Wish Willow only to have the voice on other end (director Baker in a bored/stoned fugue) tell him that he only way to undo his wish is to die.  And Darin Toonder is grimly funny as the gift shop clerk who’s had it up to here with customers bitching about the One Wish Willow.

One generally does not turn to horror for great performances, but Navarette approaches Oscar-level intensity as Nikki, turning on a dime from caring cajoling to screaming threat.  

Be careful what you wish for.

Cooper Hoffmann, David Jonsson

“THE LONG WALK” My rating: B (Hulu)

108 minutes | MPAA rating: R

One might easily dismiss “The Long Walk” as a “Hunger Games”/“Battle Royale”  clone designed as fodder for the YA market. Especially since it was directed by “Hunger Games” veteran Francis Lawrence.

So it comes as a surprise to discover a personality-and-dialogue-driven melodrama that carries an unexpected emotional heft.

Cooper Hoffmann (yes, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s kid…you may recognize him from “Licorice Pizza”) stars as Raymond,  who as the film begins is preparing to participate in The Long Walk.

We learn (in bits and pieces sprinkled throughout the film) that 20 years ago the USA was engaged in a civil war and ever since has suffered through Depression-era hard times.

But each year the citizenry is rallied by a competition in which 50  young volunteers — one young man from each state — set off on a walk.  Special wristwatches measure their speed…if they fall below three miles per hour they run the risk of being shot by the mute and stony-faced soldiers who accompany this parade.  

There is no stopping, no sleeping, no leaving the pavement of the rural highway they are traversing. Eat, drink and defecate while maintaining a brisk pace.  Eventually — after days of nonstop movement through sun and rain— one lone survivor will be crowned the winner.

J.T. Mollner’s screenplay (based on a Stephen King novel) is remarkable in that the characters are developed almost exclusively through dialogue.  This is a walk-and-talk film…literally.  The performances are an intriguing blend of stream-of-consciousness chatter and segments in which the dialogue seems as carefully crafted as that of a stage play or classic ‘50s film.

Raymond is almost immediately befriended by Peter (David Jonsson), a black kid whose garrulous personality makes the unending drudgery of walking a bit less oppressive.  Indeed, the contestants are a regular smorgasbord of American youth — Asian, white, black, Native American. Intellectually they range from standard-issue rednecks to an aspiring author who hopes to turn his experience into a book.

What’s kinda unsettling is the way in which we the audience find ourselves participants in this exercise, sharing the ever-creeping exhaustion and growing desperation of the young men. There’s a kind of purity in the film’s narrow focus, a sort of cinematic minimalism that feels weirdly revelatory.The effect is not unlike that of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”

Drawbacks? Well, Mark Hamill’s performance as The Major — the officer in charge of the operation —might seem a caricature, a parody of the military martinet oozing motivational gung-ho.  But the Major is also the key to understanding what the US has become.  Clearly the civil war was not won by the humanists.

Not a happy film, but one that sticks with you long after the lights go out.

Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci

“THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2” My rating: B- (Hulu)

119 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Do we  really need “The Devil Wears Prada 2”? Especially those of us — meaning me — who  lack the fashionista gene?

So let’s admit that as time killers go, this sequel (directed by David Frankel, who helmed the original) is kinda charming.

Not for the too-familiar plotting or the clothes, but for the people.

I’m talking here mostly about Meryl Streep reprising her role as chilly, arrogant magazine editor Miranda Priestly and Stanley Tucci as her loyal doormat Nigel. (Is he gay? Straight? Sexless?)

In a weird way neither character is complete without the other. It’s a real oddball pairing, but I’d forgotten how terrific these two were together.

Of course Anne Hathaway is back as Andy.  Twenty years ago she was Miranda’s much-abused gofer girl; now she returns as a prize-winning journalist left jobless by media upheaval and hired to give Runway magazine a socially conscious vibe to go with the fashion and fluff.

Andy considered herself a serious journalist, something Miranda and Co. have little use or tolerance for. Humorous situations develop. Not to mention a hostile takeover of the mag.

