Posted in New on DVD, Uncategorized, tagged Fred Phelps, John Goodman, Kevin Smith, Melissa Leo, Michael Parks on October 27, 2011| 2 Comments »
Michael Parks, a gay-bashing preacher in "Red State"
Think Fred Phelps meets the Waco standoff by way of a “Hostel” flick.
The movie is several things at once, some elements more successful than others. But for all of its borderline naive satire and paranoia it cannot be easily dismissed, if only because Smith is working here with some very talented actors who elevate the material into something quite watchable.
Posted in Uncategorized on October 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The two best films of the recent Kansas International Film Festival — at least in the opinion of festival goers who voted on their favorites — open today (Oct. 14) at the Glenwood Arts. Plus a KIFF doc about a transgender icon gets a run at the Rio.
“eMANNzipation” My rating: B- (Opens Oct. 14 at the Glenwood Arts)
115 minutes | No MPAA rating
“eMANNcipation” would be the perfect movie for the Lifetime cable channel. It’s about a spousal abuse and how the victim overcomes many obstacles to achieve true emancipation.
Yeah, we’ve been there and done that.
Urs Stampfli and Frances Heller in better days
But this German effort from writer/director Philipp Muller-Dorn pulls a switcheroo. It’s not about an abused woman. Its protagonist is a man…a man whose wife beats the crap out of him.
When we first meet Dominik (Urs Stampfli) he’s living with a married friends, having been beaten up (he’s got a patch over one eye) and kicked out of the house…this in addition to losing his job.
The mopey, unassertive Dominik is soon asked to leave and winds up in a shelter for abused men.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Deborah Kara Unger, Emilio Estevez, James Nesbitt, Martin Sheen on October 7, 2011| 1 Comment »
“THE WAY” My rating: B (Opening wide Oct. 7)
115 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
Emilio Estevez’s “The Way” is old fashioned filmmaking.
By which I mean that it takes its time, lets its story and its characters breathe, and slowly gets under your skin until it becomes a part of you.
It’s not perfect, but this variation on the road movie — or “Canterbury Tales,” if you’re a classicist — is terrifically satisfying.
Widower and LA area opthamologist Tom Avery (Martin Sheen) is enjoying a game of golf when the cell phone call comes through. His only child, his son Daniel, has died while traveling in France.
Tom has no choice but to catch a flight to Paris. A train trip brings him to a small town in the Pyrennes where a police officer (French film stalwart Tcheky Karyo) informs him that Daniel died in a mountain storm while attempting to walk the Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James, a 500-mile pilgrimage from Southern France into Spain and on to a cathedral in the city of Galacia where the bones of St. James reportedly rest.
Posted in Uncategorized on October 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Four films screened as part of the recently concluded Kansas International Film Festival will receive a one-week run at the Glenwood Arts and Rio theaters beginning today (Oct. 7).
They are:
Lee Tergeson and Enid Graham in "Silver Tongues"
“SILVER TONGUES” My rating: B+ (Opens Oct. 7 at the Glenwood Arts)
87 minutes | No MPAA rating
This is one nasty movie.
I loved it.
Two lovers (Lee Tergesen, Enid Graham) travel from town to town, constantly changing identities and playing mind games with those they encounter.
Showing up for Sunday services at a small church, they accuse the pastor of stealing from the collection plate. At a nursing home they attempt to convince an old man with Alzheimer’s that they are family members come to rescue him. Meeting young honeymooners at a resort, they propose a little wife swapping.
Beyond that, there’s a weird dynamic between the two of them. The man shows a proclivity for brutal sex and controlling situations; the woman seems to be looking for a way to escape him.
But which, if any, of these different identities represent who they really are?
Writer/director Simon Arthur will have you scratching your head with confusion even as he hooks you with great, cryptic dialogue and a pair of knockout performances (Tergesen and Graham have a field day playing a half dozen characters). This one is bursting with dark energy.
“BERLIN 36” My rating: B (Opens Oct. 7 at the Glenwood Arts)
100 minutes | No MPAA rating
Desperate to win medals at the upcoming Berlin Olympics (and eager to diffuse charges of anti-Semitism), Nazi Olympic officials blackmail Jewish high jumper Gretel Bergman (Karoline Herfurth) to return to Germany from her safe exile in England. She is ordered to join the Party-run training camp.
