Butler's Cinema Scene

“BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD”  My rating: B+

93 minutes  MPAA rating: PG-13

Name just about any important filmmaker, and they’ll have made a movie about children.

But I can recall no film – not even from an acknowledged master of cinema — that captures a child’s way of looking at the world as perfectly as “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

Quvenzhane Wallis

In just about every aspect Benh Zeitlin’s feature reflects the thoughts, vision, and emotions of its six-year-old protagonist, from a camera that views everything from about three feet off the ground to its flights of intoxicated imagination to its simple narrative, which eschews the adult inclination to explain, elaborate, illuminate.

Our heroine is Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis), an astonishing beautiful tyke with a bushy Afro and a wardrobe that seems to consist mostly of underpants and big white rubber boots.

Actually the minimal clothing is perfectly appropriate given Hushpuppy’s environment. She lives in the Bathtub, a steamy community of swamp-dwellers along the Gulf Coast. The Bathtubbers are black and white and a Cajun blend of both. Most seem to have been here all their lives and share a laid-back lifestyle centering on beer and steamed crawfish pulled from the brackish waters. The work ethic isn’t big in the Bathtub.

Hushpuppy lives with her father Wink (Dwight Henry). Well, not actually with him. Hushpuppy has her own ramshackle mobile home raised on pilings. Wink sleeps, drinks and cooks in a shack across a junk-strewn meadow. Continue Reading »

I’m departing from my usual format of reviews and movie news to let everyone know that “Heart,” the four-issue comic book by our spectacularly talented daughter, Blair Butler, is now available in trade paperback.

For the benefit of the non-geeks out there, a trade paperback collects the entire run of a comic book in one volume.

Not only was “Heart” written by a former Kansas Citian, but it was illustrated by Kevin Mellon of Blue Springs. And the story takes place in and around our town.

“Heart” is the story of Oren Redmond, an Overland Park insurance company cubicle drone, who finds a reason to live in the world of mixed martial arts fighting. The book chronicles his rise in the ranks, as well as the many life lessons he learns, often the hard way.

For several years now Blair has been doing Mixed Martial Arts commentary for her cable TV channel, G4, and her love of and wealth of knowledge about the sport comes through loud and clear on every page.

This isn’t just a proud papa boasting. Check out the reviews:

“HEART may not change anyone’s feelings about MMA fights, but it will have readers reexamining their feelings about what drives some MMA fighters. Everyone knows someone like Oren — a friend who spends three nights a week playing shows with a band that probably won’t ever get signed, a relative who puts every hour of their day into a start-up company even when the economy’s broken, an activist struggling to change the way people think — or maybe they’re facing an uphill battle of their own. As anyone in contact with friends from high school on social media understands, not all of these kinds of struggles are worth watching unfold. In the case of Heart, however, fans are going to want to see Oren’s trials and tribulations through.”               — Comics Alliance

“Quite early on, it becomes clear that Oren has reached the glass ceiling, and his MMA prospects are pretty much over.  Blair Butler does an excellent job of getting into the mindset of a fighter in the aftermath of a knockout loss, showing how they might lose confidence in their chin, and how that could affect their whole style of fighting. Continue Reading »

There isn’t a whole lot of middle ground when it comes to Larry Fine, Moe Howard and Curly Howard.

Either you think the Three Stooges are hilarious (meaning you’re probably a regular guy) or you think they’re utterly stupid (meaning you’re a woman…or one of those guys).

So…half of you could not care less about the release of the massive 20-disc “The Three Stooges Ultimate Collection.” But for the other half it’s a sort of comedy Second Coming.

(A confession: I’m one of those guys. The Stooge magic never worked on me – or at least it hasn’t since the fifth grade.)

Well, love ‘em or loathe ‘em, you’ve got to give props to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for putting together 60-plus freakin’ hours (and three decades) of nonstop Nyuk Nyuk, eye poking, head-thumping and face slapping.

