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“NAPOLEON”: Little big man

November 21, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

“NAPOLEON” My rating: C (In theaters)

158 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Like Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and any number of Shakespearean characters, Napoleon Bonaparte is one of those figures ever ripe for fresh cinematic reinterpretation.

I only wish I knew what incarnation director Ridley Scott and leading man Joaquin Phoenix were going for in their big, noisy, not-very-interesting “Napoleon.”

This is less viable drama than a 2 1/2-hour illustrated history lesson.  The most memorable moments are several battle scenes that depict the grandeur/horror of Napoleonic-era warfare without ever evoking a genuine emotional response.

As for the drama, it centers almost exclusively on the relationship of Napoleon (Phoenix) and his Empress Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). Indeed, David Scarpa’s screenplay is essentially a two-hander.  Virtually every other character (among them heavy hitters like Robespierre, Talleyrand, the Duke of Wellington and assorted European royalty) has been reduced to walk-on status.

So it’s a love story…sorta.  

The film begins with the French Revolution and is basically a series of highlights of the Napoleonic legend, sometimes jumping years between scenes.  

Phoenix’s Napoleon presents as a socially inept clod who just happens to be a military genius.  He is bereft of charm or a sense of humor.  Early on  I found myself wondering if we were supposed to regard this Napoleon as being on the autism spectrum.

We see our protagonist on various military campaigns (Egypt, Austria, Russia) where he wins the hearts of his troops in spite of his personality (as long as he keeps producing victories he’s their guy). We see Napoleon use his grapeshot-loaded artillery to quell an urban uprising of Royalists, turning a  crowd  of protesting Parisians into so many mounds of ground round. 

His military prowess gives him a foothold in the new Revolutionary government, first as one of three consuls leading France and then as emperor.

Vanessa Kirby, Joaquin Phoenix

Except that there’s little in Phoenix’s performance to suggest why anybody would even consider Napoleon as emperor material.  He’s kind of a doofus and almost seems to have lucked into his imperial status. 

Maybe the film is meant to be a Trumpian allegory about a numbnuts who ends up running a country.  But that suggests a sense of satire found nowhere in the Scott canon.

Whatever sparks this “Napoleon” strikes come from the collision of our man with Josephine.  

When we first see Kirby in the role she wears her hair in a sort of pixie cut (I’m guessing the look was the result of Josephine’s long imprisonment after her husband went to the guillotine) and exudes a feral feline sexuality.

You can see why the ham-fisted Nappie is attracted, though initially she appears unimpressed by his jackrabbit lovemaking technique.  In fact, while he’s off fighting the Republic’s enemies Josephine is messing around with other fellas.

Vanessa Kirby

But over time they become a codependent team who trade insults as a prelude to copulation.  Only problem is, Josephine is unable to give her emperor a son. But even after their divorce and Napoleon’s marriage to a more fertile female (I think there’s only one shot of this second wife in the whole picture) he continues to visit his original squeeze at the country estate to which she has been exiled.

“I wish  I could quit you” might well be their motto.

That Phoenix is one of our finest actors isn’t up for debate. But here he can’t seem to wrap his head around his character, and as a result we’re all left in the dark.

Was Napoleon a power-hungry tyrant? Or was he devoted heart and soul to his country? What kind of ruler  was he? (The film offers not a clue.) 

Did he have any hobbies?  Favorite foods?  I’m grasping at straws here.

Like “The Duellists,” Scott’s first film and also set in the Napoleon Wars, this latest effort is an impressive physical recreation of a time and place.  That sense is reinforced by a score made up almost exclusively of period music.

But the duties of physically creating the film seem to have left Scott no time to contemplate what he wants to say. This director has never exhibited a strong individual style, but here the absence of a point of view is maddening.

And why oh why has cinematographer Dariusz Wolski opted for a visual style so dimly lit that even scenes set in bright sunshine seem gray? There are no bright colors — at least in that regard the visual palette reflects the general joylessness of the overall enterprise.

| Robert W. Butler

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“NAPOLEON”: Little big man

November 16, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is napoleon-2023.jpeg

“NAPOLEON” My rating: C (In theaters)

158 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Like Dracula, Sherlock Holmes and any number of Shakespearean characters, Napoleon Bonaparte is one of those figures ever ripe for fresh cinematic reinterpretation.

I only wish I knew what incarnation director Ridley Scott and leading man Joaquin Phoenix were going for in their big, noisy, not-very-interesting “Napoleon.”

This is less viable drama than a 2 1/2-hour illustrated history lesson.  The most memorable moments are several battle scenes that depict the grandeur/horror of Napoleonic-era warfare without ever evoking a genuine emotional response.

