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HOLLYWOOD’S GREATEST YEAR: “Only Angels Have Wings”

January 19, 2014 by butlerscinemascene

Cary Grant and Jean Arthur

Cary Grant and Jean Arthur

“Only Angels Have Wings” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, January 25, 2014 in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14W. 10th St.  Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film sereies Hollywood’s Greatest Year, which offers movies released in 1939.

Before the 1950s, movie companies rarely filmed in exotic locations. If a script called for a Welsh mining village, a Medieval castle, or a steamy jungle, it was all created on a soundstage or the back lot of a Hollywood studio.

Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings is set in a South American coastal town from which daredevil pilots take off to fly the mail over mountains and into the continent’s interior. It wasn’t shot in South America but on a sound stage in North Hollywood, California.

Creating an entire world on a studio soundstage was all in a day’s work for the designers, artists, and craftsmen on the payroll of every studio in the 1930s.  How good were they?

Watch the first 10 minutes of Only Angels.  The film begins with a nighttime shot of a ship approaching the dock through the fog. (I’m pretty sure a model boat was employed.) Then the camera begins wandering along the pier alongside the ship, following a couple of flyers who are looking for a little after-hours action. There’s a cacophony of voices and sounds, a swirl of busy movement.

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“JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT”: Less than meets the eye

January 16, 2014 by butlerscinemascene

Chris Pine as the new Jack Ryan

Chris Pine as the new Jack Ryan

“JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT” My rating: C (Opens wide on January 17)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has always been the anti-Bond, a CIA agent who balances a normal family life with adventures that carry a torn-from-the-headlines aroma.

No luscious babes. No super villain with a high-tech lair disguised as a volcano.

Actually, “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” might have benefitted from a super villain or a luscious babe or two. This latest attempt to reboot the franchise (previous

Keira Knightley

Keira Knightley

Jack Ryans include Alec Baldwin, Ben Affleck and, most notably, Harrison Ford) is a competent but fairly sedate affair. Whether it will jump-start the series is up to the ticket buyers…I’m not terribly hopeful.

Chris Pine, fresh from his other gig as a young James T. Kirk in the “Star Trek” universe, is our new Jack Ryan. We meet him studying economics in London in 2001. After 9-11 he enlists in the Marines, is shot down in Afghanistan, paralyzed with a spinal injury, and undergoes a long rehab which not only gets him back on his feet but into the bed of his med-student therapist, Cathy (Keira Knightley).

This all happens in the first 10 minutes.

While still recuperating at Walter Reed he’s recruited by CIA spookmaster Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner), who gets Jack a job in a big Wall Street firm from

Kevin Costner

Kevin Costner

which he can covertly look for funding channels for terrorist groups. If he were married to Cathy, Jack could tell her of his real job, but since they’re only living together, he can’t. This puts a strain on their relationship.

Jack’s study of international financing raises alarms of a plot from within Russia to destroy the U.S. economy with a combined terrorist attack and world-wide sell-off of American securities that would make the dollar worthless.

So Jack is off to Moscow to confront one of those newly-minted Russian billionaires, Viktor Cherevin (a thin-lipped Kenneth Branagh), who carries an old Cold War grudge against the Yanks and wants to elevate Mother Russia to her rightful place at the top of the international food chain.

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“BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL”: Behind the pinup

January 16, 2014 by butlerscinemascene

bettie“BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL”  My rating: B (Opens Jan. 17 at the Tivoli)

101 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Even those who don’t know her name will recognize the look — the black bangs, the gorgeous body (not skinny, not plump, just right), and especially the attitude she wore like other women wore clothing —  a heady blend of healthy sexuality and girl-next-door good humor.

Bettie Page was the pinup girl of the 1950s. Then she vanished, only to return in recent years as an iconic image, the stuff of advertisements, book covers and tattoos.

Her face and form are so universally recognized and accepted that she’s become a brand, and as is  the case with Walt Disney, many young people don’t even realize that Bettie Page was a real person.

Mark Mori and Doug Miller’s documentary, “Bettie Page Reveals All,” means to set the record straight. And they have an unexpected ally: Bettie herself, who a few years before her death at age 85 in 2005 sat down to tape a long audio interview about her life and career.

She’s not the only voice here — the film is packed with talking-head sexperts ranging from Hugh Hefner and Dita Von Teese to pop culture academics and, poignantly, one of Bettie’s former husbands. But Bettie’s is the voice you remember, a grandmotherly voice with a Southern drawl and a tendency to make even horrific memories somehow less ghastly.

