Butler's Cinema Scene

“THIS IS 40” My rating: C- (Opens wide on Dec. 21)

134 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Being funny has never been a problem for Judd Apatow. And let’s be honest —  there are some good laughs in his latest, “This is 40.”

The problem is Apatow’s  increasing incompetence as an overall filmmaker.  His movies are obscenely long, slowly paced, meandering, and poorly laid out. I won’t say they have no point, only that they so quickly run out of dramatic steam and narrative focus that they seem to have no point.

“This is 40” follows Pete (KC native Paul Rudd) and his wife Debbie (Leslie Mann, Apatow’s Missus), two supporting characters from “Knocked Up,”

They live in an upscale LA neighborhood with their two daughters (Iris and Maude Apatow, the director’s kids). Debbie runs a boutique. Pete has started his own independent record label.

And like a lot of folks who hit 40 years of age, they’re getting jumpy.

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Members of the KC movie reviewing community gathered on Sunday, Dec. 16 to vote for the 46th annual Kansas City Film Critics Circle awards.

The Winners:

Best Film: “THE MASTER”

Best Director: Ang Lee “THE LIFE OF PI”

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence “SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK”

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis “LINCOLN”

Best Supporting Actress:   Anne Hathaway “LES MISERABLES”

Best Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman “THE MASTER”

Best Screenplay Adaptation: Chris Terrio “ARGO”

Best Original Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson “THE MASTER”

Best Foreign Film: “AMOUR”

Best Animated Feature: “FRANKENWEENIE”

Best Documentary Feature: “THE IMPOSTER”

Vince Koehler Award for Best Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror Feature: “CABIN IN THE WOODS”

Here are my Top 10 movies of the year (meaning they opened in KC during 2013, even if they were considered for the 2011 Oscars). They are presented in no particular order. Alas, “Zero Dark Thirty” won’t open  here until January. Otherwise it would definately be among the Top Ten.

PS  Late addition: Holy crap, how could I forget about “SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN”?  That ought to be in the Top Ten, too. I’m beginning to think this was a very good year at the movies.

THE TOP  TEN:

“The Sessions”

“Life of Pi”

“Argo” Continue Reading »

Riley Keough and Juno Temple

“JACK AND DIANE” My rating: C (Opening Nov. 30 at the Screenland Crossroads)

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

 “Jack and Diane” is a teenage lesbian love story.

And, no, it’s not hot.

Instead it’s…well, weird. Strange. Definitely pretentious.

Diane (Juno Temple…last seen as the trailer court white trash Lolita in “Killer Joe”) is a British teen spending the summer with her aunt in NYC. 

We first encounter Diane wandering around Greenwich Village, begging strangers to let her use their cell phones. With her unkempt blond mane she looks like the waif on a poster for the Broadway musical “Les Miserables.”  When she’s under pressure (which is often) her nose bleeds. She has a tendency to pass out in odd places – like on the floor of a bathroom in a noisy disco.

When she runs into the boyish Jack (Riley Keough, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter) it’s love at first sight. At least on Jack’s part (she has a mix tape she has long wanted to share with someone special). It takes Diane a bit longer to get on board (apparently she has had no prior sexual experience).

Bradley Rust Gray’s film follows the two young lovers as they come together, pull apart, party, and fight. There are confrontations with Diane’s disapproving aunt (Cara Seymour). On the rebound after a nasty spat, Jack has a fling with an older woman (Kylie Minogue).

And throughout Gray alternates the live action with disturbing stop-action animated sequences by the Brothers Quay. Here strands of hair, knots of viscera and rivulets of blood writhe sinuously and make squishy, slurping noises.

The girls watch an unsettling internet  web site on which college girls are drugged and sexually abused.

At one point Diane transforms into a werewolf and eats Jack … but apparently that’s only a dream.

Never mind.

“Jack and Diane” (no relation to the John Mellencamp song with the same title) has a queasy Cronenberg-ish feel to it, with allegory, fantasy, eroticism, and adolescent angst colliding.

There’s a lot going on here and the acting is okay…but then why does it feel as banal as a teenage slumber party?

 | Robert W. Butler

“ANNA KARENINA” My rating: B (Opens wide on Nov. 30 )

130 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Georgeous to gaze upon but muted dramatically, Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” is an honorable adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s great Russian novel.

But then  I don’t expect ever to see a movie that captures all the aspects of this monumental piece of literature, which contains within its pages not only a story of doomed love but a practically encyclopedic portrait of upper-class tsarist society.

In a way Wright (his resume includes “Pride and Prejudice,” “Hanna,” “Atonement” and “The Soloist”) has given us a  Cliff’s Notes version of the book that touches on most of the main themes without developing them with anywhere near the detail provided by Tolstoy.

Part of the problem is that most of us go to “Anna Karenina” expecting breathless, tragic romance. That was the main selling point of earlier movie versions with Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh.

Tolstoy had no intention of writing a romance. In depicting the affair of the married Anna (Wright protégé Keira Knightley) and the handsome but shallow officer Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his goal was not to bathe in swooning emotion but to dissect – some would say clinically and cruelly – the flaws in human character and in society at large that will lead to his heroine’s eventual downfall.

To the extent that Wright’s approach to the material is also clinical, he emulates Tolstoy. The problem, of course, is that we want, nay, demand to be emotional voyeurs, and this film’s dour take doesn’t give us the kick we’re expecting.

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