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2012 OSCAR NOMINATED ANIMATED SHORTS

February 10, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

" A Morning Stroll"

This program of Oscar-nominated shorts opens Feb. 10 at the Tivoli

“A MORNING STROLL”  My rating: B

7 minutes

This short from the UK is a triptych, with each “panel” set in a different time and rendered in a different artistic style. The subject matter, though, remains more or less the same.

In a segment set in 1959, stick figures in a black-and-white urban environment respond to a chicken that clucks down a sidewalk on its morning walk.

In the present, a young hip-hop lad encounters the same chicken in a brightly colored environment…but he’s too wrapped up in his  handheld zombie video game to pay much attention to anything else.

And 50 years in the future, the same chicken is out taking his morning stroll…although there apparently has been a zombie apocalypse, for the street is littered with wrecked cars and our perambulating fowl must avoid a voracious example of the undead. This segment employs very realistic computer animation.

I can’t deduce any important meaning in “A Morning Stroll,” but it’s divertingly goofy. Continue Reading »

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“SAFE HOUSE”: “Bourne” meets “Training Day”…sort of

February 10, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“SAFE HOUSE”  My rating: C+ (Opening wide Feb. 10)

115 minutes | MPAA rating:R

“Safe House” is of interest mostly for the films it borrows from, mainly the “Bourne” series and “Training Day.”

Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds

Like the former, it’s a spy movie about one guy’s attempts to survive while exposing a conspiracy within the CIA. Like the latter, it offers Denzel Washington in award-winning charmy/scary mode.

Washington plays Tobin Frost, a legendary American agent who went rogue a decade ago and has spent the last few years selling the secrets of the world’s big espionage agencies to the highest bidder. An international fugitive, Frost is viewed almost as superhuman – smarter, creepier and more deadly than just about anyone else.

Fleeing a small army of well-armed assassins, Frost takes refuge in an American consulate in Capetown, South Africa. He figures he’ll be safer in custody than on the street.

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“WOMAN IN BLACK”; “THE INNKEEPERS”: Something wicked this way comes

February 3, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“THE WOMAN IN BLACK” My rating: B- (Opening wide on Feb. 3)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“THE INNKEEPERS” My rating: C+ (Opening at the Screenland Crossroads on Feb. 3)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The problem with most ghost movies is that they fall apart in the clutch.

Oh, there are a few, like Robert Wise’s “The Haunting,” that set the hook early and never let you shake it off.

But most movies in the genre end up delivering a few goosebumps and then run aground on the rocks of their own illogical premises.

Two new spookfests have opened simultaneously in Kansas City, one your traditional Victorian haunter, the other a vaguely hip modern interpretation. Oddly enough, in both cases the wandering spirit making life miserable for the living is a wronged woman.

Perhaps the makers of ghost stories have a misogynistic streak. Discuss among yourselves.

Daniel Radcliffe...chasing ghosts

The more elaborate of the two productions is “The Woman in Black” starring Daniel Radcliffe (that’s right, Harry Potter) as a widowed lawyer. The time is the turn of the last century (noisy automobiles are beginning to show up even in remote English towns) and our hero, Arthur Kipps, has journeyed to a small coastal burg to settle the estate of a wealthy old woman whose large and largely rundown home sits on an island cut off from the mainland with each high tide.

Arthur is a sad, morose fellow perpetually in mourning for the wife who died in childbirth and left him with a young son back in London. He has his hands full with the locals, who refuse to rent him a room at the local inn, decline to take him out to the island estate, and even try to block roads to prevent access.

The local gentry (Ciaran Hinds), a rationalist with a mad wife (Oscar nominee Janet McTeer) and contempt for the peasants’ superstitions, befriends the young stranger and facilitates his entry to the mouldering mansion.

Continue Reading »

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“A DANGEROUS METHOD”: A therapist’s progress

January 27, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“A DANGEROUS METHOD” My rating: B- (Opening on Jan. 20)

99 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There’s no overt violence in “A Dangerous Method.” The characters wear top hats or long pastel dresses and talk in a highly civilized manner while sipping coffee and puffing stogies.

But for all the gentility of its Merchant-Ivory trappings, the latest from filmmaker David Cronenberg (“A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises”) is right at home with his longstanding preoccupation with “abnormal” psychology.

More than just a case history, “A Dangerous Method” is about psychology with a capital P. It goes right to the source.

Michael Fassbender (who also stars in the just-opened “Shame”) staras as psychiatric giant Carl Jung. It’s the turn of the last century in picturesque Zurich, where Jung works at a mental hospital, attempting to cure his patients through psychotherapy instead of the often violent methods that in the past made such clinics a living hell.

Continue Reading »

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“ALBERT NOBBS”: The measure of a man

January 27, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Glenn Close as Albert Nobbs

“ALBERT NOBBS”  My rating: B (Opens Jan. 27)

113 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There’s so much interesting stuff going on in “Albert Nobbs” that it’s hard to know where to begin.

First, of course, there are the Oscar-nominated performances by Glenn Close (best actress) and Janet McTeer (supporting actress). What makes it doubly intriguing is that both play women disguised as men.