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HOLLYWOOD’s GREATEST YEAR: “Idiot’s Delight”

January 13, 2014 by butlerscinemascene

Clark Gable, Norma Shearer in "Idiot's Delight"

Clark Gable, Norma Shearer in “Idiot’s Delight”

“Idiot’s Delight” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, January 18, 2014 in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14W. 10th St.  Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film sereies Hollywood’s Greatest Year, which offers movies released in 1939.

“Idiot’s Delight” is a movie whose time has come.

And gone.

Sorry to damn with faint praise a film based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a movie that features Clark Gable’s only on-screen singing/dancing performance. But this is a classic case of a once-celebrated flick that no longer works for modern audiences.

Still, it came out in 1939 and as one of that year’s hits it’s part of our year-long film series Hollywood’s Greatest Year.

“Idiot’s Delight” is about a bunch of travelers representing different countries and political persuasions who are stranded in a posh mountaintop hotel in the Alps. War has broken out (clearly World War II, though it’s not identified as such) and the borders have been closed.

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“AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY”: At-your-throat acting

January 9, 2014 by butlerscinemascene

Julianne Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts

Julianne Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts

“AUGUST:  OSAGE COUNTY”  My rating: C+ (Opens wide on Jan. 10)

121 minutes | MPAA rating R

Some stories were meant to be performed on a stage.

For instance, the plays of Sam Shepard, which deliver moments of violence and affrontery you almost never see in live theater. A Shepard character might be required to beat a typewriter to death with a golf club, smash dozens of glass bottles just feet from the folks in the front row, or urinate on his little sister’s science project in full view of the paying customers.

If those things happened in a movie, you’d shrug. No big deal.  In a movie you can do anything.

But seeing those moments play out live, in the flesh, while you brace yourself to dodge flying glass shards or broken typewriter keys…well, that has a way of focusing your mind most wonderfully.

I thought of Shepard’s plays while watching John Wells’ screen version of “August: Osage County,” Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer-winning black comedy about an Oklahoma clan assembled to bury its patriarch (played, ironically enough, by  Sam Shepard).  In the same way that Shepard’s  plays almost never make satisfying movies, “August: Osage County” makes an uncomfortable transition to the screen.

First, don’t buy into the TV ads that make it look like a rollicking comedy.  There are laughs here, yeah, but they’re the sort of laughs you can choke on. Dourness is the order of the day.

In adapting his play Letts has boiled a 3 1/2 hour production down to 2 hours. Stuff’s been left out — character development, carefully calibrated pauses — and while the essence of the play remains, it feels curiously underwhelming.

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“LONE SURVIVOR”: Elegy for SEALS

January 9, 2014 by butlerscinemascene

lone-survivor-wahlberg“LONE SURVIVOR” My rating: B (Opens wide on Jan. 10)

121 minutes | MPAA rating: R

A superior action film based on real events, “Lone Survivor” is a modern update of the classic “lost patrol” movie in which a small unit of soldiers is trapped behind enemy lines and, often, doomed to fight to the last man.

It was inspired by Operation Red Wings, a 2005 mission in which four Navy SEALs were dropped in the mountains of Afghanistan to locate and keep tabs on a Taliban war lord.  As the title suggests, it didn’t go well.

The opening credits of writer/director Peter Berg’s action drama unfold against documentary footage of the grueling (some might say sadistic) training that potential SEALs must negotiate to become part of this elite fighting force. It’s so rough that bodies and spirits begin to break down. For some classes the dropout rate is 90 percent.

The ones who last are tough bastards.

The film proper begins with one of the SEALSs, Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), being evacuated by a rescue team. He’s been badly wounded and dies as the medics scramble to revive and stabilize him.

Berg’s screenplay, adapted from the non-fiction book by Luttrell and Patrick Robinson (obviously, Luttrell lived to tell the tale), then flashes back several days as the four members of Operation Red Wings are briefed and make preparations for their mission.

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“HER”: Love with the proper operating system

January 9, 2014 by butlerscinemascene

Joaquinn Phoenix

Joaquin Phoenix…isolated, but not for long

“HER” My rating: A- (Opens wide on Jan. 10)

120 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The sentient computer — the mechanical brain that becomes self aware — has been with us for many years now (perhaps most famously in the person of “2001’s” HAL 9000). But writer/director Spike Jonze’s “Her” pushes that idea in new and wonderful directions.

Along the way it becomes the best film of 2013.

In the near future — so near you can’t categorize the film as science fiction — a computer operating system is developed that so perfectly imitates human thought and emotion as to make the iPhone’s Siri seem like a grunting Neanderthal.

Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely romantic.  Lonely because he and his wife (Rooney Mara) are divorcing — though Tehodore cannot bring himself to sign the papers.  Romantic because his day job is writing heartfelt letters  to strangers.

He works for a company that, for a fee, will compose personal letters to family members, dearly beloveds, friends and acquaintances. Apparently in this near future most personal written correspondence is limited to texting abbreviatons and emoticons. Some folks will pay big bucks for a well-written, sincere and “handwritten” letter (actually, a computer provides the appropriate font and coughs it out of a laser printer).

Theodore is a master of this old-fashioned form of communication — which only makes his sterile personal life all the more ironic.

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HOLLYWOOD’s GREATEST YEAR: “Bachelor Mother”

January 6, 2014 by butlerscinemascene

Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, David Niven

Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, David Niven

“Bachelor Morther” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, January 11, 2014 in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14W. 10th St.  Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film sereies Hollywood’s Greatest Year, which offers movies released in 1939.

During the heyday of the Motion Picture Production Code (1930-1968), there were certain things that just couldn’t happen in an American movie.

You couldn’t get away with murder, since the code demanded that criminals be punished before the lights came up.

Bathrooms in Hollywood movies didn’t have toilets…at least you never saw one on screen.

A man and wife couldn’t share a single bed. Twin beds were the order of the day, and should members of the opposite sex find themselves occupying the same horizontal space, at least one of the gentleman’s feet must be planted firmly on the floor.

For that matter, you couldn’t discuss sex, much less show it. Even “excessive or lustful kissing” was prohibited.

Today it all sounds ludicrous, but back then the Production Code exercised immense power in Hollywood, guaranteeing that any movie released by a major studio would be suitable for everyone from Junior to Grandma.

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“THE GREAT BEAUTY”: Wistful world weariness

January 2, 2014 by butlerscinemascene

Toni Servillo in "The Great Beauty"

Toni Servillo in “The Great Beauty”

“THE GREAT BEAUTY” My rating: B+ (Opening Jan. 3 at the Tivoli)

142 minutes | No MPAA rating

It’s impossible to talk about “The Great Beauty” without bringing up Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vida.”

Paolo Sorrentino’s film is, if not a literal sequel to that 1960 masterwork about ennui among the jet setters, inescapably a thematic sequel.  And like Fellini’s film, it takes its journalist protagonist on an episodic ride through the Roman night life they don’t feature in the tourist brochures.

The picture begins with achingly beautiful images of Rome.  Cinematographer Luca Bigazzi’s camera seems to float effortlessly through a series of semi-tableaus — the effect is like a sensuous melding of moments from Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia” and Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life.”

Then we suddenly find ourselves plunged into an orgiastic party filled with flashing lights,  throbbing techno music and swaying revelers.  The man of the hour is Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), a man about town celebrating his 65th birthday.

Some 40 years ago Jep came to Rome after writing a promising first novel…and never followed up on the promise.  Now he does celebrity interviews for a magazine. Apparently it pays well enough for him to maintain a spectacular apartment overlooking the Coliseum.

He’s a Roman down to his toenails — he never leaves the city and knows every alley, fountain, park and plaza like his own bedroom. He wanders the city in the wee hours, usually going home only with the rising sun.

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HOLLYWOOD’s GREATEST YEAR: “Ninotchka”

December 30, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas

Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas

“Ninotchka” screens at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, January 4, 2014, in the Durwood Film Vault of the Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.  Admission is free. It’s part of the year-long film series America’s Greatest Year, which offers movies released in 1939.

For most of her career, the great Swedish star  Greta Garbo (1905-1990) was known as a dramatic actress. A tragic actress, in fact.

In films like “Flesh and the Devil” (1926), “Anna Karenina” (’35), and “Camille”(‘36), the ethereal-looking Garbo loved, suffered, and died. With regularity.

Audiences were riveted by Garbo’s subtlety of expression, something they were unaccustomed to in silent film. In just a few years she became the best-known woman in world, the “unapproachable goddess of the most widespread and remarkable mythology in human history,” according to social critic Alistair Cooke.

Garbo was considered the movies’ most mysterious and seductive leading lady. Most of her films were box office sensations, and the public became obsessed with her personal life and loves … a situation the fundamentally shy and insecure actress found distressing. As a result she went to extremes to shun unwanted publicity and protect her privacy.

Comedians and even animated cartoons often spoofed a line from Garbo’s film “Grand Hotel” in which her moody ballerina character says, “I want to be alone.”

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