Butler's Cinema Scene

“IN THE FAMILY” My rating: A- (Opening May 20 at the Tivoli)

169 minutes | No MPAA rating

“In the Family” is a first feature so meticulously made, quietly heartfelt and carefully modulated that feels like a revelation, like the arrival of a talent that might really matter. An American Bresson, perhaps.

Except…except that writer/director/star Patrick Wang seems unable to turn it off. “In the Family” runs for nearly three freaking hours, and while audiences might tolerate that excess in a big-screen epic, it’s an intimidating thing in an intimate family drama. Unless you’re O’Neill, and even then it’s iffy.

Still, I saw the film a week ago and it has stuck with me. It establishes its own rhythms and viewpoint, it took up residence in my head. That doesn’t happen all that often.

What Wang gives us here is a story about a gay family, and yet I hesitate to call this a “gay” movie because its concerns — and Wang’s obvious artistry — are so universal.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Alex…one of the victims of “Bully”

“BULLY”  My rating: B (Opening wide on April 13)

99 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Bully” isn’t a particularly artful documentary, but there’s no question of its effectiveness.

Lee Hirsch’s film actually should be called “Bullied,” since it’s not about the perpetrators of classroom abuse but about the victims — the geeks, the gays, the goofy kids who go through life with a metaphorical target pinned to their backs.

Thus “Bully” doesn’t even address the “whys” of bullying. It’s all about the emotional and psychic pain it inflicts…and it more than proves its case.

Hirsch concentrates on five cases of bullying. In Sioux City, Iowa, he hides a microphone on young Alex to record the abuse piled on him every day on the bus ride to school. Hirsch — who served as his own cinematographer — also employs what seem to be hidden cameras to capture the slaps, punches and pushing (either that or the young bullies are actually showing off for the filmmaker).

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Maggie Grace and Guy Pierce in “Lockout”

“LOCKOUT” My rating: C (Opens wide on April 13)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There are moments in “Lockout” — usually when Guy Pearce is channelling his best “Die Hard”-era Bruce Willis —  that you really wish this Aussie actor got better material.

“Lockout” is easiest described by listing the movies it rips off: The original “Die Hard,” “Escape from New York,” the first “Star Wars”…it’s not so much a movie as a laundry list of references.

The writers and directors — James Mather and Stephen St. Leger — start things off with a nifty sequence. Pierce’s character, a CIA agent named Snow, is tied to a chair and being roughed up by a goon. Between deafening punches, Snow cracks wise. He’s cocky and funny and sardonic. An Energizer Bunny with a steel jaw.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor

“SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN” My rating: B (Opening March 30 at the Glenwood Arts)

107 minutes | MPAA rating:PG-13

With its gentle humor and forgiving view of human nature, Lasse Hallstrom’s “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” reminds me a lot of Bill Forsyth’s “Local Hero.”

Not that it’s as good as that sublime comedy (among the best of the ’80s), but it’s a low-keyed charmer that will leave most of us with bemused smiles plastered across our mugs.

Ewan McGregor is Alfred Jones, a scientist with the British Ministry of Fisheries. He’s a science wonk who takes his job of riding herd on Her Majesty’s wild salmon population quite seriously indeed. So he’s none too thrilled when someone in the Prime Minister’s office — hoping for some news from the Arab world that doesn’t involve an explosion — directs him to take  a meeting with a publicist named Harriet (Emily Blunt) who’s in the employ of a fantastically wealthy oil sheik.

This Muhammed (Amr Waked) is an avid fly fisherman who dreams of establishing a salmon fishery in his native land. All that’s required is to build a massive dam, create a huge lake, and somehow fool North Atlantic salmon to reproduce amid the desert sands.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Matt O'Leary and Rachael Harris

“NATURAL SELECTION” My rating: B- (Opening March 30 at the Glenwood Arts)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Read Full Post »

Tilda Swinton

“WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN” My rating: B (Opening March 23 at the Tivoli, Glenwood Arts and Glenwood at Red Bridge)

112 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Psychopathology runs rampant on our movie screens (and, if recent surveys are to be believed, in the ranks of Wall Street types), but usually the focus is on the psychopath, not the people he leaves behind.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” is a sort of “Bad Seed” for the era of Columbine, one that focuses not so much on a bad kid as on the mother who produced him.

