Butler's Cinema Scene

There isn’t a whole lot of middle ground when it comes to Larry Fine, Moe Howard and Curly Howard.

Either you think the Three Stooges are hilarious (meaning you’re probably a regular guy) or you think they’re utterly stupid (meaning you’re a woman…or one of those guys).

So…half of you could not care less about the release of the massive 20-disc “The Three Stooges Ultimate Collection.” But for the other half it’s a sort of comedy Second Coming.

(A confession: I’m one of those guys. The Stooge magic never worked on me – or at least it hasn’t since the fifth grade.)

Well, love ‘em or loathe ‘em, you’ve got to give props to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for putting together 60-plus freakin’ hours (and three decades) of nonstop Nyuk Nyuk, eye poking, head-thumping and face slapping.

What you’ve got here are 190 shorts (or, more accurately, a handful of basic slapstick routines recycled through 190 scenarios so similar it’s impossible to tell them apart), two feature films from the late ‘50s (“Have Rocket, Will Travel” and “Rockin’ in the Rockies”) and, of particular interest to hard-core Stooge fans, three discs of rare and unreleased content centering on various solo short subjects by the boys. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Mark Duplas, Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt

“YOUR SISTER’S SISTER” My rating: A- (Opening June 29 at the Tivoli and Leawood)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Lynn Shelton’s “Your Sister’s Sister” is some sort of miracle — a cleverly conceived, perfectly acted three-character dramedy that has all the verbal beauty of a great stage play and yet always feels absolutely cinematic, albeit in an unforced sort of way.

Iris (Emily Blunt) was dating Tom. But Tom died. Since then Iris has become best friends with Tom’s brother Jack (Mark Duplass). Now she’s concerned because Jack’s drinking, bitterness and lack of direction since Tom’s death have reached a tipping point.

So she initiates her version of an intervention, telling Jack — ordering him, really — to ride his bike to the ferry (they live in Seattle) and go to an island where Iris’ family has a rarely-used home.

No TV. No Internet. Jack will be forced to spend time alone with himself.

Except that when Jack pedals up to the threshold on a cold night (nights are always cold on the island, and wet, too) he finds the house occupied. Iris’ half sister, Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), is already encamped. She’s left her girlfriend of seven years and is trying to get her head together.

A bottle of tequila and some clever conversation later and Hannah and Jack are tumbling into bed together. It’s not an auspicious mating (he’s got, er, control problems and she hasn’t been with a man for a long time) and the next morning they’re prepared to write the whole thing off as a Cuervo-instigated mistake.

Except that Iris suddenly appears. Jack and Hannah agree not to tell her what happened.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Channing Tatum and friends strut their stuff

“MAGIC MIKE”  My rating: C+  (Opens wide on June 29)

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

For its first 40 minutes – or until it realizes it hasn’t anything to say – “Magic Mike” offers an amusing inversion of movie sex roles.

In this case the usual big-bazoomed bimbos have been replaced by prodigiously packaged dudes.

The film, you see, is a sort of distaff “Show Girls” set in the world of male strippers.  It makes no bones about offering female moviegoers the same sexual  voyeurism men have enjoyed since forever.  Just consider how many scenes in recent movies and TV series have been set, quite arbitrarily, in titty bars.

Turnabout is fair play.

But one could wish that the unpredictable Steven Soderbergh —  who can go from an arty effort like “Che” to the strictly-for-the-money “Ocean’s 11” franchise without breaking a sweat – had something of substance to offer once the thrill of those taunt pecs and rippling abs wears off.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Mark Duplass, Aubrey Plaza

“SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED” My rating: B Opens wide on June 29)

86 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Safety Not Guaranteed” is an indie sci-fi movie.

Sorta.

Well, not really.

What it actually is is an indie relationship movie that’s pretending it’s a sci-fi movie.

It’s sort of a bait-and-switch situation, but I can’t complain because the film from director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly is consistently weird and goofily amusing and it features yet another good perf from Mark Duplass, who is seriously courting overexposure (currently you can see him in “Darling Companion,” “Your Sister’s Sister” and “People Like Us”).

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“TED” My rating: C+ (Opening wide on June 29)

106 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Ted” begins about 30 years ago in Massachusetts at Christmas, a special time of year, a stentorian narrator (Patrick Stewart) informs us, “when Boston children join together to beat up Jewish kids.”

