Butler's Cinema Scene

“DARK SHADOWS”  My rating: C (Opening wide on May 11)

113 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

You can’t expect Johnny Depp to do everything.

He’s a very fine actor, wildly creative and capable of putting a singular spin on just about any character that comes his way, from Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter to the tragicomic Edward Scissorhand.

But he can’t take an indifferent piece of writing or a half-assed idea and, through sheer will power, transform it into gold. Surely we have at least learned that from three “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequels.

(I’m talking here of esthetics. When it comes to actual gold – i.e., the generating of wealth – Depp’s mere presence in a film practically guarantees its financial success.)

Artistically, though, there’re only so many miracles that one man – even a very talented man — can pull off in the face of overwhelming mediocrity.

Lately, Depp has been wasting his great talents trying to give life to meritless films. The most recent of these is “Dark Shadows,” an updating of the late-‘60s horror-themed daytime soap opera.

The film’s trailer is promising. Here’s a white-skinned, black-haired Depp as Barnabus Collins, the series’ conflicted vampire hero, who after 200 years in a buried coffin is  having a hard time adapting to modern life (in this case the early 1970s). Like the aforementioned Mr. Scissorhand, he’s both cute and creepy.

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Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Barr…a modern Bonnie & Clyde?

“GOD BLESS AMERICA”  My rating: B- (Opening May 11 at the Screenland Crossroads)

100 minutes | Audience rating: R

“God Bless America” is less a movie than a primal scream of rage and frustration.

It’s basically a riff on the lovers-on-a-murder-spree genre (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “Badlands,” even “Thelma & Louise”), but one packed to the gills with biting social commentary courtesy of writer/director  Bobcat Goldthwait.

In case you didn’t know, Goldthwait, best known for his synapse-knotting stand-up comedy delivery, is a pretty decent filmmaker (“Shakes the Clown,” “World’s Greatest Dad”)

Here he takes all the things that infuriate him about America’s shallow, anti-intellectual, Kardashian-worshipping popular culture and unmercifully skewers them and their proponents.

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Greta Gerwig (far right) and do-gooder posse

“DAMSELS IN DISTRESS”  My rating: C-  (Opening May 5 at the Glenwood at Red Bridge)

99 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

I have acquaintances who are big fans of Whit Stillman, who love his ultra-low-keyed comedies of modern manners (or perhaps it’s a lack of manners).

Sorry. I don’t get it.

I wasn’t that enthusiastic about Stillman’s best movie, his 1990 debut feature “Metropolitan.” But  I’m borderline hostile  when it comes to his fourth and latest film, the overly-mannered, criminally underpopulated “Damsels in Distress.”

Having heard about the setup for “Damsels…” I was actually looking forward to it. There’s some real potential here.

Set on the ivy-covered and vaguely run-down campus of Seven Oaks College, Stillman’s screenplay centers on a trio of terminally peppy and unabashedly preppy coeds. Their leader is the towering Violet (Greta Gerwig, memorable in “Greenberg”) who, like a Seven Sisters mutation of Jane Austen’s  Emma, has  devoted herself to improving the lives of her fellow students.

Whether or not they want their lives improved.

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Jason Patric

“KEYHOLE”  My rating: C (Opens May 4 at the Crown Center)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Keyhole” is the weirdest movie Guy Maddin has yet made…which is saying a lot.

In many regards it is vintage Maddin — shot in black and white on claustrophobic sets, marked by dynamic editing and a bizarre soundtrack, and acted by performers who do their best not to be naturalistic.

The problem is that “Keyhole” lacks what may be the most crucial element of Maddin’s style — his bizarre sense of humor. There are stabs at grim hilarity here, but they don’t take. Overall, this is a brooding, dark and largely joyless enterprise.

It’s set in a falling-down mansion in what is apparently the 1930s.  A group of gangsters and their molls armed with pistols and Tommyguns take refuge in the parlor. It’s night and outside a raging lightning storm competes with the flashing lights of police cars surrounding the house  to create a hallucinogenic atmosphere.

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Tom Hiddleston, Rachel Weisz in “The Deep Blue Sea”

“THE DEEP BLUE SEA” My rating: C (Opening April 27 at the Tivoli and Glenwood)

98 minutes| MPAA rating: R

Twenty years ago British filmmaker Terence Davies made two movies — “Distance Voice, Still Lives” and “The Long Day Closes” — that were masterpieces of personal cinema. Low budget but beautifully conceived, the films hauntingly examined Davies’ own boyhood and youth in pre-WW2 Britain. They weren’t dramas, really (there was no big dramatic narrative), but they created an indelible portrait of a way of life, a working-class existence in which the simplest things might provide the most profound joy. Simple things like gathering with friends at the pub and over a pint singing popular songs.

In a sense Davies has been trying to remake those movies ever since. Certainly that seems to be the case with “The Deep Blue Sea,” his adaptation of Terrence Rattigan’s 1950 play about a woman who has left her wealthy husband for a washed-up fighter pilot and finds that isn’t working out either. Continue Reading »

“IN THE FAMILY” My rating: A- (Opening May 20 at the Tivoli)

169 minutes | No MPAA rating

“In the Family” is a first feature so meticulously made, quietly heartfelt and carefully modulated that feels like a revelation, like the arrival of a talent that might really matter. An American Bresson, perhaps.

Except…except that writer/director/star Patrick Wang seems unable to turn it off. “In the Family” runs for nearly three freaking hours, and while audiences might tolerate that excess in a big-screen epic, it’s an intimidating thing in an intimate family drama. Unless you’re O’Neill, and even then it’s iffy.

Still, I saw the film a week ago and it has stuck with me. It establishes its own rhythms and viewpoint, it took up residence in my head. That doesn’t happen all that often.

What Wang gives us here is a story about a gay family, and yet I hesitate to call this a “gay” movie because its concerns — and Wang’s obvious artistry — are so universal.

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