Butler's Cinema Scene

“ELYSIUM”: Paradise in orbit

August 9, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

“ELYSIUM” My rating: C (Opening wide on Aug. 9)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

One classic definition of science fiction is a story that takes a contemporary social or scientific situation and extrapolates how it might play out in the future.

Neil Blomkamp’s “Elysium” should be great sci-fi. Instead it’s a great idea that quickly bogs down in the same sort of slam-bam chaos we’ve been enduring all summer. (Hell, for as long as I can remember).

As such it’s a distinct step down from Bloomkamp’s debut feture, 2009’s “District Nine,” a savvy futuristic satire of Apartheid involving aliens instead of black people.

We all know about the 1 percent, right? Well, 150 years from now the wealthiest among us have given up on the dying planet Earth and relocated to Elysium, a big, sleek space station rotating in orbit.

There the lawns are all manicured, the foliage is lush, the people are rich and beautiful, and the technology so advanced that every home has a machine that diagnoses illnesses or physical damage and cures the patient in a matter of minutes.

Back on terra firma the vast mass of humanity lives in conditions that suggest a South American favela that has spread to cover the entire planet. Everyone dreams of going to Elysium; a few actually make it thanks to smugglers who make illegal shuttle runs.

Max (Matt Damon, head shaved, heavily tattooed) is an ex-con working in an L.A. factory making ‘droids. Thanks to his criminal past he’s always being hassled by the cops (actually robots) and spends a lot of time talking to his parole officer (a robotic mannequin so primitive it looks like one of those fortune tellers in a turn-of-the-last-century penny arcade).

Posted in Popcorn movies | Leave a Comment »

“STILL MINE”: Geezer angst

August 9, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

James Cromwell, Genevieve Bujold

“STILL MINE” My rating: C+ (Opening Aug. 9 at the Rio)

102 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There is much to admire in “Still Mine”: Fine acting, some gorgeous cinematography, lovely New Brunswick landscapes.

None of which can dispel the sensation that the movie is bitter medicine that we should swallow because it will be good for us.

“When I was young I looked at old people and thought if you live long enough, you probably have time enough to figure out dying,” says 80-something Irene Morrison (Genevieve Bujold). “But I’m no closer now to the great mystery than when I was 10.”

Craig (James Cromwell), her husband of some 60 years, shrugs. A crusty old farmer, he hasn’t time for meditations on mortality. He’s got stuff to do.

“Still Mine,” written and directed by Michael McGowan, is a Canadian geezer drama (based on a real incident) that chronicles Craig’s long legal wrestling match with the local authorities over his plan to build a new house on his farmland.

With his beloved Irene slipping into dementia and their century-old farmhouse now unsuitable for folks their age (the place is impossible to heat and the only bathroom is on the second floor), Craig decides to build a nice cozy new one-story home. He’ll do it himself, the way his father taught him.

And he sees no reason why he should have to file building permits, or draw up architectural specs, or buy lumber that has been officially inspected and stamped (after all, he mills his own boards from his own trees and knows that the quality exceeds anything he’d find at a building supply store).

“When did we become a country of bureaucrats?” Craig fumes.

Posted in Art house fare | Leave a Comment »

MOVIES THAT MATTER: THE SEQUEL

August 7, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

I’m happy to report that once again this year I’ll be hosting Movies That Matter, the KC Public Library’s series devoted to some of the greatest titles in cinema history.

Last year for our kickoff we offered such classics as Buster Keaton’s “The General,” Orson Welle’s “Citizen Kane,” Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” Carl Theodore Dryer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” the screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby,” Disney’s animated “Snow White,” the musical “Singin’ in the Rain” and Wim Wenders’ haunting “Wings of Desire.”

Movies That Matter: The Sequel consists of 10 titles from both the silent and sound eras. We’ll be showing comedies, musicals, adventures, searing drama, horror – even an animated classic.

All screenings are at 1:30 p.m. Sundays in the Truman Forum of the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St. Admission is free.

The schedule:

THE GRAND ILLUSION (France; 1937)

Sunday, Sept. 29, 2013

On the outside it’s a World War I escape movie about Frenchmen breaking out of a German POW camp.

On the inside Jean Renoir’s The Grand Illusion is a meditation on the inevitability of armed conflict and the changing face of European society.

