Butler's Cinema Scene

Chris Rock, Julie Delpy

“2 DAYS IN NEW YORK” My rating: C+ (Now showing at the Tivoli)

96 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“2 Days in New York” is absolutely dispensable, but as time killers go it’s a pleasant enough diversion, being  a continuation of the story begun five years ago in “2 Days in Paris.”

Once again French actress Julie Delpy writes, directs and stars in a comedy, casting her own relations and friends as the friends and family of her fictional character.

“…Paris” was about a French girl, Marion (Delpy), bringing her American beau (Adam Goldberg) to meet her eccentric parents.  Playing the latter were Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet, Delpy’s real-life parents.

The new film – obviously it takes place in NYC — starts with a puppet show  being acted out by Marion for the benefit of her young son. From this we learn that Marion is now divorced (the Adam Goldberg character, not seen here, lives just a few blocks away), that her mother is in heaven (indeed, Delpy’s real-life mother died in 2009) and that her father  and sister are coming to visit so that they can meet Marion’s new live-in beau.

That would be Mingus (Chris Rock), a music essayist and public radio deejay who has his own 8-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. He, Marion, her boy Lulu and his daughter Willow now happily cohabit in a Manhattan apartment.

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Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Ezra Miller

“THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER”  My rating: B+ (Opening Oct. 5 at the AMC Studio)

103 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Coming-of-age movies are such a cinematic staple that it takes something special to get my attention.

“Perks of Being a Wallflower” grabbed me early and never let go.

This directing debut by Stephen Chbosky (who adapted his own novel for young adults) isn’t technically adventurous, but when it comes to characterization, dialogue and situations, it’s like the work of an old soul.

Or, rather, an older soul looking back on his own youth, since I can only imagine that big chunks of the story are autobiographical.

Our protagonist is Charlie (an astonishingly good Logan Lerman), a loner and “wallflower” who is not at all looking forward to his first day in high school.

Charlie has a past, we learn in the course of the film.  There’s the suicide of one of his friends and the driving death years before of his beloved aunt (a relationship jam-packed with hair-raising, late-arriving revelations). Moreover, Charlie already has endured one mental/emotional breakdown and lives in terror of yet another.

Charlie is the kind of kid who gets picked on because he’s smart and decent and can see through the desperate posing that passes for adolescent society.

Though a lowly freshman, he’s lucky enough to fall into the good graces of a small coterie of high school outsiders, seniors who recognize in him their own former selves.

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“FRANKENWEENIE” My rating: A- (Opens Wide on Oct. 5)

87 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Deliciously twisted yet genuinely warm, “Frankenweenie” is my new  favorite Tim Burton movie. At least it’s in a heated competition with ”Ed Wood” and “Sweeny Todd” for top honors.

Like Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein,”  this is a wonderfully inventive, thoroughly hilarious and spectacularly executed homage to the old Universal Pictures horror movies.

Except that it’s animated, told from a child’s point of view and has a big, big heart. It’s destined to become a classic.

(This feature is an expansion of the live-action short “Frankenweenie” which Burton directed back in 1984 while employed by Disney.  You might want to check out the original on YouTube.)

Presented in glorious black and white (I saw the 3-D version…nifty), this is the story of a boy and his dog.

Victor (last-name: Frankenstein) is a loner whose best friend is his dog Sparky. Victor’s parents try to get him to participate in sports and other group activities, but he’s happiest either making monster movies in which Sparky stars or holed up in the attic of their tract home where he turns everyday appliances into lab equipment for his scientific experiments.

When poor Sparky is run over by a car, a mourning Victor secretly exhumes the pooch’s body from the pet cemetery and wires it up to receive a charge of lightning from a passing storm.

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“GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING” My rating: B (Opens Sept. 28 at the Tivoli)

97 minutes | No MPAA rating

For those unfamiliar with painter Gerhard Richter, Corrina Belz’s new documentary might not mean much.

It’s basically a cinema verite effort (no narration, no interpretation) that follows Richter as he paints and plans gallery shows. But the film doesn’t illuminate his life much beyond what happens while the camera is running. Despite some vintage footage and old TV interviews , you can’t call it a biographical project. It captures just a thin slice of Richter’s 80 years.

If, however, you’re a hard-core art fan, you’ll recognize Richter as the world’s top-selling artist with total sales that now top those of Claude Monet, Alberto Giacometti and Mark Rothko.

As the film makes clear, Richter’s success isn’ just hype.  He’s a brilliant painter who, like Picasso, keeps changing his style.

So the chance to spend time in his Cologne studio, to hear his ideas on art, and to actually watch this normally reclusive genius actually create paintings is a big deal. Continue Reading »

Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena

“END OF WATCH” My rating: B+ (Now playing)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R 

“End of Watch” is like an entire season of TV’s excellent “Southland” distilled into one feature film.

Which is another way of saying it’s one of the better cop flicks you’ll ever see.

Writer/director David Ayer, who made a splash a 11 years ago with “Training Day” and has been struggling ever since to match that film’s blend of style, suspense and acting chops, here makes up for a wasted decade.

“End of Watch” is a buddy movie, but one so reeking of versimilitude, one that so perfectly captures the camaraderie of cocky young cops on patrol, that it transcends a couple of common-sense objections (no officers in LAPD history have ever seen as much action as the uniforms played here by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena) to emerge as a near-documentary look at life on the job.

Part of that is Ayer’s technique. Recognizing that nothing happens nowadays that isn’t captured by some sort of recording device (the police learned this the hard way with the Rodney King beatdown), Ayer presents his story largely as “found footage” captured by surveillance cameras, police dashboard cams and cell phones. And then there are the images recorded by cop Brian Taylor (Gyllenhaal), a techno geek of the first order who pins mini-cams on himself and his partner, Mike Zavala (Pena), wires his police cruiser for sight and sound, and often carries his own digital camera onto crime scenes.

Heck, even the bad guys like to record their crimes for posterity.

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Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere

“ARBITRAGE” My rating: B  (Now playing wide)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: R

In economics, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets, creating a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices.

Financial whiz Robert Miller, portrayed with great relish and considerable subtlety by Richard Gere in the new thriller “Arbitrage,” extends that concept to his daily life, which is compartmentalized into different markets…one for family, one for romance, and several for his business.

When we first encounter Miller he’s on a private plane returning from a meeting with a fellow financial heavy hitter who wants to buy Miller’s company. In Gere’s hands Miller seems the perfect CEO — calm, controlled, yet somehow passionate about the business. He handsome, he’s funny. He seems very, very smart.

This, you think, is a guy you could trust with your money.

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“SLEEPWALK WITH ME”  My rating : B

90 minutes | No MPAA rating

Standup comic Mike Birbiglia makes a way more than adequate feature directing debut with “Sleepwalk With Me,” a big screen adaptation of his one-man stage show that suggests a genuine cinematic talent in the making.

Like most good movies, Birbiglia’s semi-autobiographical effort works on several levels.

On one it addresses the dreams of aspiring standup comic Matt Pandamiglio (Birbiglia). Matt tends bar in a comedy club but lives for those few moments when he’s allowed to climb on stage and try out his own material.  Problem is, Matt is almost painfully shy and tongue tied and, at first, anyway, his halting, uncertain delivery generates more pain than pleasure.

“Sleepwalk With Me” follows Matt’s gradual climb to comedy competence and, eventually, excellence.

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