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“LAWLESS”: Moonshine and mayhem

August 29, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Shia LaBeouf, Mia Wasikowska“LAWLESS” My rating: B- (Opening wide on Aug. 29)

115 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Reeking of period atmosphere and packed with faces that seem to have stepped out of the WPA  photographs of Dorothea Lange (or maybe the Skid Row portraiture of Weegee), the period crime drama “Lawless” certainly looks good.

Guy Pearce

But the latest from Australia’s John Hillcoat (who gave us the Down Under western “The Proposition” and the post-apocalyptic “The Road”) is a dramatically fuzzy venture, one that clumsily attempts to balance vintage bootlegger clichés and hard-core violence with moments of oddball humor.

The subject of the screenplay by Nick Cave (the eccentric Aussie rock star who also scripted “The Proposition”) are the backwoods Bondurants of Virginia, a real-life clan that in the early years of the Depression ran a major bootlegging operation  providing illegal liquor to speakeasies all over the East Coast.

Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy, last seen – barely —  beneath Bane’s mask in “The Dark Knight Rises”) heads the operation. A veteran of the Great War who has a reputation as unkillable, Forrest is socially uneasy loner who says little (he croaks like Billy Bob Thornton in “Slingblade”) and radiates an arresting blend of primitive strength and intimidation. Folks hereabouts know better than to cross him.

Helping out with the heavy lifting is brother Howard (Jason Clarke), a shaggy fellow a bit too in love with the family product to be wholly reliable.

Baby brother Jack (Shia LaBeouf) is eager to get into the bootlegging game, but Forrest wants him to go slow, figuring Jack lacks the cut-throat inclinations the job demands.

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“THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES”: Riches to rags

August 24, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES” My rating: A- (Opening Aug. 24 at the Tivoli)100 minutes | MPAA rating: PGIt’s a testament to the evenhandedness of Lauren Greenfield’s documentary “The Queen of Versailles” that I didn’t end up hating its money-centric subjects.

These are precisely the kind of filthy rich people who usually piss me off.

David Siegel, 73, and his trophy wife Jaqueline, 43, are – at the film’s outset, anyway – among the richest people in America.

He is the founder and president of the world’s biggest time share operation, which typically dangles free show tickets or other perks in front of vacationers if they’ll make room in their schedule to hear the sales pitch.

She’s the stay-at-home mother of eight…although all the real work falls to a small army of servants, including a Filipino nanny who hasn’t seen her own child for 20 years and confides to the camera that she considers herself to be the true mother of the Siegel kids.

What Jackie Siegel is really good at is spending money. And she’s got so much that no matter how many consumer sprees she launches, she can’t burn through it. Now if she only had a modicum of taste.

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“KILLER JOE”: John Waters meets JimThompson

August 24, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Jude Temple, Matthew McConaughey

“KILLER JOE”  My rating: B- (Opening Aug. 24 at the Glenwood Arts and Alamo Draft House)

102 minutes | MPAA Rating: NC-17

If a cough syrup-addicted John Waters made a film based on a pulp novel by Jim Thompson, the results might resemble “Killer Joe,” veteran director William Friedkin’s descent into murder and lust among Texas’ trailer-court trash set.

The film is a blood-splattered comedy of stupidity which, ironically, features a very smart performance by Matthew McConaughey, who in recent films (“Magic Mike,” “Bernie”) has been busy proving that when freed of stifling rom-com conventions he’s a freakin’ fine actor.

“Joe” is based on the stage play by Tracy Letts, who won a Pulitzer a few years back for his “August: Osage County.”

“Killer Joe,” though, is more akin to an earlier Letts play, “Bug,” a paranoid yarn about a couple in a seedy motel room who are convinced insects from a secret government experiment are breeding in their bodies.  Friedkin (“The Exorcist,” “The French Connection”) filmed “Bug” in2006; obviously he’s on Lett’s wavelength.

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“AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY”: Flipping the bird to hypocrisy

August 17, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“AI WEI WEI: NEVER SORRY”  My rating: B+  (Opening August 17 at the Tivoli and Glenwood Arts)

91 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The movies go through heroes like McDonald’s goes through cows. But “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” offers us a real-life hero unlike any we’ve ever seen.