Then there’s the true but semi-fantastical premise of the screenplay by Close and John Banville, which springs from the fact that in Victorian Ireland (and elsewhere around the world during various epochs), certain women to simply survive or to realize their ambitions have opted to go through life as males, never letting society know of their secret.

And finally there’s the man behind the camera, Rodrigo Garcia, who has given us two wonderful and criminally underappreciated masterpieces of independent cinema (“Nine Lives,” “Mother and Child”) and produced (and, frequently, directed) the HBO  series “In Treatment” about a psychotherapist and his patients.

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“EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE”: Precious, but…

January 20, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

“EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE”  My rating: B (Opening Jan. 20)

129 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

I was prepared to be irritated by “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” And I was.

This is a movie about a too-cute kid (he may or may not be autistic) who after losing his father in the 9/11 attack goes on a borough-to-borough scavenger hunt throughout NYC, attempting to solve the final conundrum left by his puzzle-posing papa.

This yarn has an off-the-charts potential for preciousness.

And yet by the end, Stephen Daldry’s film adaptation of Jonanthan Safran Foer’s novel had me by the throat and the tear ducts.

This puts your humble critic in an uncomfortable position. My left brain is telling me, “Aren’t you ashamed?” My right brain is saying, “Yeah, but it feels so good.”

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“SHAME”: The job of sex

January 20, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Michael Fassbender

“SHAME” My rating: B (Opening Jan 20)

101 minutes | MPAA rating: NC-17

The words “sex addict” are never uttered in Steve McQueen’s “Shame.”

This isn’t one of those social-problem films where a shrink swoops in to explain our hero’s condition and tell us how with therapy and the support of loved ones a sufferer’s life can be turned around.

We’re not even all that sure that Brandon Sullivan, the film’s protagonist, wants to turn his life around.

When we first meet Brandon (Brit actor Michael Fassbender) he’s lying in his bed after a sexual encounter. We hardly get a glimpse of his partner, who is dressing to leave. In fact, she doesn’t matter. Certainly not to Brandon.

As he gets up to walk to the bathroom we take him all in — stark naked from head to toe.  It’s blatantly in-your-face, with Fassbender’s pendulous manhood advancing directly toward us.

Continue Reading »

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“CORIOLANUS”: Bard in the Balkans

January 20, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Gerard Butler, Ralph Fiennes in "Coriolanus"

“CORIOLANUS” My rating: B- (Opening Jan. 20)

122 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The rarely-performed plays of Shakespeare pose a problem for film adaptations. Lacking the familiar plots and Bartlett’s-heavy dialogue of a “Macbeth” or “Hamlet,” these minor works force filmmakers to come up with a creative presentational style if they’re to hook a modern audience.

With that in mind, director/star Ralph Fiennes makes of Shakespeare’s Roman play “Coriolanus” a modern-dress political fable about patriotism, loyalty and class warfare.

It’s quite well acted and if the text itself isn’t terribly compelling, the movie’s semi-documentary visual style and the political parallels Fiennes draws between ancient Rome and our own time engage both the eye and the intellect.

The plot centers on the Roman general Caius Martius (Fiennes), who has defeated the rebel forces of Aufidius (Gerard Butler). For his great victory the Senate renames him Coriolanus and names him Consul of Rome. But before getting the job the newly-named Coriolanus must gain the approval of the citizenry.  And that’s no small task, since he’s an aloof patrician who views everyday Romans as worthless rabble. Early in the film we see him turning back starving rioters who have attacked a government warehouse demanding to be fed.

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“CARNAGE”: Touchy-feely to the death

January 13, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Cristoph Waltz

“CARNAGE” My rating: B  (Opens Jan. 13)

79 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Wickedly funny and maddeningly claustrophobic, Roman Polanski’s “Carnage” is a sort of pretention-free “No Exit” in which four characters are trapped in a hell from which there appears to be no escape.

Actually it’s a nicely-appointed Brooklyn apartment owned by Michael (John C.Reilly) and Penelope (Jodie Foster).  Visiting are another couple, Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan (Christoph Waltz).

Nancy and Alan’s 11-year-old son Zachary has ended a playground argument by smashing Michael and Penelope’s son Eliot in the face with a stick.  Now the parents are coming together to make amends in a nice, civilized fashion.

Good luck with that.

Almost from the beginning you can tell that this attempt at reconciliation is not going well.

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“THE IRON LADY”: Her coolness

January 13, 2012 by butlerscinemascene

Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher

“The IRON LADY” My rating: B-  (Opening Jan. 13 at the ** theaters)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

By now we should be thoroughly inured to Meryl Streep’s transformational abilities.

Even so, her performance as Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady” comes as a shock.

Yes, she gets immeasurable help from an unsung crew of costumers, hairdressers and makeup artists. But as with any Streep performance, the magic goes far deeper than the surface. The way in which Streep’s Maggie Thatcher moves, holds herself, speaks — it is little short of eerie.

Streep’s believability in the role goes a long way toward ameliorating the movie’s biggest drawback — namely that director Phyllida Law (“Mamma Mia!”) and screenwriter  Abi Morgan (“Brick Lane,” “Shame”) are deeply ambivalent about their subject.

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