As for the drama, it centers almost exclusively on the relationship of Napoleon (Phoenix) and his Empress Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). Indeed, David Scarpa’s screenplay is essentially a two-hander.  Virtually every other character (among them heavy hitters like Robespierre, Talleyrand, the Duke of Wellington and assorted European royalty) has been reduced to walk-on status.

So it’s a love story…sorta.  

The film begins with the French Revolution and is basically a series of highlights of the Napoleonic legend, sometimes jumping years between scenes.  

Phoenix’s Napoleon presents as a socially inept clod who just happens to be a military genius.  He is bereft of charm or a sense of humor.  Early on  I found myself wondering if we were supposed to regard this Napoleon as being on the autism spectrum.

We see our protagonist on various military campaigns (Egypt, Austria, Russia) where he wins the hearts of his troops in spite of his personality (as long as he keeps producing victories he’s their guy). We see Napoleon use his grapeshot-loaded artillery to quell an urban uprising of Royalists, turning a  crowd  of protesting Parisians into so many mounds of ground round. 

His military prowess gives him a foothold in the new Revolutionary government, first as one of three consuls leading France and then as emperor.

Vanessa Kirby, Joaquin Phoenix

Except that there’s little in Phoenix’s performance to suggest why anybody would even consider Napoleon as emperor material.  He’s kind of a doofus and almost seems to have lucked into his imperial status. 

Maybe the film is meant to be a Trumpian allegory about a numbnuts who ends up running a country.  But that suggests a sense of satire found nowhere in the Scott canon.

Whatever sparks this “Napoleon” strikes come from the collision of our man with Josephine.  

When we first see Kirby in the role she wears her hair in a sort of pixie cut (I’m guessing the look was the result of Josephine’s long imprisonment after her husband went to the guillotine) and exudes a feral feline sexuality.

You can see why the ham-fisted Nappie is attracted, though initially she appears unimpressed by his jackrabbit lovemaking technique.  In fact, while he’s off fighting the Republic’s enemies Josephine is messing around with other fellas.

Vanessa Kirby

But over time they become a codependent team who trade insults as a prelude to copulation.  Only problem is, Josephine is unable to give her emperor a son. But even after their divorce and Napoleon’s marriage to a more fertile female (I think there’s only one shot of this second wife in the whole picture) he continues to visit his original squeeze at the country estate to which she has been exiled.

“I wish  I could quit you” might well be their motto.

That Phoenix is one of our finest actors isn’t up for debate. But here he can’t seem to wrap his head around his character, and as a result we’re all left in the dark.

Was Napoleon a power-hungry tyrant? Or was he devoted heart and soul to his country? What kind of ruler  was he? (The film offers not a clue.) 

Did he have any hobbies?  Favorite foods?  I’m grasping at straws here.

Like “The Duellists,” Scott’s first film and also set in the Napoleon Wars, this latest effort is an impressive physical recreation of a time and place.  That sense is reinforced by a score made up almost exclusively of period music.

But the duties of physically creating the film seem to have left Scott no time to contemplate what he wants to say. This director has never exhibited a strong individual style, but here the absence of a point of view is maddening.

And why oh why has cinematographer Dariusz Wolski opted for a visual style so dimly lit that even scenes set in bright sunshine seem gray? There are no bright colors — at least in that regard the visual palette reflects the general joylessness of the overall enterprise.

| Robert W. Butler

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

“THE KILLER”: Ruthless efficiency

November 11, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

Michael Fassbender

“THE KILLER” My rating: B (Netflix)

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

David Fincher’s latest is a minimalist epic about  a contract killer who appears to have no personality whatsoever.

Despite all this, it is a wildly entertaining effort.

Michael Fassbender is our unnamed protagonist, whom we meet in an under-renovation apartment in Paris.  He’s been there for days awaiting the arrival in the building across the street of his target.  We don’t know who he’s supposed to kill. or why.

All we know is that the Killer exhibits an astonishing level of patience. He passes the time scanning the street through a scope and doing yoga.

In the film he says almost nothing.  Well, that’s not quite true. In the first 30 minutes he gives us, in narration, a sort of primer on hitman etiquette.  In this he is quite chatty, holding forth on the necessity of anticipation and the dangers of improvisation.  As for the moral consequences of his actions… there’s no mention of that.  Doesn’t seem to matter.

The screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker, Alexis Nolent and Lucy Jacamon is astonishingly straightforward.

The Paris job goes wrong. The Killer flees to his  palatial home base in the Dominican Republic only to find that rival killers from his employer have beat him there, torturing his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) so badly that she’s in the hospital.  