Sebastian Urzendowsky, Karoline Herfurth in "Berlin 36"
Gretel is ostracized by her fellow athlestes, but finds a confidant in Marie Ketteler, another high jumper with mannish traits. In fact, Marie is a man raised from infancy to act and think like a woman. The Nazi bigwigs are aware of this, but stick with the deception because Ketteler may be their best chance for medal.
Kaspar Keidelbach’s “Berlin 36” is one of those stranger-than-fiction yarns that boggles the imagination. Herfurth shows tremendous mettle as the beleaguered Gretel, but stealing the show is Sebastian Urzendowsky as the gender-switching Marie.
Astoundingly, both “women” survived the war (the real-life Bergman, an American citizen since 1942, appears in a documentary epilogue). Dora Ratjen, on whom the character of Marie Ketteler was based, lost his Olympic medals when he was exposed as a man and, renaming himself Heinz, ran his family’s bar until his death in 2008.
“HABERMANN” My rating: B (Opens Oct. 7 at the Glenwood Arts)
104 minutes | Mo MPAA rating
Ben Becker, Mark Waschke in "Habermann"
Set in the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia heavily populated by Germans, Juraj Herz’s “Habermann” is the sad, sobering story of a man caught in the middle.
Before the outbreak of World War II, August Habermann (Mark Waschke), the German owner of a successful sawmill, lives in happy harmony with his Czech friends and employs.
But with the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland and especially the depredations of the district’s new military commander, Sturmbannführer Koslowski (Ben Becker), Haberman finds it increasingly difficult to remain neutral.
He attempts to reason with Koslowski as a fellow German. He tries to acknowledge the sentiments of his Czech workers, even covering for them when they dabble in sabotage. And he learns too late that his beloved wife Jana (Hannah Herzprung), an orphan raised by Catholic nuns, is in fact the child of a Jewish father.
For his attempts to keep the peace both the Czechs and the Germans view Habermann as a traitor.
It’s lonely in the middle.
Extremely well produced and acted, “Habermann” suggests the truth in that cynical old adage: No good deed goes unpunished.
Karoline Herfurth, Florian David Fitz in "Vincent Wants to Sea"
“VINCENT WANTS TO SEA” My rating: B- (Opens Oct. 7 at the Rio)
96 minutes | No MPAA rating
The German road movie “Vincent Wants to Sea” is fraught with peril. Not just for the characters, but for filmmaker Ralf Huettner.
Vincent (Florian David Fitz), a young man with Tourette’s syndrome, teams up with an anorexic girl (Karoline Herfurth…yes, the same actress who stars in “Berlin 36”) and a neat freak with crippling obsessive/compulsive disorder (Johannes Allmayer) to flee their psychiatric group home.
Their destination: the seashore, which represents an opening up of their carefully circumscribed lives.
In pursuit is Vincent’s controlling financier father (Heino Ferch) and the young fugitives’ shrink (Katharina Muller-Elmau).
Director Huettner balances the comic with the near tragic…not always as successfully as I’d have liked.
Still, the three leads bring a touching conviction to their roles as perennial outcasts finding strength in unity.
| Robert W. Butler
Posted in Popcorn movies, Uncategorized, tagged " Joe Cornish, "Attack the Block, alien invasion on September 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »
“ATTACK THE BLOCK” My rating: B (Opening Sept 2 at the Studio 30)
88 minutes | MPAA rating: R
“Attack the Block” hits the ground with all four limbs moving like the Coyote in a “Road Runner” cartoon, and it doesn’t let up until nearly 90 minutes later.
Along the way Joe Cornish’s low-budget alien invasion flick manages to be funny, scary, exciting and even socially relevant, though not so much so as to slow things down.
Set in a London public housing high rise (they’re called “estates,” which is a pretty classy word for a pretty grungy environment), the film follows a gang of disaffected teens who turn from mugging strangers to confronting an invasion of voracious alien creatures who have dropped from the sky.
Posted in Uncategorized on August 9, 2011| 2 Comments »
On the set of CinemaKC...
