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“A ROYAL AFFAIR”: Rotten in Denmark

November 21, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Mads Mikkelsen and Alicia Vikander

“A ROYAL AFFAIR” My rating: C+ (Now at the Tivoli and the Rio)

137 minutes | MPAA rating: R

 It’s got no shortage of plush costumes and castles, not to mention an egalitarian sensibility that resonates with modern  audiences.

But I found Nikolaj Arcel’s “A Royal Affair” (Denmark’s submission to this year’s Oscar competition for foreign language film) dry and morose and not much fun.

Historically, at least, it seems to be pretty accurate.

In the mid 1700s an English princess (Alicia Vikander) is wedded to Denmark’s King Christian VII.  It is not a happy marriage for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, England seems positively liberal compared to repressive Denmark. Upon arriving in her new home, young Queen Caroline finds that much of her personal library has been seized for espousing the heretical ideas of the Enlightenment.

But that’s just a minor blip compared to the challenges posed by her husband. King Christian (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard) is flat out nuts. He drinks and whores to excess, is indifferent to his royal duties. The best education available has left him no better prepared to rule than a besotted frat boy at some Midwestern college.

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New on DVD: “THE INCREDIBLE MEL BROOKS”

November 21, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

There’s no shortage of Mel Brooks out there in home video land.

His movies (“Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein,” “The Producers,” etc. etc. etc.) have long been available on DVD.  Ditto for all the episodes of his ‘60s TV comedy series “Get  Smart.”

But the Shout Factory’s new five-DVD, one-CD collection “The Incredible Mel Brooks” employs a different approach. This massive undertaking is mostly about Mel Brooks the raconteur…and taken as such  it is flat-out wonderful.

Oh, three’s lots of other stuff here,  including Brooks’ Oscar-winning animated short “The Critic” and single episodes of his TV shows “Get Smart” and “When Things We Rotten” (not to mention the “Mad About You” episode in which he was guest star). There are short films and brief TV appearances on various variety shows (Sid Caesar).

But the real joy of “The Incredible Mel Brooks” comes when the man just sits down and talks.

Amassed here are all of Brooks’ TV appearances on the Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett talk shows, as well as an extended recent conversation (before a live audience) between Brooks and Cavett (and, out in the house, Carl Reiner).  These are screamingly, hilariously, off-the-wall riotious.

In a recurring series of featurettes Brooks discusses his filmography…these segments aren’t always terribly funny, but they’re full on insights about a moviemaker who sometimes seems to be winging it. Turns out Brooks gives his projects a lot of thought.

And a good chunk of one of the discs is turned over to Brooks’ most lingering creation, the 2000 Year Old Man.

In addition to 11 hours of viewing, this collection provides a 60-page booklet with essays by the likes of Gene Wilder, Bruce Jay Friedman and Robert Brustein.

So, if you have a Mel Brooks fanatic in the family, this is the perfect holiday gift.  Or, you can buy it for someone close and then watch it yourself.

| Robert W. Butler

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“SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK”: Love and madness, football and dance

November 20, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK”  My rating: B+  (Opening wide on Oct. 21)

122 minutes | MPAA rating: R

With “Silver Linings Playbook”  director David O. Russell (“Three Kings,” “I Heart Huckabees,” “The Fighter”) has made a screwball comedy about mental illness that is simultaneously very funny and dead serious about the pain inherent in such a diagnosis.

This movie shouldn’t work. It could have fatally derailed at any one of several junctures.

And yet thanks to a stupendous cast and Russell’s almost supernatural ability to juggle scenes, moods and  characters, the film emerges as a small triumph.

Our troubled hero is Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), back in his parents’ suburban Philadelphia home after several months in a psych ward. Pat is a manic depressive who, even in repose, seems to be engaged in an internal wrestling match with his demons.

A school teacher before he discovered his wife was having an affair (Pat beat her lover nearly to death), he returns to “normal” life filled with energy, ambition and a determination to win back both his job and his spouse.  He is desperately, unnaturally optimistic, looking for a silver lining in even the most disheartening setbacks.

He’ll need all the optimism he can muster. His former co-workers are terrified of him and his wife has taken out a restraining order.  And he’s still a very sick puppy, a guy with no filters on his behavior. (Pat goes berserk whenever he hears a particular Stevie Wonder song he associates with his wife’s infidelity).

Pat’s parents provide his old room, if not conventional  stability. Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro) is a laid-off blue-collar type who has launched a new career as a bookie. He’s obsessed (that’s the only word for it) with the Eagles, and on game days follows an exacting ritual which he believes makes his team invulnerable.  He watches the contests on TV, having been banned from the stadium for brawling.

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“LIFE OF PI”: Ang Lee does the impossible

November 20, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“LIFE OF PI”  My rating:  A (Opens wide on Nov. 21)

127 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

If ever there was a novel that defied the journey to film, it is Yan Martel’s 2001  “Life of Pi.”

The narrative presents a daunting logistical nightmare for any filmmaker. Most of the story involves a shipwrecked teenager who spends months at sea sharing a lifeboat with a huge Bengal tiger. It’s the sort of setup that demands the utmost of film technology.

And, in the book’s final pages, Martel introduces the possibility that our young hero is an unreliable narrator, that he has invented this epic yarn to cover a much more tawdry, shameful and shocking reality.

How do you make that work on the screen? I thought it couldn’t be done.

I was  wrong.

Ang Lee’s film version of “Life of Pi” is so good on so many levels that it’s unsettling.

Not only does Lee capture the vast arc of this unconventional survival tale, but he renders it in the best 3-D I’ve ever witnessed (the only thing that comes close is “Avatar”). Moreover, the entire film is a visual tour de force, a panorama of such hallucinogenic beauty that words cannot do it justice.

For mind-blowing visuals it is rivaled only by the acid-trippy “star gate” sequence at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” This film has that sort of impact. Continue Reading »

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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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“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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“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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