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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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“POWER BALLAD”: Hitting it big

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Nick Jonas, Paul Rudd

“POWER BALLAD” My rating:  B (In theaters)

98 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Goofball affability comes so naturally to Paul Rudd that it’s easy to forget that with the right material he’s a formidable performer.

He gets just such an opportunity in the bittersweet dramady “Power Ballad,” the latest from writer/director John Carney and, like his memorable “Once” from a decade back, a look into the life and dreams of a struggling  Dublin musician.

The screenplay by Carney and Peter McDonald centers on Rick, the American-born (Kansas City, no less) lead singer of Bride and Groove, a quintet  billed as Ireland’s premiere wedding band.

Rick has an Irish wife and daughter (Marcella Plunkett, Beth Fallon), a modest house in the ‘burbs and a vast backlog of unfinished songs,.  He dreams — literally — of selling out arenas to sing his compositions.  In the meantime he and his bandmates schlep around in a tour van playing gigs in which they cover, practically note for note, the pop catalog of the last 50 years.

These opening segments are crammed with sly observations about fiftysomething geezers pounding out rock ’n’ roll and donning glasses to read the fine print.  They also establish that Paul Rudd can actually sing.

One of the wedding guests at their latest gig is none other than Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), formerly famous as part of a boy band but now struggling to establish a solo career.  At the request of the bride Danny joins the band for a few songs. 

He and Rick share a moment on stage and, after the reception has shut down, spend the rest of the night trading riffs over a piano and a good single-malt whiskey. Rick plays some stanzas from a song he’s been working on for 15 years; Danny makes a few suggestions. Damned if it doesn’t sound pretty good.

A year later Rick is shopping in a Dublin mall when over the piped-in Muzak he hears…yes, his song. It’s pretty obvious that Danny Wilson has claimed the tune as his own and turned it into an international hit.

The major plot thread here is Rick’s seemingly hopeless quest to get recognition for the song. It  isn’t so much the money the tune has generated (although he wouldn’t mind getting some of it) but the principle of the thing.

Here’s the problem.  Rick cannot prove to anyone — even his family — that the song is his.  He never recorded it, and any early versions he committed to paper can be dismissed as recent forgeries. Knowing he’s being cheated threatens to push the poor guy over the edge.

Marcella Plunket, Paula Rudd

Rudd is really terrific as an Everyman  whose obsession is driving away his friends, co-workers and even loved ones.  Finally, after all attempts to contact Danny Wilson have been rejected, he buys a plane ticket and with his scuzzy bandmate Sandy (Peter McDonald, the film’s co-writer) heads off to La-La Land for a showdown.

This may be Rudd’s best work since the underappreciated 2013 gem “Prince Avalanche” (it’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime…watch it), with his innate likability providing a vital counterpoint to Rick’s self-destructive fame fixation.

He’s nicely matched by Jonas’ turn as a guy so desperate to get back on top that he puts his conscience on the back burner. Danny is clearly the villain of the piece, but Jonas’ perf and the writing make his transgressions understandable if not acceptable.

And practically stealing his every scene is McDonald as the boozy, guitar-shredding Sandy. (Think Bill Nighy in “Love Actually.”)

The tone Carney achieves here reminds a lot of Bill Forsythe, especially 1984’s “Comfort and Joy.” It’s a tightrope act that bends back and forth between mild comedy and real emotional pain.

My one objection to “Power Ballad” is a brief coda tacked on the end, a sort of cop-out that plays to the cheesy expectations of the least-sophisticated viewers and undermines what up to then had been a ambivalent but deeply satisfying conclusion. I wouldn’t be surprised if some studio suit told Carney he had to tack it on.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Tuner,” “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Dustin Hoffman, Leo Woodall

“TUNER” My rating: B- (At the Glenwood Arts)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Part noir crime thriller, part love story, part buddy comedy, Daniel Roher’s “Tuner”  overcomes a plot thick with unlikely coincidence to deliver a generally satisfying suspense yarn peppered with oddball moments.

Niki (Leo Woodall) is a baby-faced piano tuner in the Big Apple.  He’s technically an apprentice to old timer Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), but in reality Harry does little more than sit around spouting dietary conspiracy theories.  Niki does all the real work.