This calls for revenge.  Quickly, methodically and implacably the killer goes about eliminating the threats against him.  

Tilda Swinton

That means paying a visit to the crooked New Orleans lawyer (Charles Parnell) who hands out his deadly assignments, the Florida thug (Sala Baker) who beat up his girl, the thug’s New York-based co-killer (Tilda Swinton) and finally the impossibly rich mover and shaker (Arliss Howard) who ordered the Paris hit.

As I mentioned, the Killer rarely says anything.  Not so most of his targets, who when facing death become remarkably loquacious.  A lot of good it does them. (The only one as silent as the Killer is the hulking goon in Florida; the two of them have a mano-a-mano smackdown for the ages.)

Now this all sounds terribly grim, and it should be pointed out that “The Killer” is often slyly amusing.  For example, our protagonist has a collection of fake identities (with attendant IDs, passports, credit cards and other documentation) in the names of classic TV sitcom characters: Felix Unger, Oscar Madison, Archibald Bunker, etc.

And then there’s the Killer’s clothing choices.  In voiceover he announces that the whole idea is to be so freaking bland that nobody can remember you; for much of the film he wanders around looking like a suburban dad at Disney World.

There’s no moral to “The Killer,” hardly any plot and certainly no characters you’d want to actually meet (okay, maybe the girlfriend, but she got beat up protecting a man she knows is a murderer).

Nevertheless, it’s a fun ride precisely because of its menagerie of cooly calculating/brutal/smooth talking creeps. 

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE HOLDOVERS”: Merry F**king Christmas

November 11, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

Dominic Sessa, Paul Giamatti

“THE HOLDOVERS” My rating: B+ (In theaters)

133 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It starts out like a misanthropic “Goodbye Mr.  Chips” and ends like a pessimist’s take on “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

But before it’s over Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” exhibits a humanist’s love of its characters.  It’s the perfect Christmas movie for people who hate Christmas movies.

David Hemingson’s witty and ultimately moving screenplay unfolds over the holidays in 1970 at the Barton Academy, one of those posh New England prep schools where the rich send their errant and spoiled sons for an education in the classics and character building.

Despite a fabulous reputation, Barton achieves neither of those objectives. It’s basically a holding facility for entitled idiots, a fact all too obvious to Paul Hunham (Paul Giomatti), who has taught ancient history for 40 years to bored young adolescents he dismisses as hormonal Visigoths.

On this particular snowbound Christmas, the unmarried and spectacularly grumpy Hunham has been saddled with “holdover” duty.  He’s must oversee a handful of students who will remain on campus until classes resume in the New Year.

Among these “holdovers” is the son of Mormons on missionary duty abroad, a Korean whose family can’t afford the plane ticket home, and a football Adonis has been banned from his family Christmas for refusing to cut his hair (the rebellious ‘60s have only just ended and the Vietnam War still rages).

And then there’s Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a smart kid with a chip on  his shoulder the size of a manhole cover.  At the last minute his recently-remarried mother informs Angus that she’s opted to dedicate her holidays to a delayed honeymoon. Surly teenage sons are not invited.

 Da’Vine Joy Randolph

In addition to Hunham and his angry/disappointed/lonely young charges, we meet Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). who runs the school’s dining hall. Mary’s son Curtis grew up on the campus, studied there (free tuition for employees’ offspring) and, lacking the money for college, enlisted in the Army, dying in Vietnam.

It’s a setup rich with heart-tugging possibilities, all of which Payne and Hemingson avoid like the plague.  The dialogue is sharp, bitter and often screamingly funny. The performances don’t beg our sympathy; quite the contrary, this is a prickly bunch of angry individuals. Unlikeable, even.

Yet over the film’s two-hour-plus running time (it actually seems much shorter) “The Holdovers” finds ways to reveal its characters’ pain, yearnings and fears without ever drifting into mushy territory.  The approach is astringent, clear-eyed and sardonic.  

If you’re not careful it can break your heart.

Here’s a prediction: Expect Giamatti to land an Oscar nomination for best actor; Randolph and Sessa should score in the supporting categories.

In the meantime, watch “The Holdovers” with someone you love.  Better still, watch it with someone you’re not so sure about.

| Robert W.Butler

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“FINGERNAILS”: Getting to the roots of love

November 5, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

Riz Ahmed, Jessie Buckley

“FINGERNAILS” My rating: C+ (Apple+)

113 minutes | MPAA rating: R

From the INTRIGUING IDEA GOES NOWHERE DEPARTMENT:

“Fingernails” unfolds in an alternate reality that looks a lot like America in the 1980s.  No ubiquitous cell phones or laptops. Most of the cars are sedans, not SUVs. The TV sets are modestly proportioned.