Returning also is Emily Blunt as Emily, one-time Miranda acolyte now running a high-end boutique.  She’s engaged to a dweeby tech billionaire (Justin Theroux, cast against type and having the time of his life) but is at heart still a scheming witch.  She also gets the best line in Lauren Weisberger and Aline Brosh McKenna’s screenplay: 

“May the bridges I burn light the way.”

Has a character ever been so succinctly limned in just eight words?

Toss into the brew Kenneth Branagh and Lucy Liu and you’ve got a ridiculously attractive murderer’s row.

“Prada 2” isn’t entirely frivolous.  The film strives for relevance by protesting the demise of American journalism and the rise of the misinformed multitudes…well, it’s not so much a protest as a grumpy observation stirred in with the fun and fashion.  

Hey, audiences for this film didn’t come for a civics lesson.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Couture,” “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 26, 2026| 1 Comment »

Angelina Jolie, Lopuie Garrel

“COUTURE” My rating: C+(In theaters)

106 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Four women come to grips with their futures (and mortality) in Alice Winocour’s “Couture,” set in the Paris during Fashion Week.

The film is ambitious, wearing its feminism on its sleeve, but unfocused, with some of the characters developing genuinely involving situations and others merely treading water.

American filmmaker Maxine Walker (Anglina Jolie), who usually specializes in horror, has signed on to direct a short film to open the runway show of a major label. It’s a high-tension job in the best of circumstances, but Maxine has just discovered a health crisis that threatens to upend her life.  

Ada (Anyier Anei) îs a naive 18-year-old refugee from the war in Sudan.  Recruited by video, she soon finds herself both delighted and intimidated by the big city, especially the catty attitudes of the other models with whom she shares an apartment.  She has a short learning curve but has to nail it…otherwise it’s back to a questionable fate in Africa.

Angele (Ella Rumpf) is a makeup artist kept busy zipping from one show top the next.  Her real love, though, is writing. Early on an agent shoots down her manuscript and she now must come up with a new idea.

Finally there’s Garance Marillier as Christine, a young seamstress facing a deadline to finish work on the dress that will open her fashion house’s big show.

Of these four plot threads only Maxine’s is fully worked out.  Faced with the need for an immediate surgery, she goes through all the stages of grief in just a couple of days. . The fact that Jolie is herself a breast cancer survivor gives extra oomph to her heart-wringing performance.

There are a couple of male roles…Vincent Lindon is quietly reassuring as Maxine’s new MD, and Louis Garrel is both sexy and sincere as a co-worker with who she has one last fling before surgery.

The highlight of the film — aside from Jolie’s perf — is it’s depiction of a runway show staged in a forest an nearly ruined by a thunderstorm.

Sam Rockwell (center)

“GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON’T DIE” My rating: B (Hulu)

124 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Sam Rockwell gets the best opening scene of any movie in ages with “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” a mind-bender that’s part apocalyptic sci-fi, part fiendish social satire, and part action epic.

It’s late at night in a Los Angeles diner.  There’s a flash of light outside the window and in walks the Man from the Future” (Rockwell), a bearded ragamuffin wrapped in a transparent raincoat and covered with wires, blinking lights and, it turns out, several bombs.

The Man greets the diners, calling some of them by name, even predicting what they’ll do or say next. He is, he says, from the future.  This is the 117th time he’s appeared at the diner to recruit a half-dozen eaters to go on a mission to destroy the AI that is poised to ruin the world.

So far the Man and those he’s chosen to accompany him (they’re different on every iteration of the mission) have failed miserably…killed and apparently resurrected as time resets.  But the sardonic, wise-cracking Man has to keep at it, learning from each mistake and getting ever closer to destroying the source of the electronic hell that is his future. 

On this night he’ll find just the right combination of subjects to pull it all off. And through a series of clever flashbacks we’ll learn how these folk became qualified for the gig.

Mark and Janet (Michael Pena, Zazie Beetz) are high school teachers terrified that their cellphone-addicted students are just a text away from becoming a sort of zombie mob.

Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) is a bad-tempered goth girl who works as a fairy princess for little girls’ birthday parties. She’s allergic to most kinds of electronic gizmos…being too near a cell phone gives her a nosebleed.