Turns out he’s ideally suited for the job.  Niki was a child prodigy on the keyboard but developed a hearing issue that forced him to give up playing.  Not deafness…just the opposite.  His hearing is so acute that everyday sounds are painful. He goes through life wearing a pair of noise-dampening headphones.

The screenplay by Roher and Robert Ramsey begins as an affable study of friendship.  Harry and his wife (Tovah Feldshuh) regard Niki as the son they never had. There’s a good deal of familial kvetching.

On one of his jobs Niki encounters Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), a conservatory student in piano and composing.  Little by little they hit it off.

Conflict arrives in the person of Uri (Lior Ray), whose home security firm is basically a front for a mini crime syndicate.  It’s all too easy for Uri to bypass the systems he installed and rob  his clients.  Except that he needs someone who can open safes and lockboxes.  Turns out that Niki’s sensitive ears are just right for hearing the tumblers click into place.

Now our hero isn’t a dummy. He knows this is dangerous business.  But Uri can be quite charming and/or threatening and when Harry ends up in the hospital Niki decides to keep cracking safes until the bills are paid.  Of course the thuggish Uri has his own ideas for Niki’s career in crime.

“The Player” musters a good deal of tension, but the real meat here is Woodall’s low-keyed performance.  Niki’s handicap has made him something of a loner…not exactly anti-social but borderline.  Which makes his journey into romantic love all the more affecting.

Sally Field

“REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES” My rating: B (Netflix)

111 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

I don’t know what bugs me the most:  that “Remarkable Bright Creatures” is so overtly manipulative or that most of the time that manipulation works.

In any case, Olivia Newman’s adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt’s best selling novel gives us national treasure Sally Field in one of her best roles in years. Hard to complain too much with that on the table.

Field plays Tova Sullivan, a widow in a coastal town in the Pacific Northwest and the night custodian at the local aquarium. Tova has plenty of elderly gal pals (Kathy Baker, Joan Chen, Beth Grant) but her best buddy is Marcellus, the giant pacific octopus with an uncanny ability to slip out of his tank and go on nocturnal prowls around the building.  

As was the case with the novel, Marcellus is the narrator of this tale (voice provided by an uncredited Alfred Molina), though for some reason I found this device worked better on the printed page than it does here.

The heart of the yarn lies with Cameron (Lewis Pullman), a young nomad living out of his minivan who becomes Tova’s assistant.  He’s a bit creeped out by the computer-generated Marcellus but he and Tova form a bond.  She lost her own son years before in a boating accident and Cameron allows her to indulge some of her long-suppressed maternal instincts.

Turns out the old lady and her young helpmate are connected in ways neither could have anticipated…although Marcellus the octopus has it all figured out long before the pokey humans come around.

I cannot count the number of acquaintances who’ve told me how much they love this movie.

I enjoyed it, but with reservations.

Sienna Miller, Wendell Pierce, John Krasinski

“TOM CLANCY’S JACK RYAN: GHOST WAR” My rating: C (Prime Video)

105 minutes |MPAA rating: R

I’m a sucker for both John Krasinski and Wendell Pierce, but there’s no escaping the by-the-numbers blah-ness of “Jack Ryan: Ghost War.”

Scripted by Krasinski, Aaron Rabin and Noah Oppenheim, and directed by Andrew Bernstein, “Ghost War” is a hodgepodge of spy movie cliches held up by a script so fuzzy I’m still not sure exactly who is doing what and why.

As I understand it,  former British spy Liam Crown (Max Beesley) has started murdering British and American agents because he misses the good old days when spies could kill with impunity.  No codes of conduct, no ethical review boards, no red tape.

Apparently Crown intends to use his mercenary army (where does he get the money?) to force the good guys (the CIA, MI6) to return to their scorched earth policy of bygone days.

No, it didn’t make any sense to me, either.

Krasinski reprises his role as reluctant action hero Jack Ryan, while Pierce is his boss at the Agency. Both are imminently watchable but have to work way too hard at selling this nonsense.

Sienna Miller pops up as a tough-as-nails British operative, but the script really doesn’t give her much to do.  Michael Kelly is back as Ryan’s wise-cracking sidekick.