Except that in this reality the films “Titanic” (1997)  and “Notting Hill” (1999) are already classics (the latter a key title in the Hugh Grant Romance film festival).

And a special feature of this alternate universe is a process (allegedly scientific) that allows couples to test for romantic compatability. Ideally you want a score of 50%, indicating that a couple love each other equally.  More often though, those tested discover that they’ve  absolutely no future with their current squeeze.

And what do you have to sacrifice for this life-changing information? Well, in addition to paying a steep fee you must have one of your fingernails pulled out with pliers (sans anesthesia) so that it can be microwaved along with one yanked from your significant other.  Apparently fingernails are terrific indicators of one’s emotional state.

Anna (Jessie Buckley) is the latest employee of the Love Institute, which not only conducts the fingernail tests but holds seminars and workshops and issues reports on what its researchers have discovered about romance.

Anna and her beau Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) did the fingernail test several years earlier and were told that they were a perfect match.  Except that Anna is starting to get bored with the relationship (possibly Ryan is too nice and predictable).  Anna hopes that by working as a counselor at the Institute she can gain insights into her own romantic sensibilities.

Her work partner is Amir (Riz Ahmed), and it doesn’t take a fingernail test to determine that Anna’s affections soon will be directed his way.

As written by Christos Nikou, Sam Steiner and Davros Raptis and directed by Nikou, “Fingernails” scores more points for quirkiness than for emotional heft.

And even the quirkiness is of the low-caliber variety.  There are a couple of amusing moments but the film never quite jells as either comedy or romance.  I was ready for it to wrap things up a good half hour before the end.

That said, I’m a big fan of Buckley (even with a ‘do that looks like it was styled with a weed whacker).  Ahmed and White are solid as Anna’s romantic options, and Luke Wilson very nearly steals the film as the science-nerd chief of the Love Institute.

Forget about the fingernail test.  When it comes to human emotions there are no absolutes.

|Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING

October 24, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

“BODIES”  (Netflix)

A good time travel yarn can really mess you up. 

Remember how dislocated and awed you felt after seeing the original “Terminator”?

How you started asking yourself questions about the immutability of time, about the possibility of changing the past or, even freakier, our own present?

That same sort of brow-furrowing mind massage is at work in the  deep-diving Brit series “Bodies.” 

Episode One sets up the tantalizing premise.  In present-day London the corpse of a naked man is found in an all-but-abandoned alleyway.  A police detective (Amaka Okafor) is stumped as to how he got there.

The scene then jumps to 1890s London where — WTF? — the same body is found in the same alley by a bearded and bowler-hatted police inspector (Kyle Soller).

But there’s more.  In 1941, with German bombers paying nightly visits, yet another copper (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) stumbles into the same scenario.

And then, just when you think you’re getting a handle on it, the episode wraps up with the revelation that 30 years into the future another officer (Shira Haas) is dealing with the same body in the same crumbling alleyway.

Series creator Paul Tomalin (adapting Si  Spencer’s graphic novel) takes his time setting up his reveals…before any big answers are dangled he explores societal conflicts like contemporary racism, anti-Semitism during the Blitz or the Victorian-era inspector’s desperately closeted homosexuality.

Along the way there are all sorts of tantalizing hints at a monstrously massive conspiracy, members of which invariably sign off with the superficially comforting/existentially disturbing line: “Remember, you are loved.”

Eventually the film focuses on Mannix (Stephen Graham), who exists in all of these time frames, though not always as an adult (in our present he’s a troubled adolescent). Basically he’s playing God with time…and thus with everyone on Earth.

There are several big holes here.  The methodology of time travel isn’t explored..there’s this machine, but good luck figuring out how it got made and tested. And in one possible past/future the city of London is hit by a nuclear blast…it levels everything except that darned red-brick alleyway where the bodies keep dropping. Unlikely.

But the series’ slow-build momentum is such that you don’t dwell on these shortcomings, preferring to take in the big picture.

And that big picture will leave you juggling a score of metaphysical conundrums.

“THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER” (Netflix)

With “Midnight Mass” and “The Haunting of Hill House” writer/directorMike Flanagan shot to the top of the horror world, delivering slowly-unfolding creepfests that served as anguished meditations on the human condition while delivering multiple opportunities for great acting.

His latest, the 8-part “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is a step back, in part because just about everyone on screen is a truly horrible individual. Good luck looking for someone to empathize with.