If you love film you can’t afford NOT to watch”CinemaKC,” the homegrown half-hour TV program that spotlights area filmmakers.
The show’s production values are terrifically high — even though just about everyone involved is working for free — and the locally-made short films exhibited are really, REALLY impressive.
Turns out our town has cinematic talent to burn.
Problem is, “CinemaKC” is aired late on Saturday night…not exactly a primo time slot.
Worse, often it wasn’t there when it was supposed to be. (more…)
Posted in Uncategorized on August 6, 2011| 4 Comments »
Aspiring KC auteur Paula Smith is on a roll.
This week she learned that her screenplay “Caruso and the Sword” was one of only 351 out of nearly 7,000 entries to be named a quareterfinalist of the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, a program of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Now her script will be read by at least two judges; if it makes the cut it will be one of 120 scripts that make it to the semifinal round.
More good news: The “Caruso” screenplay is a finalist in the “From the Heart Productions” grant competition. From the Heart is a nonprofit organization that annually awards grants to films that are “unique and make a contribution to society.”
“Caruso and the Sword” is about a young teen taken with the sport of fencing and must deal with bullies, poor grades, parental objections and low self esteem if he’s to qualify for the Summer Nationals, the largest fencing tournament in the world.
| Robert W. Butler
Posted in Deep thoughts...maybe, Uncategorized, tagged " Scott Bakula, "Men of a Certain Age, Andre Brauer, Ray Romano, TNT on July 29, 2011| 5 Comments »
"Men of a Certain Age": R.I.P.
The TV networks spend millions each year on market testing to determine which shows are likely to survive and which to flounder.
I could save them a whole lot of money.
If the Missus and I get hooked on a series, then it’s doomed. Pretty simple.
The latest casualty of the Butler Curse is “Men of a Certain Age,” the superb series about three boyhood friends (Ray Romano, Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher) uncomfortably working their way toward 50.
The show was everything you could want– terrifically acted, screamingly funny, unexpectedly touching and always realistic.
Of course it didn’t have a chance. (more…)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged " Jon Favreau, "Cowboys and Aliens, aliens, Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Western on July 29, 2011| 1 Comment »
“COWBOYS AND ALIENS” My rating: C+ (Opening wide on July 29)
118 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
Daniel Craig carries himself like vintage Steve McQueen.
Harrison Ford, on the other hand, is starting to carry himself like Lee J. Cobb.
If you’re old enough to recognize those two names, welcome to my world.
In “Cowboys and Aliens” Craig is a resident of the Old West who wakes up in the middle of the desert with a bad case of amnesia and some sort of big honking electronic bracelet on his wrist that cannot be removed.
Ford plays a crusty old cattle baron accustomed to ruling the area like a Medieval lord.
Before you can say “alien abductions in 1870s Arizona” they’re battling high-tech invaders from outer space.
Jon Favreau’s latest is in many ways a conventional cowboy movie — though not always a particularly good one. We’ve all seen the Western in which the Indians raid settlements taking prisoners and the surviving menfolk organize a posse and take off in pursuit.
Same deal here. Just substitute Martians for Indians.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged "Double Hour", thriller on July 28, 2011| 1 Comment »
“THE DOUBLE HOUR” My rating: B (Opening July 29 at the Tivoli)
95 minutes | No MPAA rating
Brain teasers don’t get much more gnarly than “The Double Hour,” an Italian thriller that will leave you not knowing if you’re coming or going.
It begins with a speed dating session in which Guido (Filippo Timi), a hunky ex-cop, meets Sonia (Ksenia Rapport), a red-headed hotel maid. He has a history of seducing women he meets at these events, but the shy Sonia, who seems to be nursing a quiet hurt, appeals to his romantic side.
After a couple of dates he decides to show her his job as the lone security guard at a sprawling estate whose millionaire owner is rarely at home. He turns off the high-tech security equipment so that he and Sonia can have the grounds to themselves.
Their romantic tryst is interrupted by masked thugs who hold the lovers captive while they strip the place of its priceless art. One of the crooks tries to molest Sonia, Guido springs to the rescue and…. (more…)
Butler's Cinema Scene 