Butler's Cinema Scene

“LIFE OF PI”  My rating:  A (Opens wide on Nov. 21)

127 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

If ever there was a novel that defied the journey to film, it is Yan Martel’s 2001  “Life of Pi.”

The narrative presents a daunting logistical nightmare for any filmmaker. Most of the story involves a shipwrecked teenager who spends months at sea sharing a lifeboat with a huge Bengal tiger. It’s the sort of setup that demands the utmost of film technology.

And, in the book’s final pages, Martel introduces the possibility that our young hero is an unreliable narrator, that he has invented this epic yarn to cover a much more tawdry, shameful and shocking reality.

How do you make that work on the screen? I thought it couldn’t be done.

I was  wrong.

Ang Lee’s film version of “Life of Pi” is so good on so many levels that it’s unsettling.

Not only does Lee capture the vast arc of this unconventional survival tale, but he renders it in the best 3-D I’ve ever witnessed (the only thing that comes close is “Avatar”). Moreover, the entire film is a visual tour de force, a panorama of such hallucinogenic beauty that words cannot do it justice.

For mind-blowing visuals it is rivaled only by the acid-trippy “star gate” sequence at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” This film has that sort of impact. (more…)

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“CHINESE TAKE-AWAY”  My rating: B (Opens Nov. 2 at the Glenwood Arts)

93 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Chinese Take-Away” opens with one of the weirdest images you’ll see in movies this year.

On an idyllic lake in China two young lovers sit in a boat. The boy has a couple of wedding rings…he’s preparing to propose. And then a cow falls from the sky, shattering the boat and, in the process, the kid’s life.

Next thing you know we’re in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the tiny hardware store operated by Roberto (Ricardo Darin).  He’s a middle-aged grump, sour and solitary, obsessed with making sure that when his suppliers sell him a box of 500 screws that there are actually 500 screws in the box.  He spends a lot of time counting screws…that and collecting tiny blown glass animals for a shrine to his late mother, who died giving birth to him..

Sebastian Borensztein’s comedy with a heart throws together the truculent Roberto with a visitor, Jun (Ignacio Huang), that same young man from the comic/tragic prologue. Jun has traveled to Argentina to live with an uncle who immigrated there years before. But the uncle has moved out of the city to parts unknown and the childlike Jun, who speaks not a word of Spanish, must throw himself upon the comfort of strangers — or at least on the comfort of the strange Roberto.

That you can see where “Chinese Take-Away” is going doesn’t really diminish its pleasures. Roberto tries repeatedly to ditch his unwelcome guest, but his conscience always gets the best of him. For his part, Jun does what he can to be useful to his benefactor. And his presence does have one upside…it shows Roberto’s off-and-on girl (Muriel Santa Ana) that he’s not such a curmudgeon after all.

The joy in all this is the balancing of Roberto’s surly pessimism against Jun’s sad innocence. Together they make a pretty complete human being.

| Robert W. Butler

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Rodriguez

“SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN” My rating: A- (Opens Oct. 12 at the Tivoli and Glenwood at Red Bridge)

86 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Searching for Sugar Man” plays less like a documentary than like a decade-spanning, continent-jumping whodunnit  about a legendary “lost” musician.

It is both specific and mythic, and the film is such a perfect series of ever-expanding revelations that I’m afraid to say too much about it, lest the pleasure of discovery be ruined for those who have so far managed to avoid the publicity blitz surrounding the movie.

So I’m going to assume, dear reader, that you know next to nothing about the obscure musician known as Rodriguez, and that you missed last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” segment about him and this movie.

This effort from Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul begins in Detroit, where in the late ‘60s a musician named Rodriguez recorded two albums that vanished without a commercial ripple. He was known only as Rodriguez, a singer/songwriter described by his producers – one a seasoned veteran of the Motown label – as an egoless drifter and a musical wordsmith whose songs rivaled those of Bob Dylan.

He wasn’t just a musician, they say. “He was a wise man and a prophet.”

No one seems to know what happened to Rodriguez. He just vanished.

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Chris Rock, Julie Delpy

“2 DAYS IN NEW YORK” My rating: C+ (Now showing at the Tivoli)

96 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“2 Days in New York” is absolutely dispensable, but as time killers go it’s a pleasant enough diversion, being  a continuation of the story begun five years ago in “2 Days in Paris.”