Susan (Juno Temple)  lost her teenage son to  a school shooter.  Recently she paid to have him cloned…though this new version of him is more robotic than human.

Together they will battle mysterious assassins, armies of hypnotized teenagers — even a giant creature that is part horse and part cat.  But will they be able to stop the inexorable creep of the electronic “other”?

“Good Luck…” — written by Matthew Robinson and directed by Gore Verbinski — is by turns funny and a bit frightening. Granted, it cannot keep up the high level of comedy/wonder that Rockwell establishes in the opening moments, but even in the slow moments it’s fun to watch.

And when it’s all over it leaves us satisfied, yet cautious.  We’re led to believe that our heroes have stymied AI…but perhaps even their presumed victory has been staged as part of vast virtual reality experiment. Who knows?

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Spider-Noir,” “Star City,” “Criminal Record”

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

Nicolas Cage

“SPIDER-NOIR” (Prime Video)

“Spider-Noir” is such a promising variation on the usual superhero tropes that I probably stuck with it longer than it merits.

Oren Uziel’s 8-part miniseries gives us Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly, a down-on-his-luck private eye in Depression-era NYC who is also a web-slinging crime fighter.  

Or was.  Ben burned out and hasn’t done the Spidey-thing for several years.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that his costume consists of a  Sam Spade-ish trench coat and a Spy-vs-Spy fedora…not exactly the ideal duds for aerial acrobatics.

Anyway, Ben is a crotchety font of sardonic bad vibes, full of amusing too-weary-to-be-a-tough-guy banter. I loved getting to know him.

But the sad truth is that “Spider-Noir” ran out of compelling  ideas after the first two or three episodes.  I lost interest.

The plot?  Well, turns out the Big Apple is suddenly inundated with crooks flashing all sort of superpowers. Their origin story — and Ben’s — leads back to German experiments on Allied POWs during the Great War.

Ben must return to his Spider persona to battle this army of mutants, which is led by crime boss Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson, a good actor stuck here with comic book villainy).  There’s a love interest in the form of nightclub singer Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li), but that fizzles in the absence of any erotic chemistry between Cage and Li.

There are a couple of nice supporting perfs by Jack Huston as a mutant undergoing a crisis of conscience, and from Karen Rodriguez as Ben’s long-suffering Girl Friday.

The real heroes here are production designer Warren Alan Young and cinematographers Darran Tiernan and Peter Deming, who give the series a ravishing look that reminds of “Ripley.”  Prime Video has done something quite wonderful by allowing viewers to choose between color and black-and-white versions of the show.  I much prefer the shadowy, atmospheric B&W, which perfectly captures the atmosphere of film noir classics from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Anna Maxwell-Harris

“STAR CITY”  (Apple+)

For several seasons “For All Mankind” has given us an alternative history of the U.S. space program, beginning with the early Mercury missions and moving on to the moon landings.  

But whereas in real life NASA reined in its explorations for nearly nearly 40 years, in this version we race on to establish bases on the moon, on Mars, and on asteroids being mined for rare minerals needed back on Earth.

The series appears to be scrupulously scientific in its approach. What makes it really interesting, though, are the ways we carry our human foibles with us to the stars.  Science advances.  Human nature…not so much.

One of more disturbing aspects of “For All Mankind” is its notion that the Soviet Union, far from breaking up, became more controlling than ever.

This notion is taken to the limit in “Star City,” a companion piece that follows the space race from the Russian POV.

Star City is the newly-built, top-secret complex where the Soviet space program does its work.

Rhys Ifans stars as the Chief Designer, determined to expand the USSR’s grasp of the cosmos even when he runs afoul of a stifling party apparatus. His main nemesis is a uniformed security official (Anna Maxwell-Harris) whose dedication to the Party is such that she will kill even a famous cosmonaut who runs afoul of the rules. Not even national heroes are safe.

“Star City” is a vast canvas that pits scientific outreach against the controlling interests of a police state.  We’re talking about hidden microphones in every apartment, neighbors who inform on neighbors, contraband records of American pop groups that can get you permanently exiled to a Siberian work camp.