Also, horror is much less scary when those threatened are evil bastards to begin with.

That said, the series is wildly successful in cannibalizing the Poe oeuvre, not just …Usher but most of his famous poems and short stories. No doubt as you read this some grad student is working on a thesis picking apart the series’ plethora of Edgar Allan Easter eggs.

The Usher family has become fabulously wealthy after developing an opiate pain killer that has addicted a good chunk of the population. (Yeah, they’re a thinly-disguised version of the Sacklers.)

At the top is Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood), now in his early 70s and, thanks to several marriages, the father of six very spoiled, desperately corrupted offspring.

The series is so jammed with flashbacks, subplots and digressions that a flow chart might come in handy. Basically, in just a month’s time all of Usher’s despicable heirs will die in bizarre ways. The common thread is a mysterious woman (Carla Gugino) who serves as a sort of Angel of Death (if you gotta go, doing so at Gugino’s hands seems preferable).

The whole thing is a huge flashback, as the doomed Roderick relates his clan’s twisted history to the prosecutor (Carl Lumbly) who has been trying for years to bring down the Usher empire.

The “Dynasty”-sized cast is filled with familiar faces from the Flanagan repertory company, as well as newcomers like Mary McDonnell as Usher’s scheming sister and Mark Hamill as the Ushers’ creepy legal fixer.

Unlike “…Hill House” and “…Mass,” I never experienced fright watching “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and that lack of emotional connection percolates throughout the enterprise. There’s a certain intellectual attraction in observing how Flanagan structures his story and, as previously stated, you can spend the whole thing picking out Poe references.

But genuine terror? Nope.

| Robert W. Butler

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“KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON”: Murder in Oklahoma

October 20, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio

“KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON” My rating: B (In theaters)

306 minutes | MPAA rating: R

More than any film I’ve seen in a decade, Martin Scorsese’s “Killer of the Flower Moon” has left me at a loss for words.

Sometimes that’s a good thing, suggesting a cinematic experience so overwhelming that it defies easy summation.

In this case it means I left the film with mixed reactions. It’s taken days to sort them out and I’m still struggling to come to a neatly encapsulated conclusion.

The setup:

“Killers…” is a lightly fictionalized version of David Grann’s superb nonfiction study of the notorious Osage murders of the 1920s.  With the discovery of oil in Oklahoma, members of the Osage tribe who had been settled on this presumably worthless land became overnight millionaires.  

This made them targets for predatory whites who often married Osage women.  Frequently those women— and other members of their clans — died under mysterious or outright murderous circumstances, with the oil rights reverting to their white husbands.  It took a major investigation by the fledgling FBI to uncover a cabal of conspirators behind the murders of at least 30 tribal members.

Scorsese’s film (co-written with Eric Roth) is noteworthy in that it isn’t really about solving a crime (the first federal agent doesn’t show up until more than two hours into the 3 1/2-hour film, and the audience knows who the bad guys are almost from the get-go).  Its focus is split between one particular marriage. and a study of unapologetic corruption.

After serving in the Great War Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives in Oklahoma to work for his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), the most powerful white man living in the Osage Nation.

 

Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio

Hale is a mover and shaker who has been among the Osage for so long he speaks their language fluently.  He advises tribal leaders and maintains that the Osage are the finest people on the planet. But beneath his benevolent paternalism there’s sinister intent.

At his uncle’s urging, the slow-witted and morally anchorless Ernest marries Mollie (Lily Gladstone), an Osage woman who, for all of her family’s wealth, is a nurturing, down-to-earth individual.  They start a family.

But little by little Ernest is drawn into his uncle’s manipulative world. Early on he participates in the armed robbery of a wealthy Indian couple; before long he’s a middleman setting up the assassinations of individuals fingered by Hale. Among the targets are his own in-laws.

The yarn is thick with moral ambiguity. For even as he does his uncle’s murderous bidding, Ernest remains desperately in love with his wife. At some point he’s going to have to choose between love and his white family.

The film’s recreation of life in Oklahoma during this period is astonishingly authentic.  Tribal customs, language and attitudes have been scrupulously researched and depicted.  Some of the long shots of oil derricks and oil pools pocking the landscape are epic (Rodrigo Prieto is the cinematographer).  Costuming and set decoration are impeccable.  The late Robbie Robertson has created a haunting minimalist musical score heavy on native drums rhythmically thudding like a heartbeat.

My hangup is the film’s emotional neutrality.  I get it, intellectually.  But I felt more an observer than a participant.

Possibly it’s best to see the film without having read the book.  That way the perfidy of the “killers” comes as a shocking revelation with attendant moral revulsion. Maybe I knew too much going into the experience.

