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“THE HUNT”: Mikkelsen does it again

August 2, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

hunt 1“THE HUNT”  My rating: B+ (Now showing at the Tivoli)

115 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Is Mads  Mikkelsen is our greatest living movie actor, the Olivier of our era?

Exhibit A is the melancholy Dane’s latest film, “The Hunt.”

In it Mikkelsen portrays an average guy accused of a horrible crime – child molestation – and caught up in a Kafkaesque situation in which he cannot prove that the crime didn’t happen, all the while being driven further away from the community he calls home.

Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, one of the founders of the austere Dogme 95 avant-garde filmmaking movement, this tale is so excruciating that it takes a bravura central performance to make it bearable.

Naturally, Mikkelsen delivers.

Of course there are plenty of other impressive  Mikkelson perfs to be sampled: the bloodthirsty Viking berserker in Nicholas Winding Refn’s  “Valhalla Rising,” the suave but majorly disturbed villain of the Bond flick “Casino Royale,” an idealistic aid worker caught up in a corrupt rich family in “After the Wedding,” or the psycho/cannibal/psychiatrist title character of the current NBC series “Hannibal.”

Whatever the project, Mikkelsen lifts everything around him.

Here he plays Lucas, a teacher in a small Danish town who is putting his lonely life back together after several setbacks.

He used to teach at a middle school, but he was downsized. Now he’s employed by a kindergarten where he’s beloved by staff and kids (the latter group uses him like a human jungle gym).

His ex-wife has had custody of their teenage son and until recently would allow the boy to visit Lucas only every other weekend.  Now young Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrom) has made such a fuss that Lucas’ ex agrees to let him live with his father.

And Lucas’ love life has improved, thanks to Nadja (Alexandra Rapaport),  a cook at the school.

Job. Child. Woman. Everything is looking up.

At least until little Klara (Annika Wedderkopp), the four-year-old daughter of Lucas’ lifelong best friend, gets mad at him and tells another teacher that she has seen Lucas’ erect penis. (How, you wonder, does a child even know such stuff?  She glimpsed a porn website on her older brother’s computer tablet.)

And at that point it all starts falling apart for poor Lucas.

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“Fruitvale Station”: Life and Death in the new urban America

July 27, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

fruitvale with daughter“FRUITVALE STATION”  My rating: A (Now playing wide.)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

If “Fruitvale Station” was concerned only with a young man’s death on an Oakland train platform early in the hours of Jan. 1, 2009, it would be hard going, indeed.

But Ryan Coogler‘s stunning writing/directing debut is less about dying than about living, and by attempting to limn the world of one individual it becomes the story of an entire class of contemporary Americans.

“Fruitvale Station” was inspired by the shooting by a Bay Area Rapid Transit cop of 22-year-old Oscar Grant. I’m giving nothing away by letting you know that Oscar dies.  It’s the first thing you see in the movie.

In grainy cell-phone video — Is this real footage or a re-enactment? Can’t tell — we see transit police officers standing over several young black men sitting with their backs against a wall of the Fruitvale BART station. A ruckus breaks out and the cops jump on one of the  young men, who is lying on the concrete. We hear observers yelling at the officers to stop. Suddenly there’s a gunshot…

Melodie Diaz

Melonie Diaz

The film proper begins almost 24 hours earlier. Oscar (the Oscar-bound Michael B. Jordan), his live-in girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz) and their pre-school age daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal) are waking up on Dec. 31, 2008.

Oscar and Sophina are having a quiet early-a.m. argument. Oscar has had sex with another woman. He says it only happened once. No, she says, you only got caught once.

But Oscar swears fidelity, says he wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with Sophina and little Tatiana, in whose presence he becomes the playful, loving and responsible Daddy.

We follow Oscar through his day. He goes to a grocery story to buy food for a big birthday bash that night for his mother, Wanda (Octavia Spencer). While there he begs his former boss to give him back his job — he was fired two weeks earlier for being regularly late for his shift.

“Do you want me selling dope?” the desperate young man asks the manager, who has already filled Oscar’s old position and cannot rehire him.

