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“LINCOLN”: Day-Lewis: 10. Spielberg: 5

November 15, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“LINCOLN” My rating: B (Opens wide Nov. 9)

150 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

The first thing you must know about Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” is that in the title role Daniel Day-Lewis gives the performance of a lifetime.

Yeah, yeah, we’re all accustomed to Day-Lewis diving heart and soul into the characters he plays. But in “Lincoln” he outdoes even his own high standards.  Two minutes into the film you no longer are even thinking in terms of technique and performance. Daniel Day-Lewis has vanished to be replaced by freakin’ Abraham Lincoln.

The second thing you must know about “Lincoln” is that it’s less a movie than an illustrated history lesson, that it is forever becoming bogged down in political discussions and declamatory monologues. There’s not much forward momentum. It comes perilously close (in at least this man’s opinion) to being a dramatic dud.

It’s Spielberg’s deal with the devil: one of the finest performances you’ll ever see in a borderline mediocre package.

Though ”Lincoln” is based in part on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s brilliant book “Team of Rivals” — about how Lincoln gently rode herd on his dissenting and oft-times disloyal cabinet members —  Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner concentrate on a different story: the effort to ban slavery through passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

“Lincoln” contains a brief scene of chaotic fighting, but the real battle here is one of words and ideas.

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Posted in Art house fare, Popcorn movies | 11 Comments »

“THE SESSIONS”: His penis speaks to him

November 8, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Helen Hunt, John Hawkes“THE SESSIONS” My rating: A (Opening Nov. 9 at the )

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“My penis speaks to me.”

Mark O’Brien, a devout but conflicted Roman Catholic, is confessing to his parish priest.  

Mark  has been paralyzed from the neck down ever since contracting polio as a child. He spends all but three or four hours of every day in an iron lung and can only go to church by being strapped onto a gurney pushed by one of his care-givers.

Mark can feel his body, he just can’t move it. And now, at age 38, he’s determined to finally have sex with a woman.

“I’m getting close to my ‘use by’ date,” he explains, introducing his plan to hire a sex surrogate to take his virginity.

Mark O’Brien (1950-1999) has already been the subjects of an Oscar-winning documentary, 1997’s “Breathing Lessons.”

“The Sessions” takes a fictional approach to a particular aspect of O’Brien’s life, and in tackling an eyebrow-raising situation with humor, compassion and insight writer/director Ben Lewin has given us a film less about disabilities than about the human condition.

(Lewin, a veteran of nearly 40 years in television and documentaries, knows of which he speaks. He gets around on crutches, the result of his own boyhood brush with polio).

Mark is played by John Hawkes, who was so effective a couple of years back as a coiled-spring Ozarks meth head in “Winter’s Bone.” Here he cannot act with his body at all, spending most of the movie flat on his back and unmoving.

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“SKYFALL”: Blue eyes and pectorals

November 8, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“SKYFALL” My rating:  B- (Opens wide on Nov. 9)

143 minutes | MPAA  rating: PG-13

The plot of “Skyfall,” the latest (and, according to a rising chorus of voices,  best) of the James Bond franchise, is irrelevant. The narratives of all these movies are interchangeable.

Here’s what matters:

Daniel Craig’s blue eyes, followed closely by his pecs.

Bond’s skin-tight gray suit, practically a character in its own right.

The gold Aston Martin from “Goldfinger” (the ejection seat still functional), taken out of mothballs for a last run.

Javier Bardem’s ridiculous blond Euro-mullet.

Judi Dench’s no-nonsense, mother-knows-best M.

Ben Whisaw’s gawky whiz-kid Q.

Chases.

Explosions.

Scenery.

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“THE IMPOSTER”: An onion with no center

November 8, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Nicholas Barclay, age 13

“THE IMPOSTER” My rating: A- (Opening Nov. 9 at the Tivoli)

99 minutes | MPAA rating: R

If a Hollywood feature film came along to tell the same story related in the new doc “The Imposter,” I’d write it off as a typical bit of Tinseltown overstatement and the product of a screenwriter with a tenuous grasp on reality.

(In fact, it did become a feature film, 2010’s “The Chameleon” with Ellen Barkin and Famke Janssen. The movie never played in KC.)