What you’ve got here are 190 shorts (or, more accurately, a handful of basic slapstick routines recycled through 190 scenarios so similar it’s impossible to tell them apart), two feature films from the late ‘50s (“Have Rocket, Will Travel” and “Rockin’ in the Rockies”) and, of particular interest to hard-core Stooge fans, three discs of rare and unreleased content centering on various solo short subjects by the boys. Continue Reading »

Mark Duplas, Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt

“YOUR SISTER’S SISTER” My rating: A- (Opening June 29 at the Tivoli and Leawood)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Lynn Shelton’s “Your Sister’s Sister” is some sort of miracle — a cleverly conceived, perfectly acted three-character dramedy that has all the verbal beauty of a great stage play and yet always feels absolutely cinematic, albeit in an unforced sort of way.

Iris (Emily Blunt) was dating Tom. But Tom died. Since then Iris has become best friends with Tom’s brother Jack (Mark Duplass). Now she’s concerned because Jack’s drinking, bitterness and lack of direction since Tom’s death have reached a tipping point.

So she initiates her version of an intervention, telling Jack — ordering him, really — to ride his bike to the ferry (they live in Seattle) and go to an island where Iris’ family has a rarely-used home.

No TV. No Internet. Jack will be forced to spend time alone with himself.

Except that when Jack pedals up to the threshold on a cold night (nights are always cold on the island, and wet, too) he finds the house occupied. Iris’ half sister, Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), is already encamped. She’s left her girlfriend of seven years and is trying to get her head together.

A bottle of tequila and some clever conversation later and Hannah and Jack are tumbling into bed together. It’s not an auspicious mating (he’s got, er, control problems and she hasn’t been with a man for a long time) and the next morning they’re prepared to write the whole thing off as a Cuervo-instigated mistake.

Except that Iris suddenly appears. Jack and Hannah agree not to tell her what happened.

Continue Reading »

Channing Tatum and friends strut their stuff

“MAGIC MIKE”  My rating: C+  (Opens wide on June 29)

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

For its first 40 minutes – or until it realizes it hasn’t anything to say – “Magic Mike” offers an amusing inversion of movie sex roles.

In this case the usual big-bazoomed bimbos have been replaced by prodigiously packaged dudes.

The film, you see, is a sort of distaff “Show Girls” set in the world of male strippers.  It makes no bones about offering female moviegoers the same sexual  voyeurism men have enjoyed since forever.  Just consider how many scenes in recent movies and TV series have been set, quite arbitrarily, in titty bars.

Turnabout is fair play.

But one could wish that the unpredictable Steven Soderbergh —  who can go from an arty effort like “Che” to the strictly-for-the-money “Ocean’s 11” franchise without breaking a sweat – had something of substance to offer once the thrill of those taunt pecs and rippling abs wears off.

Continue Reading »

Mark Duplass, Aubrey Plaza

“SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED” My rating: B Opens wide on June 29)

86 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Safety Not Guaranteed” is an indie sci-fi movie.

Sorta.

Well, not really.

What it actually is is an indie relationship movie that’s pretending it’s a sci-fi movie.

It’s sort of a bait-and-switch situation, but I can’t complain because the film from director Colin Trevorrow and writer Derek Connolly is consistently weird and goofily amusing and it features yet another good perf from Mark Duplass, who is seriously courting overexposure (currently you can see him in “Darling Companion,” “Your Sister’s Sister” and “People Like Us”).

Continue Reading »

“TED” My rating: C+ (Opening wide on June 29)

106 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Ted” begins about 30 years ago in Massachusetts at Christmas, a special time of year, a stentorian narrator (Patrick Stewart) informs us, “when Boston children join together to beat up Jewish kids.”

That level of snarky sardonicism is a constant in this profane fairy tale about a lonely little boy whose beloved teddy bear comes to life. Sounds kind of touching, but don’t be fooled. As written and directed by bad taste king Seth McFarland (creator of TV’s “The Family Guy”), “Ted” is hilariously crude and good-naturedly offensive.

You’d expect nothing less.

Mark Wahlberg plays our hero, John Bennett, who as a little boy found his world turned inside out when his stuffed bear Teddy sprang to life as the result of his Yuletide wish. Initially the talking bear was a big celebrity (there’s old video footage of Ted trading quips with Johnny and Ed on the “Tonight Show”), but now the world has pretty much forgotten about this aberration of nature.

But not John, who still loves Teddy with all his heart. Of course it’s no longer the love of a little boy for a beloved toy. Now it’s the mutual love of a couple of ambitionless stoners who have spent two decades reinforcing each other’s adolescent impulses. Continue Reading »