More problematic is the focus on Ernest, a stupid, easily manipulated oaf. As played by DeCaprio he is resoundingly unempathetic, a spineless sort whose only redeeming quality is that he grows to love his wife despite his many sins against her family. (I can’t recall another major actor so willing to alienate his character from the audience, so there’s that.)

Were “Killers…” only, say, two hours long, Scorsese’s sheer filmmaking bravado might well compensate for our having to spend so much time with this thick hick. But the film’s butt-numbing length stretches matters out while diluting the dramatic impact — the movie’s trailers are more effective in this regard than the film itself.

Scorsese and Roth find some grim humor in the killers’ desperate machinations as the net closes on them (Jesse Plemons portrays the main Fed doggedly digging into the murders), but the film is largely humorless.

The saving grace in all this is Gladstone, a Native American actress whose most compelling previous performance was in Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Woman” from 2016. Her Mollie becomes the moral/emotional center of the film, a woman radiating empathy, quiet dignity, intelligence and a sort of stoic resignation as life piles on one tragedy after another. It’s damn near impossible to explain what she does here…it’s a kind of soulfulness rarely seem on the screen.

At the other end of the spectrum is DeNiro’s William Hale, a villain with a breathtaking ability to compartmentalize the conflicting aspects of his life.  In public he’s everybody’s uncle and friend; behind closed doors Hale becomes an amoral master manipulator with an unquenchable thirst for wealth and power. Anyone smarter than the thick-headed Ernest would recognize his pervasive malevolence right off the bat.

Advance word on “Killers of the Flower Moon” has the film pegged as a masterpiece, perhaps the highlight of Scorsese’s illustrious career.

Well, it’s good. It’s got its moments.  But in my opinion not enough to fill 3 1/2 hours.

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING

October 9, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

“GANGS OF London” (Max)

When the Brit series “Gangs of London” premiered in 2020 on AMC  it dished up the most graphic violence ever seen on mainstream cable. 

Each episode was highlighted by at least one state-of-the-art fight scene…sometimes featuring firearms, often with bladed weapons, frequently with fists, feet and teeth.

We’re talking John Wick-level action choreography melded with a gruesome  attention to the trauma inflicted on the human body. Sometimes balletic but mostly brutal.  In the middle of the first season nearly an entire episode was devoted to the siege of a remote farmhouse by a small army of mercenaries…it was an astounding action set piece comparable to Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch.”

“Gangs…” Season Two just dropped on Max and, if anything, it raises the ante on onscreen mayhem.

The premise is pretty much summed up in the title.  Various gangs representing different ethnic groups (Pakistanis, Irish, Kurdish, etc.) vie for supremacy of the London underworld.  The authorities are conspicuous in their absence…apparently standard-issue law enforcement is utterly ineffective in curtailing the carnage.

Our nominal hero is undercover cop Elliott (Sope Dirisu) who infiltrates the gang led by the demented mother/son duo Marian and Sean Wallace (Michelle Fairley, Joe Cole). The idea is to undermine the Wallaces from within, but to prove his loyalty (and to elude discovery) Elliott must participate in the gang’s reign of terror. He’s the closest thing we have to a moral authority, but even he has way too much blood on his hands.

This being a Brit production, the acting is top-notch.  Season Two features the arrival of the loathsome Koba (Waleed Zuaiter), a platinum-haired enforcer from Georgia (the eastern European Georgia, not the American one) tasked with ending the infighting whether the warring gangs like it or not.  Kidnapping and torturing the wife of an uncooperative gangster is all in a day’s work for this ruthless killer…Koba may be the year’s best heavy.

Season Two also raises tantalizing questions about “the investors,” a shadowy group of plutocrats (we never see them) who are the mob bosses’ bosses. I have to imagine that Season Three (now in production) will find Elliott exposing their Koch-level shenanigans.

Just about every aspect of “Gangs of London” works.  The question is whether you can handle the series’ pervasive nihilism and unapologetic barbarity.  Because no matter how you approach it, you’ll  end up rooting for one of the bad guys.

“RESERVATION DOGS” (Hulu)

Apparently the world is made up of two kinds of viewers: Those who immediately recognized the genius of “Reservation Dogs” and those of us who discover it later.

When the show debuted in 2021 I gave it a go, but couldn’t slip into its distinctive vibe about slacker teens growing up hopeless on an Oklahoma Indian Reservation. There was something about the pseudo-amateurish performances that rubbed me the wrong way.