The titled French officer De Boldieu (Pierre Fresnay) has more in common with the aristocratic German commander of the prison camp (Eric Von Stroheim) than he does with his own working-class fellow prisoner, Marechal (Jean Gabin). Then there’s Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), the Jew whose “new money” denotes a future in which competence, not birthright, determines the pecking order.

Renoir, the son of impressionist painter August Renoir, was a humanist who observed that no matter which side you’re fighting for, the basic qualities we share should trump the politics that push us apart. But it never works out that way.

An end to war? Alas, Renoir argues, that’s the grand illusion.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare, KC Film Scene | Leave a Comment »

“SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE”: Crash course in esthetics

August 3, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

I’m a huge fan of TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” which recently ended its current season.

Not the whole show, just the dancing. The dancing is so terrific that I find myself choking up two or three times in every broadcast because I’ve just seen something that so seamlessly blends movement, emotion and intellectual content that it’s like a crash course in esthetics.

It’s just so goddam…beautiful.

The Fox show itself gives me a bit of an ass pain. I’m not terrifically interested in SYTYCD as an “American Idol”-type competition that begins with weeks of tryouts in cities across the country and starts properly with 20 elite dancers, two of whom (one man, one woman) are eliminated each week until we end up with a season champion.

I don’t like the voting process and never participate.

As with “Idol,” TV viewers cast their ballots by phone or text at the end of each episode. The following week the dancers receiving the least votes must perform a solo “dance for your life” routine before the judges. Each show ends with two of these kids going home.

I dislike the voting process because most Americans have the all taste of a Busch Lite. They vote less for talent than for cuteness. They’re almost as bad as the studio audience, who are encouraged to cheer particularly spectacular steps and lifts as if they’d just seen a singularly violent hit during an NFL game.

Dance as spectator sport.

Posted in Deep thoughts...maybe, Uncategorized | Tagged Mandy Moore, Mia Michaels, So You Think You Can Dance, Sonya Tayeh, Stacey Took, Travis Wall, Tyce Diorio | 3 Comments »

“I’M SO EXCITED”: Almodovar makes a gay film

August 2, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

“I’M SO EXCITED” My rating: B-

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“I’m So Excited” is the gayest movie of Pedro Almodovar’s career.

Which is another way of saying that it’s really, really gay.

It’s also amusing and wacky in a lightweight, breathless way that so reminds me of one of Almodovar’s earlier classics that it could have been called “Flight Attendants on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

All is quiet and peaceful on Peninsula Airlines Flight 259 from Madrid to Mexico City. Everyone in economy class is fast asleep. You can tell by the snoring, farting and drool collecting in the corners of the passengers’ mouths.

This is because of the muscle relaxant with which their drinks have been spiked by the three male cabin attendants.

You see, there’s a problem with the plane, one that could kill everyone on board. And rather than deal with a bunch of panicked travelers, the business-class crew — Fajas (Carlos Areces), Joserra (Javier Camara) and Ulloa (Raul Arevalo) — have defused the situation with pharmaceuticals.

Now these three are busily self-medicating with tequila and weed — and letting their gay sensibilities have free reign. At this point there’s nothing to lose…which may explain why they attempt to distract the passengers still awake with a fully choreographed lip sync version of the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited.”

“I’m So Excited” unfolds while the plane flies circles over Spain and the authorities on the ground try to find an open runway for a crash landing.

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged almodovar, Cecilia Roth | Leave a Comment »

“THE HUNT”: Mikkelsen does it again

August 2, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

“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.

Posted in Art house fare | 1 Comment »

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

July 27, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

“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…

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

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

July 19, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

“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

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).

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged Allison Janney, AnnaSophia Robb, Liam James, Sam Rockwell, Steve Carell, Toni Collette | 2 Comments »

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

July 19, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

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.”

Posted in Popcorn movies | Tagged Ed Walker, James Wan, Lili Taylor, Lorraine Walker, Patrick Wilson, Ron Livingston, Vera Farmiga | 1 Comment »

“A HIJACKING”: Living in limbo

July 18, 2013 by butlerscinemascene

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 »

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged hijacking, Somali pirates | Leave a Comment »

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Butler's Cinema Scene

Movie criticism taking the long view

“ELYSIUM”: Paradise in orbit

“STILL MINE”: Geezer angst

MOVIES THAT MATTER: THE SEQUEL

“SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE”: Crash course in esthetics

“I’M SO EXCITED”: Almodovar makes a gay film

“THE HUNT”: Mikkelsen does it again

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

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

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

“A HIJACKING”: Living in limbo

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