Butler's Cinema Scene

“JOHN CARTER” My rating: C- (Opening wide on March 9)
132 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Well, that’s two hours I’m not getting back.

For fans of sword-and-sorcery fiction, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter series of pulp novels set on Mars have long been a sort of cinematic Holy Grail.

Filled with bizarre creatures, massive alien cities and unearthly (well, duh) landscapes, the books have for a century defied big-screen treatment in large part because Burroughs (who was also the creator of Tarzan) had an imagination too fevered to be realized through conventional movie technology.

Now that we’re in a digital age where whatever you can think of can be made flesh (figuratively speaking), “John Carter” has finally come to your local multiplex courtesy of the folks at Walt Disney.

It’s got eye candy out the wazoo, but under the direction of Andrew Stanton (the director of Pixar’s “WALL-E” and “Finding Nemo” here making his live-action debut) this hugely expensive (reportedly north of $200 million) production is a remarkably leaden thing, marked by an embarrassingly inadequate lead performance and an utter absence of anything resembling a directorial style.

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Leila Hatami and Peyman Moaadi in “A Separation”

“A SEPARATION”  My rating: A- (Opening March 2 at the Glenwood at Red Bridge and the Leawood)

123 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

There’s no small irony in the fact that Iran has one of today’s most aesthetically developed film scenes precisely because it is a repressive society.

Like American filmmakers during the days of the Hollywood Production Code, Irani directors must find subtle, artistic ways to make their points without incurring the wrath of the theocracy. In a conservative society where the government’s will is enforced by the “morality police,” you’d best cloak your incendiary sentiments in something that looks like obedience.

“A Separation” isn’t incendiary, exactly, but writer/director Asghar Farhadi paints an unforgettable picture of a world where men and women must couch their behavior within socially accepted limits, and where the necessity of appearing pious often pushes them to do things that are anything but.

Farhadi’s film — this year’s winner of the Oscar for foreign language film — begins in a nondescript government office where Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and his wife Simin (Leila Hatami) have come to air their marital disputes before a magistrate.

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Fabrice Luchini and lady friends

“THE WOMEN ON THE 6th FLOOR”  My rating: B  (Opens March 2 at the Glenwood Arts)

104 minutes | No MPAA rating

The premise of “The Women on the 6th Floor” is so unoriginal it practically creaks.

It’s about an uptight bourgeoise character learning the real meaning of life from the decent, hard-working proletariat.

But the delivery, especially the acting, is so deftly executed that rather than grousing at its predictability you’ll find yourself sighing with pleasure at this souffle from writer/director Philippe Le Guay.

Fabrice Luchini (last seen as Catharine Daneuve’s philandering hubby in “Potiche”) is Jean-Louis,  owner of a brokerage firm who still lives in the apartment building where he was born.

He’s got a brittle blonde wife (Sandrine Kiberlain) who does little save indulge her neuroses, and a couple of spoiled, arrogant sons off at boarding school.

And now that his aged mother has finally died and her grumpy maid retreated to the provincial burg that spawned her, Jean-Louis is in the market for a new domestic.

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This collection of Oscar-Nominated Live-Action shorts opens Feb. 10 at the Tivoli

Ciaran Hinds, Kerry Condon

“THE SHORE” My rating: A-

29 minutes

Warm, funny and a bit heartbreaking, “The Shore” is about the return of a sixtysomething Joe (Ciaran Hinds) to the  seaside village in Northern Ireland he fled during the troubles in the 1970s.

Accompanying him is his American-born daughter (Kerry Condon), whose search for answers for why her father has stayed away all these years becomes our journey as well. It all has something to do with the girl (Maggie Cronin) and the best friend (Conleth Hill) Joe left behind.

Writer/director Terry George has a nifty gift for mixing the melancholy with the boistrously hilarious.  Hill’s character is one of a trio of locals who illegally supplement their government welfare checks by collecting shellfish when the tide is out and selling them to vendors. There’s a priceless scene of them spotting Joe from afar and, assuming he’s a government man come to bust them, trying to make a break for it. Alas, they’re all too fat and middle-aged to get far.

A hugely appealing film about returning to your roots and making amends. Continue Reading »

" 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 »