Or maybe it was some weird sort of white privilege. “Rez Dogs” has been written, directed and overwhelmingly acted by Native Americans, and it is unapologetic in unfolding from a distinctively N.A. point of view. To an old white guy it didn’t seem a good fit.

A friend, however, encouraged me start again, this time with Season Two.  I did…and am eternally thankful for the recommendation.

Most of the Season Two episodes put one or more of the characters through an experience that is simultaneously universal and specifically Native American.

One features young Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) taking his first paying job…as a roofer. His experiences with the older crew members widen his perspectives and his growing satisfaction at delivering a good day’s work suggests his gentle shift toward maturity. 

An entire episode is devoted to the death of the grandmother of Elora (Devery Jaccobs).  Virually every major cast member shows up to pay their respects to the fading matriarch, and the interplay among them beautifully reflects the humor, loss and resignation experienced during such a pivotal moment. 

Gay kid Cheese (Lane Factor) finds himself in juvie (he was visiting his weed-growing uncle when the cops arrived).  And a handful of aunties travel to a Native American confab in a big hotel…it’s a chance to leave the rez behind, party like their old former selves and maybe snag a fine man.

The shows are funny, yes. The characters are periodically visited by the spirits of long-gone tribal members, like William Knifeman, a horse-riding, joke-telling warrior who is far more laid back than intimidating, and Deer Lady, a beautiful but vengeful creature who gruesomely settles scores with folk who have lived badly.

And in one absurdity-drenched segment straight arrow tribal cop Big (Zahn McClarnon) accidentally takes an acid trip and in the woods stumbles across a coven of white Oklahoma businessmen planning to seize Indian land.

But there’s a growing seriousness that comes to its full fruition in Season Three.  The overarching theme has the kids little by little coming to terms with just what means to be Indian. Though they are acutely aware of the ridiculous elements of their existence (a touchy-feely session with a couple of wannabe New-Agey Native American gurus is simultaneously hilarious and creepy), these young people are developing a sense of community and discovering a new respect for traditions.

The last few episodes pretty much left me an emotional wreck. But you know what? The kids are gonna be alright.

“WINNING TIME: THE RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY” (MAX)

You don’t have to know anything about basketball to become a big fan of “Winning Time,” whose two seasons chronicle the rise of the L.A. Lakers and provide a veritable smorgasbord of acting treats.

As in most sports sagas there are ups and downs on the court, but the game itself takes a backseat to the potent characters drawn from real-life personalities.

These outsized egos include team owner and dedicated Lothario Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly), his doting mother (Sally Field), charming/naughty court superstar Magic Johnson (Quincy Isaiah), Kareen Abdul Jabbar (Solomon Hughes) and coaches like Jerry West (Jason Clarke),  Pat Riley (Adrien Brody), Paul Westhead (Jason Segel) and Jack McKinney (Tracy Letts).

Season Two spends a lot of time with the Lakers’ nemesis, Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small).

As far as I can tell, the series sticks pretty close to the historic truth, although clearly the writers have had to invent what went on behind closed doors.  I particularly love that the show is not in awe of its sugjects…there is a full panoply of human foible on display.

And the look of it all! Rarely have we seen a series which so consistently captures the visual and aural sensations of a past  era, in this case the 1980s. The makers of “Winning Time” dig up old newsfilm and video, but they also employ (or masterfully fake) now-abandoned visual formats.

The result is a series that feels more like a time machine than a conventional TV show.

| Robert W. Butler


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“EL CONDE”: Vampire as political parable

October 8, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

“EL CONDE”  My rating: B (Netflix)

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

As a rule, political strongmen despise artists, dismissing them as dreamers and dissenters always threatening to infect the body politic with their decadence.

Thing is, given enough time the artists always have the last word.

Exhibit A is “El Conde (The Count),” a Chilean feature that informs us that right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet did not die in 2006, as is widely believed, but lives on as a vampire who sucks the life out of unsuspecting victims just as he sucked up the wealth of his country.

Written and directed by Pablo Larrain (who co-wrote with Guillermo Calderon), this batshit-crazy blend of horror and political satire plays out in an otherworldly, treeless landscape that has been magnificently captured in Edward Lachman’s sumptuous black-and-white photography.

Here’s the setup: The aged Count (Jaime Vadell) is slowly losing his marbles in a sort of sprawling ranch house that has seen better days.  (It must be the only homestead on Earth that features a functioning guillotine.)

His wife Lucia (Gloria Munchmyer), his butler and (during the good old days) chief torturer Fyodor (Alfred Castro) and the Count’s four back-biting adult children have gathered in emergency session. They all fear that the world-weary old dictator will starve himself to death before they can figure out where he squirreled away his ill-gotten fortune.