Despite this downer premise, the series gives us a whole slew of interesting characters, many of whom we end rooting for despite their country’s soul-sucking repression.

Peter Capaldi

“CRIMINAL RECORD” (Apple+)

Peter Capaldi first hit the radar of cineastes as the goofy/gangly  sidekick in Bill Forstythe’s “Local  Hero” (1983) and over the last 50 years has racked up numerous film and TV appearances, including a 43-episode  stint as Dr. Who. 

A few years back his career shifted from charming to chilling…he was a prison inmate with possible supernatural abilities in 2022’s “The Devil’s Hour,” and puts his gray hair and cadaverous  features to good use in “Criminal Record,” playing a Brit police detective who may be as evil and conniving as the killers he goes after. (Nowadays he reminds me of John Carradine’s Dracula…a role he really ought to tackle.)

Cush Jumbo (“The Good Wife,” “The Good Fight”) stars as June Lenker, a cop who stumbles across evidence suggesting that a man doing life in prison for murder is in fact innocent. The cop who put together the case is Daniel Hegarty (Capaldi), an old wolf on the force (meaning possibly racist and misogynist) who isn’t  happy with this young woman questioning his arrest record.

Circumstances force June and Hegarty to work together…and she can never be sure that he isn’t planting little mines to explode in  her lap.

Paul Rutman’s series covers two seasons (in the second our heroes take on a right-wing conspirators who plan to use stolen military detonators to blow up London landmarks), but the scripts also find time to delve into the characters’ personal issues.  Hegarty has a twentysometing daughter with a heroin  habit, while June finds her devotion to the job taking a toll with her live-in boyfriend and teenage son from a failed marriage.

Jumbo makes for an intriguing protagonist (she has just enough foibles to keep her from being a goody-goody) and Capaldi keeps us wondering about where his loyalties lie.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “A History of Sound,” “Marty, Life is Short”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 22, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Josh O’Connor, PaulMescal

“THE HISTORY OF SOUND” My rating:  B+ (Hulu)

128 minutes | MPAA rating: R

A terrific 2025 release that slipped past my radar, “The History of Sound” offers a love story that resonates on a whole bunch of levels.

Adapted by Ben Shattuck from his short story and directed by Oliver Herrmanus (”Beauty,” “Living”), the film stars Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor  as young men who spend the fall of 1920 traipsing around rural Maine with a primitive machine to record on wax cylinders the songs of the common folk.

That the young men are also engaged in a love affair is enough to earn “The History of Sound” the label of “gay movie,” but it is so much more than that.

The yarn unfolds from the perspective of Mescal’s Lionel, a Kentucky farm boy whose singing voice earns him a slot at the prestigious Boston Conservatory.  There he meets aspiring composer David (O’Connor), who is as urbane and charming as Lionel is shy and unsophisticated.

The two begin a relationship interrupted by David’s enlistment in the Army to fight in France. Upon his return David gets a university gig and invites his friend to accompany him on a three-month wander through fields and woods, recording the music made by the locals.

“The History of Sound” echoes a couple of movies: “Soundcatcher” and “Brokeback Mountain.”  If you’re going claim antecedents, those are winners.  Toss in atmospheric and narrative touches reminiscent of “Train Dreams” and you’ve got a low-keyed heartbreaker.

The screenplay follows Lionel’s life after David. He studies and teaches abroad. He has relationships with both men and women. But always gnawing beneath his seemingly imperturbable surface is a sense of loss.  For David has apparently dropped off the map.

Late in the film Chris Cooper appears as the elderly Lionel, a successful musician and academician who has grown gray resigned to a solitary life.  No one has ever touched him the way David did. No one ever will.

“The History of Sound” is a quietly beautiful experience, filled with longing, loss and a reverence for the ways in which music works upon the soul.  Technical aspects are first rate, from Alexander Dynan’s rich cinematography (it’s never show-off, but always feels right) and the musical soundtrack crammed with sorrowful folk ballads and plaintive fiddle playing.