But “The Imposter” is the real deal, a hair-raising, gut knotting true-life tragedy that will leaving you brooding and marveling.

In 1994 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay failed to return to his suburban San Antonio home after spending an evening  playing video games on a nearby military base. No trace of him was ever found.

His mother, Beverly Dollarhide, older sister Carey Gibson, and other family members mourned, got angry, sought answers, and finally accepted that they’d never know what happened to Nick.

Then, three years later, they received word from authorities in a small Spanish city that Nick had been found. He had a story of being kidnapped, kept as a sexual slave, and living as a homeless teen. Now he was being held in a youth facility, waiting for a family member to come get him.

Only it wasn’t Nicholas at all, but rather a 23-year-old French man named Frederic Bourdin. Bourdin’s eyes and hair were a different color than Nicholas’ and he spoke English with a French accent.  Yet Nicholas’ blue-collar clan brought him to America, embraced him, nurtured him, and got him therapy for the many traumas he had experienced. They were completely taken in.

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Posted in Documentaries | 1 Comment »

“SMASHED”: Getting straight

November 8, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aaron Paul

“SMASHED” My rating: C+ (Opening Nov. 9 at the Cinemark Palace and Glenwood at Red Bridge)

85 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Kate Hannah loves her job as an elementary school teacher.  She connects with the kids. She’s energetic, happy, eager.

And drunk.

So drunk that she pukes in front of her first graders. So ashamed that she claims it was morning sickness. Now she has to endure the travesty of a baby shower from her fellow teachers.

“Smashed” is a sort of update of “The Days of Wine and Roses,” starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Kate and Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”) as her husband,  Charlie.

As rendered by writer/director James Ponsoldt (whose first feature was 2006’s “Off the Black” with Nick Nolte as an alcoholic…is there a trend here?), “Smashed” is solid but unspectacular. It really breaks no new ground — but then perhaps every generation needs its own addiction story.

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“CHINESE TAKE-AWAY”: International Mutt ‘n Jeff

November 2, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“CHINESE TAKE-AWAY”  My rating: B (Opens Nov. 2 at the Glenwood Arts)

93 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Chinese Take-Away” opens with one of the weirdest images you’ll see in movies this year.

On an idyllic lake in China two young lovers sit in a boat. The boy has a couple of wedding rings…he’s preparing to propose. And then a cow falls from the sky, shattering the boat and, in the process, the kid’s life.

Next thing you know we’re in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the tiny hardware store operated by Roberto (Ricardo Darin).  He’s a middle-aged grump, sour and solitary, obsessed with making sure that when his suppliers sell him a box of 500 screws that there are actually 500 screws in the box.  He spends a lot of time counting screws…that and collecting tiny blown glass animals for a shrine to his late mother, who died giving birth to him..

Sebastian Borensztein’s comedy with a heart throws together the truculent Roberto with a visitor, Jun (Ignacio Huang), that same young man from the comic/tragic prologue. Jun has traveled to Argentina to live with an uncle who immigrated there years before. But the uncle has moved out of the city to parts unknown and the childlike Jun, who speaks not a word of Spanish, must throw himself upon the comfort of strangers — or at least on the comfort of the strange Roberto.

That you can see where “Chinese Take-Away” is going doesn’t really diminish its pleasures. Roberto tries repeatedly to ditch his unwelcome guest, but his conscience always gets the best of him. For his part, Jun does what he can to be useful to his benefactor. And his presence does have one upside…it shows Roberto’s off-and-on girl (Muriel Santa Ana) that he’s not such a curmudgeon after all.

The joy in all this is the balancing of Roberto’s surly pessimism against Jun’s sad innocence. Together they make a pretty complete human being.

| Robert W. Butler

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“SOMEWHERE BETWEEN”: Oreos

November 2, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“SOMEWHERE BETWEEN” My rating: C+  (Opening Nov. 2 at the Tivoli)

88 minutes | No MPAA rating

The adolescent girls who are the focus of the documentary “Somewhere Between” often refer to themselves as Oreos: White on the inside, yellow (or Chinese) on the outside.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton’s documentary concentrates on four girls born in China, abandoned by their parents (China’s one-child-per-family policy has pushed thousands of couples to give up their female offspring until a more-prized boy comes along) and adopted by Americans.

