Butler's Cinema Scene

Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena

“END OF WATCH” My rating: B+ (Now playing)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R 

“End of Watch” is like an entire season of TV’s excellent “Southland” distilled into one feature film.

Which is another way of saying it’s one of the better cop flicks you’ll ever see.

Writer/director David Ayer, who made a splash a 11 years ago with “Training Day” and has been struggling ever since to match that film’s blend of style, suspense and acting chops, here makes up for a wasted decade.

“End of Watch” is a buddy movie, but one so reeking of versimilitude, one that so perfectly captures the camaraderie of cocky young cops on patrol, that it transcends a couple of common-sense objections (no officers in LAPD history have ever seen as much action as the uniforms played here by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena) to emerge as a near-documentary look at life on the job.

Part of that is Ayer’s technique. Recognizing that nothing happens nowadays that isn’t captured by some sort of recording device (the police learned this the hard way with the Rodney King beatdown), Ayer presents his story largely as “found footage” captured by surveillance cameras, police dashboard cams and cell phones. And then there are the images recorded by cop Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal), a techno geek of the first order who pins mini-cams on himself and his partner, Mike Zavala (Pena), wires his police cruiser for sight and sound, and often carries his own digital camera onto crime scenes.

Heck, even the bad guys like to record their crimes for posterity.

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Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere

“ARBITRAGE” My rating: B  (Now playing wide)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: R

In economics, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets, creating a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices.

Financial whiz Robert Miller, portrayed with great relish and considerable subtlety by Richard Gere in the new thriller “Arbitrage,” extends that concept to his daily life, which is compartmentalized into different markets…one for family, one for romance, and several for his business.

When we first encounter Miller he’s on a private plane returning from a meeting with a fellow financial heavy hitter who wants to buy Miller’s company. In Gere’s hands Miller seems the perfect CEO — calm, controlled, yet somehow passionate about the business. He handsome, he’s funny. He seems very, very smart.

This, you think, is a guy you could trust with your money.

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“SLEEPWALK WITH ME”  My rating : B

90 minutes | No MPAA rating

Standup comic Mike Birbiglia makes a way more than adequate feature directing debut with “Sleepwalk With Me,” a big screen adaptation of his one-man stage show that suggests a genuine cinematic talent in the making.

Like most good movies, Birbiglia’s semi-autobiographical effort works on several levels.

On one it addresses the dreams of aspiring standup comic Matt Pandamiglio (Birbiglia). Matt tends bar in a comedy club but lives for those few moments when he’s allowed to climb on stage and try out his own material.  Problem is, Matt is almost painfully shy and tongue tied and, at first, anyway, his halting, uncertain delivery generates more pain than pleasure.

“Sleepwalk With Me” follows Matt’s gradual climb to comedy competence and, eventually, excellence.

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I’ve never been a big fan of horror movies. Too many cliches, too many worn-out tropes.

And at this late stage it’s almost impossible to come up with an idea so new, so shocking that it grabs audiences the way, say, “The Exorcist” did nearly 40 years ago. It seems like we’ve seen it all.

When we reach this stage of saturation, what’s needed is a movie that delivers the familiar in an entirely different way.  Which is where “Cabin in the Woods” comes in.

Written by geek god Joss Whedon and his colleague Drew Goddard (a producer on TV’s “Lost” and “Alias” and a screenwriter of “Cloverfield”) and directed by Goddard (it’s his first feature credit in that capacity), “Cabin…” cleverly turns the usual horror flick cliches inside out, much in the same way that Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead 2” did back in the day.

You’ve got a quintet of typical college students gearing up for a big weekend in the country.

The buff jock Curt (Chris Hemsworth of “Thor” fame) has a cousin who has recently purchased an old cabin deep in the woods. He recruits his squeeze Dana (Kristen Connolly), her virginal galpal Jules (Anna Hutchison), a hunky brain named Holden (Jesse Williams) and the wisecracking stoner Marty (a scene-stealing Fran Kranz) for two days of sylvan revels.

Their preparations and drive into the forest are observed by Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford), who are installed in a high-tech control center filled with TV monitors that allow them to eavesdrop on the partiers’ every move through literally thousands of hidden cameras and microphones.

Just what are Sitterson and Hadley up to? Our first guess is that they’re producing a reality TV show in which unsuspecting subjects are put into “horror” situations. In any case, these two button-pushers command a huge staff of helpers who bring their scenarios to life.

In this regard the film reminds of “Hunger Games” and “The Truman Show.”

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“FAREWELL, MY QUEEN” My rating: B+ (Now showing at the Glenwood Arts)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The fate of France’s King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, never seems to lose its appeal for filmmakers.

But writer/director Benoit Jacquot finds a new twist with “Farewell, My Queen,” in which the French Revolution and the fate of royalty is viewed through the eyes of the hired help. It’s like “Upstairs Downstairs – Gallic Division.”

Sidonie (Lea Seydoux, who was an assassin in the last “Mission Impossible” film and the shop owner who ends up with Owen Wilson in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”) is the Queen’s reader. Each morning she greets Her Majesty with a few passages from a favorite book … precisely which book is determined by the head lady in waiting (Noemie Lvovsky), who attempts to match the day’s reading to the Queen’s current temperament.

Living in Versailles in 1789, it turns out, is less glamour than drudgery. Sidonie and her fellow workers spend most of their time in dank, undecorated rooms with meager furniture and dirty plastered walls. They take their meals in a cellar that’s positively dungeon-like.

But Sidonie came here to serve her queen. And the moments she spends with Marie Antoinette in the Queen’s sumptuously appointed suites are her reason for living.