When we first meet Eva (the ever excellent Tilda Swinton) she’s living in a modest house in a borderline neighborhood. She works in a travel agency. Apart from her loner tendencies, there’s nothing too unusual about her.

But clearly there’s something in her past. Why else would she emerge from her front door every morning to find vile threats spray painted on her front porch and car?

Lynne Ramsay’s film alternates between the present, in which a largely stoic (shell-shocked?) Eva tries to get on, and the past, which reveals her life as a wife and mother.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

“JOHN CARTER” My rating: C- (Opening wide on March 9)
132 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Well, that’s two hours I’m not getting back.

For fans of sword-and-sorcery fiction, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter series of pulp novels set on Mars have long been a sort of cinematic Holy Grail.

Filled with bizarre creatures, massive alien cities and unearthly (well, duh) landscapes, the books have for a century defied big-screen treatment in large part because Burroughs (who was also the creator of Tarzan) had an imagination too fevered to be realized through conventional movie technology.

Now that we’re in a digital age where whatever you can think of can be made flesh (figuratively speaking), “John Carter” has finally come to your local multiplex courtesy of the folks at Walt Disney.

It’s got eye candy out the wazoo, but under the direction of Andrew Stanton (the director of Pixar’s “WALL-E” and “Finding Nemo” here making his live-action debut) this hugely expensive (reportedly north of $200 million) production is a remarkably leaden thing, marked by an embarrassingly inadequate lead performance and an utter absence of anything resembling a directorial style.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Leila Hatami and Peyman Moaadi in “A Separation”

“A SEPARATION”  My rating: A- (Opening March 2 at the Glenwood at Red Bridge and the Leawood)

123 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There’s no small irony in the fact that Iran has one of today’s most aesthetically developed film scenes precisely because it is a repressive society.

Like American filmmakers during the days of the Hollywood Production Code, Irani directors must find subtle, artistic ways to make their points without incurring the wrath of the theocracy. In a conservative society where the government’s will is enforced by the “morality police,” you’d best cloak your incendiary sentiments in something that looks like obedience.

“A Separation” isn’t incendiary, exactly, but writer/director Asghar Farhadi paints an unforgettable picture of a world where men and women must couch their behavior within socially accepted limits, and where the necessity of appearing pious often pushes them to do things that are anything but.

Farhadi’s film — this year’s winner of the Oscar for foreign language film — begins in a nondescript government office where Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and his wife Simin (Leila Hatami) have come to air their marital disputes before a magistrate.

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Fabrice Luchini and lady friends

“THE WOMEN ON THE 6th FLOOR”  My rating: B  (Opens March 2 at the Glenwood Arts)

104 minutes | No MPAA rating

The premise of “The Women on the 6th Floor” is so unoriginal it practically creaks.

It’s about an uptight bourgeoise character learning the real meaning of life from the decent, hard-working proletariat.

But the delivery, especially the acting, is so deftly executed that rather than grousing at its predictability you’ll find yourself sighing with pleasure at this souffle from writer/director Philippe Le Guay.

Fabrice Luchini (last seen as Catharine Daneuve’s philandering hubby in “Potiche”) is Jean-Louis,  owner of a brokerage firm who still lives in the apartment building where he was born.

He’s got a brittle blonde wife (Sandrine Kiberlain) who does little save indulge her neuroses, and a couple of spoiled, arrogant sons off at boarding school.

And now that his aged mother has finally died and her grumpy maid retreated to the provincial burg that spawned her, Jean-Louis is in the market for a new domestic.

(more…)

Read Full Post »