That level of snarky sardonicism is a constant in this profane fairy tale about a lonely little boy whose beloved teddy bear comes to life. Sounds kind of touching, but don’t be fooled. As written and directed by bad taste king Seth McFarland (creator of TV’s “The Family Guy”), “Ted” is hilariously crude and good-naturedly offensive.

You’d expect nothing less.

Mark Wahlberg plays our hero, John Bennett, who as a little boy found his world turned inside out when his stuffed bear Teddy sprang to life as the result of his Yuletide wish. Initially the talking bear was a big celebrity (there’s old video footage of Ted trading quips with Johnny and Ed on the “Tonight Show”), but now the world has pretty much forgotten about this aberration of nature.

But not John, who still loves Teddy with all his heart. Of course it’s no longer the love of a little boy for a beloved toy. Now it’s the mutual love of a couple of ambitionless stoners who have spent two decades reinforcing each other’s adolescent impulses. (more…)

Read Full Post »

“PROMETHEUS” My rating: B- (Opening Wide on June 8)

124 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Fans of the “Alien” franchise have been awaiting Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” with the eager anticipation of cult members preparing for the landing of the mothership.

It’s been more than 30 years, after all, since Scott gave us the original “Alien,” and what red-blooded movie lover could fail to be enthused at the prospect of the veteran director delivering a prequel to that horror-in-outer-space classic?

Now “Prometheus” has arrived with a slew of state-of-the-art effects, a vision of how the those creepy insect-like aliens came to be, and a promising cast.

The verdict? An “A” for the visuals. A “B” for the backstory (which borrows a lot from “2001: A Space Odyssey”). And a “C” for the human factor.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Kristen Stewart…a different sort of Snow White

“SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN”  My rating: B- (Opens wide June 1)

127 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Woody Allen once said of his childhood viewing of  Disney’s “Snow White” that the titular heroine was a  a drag but that he found the evil queen to be incredibly hot.

One might say the same of “Snow White and the Huntsman.”

It’s not that Kristen Stewart’s Snow White is bland, exactly (heck, she ends the film encased in steel and leading an army like Joan of Arc), but rather that Charlize Theron’s evil queen provides the most formidable competition imaginable.  Theron is hands down the most compelling thing in sight.

And given the wildly imaginative art direction on display here, that’s saying something.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“MONSIEUR LAZHAR”  My rating: B (Opening June 1 at the Tivoli and Glenwood at Red Bridge)

99 minutes | MPAA rating

In the hands of an American movie studio the setup of of the French-Canadian “Monsieur Lazhar” would undoubtedly result in a bathetic wallow.

But writer/director Philippe Falardeau obviously is a very subtle  fellow, for this classroom slice-of-life (a nominee for the Oscar for foreign language film) is quiet, thoughtful and gently moving without dipping into histrionics.

Certainly the subject matter invites big gestures. In the opening moments a grade school boy named Simon (Emilien Neron) discovers that while he and his fellow students were on the playground, their young teacher hanged herself from an overhead pipe in the classroom.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“DARLING COMPANION”  My rating: B (Opening May 25 at the Glenwood at Red Bridge)

103 minutes | MPAA Rating: PG-13

Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline…looking for a dog

“Darling Companion” has been undergoing a trashing from many of the nation’s film critics, who apparently deem it insipid and boring.

Sorry, guys. The wife and I (and the handful of other critics in the theater) found the latest from Lawrence Kasdan to be a funny, warm, well-acted story about aging and relationships (and aging relationships).

It’s not earth-shaking, no. Nor is it terribly original.

But I’m damned if it didn’t leave me feeling very, very good.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“BERNIE” My rating:  B (Opening wide on May 25)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

We so often see Jack Black going “big” in broad comic performances that it’s easy to forget that this is an actor capable of great subtlety.

Certainly it’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job than he does in “Bernie,”  Richard Linklater’s based-on-fact study of a small-town eccentric now serving a life sentence in a Texas prison.

Bernie Tiede (Black) is a church-going, giving, glad-handing funeral director who comes to tiny  Carthage, Texas, in the late 1980s and quickly became one of the town’s most visible and beloved citizens.

The sort of guy who goes  the extra mile for his fellows, Bernie befriends local dowager and recent widow Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), a rich witch so disagreeable that one local describes her as capable of “ripping you a two-bedroom, double-wide asshole.”

(more…)

Read Full Post »