He hasn’t told Sophina that he’s out of work.

Out on the street a speeding car run down a stray dog.  Oscar holds the animal until it gives a final shudder.

That night, with little Tatiana safe at her aunt’s house, Oscar, Sophina and friends take the train into San Francisco to watch the New Year’s fireworks. On the way back there’s a delay and the group turn the car into a nightclub with a pair of battery-powered speakers and an iPod. Everyone — black, white, gay, straight — boogies down.

Like a square dance in a John Ford film, it’s a diverse community suddenly coming together.

And all the while they’re getting closer to Fruitvale Station.

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“THE WAY, WAY BACK”: The hilarity of misery

July 19, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

way way Liam James“THE WAY, WAY BACK” My rating: B+ (Opening wide on July 19) 

103 minutes | MPAA rating:  PG-13

Coming-of-age-movies are a dime a dozen, and a plot outline of “The Way, Way Back” suggests just more of the same.

But five minutes into this first feature from the writing/directing team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (they wrote the screenplay for Alexander Payne’s marvelous “The Descendants”) you’ll realize that something special is at work. This movie is fall-over funny, emotionally resonant (without getting sticky) and astonishingly charitable toward a cast of characters who are, to put it mildly, majorly flawed.

Our  protagonist is Duncan (Liam James), a 14-year-old who appears to have no personality save for a bad case of sullenness. Duncan is stuck in the summer vacation from hell. His divorced and insecure mother Pam (Toni

Toni Collette, Steve Carell

Toni Collette, Steve Carell

Collette) has taken up with alpha-male car salesman Trent (Steve Carell in a straight role); now Duncan has been shanghaied into a summer at Trent’s beach house on Cape Cod.  Also on board is Trent’s high-schooler daughter Steph (Zoe Levin), who cannot mask her disdain for these interlopers.

Once installed on the shore Duncan can only observe with silent disgust the behavior of vacationing adults. Trent and Pam seem to party around the clock (after seeing this film you’ll think twice before drinking around your kids), acting like teenagers with Trent’s friend Kip (Rob Corddry) and his hot wife Joan (Amanda Peet).

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“THE CONJURING”: Things that go BOO in the night

July 19, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

Lili Tqylor...it's behind you!

Lili Taylor … it’s behind you!

“THE CONJURING” My rating: C+ 

112 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“The Conjuring” might have been subtitled “Exorcism’s Greatest Hits.”  When it comes to manifestations of demonic possession, the damn thing is practically encyclopedic.

Levitation. Foul odors. Disgusting vomit. Rotting ghost-corpses. Sleepwalking.  Doors that open and close when nobody’s around. An animated evil doll. Strange noises. Unexplained bruises.

No head-spinning, but there is a Hitchcock-ian bird attack.

It’s all quite silly but surprisingly effective, thanks to the taunt direction of James Wan (creator of the “Saw” series) and a cast of talented pros who keep our doubts at arm’s length.

“The Conjuring” is inspired by the ghostly experiences of husband-and-wife team of Ed and Lorraine Walker, who specialized in paranormal investigations. These real-life ghostbusters did on-site studies of hauntings publicized in the movies like “The Amityville Horror “ and “A Haunting in Connecticut.”

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“A HIJACKING”: Living in limbo

July 18, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

DDDD...a captive of Somali pirates

Pilou Asbaek…a captive of Somali pirates

“A HIJACKING” My rating: B+ (Opening July 19 at the Tivioli)

103 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There’s not one superfluous moment in the Danish release “A Hijacking,” a terse docudrama handled so realistically and with such quiet insight that you come away from it feeling for the first time that you understand what modern seagoing piracy is all about.

Tobias Lindholm’s film is nerve-wracking without resorting to hackneyed ideas of movie “action.” And it provides tons of insight into not only what it’s like to be a captive sailor held for ransom, but what it’s like to be a corporate bigwig negotiating for his employees’ freedom.

Lindholm’s methodology might at first seem anti-dramatic. He first introduces us to Mikkel (Pilou Asbaek), the chubby, bearded young cook of a Danish cargo vessel plying the Indian Ocean. Mikkel is talking to his girlfriend and his young daughter back in Denmark, looking forward to his return home.