It’s not just that Ai doesn’t look like your conventional leading man. He’s fat, with a scraggly beard in a constant state of evolution. He resembles a scholar depicted in an old Chinese screen…except that ancient Chinese scholars were rarely seen flipping the bird (literally, the obscene hand gesture) at the authority figures in their society.

Ai Wei Wei, the subject of Alison Klayman’s documentary, is an artist by profession. He was one of the designers of the Bird’s Nest, the spectacular arena that was the centerpiece of Beijing’s 2008 Summer Olympics, and his art –usually in the form of huge installations using found materials — in recent years has been featured in solo shows in London, Munich and Sao Paolo.

But Ai’s true art may be found in his embrace of the truth and his disdain for hypocrisy.  He’s a social critic of the first order, a gadfly who devotes himself to poking China’s Communist leaders in the eye at every opportunity. Continue Reading »

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“NEIL YOUNG JOURNEYS”: Great performances from a great bad voice

August 17, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“NEIL YOUNG JOURNEYS” My rating: B (Opening Aug. 17 at the Glenwood at Red Bridge)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Neil Young looks like an old hobo. He’s not big on personal hygiene or sartorial statements. He rarely shaves and wears clothes that probably wouldn’t pass muster at any self-respecting thrift store.

But he’s a musical genius – a great songwriter, a superb instrumentalist, and possessor of one of the great bad voices in rock. By that I mean that like Bob Dylan, his singing isn’t good by technical standards, but it’s exactly what his songs require.

Jonathan Demme’s “Neil Young Journeys” is a concert documentary capturing Young’s solo performance at Toronto’s Massey Hall as part of his 2010 tour to promote his “Le Noise” album.

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“RUBY SPARKS”: It’s not easy being God-like

August 10, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“RUBY SPARKS” My rating: B+ (Opening Aug. 10 at the Glenwood Arts, Studio 30, Cinemark Palace)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The bittersweet comedy “Ruby Sparks” has been so well written that if I’d been told it was from a script by Woody Allen, I’d have believed it.

The movie’s fabulist hilarity and aching emotions would fit quite nicely among Allen titles like “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Midnight in Paris” and “Alice.”

Actually, “Ruby Sparks” was written by Zoe Kazan, 29, who also plays the title role, appearing opposite her real-life significant other, actor Paul Dano.

These two and directors and Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (the team behind the wonderful “Little Miss Sunshine”) have fashioned a delicately modulated movie that tickles the funnybone, pokes the intellect and tugs at the heartstrings.

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“THE BOURNE LEGACY”: Perpetual motion machine

August 10, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“THE BOURNE LEGACY” My rating: B- (Opening wide on Aug. 10)

135 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There was  no reason to expect much from “The Bourne Legacy,” the fourth in the “Bourne” series and first without star Matt Damon. Going in, the whole thing smacked of a desperate case of sequel-itis.

But darned if it doesn’t actually work.

Oh, by comparison to the other “Bourne” titles it’s a tad thin, but writer/director Tony Gilroy (who’s been with the series since the beginning) provides the film with so much forward momentum and furious action that he almost overcomes a ridiculously stretched-out running time.

The picture begins in a remote part of Alaska where a lone man (Jeremy Renner) battles wolves, climbs mountains and exhibits astounding strength, endurance and agility. His name, we learn, is Aaron Cross, and he – like Damon’s Jason Bourne – is a product of Treadstone, that nefarious CIA-sponsored project to create superior secret agents.

But unlike Bourne – who merely had been brainwashed to be a conscienceless assassin – Cross is one of a new generation of genetically-altered agents. Only problem is that he’s dependent on these special pills. If he doesn’t get them he’ll have a mental meltdown. Continue Reading »

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“TAKE THIS WALTZ”: Romance of indecision

August 10, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Michelle Williams, Seth Rogan in "Take This Waltz"“TAKE THIS WALTZ” My rating: C+ (Opening Aug. 10 at the Tivoli)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Some nagging voice in the back of my head tells me I should have liked “Take This Waltz” a whole lot more.

But I cannot lie. I didn’t.

Going in, it sounded like a winner: Michelle Williams starring in the new film written and directed by Sarah Polley, whose Altzheimer’s drama “Away From Her” was one of the best movies of 2006.