In most respects these girls (they’re not young women yet, though a couple exhibit a maturity far beyond their years) are thoroughly Americanized. They tend to be high achievers. One is a fervent Christian. Another is determined to be the first Chinese-American to perform on the stage of the Grand Ol’ Opry.

But they’re still children, emotionally vulnerable and, despite their happy circumstances, torn by the fact that they weren’t wanted by their birth parents.

The film runs on two parallel tracks. There’s the story of their lives in the U.S.: birthday parties, church services, sports, academics, boyfriends.

And then there are the efforts (often hopeless, but sometimes remarkably successful) of these girls to discover their birth parents back in China. In at least one case this results in a girl discovering her father, two older sisters and a little brother.

We meet an adoptive mother who has launched a charity to send relief aid to abandoned children in China and spend time on a European tour sponsored by a worldwide support organization for adopted Chinese girls.

My main problem with “Somewhere Between” is not with the information it imparts, but in the relative dryness of the delivery. Knowlton exhibits competance but not much real inspiration.

Still, for families that have adopted Chinese girls or are thinking of doing so, the film is required viewing.

| Robert W. Butler

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“FLIGHT”: A gulp of stale beer and a snort of cocaine

November 2, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“FLIGHT” My rating: B (Opens wide on Oct. 26)

139 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Whip Whitaker is one cocky S.O.B.

After a sleepless night of nonstop sex with a gorgeous naked woman half his age, Whip – played by Denzel Washington — lurches out of bed in a Tampa hotel room and gets his day started with a gulp of stale beer and a snort of cocaine.

Then he suits up in his spiffy captain’s uniform and goes to the airport, where he further fortifies himself with three mini-bottles of vodka lifted from the cabin attendants’ cart before settling in behind the controls.

It’s 9 a.m. and Whip has already consumed enough mind-altering substances to lay most of us out flat, but all this excess seems only to make him more confidant and charming.

And when on this particular flight he encounters a horrific mechanical malfunction that sets his plane screaming toward the red dirt of Georgia, Whip doesn’t panic. Instead (in a spectacular sequence that will have some of you gnawing your nails to the cuticles) he exudes calm competence, putting the uncooperative aircraft through a seemingly impossible series of maneuvers (like flying upside down) before bringing it more or less safely to rest (only six deaths) in a field. Continue Reading »

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“CLOUD ATLAS”: Where’s Waldo in sci-fi land

October 26, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Tom Hanks, Halle Berry…after the apocalypse

“CLOUD ATLAS” My rating: B- (Opening wide on Oct. 26)

172 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Cloud Atlas” held my interest for nearly three hours.

This is a remarkable fact,  given that the film engaged my emotions hardly at all.

Furthermore, I haven’t got a clue about just what the makers of this sci-fi/fantasy epic (Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer) were trying to accomplish with this century-jumping, makeup-heavy extravaganza.

Didn’t love it. Didn’t hate it. Found it interesting but frustrating.

Based on David Mitchell’s humongous (and humongously complicated) novel, this film features six stories from different epochs all knotted together in a complex tapestry.

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Posted in Art house fare, Popcorn movies | 2 Comments »

“DETROPIA”: The incredible shrinking city

October 26, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“DETROPIA”   My rating: B (Opens Oct. 26 at the Tivoli)

90 minutes | No MPAA rating

For those who require them, there are plenty of facts and figures on display in “Detropia.”

Try these on for size:

In 1930 Detroit was America’s fastest-growing city; now it is the fastest shrinking.

Detroit now has 100,000 abandoned houses or empty residential lots.

Over the last 50 years, Detroit has lost 50 percent of its population.

But Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s cinema verite documentary is more a mood piece than anything else, a sort of cinematic lament for the death of a once-great city.  The effect is impressionistic, with the camera wandering empty streets and shattered neighborhoods, looking for life.

It’s all the result of the shrinking auto industry, which has shipped thousands of jobs overseas to take advantage of cheap Third World labor, with the result that now the United States is beginning to resemble a Third World country.

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Posted in Documentaries | 1 Comment »

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