Lindholm doen’t even depict the seizing of Mikkel’s ship and its seven-man crew. We simply become aware that the cook has become  a prisoner, confined to a cramped cabin with his ailing captain and the ship’s engineer. The armed pirates refuse to let them use the bathroom, turning their “cell” into a sewer.

Periodically Mikkel is escorted to the galley where he is expected to cook for his captors from an ever-shrinking pantry. (Fact is, we rarely see the pirates, and never very clearly. They’re simply there, just out of sight.) Continue Reading »

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“PACIFIC RIM”: The world’s best train set

July 11, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

PACIFIC RIM“PACIFIC  RIM” My rating:  C + (Opening wide on July 12)

131 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There is absolutely no reason why a reasonably intelligent, over-30 lover of the dramatic arts needs to slap down $10 or so to watch “Pacific Rim.”

That said, if such an aforementioned individual does find himself in a theater watching this noisy (as in rock-concert loud) romp, he’ll be okay. Might even enjoy himself.

If you’ve seen the trailers you know that “Pacific Rim” is a lot like a Transformers movie mated to a Godzilla movie and injected with steroids – a description that sounds impossible (louder and busier than a Michael Bay movie?), but there you have it.

The pitch: Giant robotic figures battle giant saurian creatures.

But “Pacific Rim” was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, the Spanish horror/sci-fi aficionado who has given us two flat-out masterpieces set in the Spanish Civil War  (“The Devil’s Backbone” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”)  and the devilishly enjoyable (thanks to Ron Perlman’s monumental perf in the title role)  “Hellboy.”

Del Toro is in summer blockbuster mode here, which means you won’t get a whole lot in the way of character development, complicated motivations or subtlety in just about any phase of this production.

But I gotta admit, his childlike enthusiasm is infectious.

Orson Welles once described a movie set as the greatest toy train a boy could ask for. Only for del Toro a movie is a 60-story mechanical man using a seagoing oil tanker as a baseball bat.

The story? Well, apparently big lizard-like aliens called Kaiju have been entering our world through a time/space rift at the bottom of the Pacific. These critters seriously ravaged the adjacent coastlines before being held at bay by the Jaegers, huge robots piloted by two humans who must meld their minds in something called the “drift” in order to operate these massive fighting machines.

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“THE ATTACK”: What we don’t know

July 7, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

ATTACK1-articleLarge“THE ATTACK” My rating: B (Now at the Tivoli)

102 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Amin Jafaari is leading the good life. Though an Arab, he has carved an enviable niche in Israeli society.  He has a beautiful wife, a fine home, and an illustrious career as a hotshot surgeon. As the film begins, in fact, he is accepting a prestigious award…the first Arab to ever receive it.

The buzz won’t last long. The next day a suicide bombing sends dozens of victims — mostly children attending birthday parties in a Tel Aviv restaurant — to Amin’s emergency room. With professional cool he patches together bodies (although one bloody victim refuses to be treated by an Arab).

The nightmare is just beginning. He’s called back in the middle of the night to identify the body — or the half that’s still recognizable — of the suicide bomber. It is his wife, Siham.

Amin is rocked. He protests that his wife — she was off visiting relatives — would never do such a thing. Before long he’s in handcuffs being manhandled by a scary cop (Uri Gavriel) who seems determined to make him an accomplice to the crime. After three sleepless nights (his cell rocks to high-volume death metal) Amin finds himself out on the street.

When a goodbye letter from his wife arrives in the mail, Amin must admit that Siham was, indeed, the bomber. But why? How did she hide this part of her life from him? How could he be so clueless?

That confusion and angst is perfectly captured by Nazareth-born actor Ali Suliman. He’s terrific…and he needs to be, because I can’t help feeling that this psychological study from Lebanese writer/director Ziad Doueiri is a bit of a cheat. Continue Reading »

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“STUCK IN LOVE”: Love hurts

June 28, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

Lily Collins, Greg Kinnear

Lily Collins, Greg Kinnear

“STUCK IN LOVE” My rating: B (Opens wide on July 5)

97 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Stuck in Love” isn’t wildly original, but for a writing-directing debut it hits its marks cleanly and effectively, gives a talented cast an exhilarating workout, and leaves its audience convinced that newcomer Josh Boone has great things in his future.