There’s some nice scenery (Dubai, London) and a nifty car chase through crowded city streets.

But mostly “Jack Ryan: Ghost War” feels like a franchise on its last legs.

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Daredevil: Born Again,” “Legends,” “Rivals”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 23, 2026| 1 Comment »

Vincent ‘Onofrio

“DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN”(Disney+)

As was the case with the DC-based “Penguin” of a couple of years back, the latest incarnation of Marvel’s Daredevil character is noteworthy for its high degree of psychological sophistication.

Both miniseries unfold in worlds that seem far more nuanced and believable than your usual comic book fantasy.

Curiously, both get their oomph not from a traditional superhero (the character of Batman never even appeared in “The Penguin”) but from their villains.

Colin Farrell won an Emmy for his portrayal of the Penguin, a malformed ugly duckling (and mama’s boy) determined to make himself into a crime king through a regimen of self-effacing charm and Machiavellian scheming.

With “Daredevil: Born Again” the heart of the season lies not with our blind-but-sensorially-gifted vigilante title character (Charlie Cox), but with his nemesis Wilson Fisk. aka Kingpin, a crime-boss-turned-politico played by Vincent D’Onofrio with terrifying intensity.

“Born Again” has a torn-from-the-headlines immediacy with Fisk, newly elected mayor of NYC, declaring war on masked vigilantes like Daredevil. He uses this as an excuse to send out a specially trained army of thugs to arrest and detain anyone opposing his despotic reign.

Series creators Matt Corman, Chris Ord and Dario Scardapane obviously were working on this project long before Donald Trump unleashed his ICE army, but the parallels are unmistakable. Indeed, D’Onofrio’s Kingpin plays like a smarter, slicker  version of Trump, a crook fully capable of playing three-dimensional chess while bending public opinion to his will.

This season also benefits hugely from perfs by Ayelet Zurer as Fisk’s beloved Lady Macbeth of a spouse, Michael Gandolfini as the mayor’s public information officer (whose corruption and ultimate redemption forms one of the show’s most emotionally satisfying   threads), and Hamish Allan-Headley as the chief of Kingpin’s Gestapo, who comes off like the love child of Pete Hegeseth, Gregory Bovino and Kristi Noem.

Plus, the action scenes are spectacular.

“LEGENDS” (Netflix)

Perennial underdogs get to flex their sleuthing muscles in “Legends,” based on a real-life episode in which Her Majesty’s customs officials — uniformed drones most accustomed to searching suitcases at airports — entered a life-and-death battle with a heroin cartel.

Steve Coogan stars as a former spook who gave up espionage for a cushy job in customs but now finds himself training customs inspectors to go under cover in the world of drug smuggling. 

The key to survival, he drills into his wannabe Bonds, is to believe utterly in your “legend,” the phony persona under which you will enter the shadowy world of crime. The problem, as one newbie spy played by the ever watchable Tom Burke discovers, is that one’s criminal alter ego cannot easily be abandoned at the  end of the day. This makes for some anxious moments with the wife and daughter.

In theory these misfits shouldn’t be able to solve a problem that has stymied the British police and military.  Damned if they don’t — although with too many close calls for comfort.

No doubt the story has been given a big shot of melodrama in its transition to the screen; nevertheless, “Legends” is one of those rare crime dramas that never stoops to the implausible. Good stuff.



David Tennant, Nafessa Williams

“RIVALS” (Disney+)

Here’s yet another fiendishly watchable British drama, a lusty soap opera about  shenanigans (sexual and otherwise) centering on a rural television network during the Thatcher era.

“Poldark” leading man Aidan Turner (nearly unrecognizable beneath a walrus mustache) stars as Declan O’Hara, a television journalist wooed away from the conservative BBC to host an interview show on a regional network in aptly named Rutshire.  

His new boss is Tony Baddiingham (David Tennant), a powerful schemer who rules his operation with an iron fist, abetted by his gorgeous producer and mistress Cameron (Nafessa Williams).

There are at least a dozen major characters in this miniseries, and most of them are, um, very sexually active.  That especially goes for Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) — MP, former equestrian champion and a Lothario of legendary accomplishment.