To help sort it all out, the family has employed a forensic accountant, a young woman named Carmencita (Paula Luchsinger).  What they don’t know is that Carmencita is a nun who has traded in her habit for street clothes. What’s more, she has orders to perform an exorcism on the evil old bastard.

Paula Lunchsinger

(Am I imagining, or are Luchsinger’s sharp features and boyish ‘do lit and photographed in such a way as to evoke memories of Falconetti’s Joan of Arc?)

While the characters deliver their lines in Spanish, the story is narrated by a female with an English accent.  Initially this is puzzling…before it’s all over we’ll meet this woman face-to-face, confirming our worst fears about a once-powerful world leader.  (Yeah, that’s kinda vague. 
But the late-reel reveal is too delicious to give it up here.)

In flashbacks we see how as a young soldier in the French revolution the Count developed a taste for blood (he actually licks the blade that beheads Marie Antoinette) and a hatred of revolutionaries and lefties in general.  (How did he become a vampire?  It will be revealed, but not here.)

Eventually he made his way to the Americas,  became a ruthless military leader and took over Chille after a CIA-planned 1972 overthrow of Salvador Allende’s freely-elected socialist government.  For more than 20 years Pinochet ruled with an iron hand, “disappearing” more than 1200 troublesome citizens and torturing countless others.

Gloria Munchmyer, Jaime Vadell

According to this film’s alternate history, when finally deposed and facing conviction for human rights violations, the Count faked  his own death and retreated to his remote hideout.

Periodically, though, he dons his old caped uniform and glides through the night sky to Santiago to feast on humanity.  These flying scenes are spectacularly dreamlike…even beautiful in a balletic way.

 “The Conde” has a fine old time fiddling with the usual vampire tropes, and its gleeful indictment of reactionary politics and the pilfering that so often accompanies it is absolutely merciless.

There’s a built-in issue with the film…none of the characters — not even the undercover nun — is remotely likable.  Everybody is greedy, scheming, corrupt.  Or willing to be corrupted.

Thankfully the acting, the allegorical elements and the mind-blowing technical expertise (photography, locations, costuming, production design) are so inventive that there’s always something marvelous to wonder at.

The film would probably have benefitted from a tighter edit (lose 15 minutes and you might have a small masterpiece), but as it stands “El Conde” is a nasty miracle.

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR”: Pastel paradise

September 28, 2023 by butlerscinemascene

Benedict Cumberbatch

“THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR”  My rating: A (Netflix)

37 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

At the risk of committing  cinematic apostasy, I’d like to suggest that in the future Wes Anderson limit himself to short films.

I have come to this conclusion after viewing Anderson’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” 37 minutes of visual and aural bliss emphasizing all that is great about the Anderson style without ever wearing out its welcome.

Hanging  around too long has been the major flaw of Anderson’s recent features like  “Asteroid City” and “The French Dispatch,” quirky whimsy being an elusive thing to sustain over 90 minutes.

But “…Henry Sugar,” based on a short story by the late Roald Dahl, is a pure delight. the ideal marriage of material and presentational form.

It’s not so much an adaptation of Dahl’s yarn as a word-for-word recitation, with the cast members (familiar faces from the Anderson screen universe)  speaking the author’s words directly to the viewer.

What’s it about?  Well, it begins in the yellow cottage in which Dahl (Ralph Fiennes) does his writing.  Dahl tells us the story of “The Man Who Sees Without Using His Eyes.”  

Through a delightful series of interlocking flashbacks (stories within stories within stories…a familiar Anderson device) we follow Imdad Khan (Ben Kingsley), who as a young man in the 1930s became a devotee of a holy Indian hermit and learned to identify objects — like playing cards — even though his eyes have been completely bandaged. 

Ralph Fiennes

The adult Khan exploits this skill as one of the main attractions of a traveling vaudeville show. Along the way he becomes the obsession of a physician (Dev Patel) bent on understanding this phenomenon.

Eventually the yarn turns to wastrel Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), an upperclass Brit ne’er-do-well addicted to gambling.  Sugar finds a journal written by Khan in a fellow rich twit’s library, steals it, and studies it for several years with singleminded intensity..

Sugar wants to employ Khan’s remote viewing system to read the cards held by his fellow casino denizens. He pulls it off…only to realize that gambling is no longer thrilling when you know you can’t lose.

The story is oddball charming and even has a nifty moral to it.

And the presentational style is, well, beautiful. The film is awash in pastel eruptions, with sets that often resemble huge doll houses and at other times fold up or open out like gigantic pop-up books.  

| Robert W. Butler

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