Once again French actress Julie Delpy writes, directs and stars in a comedy, casting her own relations and friends as the friends and family of her fictional character.

“…Paris” was about a French girl, Marion (Delpy), bringing her American beau (Adam Goldberg) to meet her eccentric parents.  Playing the latter were Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet, Delpy’s real-life parents.

The new film – obviously it takes place in NYC — starts with a puppet show  being acted out by Marion for the benefit of her young son. From this we learn that Marion is now divorced (the Adam Goldberg character, not seen here, lives just a few blocks away), that her mother is in heaven (indeed, Delpy’s real-life mother died in 2009) and that her father  and sister are coming to visit so that they can meet Marion’s new live-in beau.

That would be Mingus (Chris Rock), a music essayist and public radio deejay who has his own 8-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. He, Marion, her boy Lulu and his daughter Willow now happily cohabit in a Manhattan apartment.

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Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller

“THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER”  My rating: B+ (Opening Oct. 5 at the AMC Studio)

103 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Coming-of-age movies are such a cinematic staple that it takes something special to get my attention.

“Perks of Being a Wallflower” grabbed me early and never let go.

This directing debut by Stephen Chbosky (who adapted his own novel for young adults) isn’t technically adventurous, but when it comes to characterization, dialogue and situations, it’s like the work of an old soul.

Or, rather, an older soul looking back on his own youth, since I can only imagine that big chunks of the story are autobiographical.

Our protagonist is Charlie (an astonishingly good Logan Lerman), a loner and “wallflower” who is not at all looking forward to his first day in high school.

Charlie has a past, we learn in the course of the film.  There’s the suicide of one of his friends and the driving death years before of his beloved aunt (a relationship jam-packed with hair-raising, late-arriving revelations). Moreover, Charlie already has endured one mental/emotional breakdown and lives in terror of yet another.

Charlie is the kind of kid who gets picked on because he’s smart and decent and can see through the desperate posing that passes for adolescent society.

Though a lowly freshman, he’s lucky enough to fall into the good graces of a small coterie of high school outsiders, seniors who recognize in him their own former selves.

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“FRANKENWEENIE” My rating: A- (Opens Wide on Oct. 5)

87 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Deliciously twisted yet genuinely warm, “Frankenweenie” is my new  favorite Tim Burton movie. At least it’s in a heated competition with ”Ed Wood” and “Sweeny Todd” for top honors.

Like Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein,”  this is a wonderfully inventive, thoroughly hilarious and spectacularly executed homage to the old Universal Pictures horror movies.

Except that it’s animated, told from a child’s point of view and has a big, big heart. It’s destined to become a classic.

(This feature is an expansion of the live-action short “Frankenweenie” which Burton directed back in 1984 while employed by Disney.  You might want to check out the original on YouTube.)

Presented in glorious black and white (I saw the 3-D version…nifty), this is the story of a boy and his dog.

Victor (last-name: Frankenstein) is a loner whose best friend is his dog Sparky. Victor’s parents try to get him to participate in sports and other group activities, but he’s happiest either making monster movies in which Sparky stars or holed up in the attic of their tract home where he turns everyday appliances into lab equipment for his scientific experiments.

When poor Sparky is run over by a car, a mourning Victor secretly exhumes the pooch’s body from the pet cemetery and wires it up to receive a charge of lightning from a passing storm.

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“GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING” My rating: B (Opens Sept. 28 at the Tivoli)

97 minutes | No MPAA rating

For those unfamiliar with painter Gerhard Richter, Corrina Belz’s new documentary might not mean much.

It’s basically a cinema verite effort (no narration, no interpretation) that follows Richter as he paints and plans gallery shows. But the film doesn’t illuminate his life much beyond what happens while the camera is running. Despite some vintage footage and old TV interviews , you can’t call it a biographical project. It captures just a thin slice of Richter’s 80 years.

If, however, you’re a hard-core art fan, you’ll recognize Richter as the world’s top-selling artist with total sales that now top those of Claude Monet, Alberto Giacometti and Mark Rothko.

As the film makes clear, Richter’s success isn’ just hype.  He’s a brilliant painter who, like Picasso, keeps changing his style.

So the chance to spend time in his Cologne studio, to hear his ideas on art, and to actually watch this normally reclusive genius actually create paintings is a big deal. (more…)

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