The show is divided between workplace crises and various love affairs.  

Declan is too busy pushing his journalistic agenda for sexual diversions.  On the other hand, his very bored former actress of a wife (Victoria Smurfit) is continually on the prowl.  And in one slow-burning relationship that literally aches with unfulfilled desire, their 20-year-old daughter (Bella Maclean) has a bad case of the hots for the priapic Rupert, who (quite out of character) makes a point of not despoiling this young woman.

“Rivals” nicely balances humor and drama, and just about everybody in the cast gets naked at one point or another.  After this it’s hard to think of our Brit cousins as stuffy and reserved.

| Robert W. Butler

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“LORD OF THE FLIES”: Child’s play

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Winston Sawyers as Ralph, Ike Talbut as Simon, David McKenna as Piggy

“LORD OF THE FILES” (Netflix)

William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies was written 62 years ago at the height of the Cold War, but seems as relevant today as it did back in the era of nuclear saber-rattling.

That’s because its true subject is man’s (or boy’s) propensity for violence, power and retribution. It’s baked into the human psyche.

There already have been two filmed versions — a 1963 rendition in stark black and white and another in 1990 — and now Netflix has dropped a brand new four-hour miniseries produced by the BBC.

It may not be perfect, but it’s about as good a cinematic interpretation of this modern classic as we’re likely to see.

The premise — for those who slept through high school English — is that a planeload of British schoolboys have been marooned on a tropical island.  With their adult chaperones killed, these prepubescents are left to their own devices.

Initially they form a society based on the rules and manners drilled into them at their posh boarding school.  Stiff upper lip and all that. But little by little their savage side takes over. Result: Chaos, cruelty and murder.

The man behind this retelling is writer/producer Jack Thorne, who has among his credits the amazing “Adolescence.”  As that show proved, he’s got a real affinity for the behavior of young males.

Each of the episodes centers on one of the four main characters.  

First we encounter Piggy, a fat kid with bottle-bottom spectacles and a bad case of asthma. As played by David McKenna, he’s a dead ringer for an 11-year-old Alfred Hitchcock.

Piggy is probably the smartest of the two-dozen castaways. He’s obviously no sportsman; he’s spent his time reading and immediately starts dispensing advice on housing, food, sanitation and the maintenance of a signal fire should a rescue ship appear on the horizon.  (Piggy’s glasses play an important role…they magnify the sun’s rays to ignite collected tinder.)  Piggy has the organizational imperative of a lifelong bureaucrat; he wants things neat and tidy.

One of the few boys not irritated by Piggy is the good-hearted Ralph (Winston Sawyers), who is elected chief of this ragtag tribe.  Ralph is nice kid, popular and honest.  Turns out he’s in way over his head.

Lox Pratt as Jack

And then there’s Jack (Lox Pratt), the head boy of the school choir whose members appear in long black robes like time travelers from the Dark Ages.  Basically they’re a tribe within the tribe, and under Jack’s leadership they begin rebelling against Piggy and Ralph.

Jack declares he’s going to have fun and enjoy  life now that there are no grownups looking over his shoulder.  He decides his singers will become hunters, tracking and killing the wild pigs that inhabit the island.  And he’ll do the same to anyone who crosses him.

And finally we have the wide-eyed Simon (Ike Talbut), a sort of artist/mystic who never quite fits in and is subject to disturbing visions.

If I correctly recall, the novel suggested that the boys were part of an air evacuation to get them out of Britain on the eve of an nuclear attack.  That idea is never broached here, though the mid-1950s time frame is retained.

What is new is the mixed enthicity of the cast.  In addition to the white kids there are blacks, Asians and all the colors in between.  Ralph, for instance, has a black mother and a white father.

Does Lord of the Flies really require four hours?  Perhaps not, but one of the piece’s strengths is the way we settle into the lush landscape.  This version feels truly lived in; it’s an immersive experience.

The young actors are first rate and the pacing set by director Marc Munden slowly pulls us into the horror of civilization being stripped away.

Not everything works. Most of the main characters are given flashbacks (this allows cameos by such recognizable faces as Rory Kinnear and Daniel Mays), none of which struck me as particularly informative or useful.