Boone‘s comedy-drama centers on the Borgens, a family of writers living along the Atlantic Coast in New England. And I don’t mean a few blocks from the Coast…I mean in a three-story beach house overlooking the dunes.

The place was purchased with money generated by the first several novels penned by William Borgens (Greg Kinnear). Alas, Bill is now in a slump.  His wife of 20 years, Erica (Jennifer Connelly), left him three years ago for another man, and lately the depressed Bill hasn’t written a word.

For excitement Bill hides in the bushes outside the house where Erica and her new husband live. He’s never happier than when he can eavesdrop on them fighting.

(Kinnear almost seems to be channelling a character he played a few years back in a similar romantic drama, “The Feast of Love.”  He’s good at these roles, but let’s have a bit more diversity, eh?)

Meanwhile Bill has his sexual needs met by a neighbor lady (Kristen Bell) who stops by on her morning run, services him in record time, and delivers unsentimental advice while tugging on her jogging outfit.

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“DIRTY WARS”: Institutionalized ruthlessness

June 28, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

Jeremy Scahill...looking for the story

Jeremy Scahill…looking for the story

“DIRTY WARS” My rating: B (Opens June 28 at the Tivoli)

90 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Dirty Wars” might be termed a “documentary thriller.”

Rick Rowley’s film follows freelance journalist Jeremy Scahill, who has covered Iraq and Afghanistan for The Nation and written the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army).

Scahill is attempting to get the story behind an increasing number of disturbing execution/massacres of apparently innocent civilians in Afghanistan and, later, Yemen.

Unlike most embedded journalists, who live with American troops and tend to unconsciously adopt their perspective, Scahill is fiercely independent. He talks to the villagers who have lost family and friends in mysterious nighttime raids or sudden missile strikes. He tracks down local warlords. And through his dogged reporting, he clearly is a threat to this unseen conspiracy.

At one point we see footage of a TV appearance in which Jay Leno asks Scahill: “Why are you still alive?”

The first half of “Dirty Wars” takes place prior to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. It is during this time that Scahill catches wind of a massive secret U.S. apparatus taking directions from the White House.  This Joint Special Operations Command apparently operates free of the usual rules of engagement, shrugging off civilian deaths — even massive ones — as simply an unavoidable by-product of the War on Terror.

With Ben Laden’s death, however, the JSOC stepped into the spotlight and took its bow. And with its new semi-transparency Scahill realizes that the organization’s efforts are far more massive and widespread than even he imagined.

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New on DVD: RICHARD PRYOR…a freakin’ genius

June 24, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

Richard-Pryor_Live-in-Concert-2On the cover of his 1975 comedy album is a photo of Richard Pryor tied to a stake and surrounded by hooded figures  (the Inquisition? Klansmen?) holding burning torches.

The album’s title: “Is It Something I Said?”

Well, yes, Richard. It’s something you said. It’s everything you said.

Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin form the Holy Trinity of American comedy. They broke rules, they went where they weren’t supposed to, and they changed the laugh-generating landscape for everyone who came after them.

Bob Newhart, no slouch when it comes to laughs, calls Pryor “the seminal comedian of the last 50 years.”

Pryor died in 2005 at the age of 65, and by that time poor health had kept him out of the spotlight for many years. Which means that a sizeable percentage of the young folk who today make up the audience for live comedy in this country are probably unfamiliar with his standup work. Oh, they may have seen him in movie roles, but at best those offered watered-down Pryor. To get the dude full strength you’ve got to look at the live routines.

And that’s just what you’ll find in “No Pryor Restraint: Life in Concert: Richard Pryor,”  a massive new boxed set out on the Shout label.

There have been other Pryor boxed sets – 2000’s “And It’s Deep Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992)” and 2004’s “Evolution/Revolution: The Early Years (1966-1974).”

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