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“CELESTE & JESSE FOREVER” My rating: C (Opens Aug. 31 at the Glenwood Red Bridge, Town Center 20 and Studio 30 )

91 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Despite some laughs and the presence of the ever-amusing Andy Samberg, “Celeste & Jesse Forever” is not a comedy.

Rather, it is a sincere attempt to analyze the breakup of a marriage. It raises some interesting points.

Unfortunately, it delivers them in a repetitive and not-very-engrossing way.

We meet the titular characters (Rashida Jones, who co-wrote the screenplay, and Samberg) driving to meet friends for dinner. They appear to be a perfect couple, keyed in to each other’s emotions, sharing little private games.

It’s only when they sit down with their pals that we realize that Celeste and Jesse have been separated for several months in anticipation of a divorce. But they still feel like a couple. In fact Jesse now lives in the garage/studio behind Celeste’s house.

This setup creeps out their friends as unnatural. But for C and J it’s the ideal, civilized, non-acrimonious breakup, one that doesn’t force their acquaintances to side with one or the other partner.

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“COSMOPOLIS” My rating: C (Opening Aug. 31 at the Glenwood Arts)

108 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Because it stars “Twilight” hottie Robert Pattinson, some of his loyal tweener fans  and their moms may think about seeing his latest film, “Cosmopolis.”

Think again.

Our first glimpse of Rob-Pat as Eric Packer, a billionaire master of Wall Street, does remind a bit of his “Twilight” persona. Packer is pale, red-lipped and hides from the sun behind a dark pair of glasses. And you could describe him as a vampire, at least in the economic sense.

But beware, ladies. This film was directed by David Cronenberg, who has made a career of psychopathy (see “Crash,” “Dead Rigners,” etc.), and over its nearly two-hour running time Pattinson’s Packer has sex with several women, kills someone (for no apparent reason) and submits to the longest prostate examination in medical (and certainly movie) history.

Moreover, “Cosmopolis” is a dispiritingly leaden movie, one populated less with characters than with archtypes. People here speak in long, theatrical monologues. They might as well be wind-up toys.

It wears out its welcome long before the closing bell. (more…)

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“LAWLESS” My rating: B- (Opening wide on Aug. 29)

115 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Reeking of period atmosphere and packed with faces that seem to have stepped out of the WPA  photographs of Dorothea Lange (or maybe the Skid Row portraiture of Weegee), the period crime drama “Lawless” certainly looks good.

Guy Pearce

But the latest from Australia’s John Hillcoat (who gave us the Down Under western “The Proposition” and the post-apocalyptic “The Road”) is a dramatically fuzzy venture, one that clumsily attempts to balance vintage bootlegger clichés and hard-core violence with moments of oddball humor.

The subject of the screenplay by Nick Cave (the eccentric Aussie rock star who also scripted “The Proposition”) are the backwoods Bondurants of Virginia, a real-life clan that in the early years of the Depression ran a major bootlegging operation  providing illegal liquor to speakeasies all over the East Coast.

Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy, last seen – barely —  beneath Bane’s mask in “The Dark Knight Rises”) heads the operation. A veteran of the Great War who has a reputation as unkillable, Forrest is socially uneasy loner who says little (he croaks like Billy Bob Thornton in “Slingblade”) and radiates an arresting blend of primitive strength and intimidation. Folks hereabouts know better than to cross him.

Helping out with the heavy lifting is brother Howard (Jason Clarke), a shaggy fellow a bit too in love with the family product to be wholly reliable.

Baby brother Jack (Shia LaBeouf) is eager to get into the bootlegging game, but Forrest wants him to go slow, figuring Jack lacks the cut-throat inclinations the job demands.

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“TAKE THIS WALTZ” My rating: C+ (Opening Aug. 10 at the Tivoli)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Some nagging voice in the back of my head tells me I should have liked “Take This Waltz” a whole lot more.

But I cannot lie. I didn’t.

Going in, it sounded like a winner: Michelle Williams starring in the new film written and directed by Sarah Polley, whose Altzheimer’s drama “Away From Her” was one of the best movies of 2006.

But I found “Take This Waltz” pushing me away instead of pulling me in. In part this is because Polley has fashioned a romance of indecision, a brave move but not one filled with big emotional hooks.

Another problem may be that “Take This Waltz” is very much a woman’s picture. I don’t mean that in any sexist way…rather, it feels as if Polley has dedicated herself to capturing a woman’s view of life and romance on the screen with such singlemindedness that those of us with our plumbing on the outside may feel excluded.

Maybe women will view the film differently.

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“HOPE SPRINGS” My rating: B+ (Opening wide on Aug. 8)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Nobody tells a joke in “Hope Springs.” Nor do they ever try to elicit a laugh from the audience.

And yet this latest film from director David Frankel (“The Devil Wears Prada”) is devastatingly funny.

For this you can credit screenwriter Vanessa Taylor (making her feature debut after a TV career that includes scripts for “Game of Thrones,” “Everwood” and “Alias”), who writes about marriage with so many dead-on insights that at a recent screening the lady behind me kept muttering “Been there. Done that.”

Taylor’s screenplay generates laughter through character and situation, not by tossing out clever lines. And the results are pretty wonderful, a grown-up comedy about grown-up problems that will undoubtedly resonate far and wide.

Of course it helps to have Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones interpreting your material.

As Kay and Arnold, who after 30 years have settled into a rut of remote cohabitation,  Streep and Jones create what may very well end up being iconic personalities, movie characters that take on an importance beyond that of a mere film. Kay and Arnold, one suspects, may do for sixtysomethings what Juno did for smart-talking teens.

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