The acting…well, as if I didn’t already love Paul Mescal to pieces, he here so fully inhabits Lionel that we can almost hear his thoughts beneath that respectful reticence. He’s perfectly matched by O’Connor as a man whose inner life is so carefully guarded that it becomes an unbearable weight.

Martin Short, Nancy Dolman

“MARTY, LIFE IS SHORT” My rating: B (Netflix)

99 minutes | No MPAA rating

Martin Short is one of the funniest men on the planet.

Which doesn’t mean he hasn’t endured some pretty hard knocks.

Lawrence Kasdan’s “Marty, Life is Short” is a cinematic tribute from one of Short’s good friends. Actually a lot of Short’s good friends.

Few people, in fact, are so beloved by so many heavy hitters.  Among the talking heads who testify to Short’s comedy genius and personal warmth are Steve Martin, John Mulaney, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, the late Catherine O’Hara, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg.

The film of course features a ton of clips from Short’s career (I could endlessly watch him as geeky Ed Grimley or the pompously uninformed Jiminy Glick), but there are also tons of home movies, many shot during Short’s legendary party weekends.

And the doc also serves as a kind of love story, chronicling Short’s marriage to Nancy Dolman, a fellow actor and comic who appears to have been his ideal spouse.  If Short had given up comedy after her death in 2010 no one would have blamed him.  Instead he once again demonstrated the life-affirming resilience that has gotten him through career bumps and personal tragedy.

| Robert W. Butler

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SOUND MANDALA: Right between the ears

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Sound Mandala is the world’s coolest stereo system. And a pretty nifty diversion for Kansas Citians this summer.

The brainchild of (among others) soon-to-retire UMKC prof and Kansas City Rep sound designer Tom Mardikes, Sound Mandala has taken over the Unicorn Theatre at 3828 Main for two months of mind-blowing aural experiences.

The theater’s auditorium has been converted to an acoustically perfect (or darn close to perfect) listening room. Guests sit in one of about 40 chairs surrounded by 100 speakers (we’re talking front, sides, rear, overhead). The lights dim and the magic begins.

I recently caught one of three 45-minute programs that will be playing in rotation and was blown away by the sounds that came at me from all directions. (Unlike your home stereo you don’t have to sit in the middle to get an ultimate experience…it’s the same everywhere in the room.)

It began with an approaching thunderstorm, from distant rumblings to crashes of lightning that seemed to land in your lap. I could practically smell the approach of rain. If only Ferde Grofe had Sound Mandala to play with while writing his Grand Canyon Suite.

There were spoken word passages (with appropriate sound effects). The local (and now defunct) band The Plant delivered a knockout slice of psychedelia with “In the Garden.” One of the tracks had a strong Captain Beefheart/Wild Man Fischer anarchistic vibe (extra points if you know what I’m talking about).

The presentation wrapped up with a stunning cover of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” already the trippiest tune in the Beatles catalog and here blasted into the stratosphere by the soul-liberating spacial effects, especially the electronically-generated noises (sounds to me almost like a flock of birds) that seem to fly back and forth across the auditorium.

This is pretty much a home grown affair. Instead of relying solely on commercially available songs Mardikes and Co. have turned to many artists recorded right here in Kansas City over a number of years. Among the featured performers are beatboxer Luke “Skippy” Harbor, Austen Schober, rapper Krizz Kalico, actress Vanessa Severn and Dwight Frizzell.

But wait. That’s not all.

One of the programs features cuts by five bands/performers represented by Challenger Artists. Participating are Mini Trees, Toledo, Valley Boy, Capital Soiree and the evocatively named Post Sex Nachos.

And as if all that was’t nifty enough, Sound Mandala also will be screening the silent horror classic “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” It features a specially composed and recorded soundtrack by Thomas Newby and chamber pop pioneers The Green Zoo that takes full advantage of the technology’s possibilities.

For information on showtimes and ticket prices, visit http://www.soundmandela.org or the Unicorn boxoffice at 816-531-7529 (or visit unicorntheatre.org

| Robert W. Butler

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“DISCLOSURE DAY”: Lost in the woo-woo weeds

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on June 9, 2026| 2 Comments »

Emily Blunt

“DISCLOSURE DAY” My rating: C+ (In theaters on June 12)

165 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

The intergalactic mayhem of “War of the Worlds” notwithstanding, no filmmaker has done more to promote the idea of benevolent aliens than Steven Spielberg.