And director Munden (or it could be cinematographer Mark Wolf) periodically shoots through a filter (or maybe it’s post-production trickery) that turns the deep green foliage red and orange.  No doubt it’s mean to reflect the growing ugliness of the boys’ society (or it may be a premonition of the flames that will all but consume this paradise)…whatever the intent, it’s more distracting than illuminating.

And several boys — especially Pratt’s Jack —seem to have undergone a make-over with blue-dyed eyelids and rosy red lips.  Is this some sort of homoerotic commentary on the part of the filmmakers?  Again, unnecessary.

Possibly the highest compliment I can pay this production is that it frequently took me by surprise despite my familiarity with the material.

And in the anarchistic rebellion of Jack and his minions we have a political allegory that seems all too familiar and way too uncomfortable.  It’s not that Thorne and Company go out of their way to hammer home these points.  They were always there in Golding’s prose…but until recently we shrugged it off as a case of it can’t happen here.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Apex,” “Crime 101”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 6, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Taron Egerton, ChalizeTheron

“APEX” My rating: B- (Netflix)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Almost as diverting as it is unnecessary, “Apex” gives us Charlize Theron in yet another action-heroine role, this time battling a psycho killer in one of Australia’s mind-boggling national parks.

Jeremy Robbins’ screenplay borrows heavily from the Meryl Streep survival flick “The River Wild” while referencing ideas from the various filmic incarnations of the 1924 novel The Most Dangerous Game.

In the vertigo-inducing intro Sasha (Theron) and her squeeze Tommy (Eric Bana) are scaling a terrifying cliff face towering over a Norwegian fiord.  She wants to forge ahead; he advises caution.  Disaster ensues.

Months later Sasha shows up in a remote Aussie wilderness; apparently she’s trying to escape her demons by kayaking solo down a rapids-heavy river.  Except she has drawn the attention of Ben (Taron Egerton), a local  whose chatty demeanor masks demons of his own. 

What ensues is a life-and-death chase through some of the most spectacular scenery ever captured on film. Cinematographer Lawrence Sher was obviously inspired by the landscape of New South Wales’ Blue Mountains, where the shoot took place.

Theron is her usual capable self.  But Egerton is genuinely disturbing.  His Ben is a font of smarmy friendliness with a core of cold-blooded malevolence.  In retrospect it’s obvious that his turn last year in in the mini-series “Smoke” was a sort of dry run for the two-faced character he plays here.

Baltasar Kormakur’s direction is taunt and creepy, slowing sowing seeds of premonition that bloom into outright panic. Pulse-pounding stuff.

Chris Hemsworth

“CRIME 101” My rating: C+ (Netflix)

140 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The buzz on Bart Layton’s “Crime 101” was that of a crime drama in the same league as Michael Mann’s “Heat.”

Well, the films have a lot in common.  Both are stories of cops and robbers in L.A.  Both have a whole slew of characters played by an A-list roster of talent. Both aspire to epic status.

But Layton is no Michael Mann.  “Crime 101” is an OK ride, but it never gets close to the heights of “Heat.”

Chris Hemsworth is Davis, whose specialty is robbing jewelry stores and couriers carrying diamonds and other valuable stuff. He’s a real pro who plans carefully and prides himself on never physically harming his victims.

He’s also socially backwards, a guy who tries so hard to remain anonymous that he has abandoned his personality in the process.  In other words, he’s a lonely S.O.B.

His M.O. has attracted the attention of LAPD detective Lou (Mark Ruffalo), a vaguely seedy fiftysomething.  With no personal life to speak of, Lou dedicates his existence to identifying the man behind a series of jewel heists that invariably occur along the 101, the superhighway that bisects the city.

The plot is set in motion by a rift between Davis and Money (Nick Nolte) the aging crook who finances his capers. They break up their partnership, but Davis isn’t aware that Money plans on going ahead with their last planned job, taking on a blond psycho with violent tendencies (Barry Keoghan).

And then there’s the high-end insurance company agent (Halle Berry) whose insider knowledge of the rich and famous make her a font of useful info for a criminal mind.

Toss into the mix brief appearances by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tate Donovan and you’ve got plenty of acting talent.  But the results are just so-so.

| Robert W. Butler

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