But I found “Take This Waltz” pushing me away instead of pulling me in. In part this is because Polley has fashioned a romance of indecision, a brave move but not one filled with big emotional hooks.

Another problem may be that “Take This Waltz” is very much a woman’s picture. I don’t mean that in any sexist way…rather, it feels as if Polley has dedicated herself to capturing a woman’s view of life and romance on the screen with such singlemindedness that those of us with our plumbing on the outside may feel excluded.

Maybe women will view the film differently.

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“HOPE SPRINGS”: The job of sex

August 8, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“HOPE SPRINGS” My rating: B+ (Opening wide on Aug. 8)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Nobody tells a joke in “Hope Springs.” Nor do they ever try to elicit a laugh from the audience.

And yet this latest film from director David Frankel (“The Devil Wears Prada”) is devastatingly funny.

For this you can credit screenwriter Vanessa Taylor (making her feature debut after a TV career that includes scripts for “Game of Thrones,” “Everwood” and “Alias”), who writes about marriage with so many dead-on insights that at a recent screening the lady behind me kept muttering “Been there. Done that.”

Taylor’s screenplay generates laughter through character and situation, not by tossing out clever lines. And the results are pretty wonderful, a grown-up comedy about grown-up problems that will undoubtedly resonate far and wide.

Of course it helps to have Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones interpreting your material.

As Kay and Arnold, who after 30 years have settled into a rut of remote cohabitation,  Streep and Jones create what may very well end up being iconic personalities, movie characters that take on an importance beyond that of a mere film. Kay and Arnold, one suspects, may do for sixtysomethings what Juno did for smart-talking teens.

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MOVIES THAT MATTER: This should be fun

August 7, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

You know how librarians and literature professors are always coming up with lists of the books you must have read to be a well-rounded, literate individual?

Well, the Kansas City Public Library is doing the same thing for movie literacy.

“Movies That Matter” is a 20-film free film series featuring masterpieces of world cinema. They will be presented at 1:30 p.m. on Sundays from September 2012 to May 2013 in the Truman Forum, a 220-seat auditorium in the basement level of the Plaza Branch Library at 4801 Main Street.

The movies range from silent comedies to hard-hitting dramas, samurai flicks, existential Swedish costume epics, Hollywood screwball hilarity, an MGM musical and the first-ever animated feature.

“Movies That Matter” was programmed by yours truly. I’ll also be doing five-minute illustrated  introductions before each film and a recap after each screening.

I’ll admit up front that this is a very personal, subjective list of movies. These are films that, above all,  matter to me. Mo matter how often I see them, they remain entertaining, thought provoking, deeply moving.

A few of them, I believe, have actually changed my life…or at least the way I look at life.

Great filmmakers – like great painters or poets or composers – use their art to share with us their perceptions of existence. When all the pieces come together (and in the complex and collaborative world of film it doesn’t happen all that often), the results can lift us out of ourselves and transport us to brave new worlds.

These movies  matter precisely because of their ability to open up our eyes, our ears, our minds, and our emotions. Each has its own personality, and these personalities are as unique as those of our friends and family members.

Once you’ve met them, they don’t go away. They’re with you forever.

| Robert W. Butler

 THE SCHEDULE:

CITIZEN KANE (USA; 1941) Sunday, Sept. 2, 2012

The greatness of Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” comes at the viewer from every direction.

Technically it is a masterpiece of inventive filmmaking, employing dramatic lighting and sound effects, seemingly impossible camera angles and movements, deep focus, and more special effects than any Hollywood picture up to that time.

Narratively “Kane” is a puzzle, depicting the life of a famous and powerful man through the often-contradictory memories of those who loved or despised him.

It offers Orson Welles – only 24 when he co-wrote, starred in, and directed the movie – in the performance of a lifetime, playing a character from the age of 25 to nearly 80.

And the story of the film’s creation – and its near destruction by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose career and private life inspired the character of Charles Foster Kane – is one of the great behind-the-scenes tales in all of Hollywood history.

THE GENERAL (USA: 1926) Sunday, September  16, 2012

Upon its release Buster Keaton’s “The General” was dismissed as a critical and commercial failure. Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare, Deep thoughts...maybe | 7 Comments »

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