“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.: The Extraterrestrial” imbued in audiences a sense of awe, in no small part because they had as protagonists a child and a child-like adult through whose eyes we experience the wondrous possibilities of the universe.

Oh, that “Disclosure Day” had a bit of that magic.  In plot (the story and screenplay are by Spielberg and David Koepp) this is in many ways a clone of “CE3K,” but in feeling, emotion, it’s dead in the water.

By now most of us are aware that “Disclosure…” is about a perilous effort to reveal to the world nearly 80 years of UFO documentation suppressed by our government. The good guys have stolen from an evil think tank dozens of super-sophisticated thumb drives containing many hundreds of hours of video, sound transmissions, photos and printed data on the phenomenon.

And now the chase is on.

Throughout the film we follow the efforts of four groups.

First there’s computer geek Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) who has gone from being a safekeeper of these secrets to a saboteur.  With a backpack crammed with world-changing data Daniel and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) are on the run.

They are pursued by the black-clad agents of Daniel’s former employer, led by Scanlon (Colin Firth), a corporate monster with a maniacal determination to suppress this information.

Colin Firth

There’s a group of revolutionaries led by Wakefield (Colman Domingo). These are folks who once worked to keep those secrets who are now convinced they must be shared with the world.

And finally there’s Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt)l, a weather lady for a Kansas City TV station who finds herself fluent in languages she has never studied, including — in the middle of a live broadcast — a guttural clicking that appears to be of extraterrestrial origin. She also develops the ability to read and manipulate other people’s minds (or maybe it’s their souls), making her a sort of corn-fed Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Spielberg has described “Disclosure Day” as a chase film, and that’s on the money.  Here’s a filmmaker who has been creating spectacular chases for 50 years (“Duel,” “The Sugarland Express,” all of the Indiana Jones titles) and he brings all that know-how to bear on several spectacular action sequences. And thank God for his expertise, because the sheer momentum created by these moments keeps us engaged even after we start to wonder if this isn’t in support of a frothy mess of woo-woo and flapdoodle.

Spielberg and Koepp throw tons of alien mythology at the screen (crop circles, the Roswell crash, alien autopsies) , but it dribbles  out in disconnected bits and pieces. Momentarily diverting, yes, but if there’s a logic behind it I can’t find it.

Acting honors here go to Blunt, who is terrific at expressing the terror and puzzlement of her newly-developed powers (she’s got an emotional meltdown that should become a permanent part of her resume reel), and to Firth, who makes his corporate overlord a Voldemort-ish font of ruthlessness. He’s genuinely scary.

Josh O’Connor

Spielberg is a master technician…the film is beautiful and the way he moves his images within a frame (the frame is often moving as well) is spellbinding.

The weak link here is a half-baked idea and a screenplay that tries to cover  up its emptiness with superficial bustle.  

Spielberg and Co. toss in an irritating hodgepodge of religious imagery and ideas.  Jane once studied to become a nun and in one scene reacts to a form of mental torture by using the cross on her necklace to pierce her own palm.  Stigmata, anyone?  And her former mentor is a Reverend Mother (Elizabeth Marvel)  who suggests that, sure, God might have created non-human intelligence.

The filmakers also muddie things up with their version of Hitchcock’s MacGuffin, in this case an alien artifact that looks like a hotdog-sized metal ingot.  The determined Scanlon uses this device to locate his prey at great distances and then enters their minds, interrogating his mesmerized victims. Mishandled the device can be dangerous, as discovered by Scanlon’s chief thug (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), who finds himself atomized and reconstituted by the technology.

Spielberg is a great enough filmmaker that I spent the 2 1/2 hours of “Disclosure Day” being mildly entertained while waiting for a big payoff that never came. Indeed, the real story here is how humanity would react to this Earth-shaking revelation…and Spielberg isn’t interested in that…or is afraid of the answer.

The results are simultaneously too much and not enough.

| Robert W. Butler

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