Feeds:
Posts
Comments

“J. EDGAR”: Lonely at the top

November 11, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“J. EDGAR” My rating: B (Opening wide on Nov. 11)

150 nminutes | MPAA rating: R

Clint Eastwood is the reason we have the new film “J. Edgar.”

It’s not like the moviegoing masses were begging for a biopic about longtime FBI director/pathologic paranoic J. Edgar Hoover. How many of today’s mall rats can even identify him?

The subject matter isn’t “sexy.” His story isn’t familiar to anyone under the age of 60. There are no obvious marketing hooks.

Not even the presence of one-time teen heartthrob Leonardo “Titanic” DiCaprio in the title role (an amazing performance that I, for one, didn’t see coming) can make this production anything but a money pit.

And yet here “J. Edgar” is, all because Clint Eastwood found Hoover’s story fascinating and has the track record, personal loyalties and financial clout to make movies nobody wants to see…or rather movies they think they don’t want to see.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

“MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE”: Life after a cult

November 11, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE” My rating: B (Opening Nov. 11 at the )

102 minutes | MPAA rating: R

One of the great thrills of moviegoing is coming across a young performer and realizing, within the space of just a few moments, that this could be a major star.

That’s what happens with Elizabeth Olsen in “Martha Marcy May Marlene,”  writer/director Sean Durkin’s moody, almost unbearably creepy look at a survivor of a Manson-type cult.

Durkin’s tightly-wound feature debut follows our titular protagonist as she surreptitiously slips away from the farm commune where she has lived off the radar for the last couple of years. She phones her older  sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), who drives three hours to pick her up. Soon she’s living in the guest room of the posh lakeside vacation home of Lucy and her husband Ted (Hugh Darcy).

Martha and Lucy share a troubled history. Lucy is ambitious, well-educated; Martha a  rootless drifter.

But whatever sibling issues they’ve been through, it’s clear that the last few years have done a number on Martha.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

“NUREMBERG”: A relic that still packs a punch

November 11, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“NUREMBERG: ITS LESSON FOR TODAY”  My rating: B (Opening Nov. 11 at the Glenwood Arts.

76 minutes | No MPAA rating

You can’t really call it entertainment.

Instead, “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today” is best viewed as a vital historical document.

Produced shortly after the end of World War II by the U.S.  government and shown exclusively to German audiences, the documentary attempted nothing less than a concise summation of Nazi crimes against humanity.

Simultaneously, it provided a look at Western-style justice as embodied in the Nuremberg  tribunal where the Third Reich’s military and civilian leaders were tried for their war crimes.

Never intended for domestic audiences, the film was never publicly screened in this country.  And almost immediately after its release in Germany it was withdrawn from circulation under mysterious circumstances.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

“WEEKEND”: A gay “Brief Encounter”

November 11, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“WEEKEND”  My rating: B- (Opening Nov. 11 at the Tivoli)

97 minutes | No MPAA rating

Andrew Haigh’s “Weekend” is a sort of gay “Brief Encounter” about two British lads who hook up on a Friday night and hit it off.

The problem is that on Sunday one of them is relocating to the U.S.

Tom Cullen, Chris New in "Weekend"

There’s some sex in “Weekend,” but for the most part this is a talkfest.

Russell (Tom Cullen) is out to his friends but tends to soft-pedal his sexuality in public.

Glen (Chris New) is just the opposite. He’s not the least bit shy about being a homosexual and bitterly resents being part of a society where straight people can be affectionate anywhere, any time, but gays are expected to tone it down.

The two men’s conflicting views provide most of the dramatic heat. The film works well enough as a boy-meets-boy romance, but it’s their different approaches to being gay that generate the piece’s real substance.

Haigh takes a fly-on-the-wall approach: handheld camera, matter-of-fact dialogue, unhurried pace and low-keyed performances.

“Weekend” won a grand jury award at this year’s L.A. Outfest; it’s a serious film that embraces the differences in gay thought and feeling.

That it should appeal to thinking gay audiences is obvious. Don’t know whether it will find favor with straight viewers…it may be too much of an insider’s look. And those thick Brit accents…maybe subtitles?

| Robert W. Butler

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

New on DVD: “BAND OF BROTHERS” and “THE PACIFIC” in a new boxed set

November 9, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Watching the new deluxe boxed set of HBO’s excellent World War II series “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” I kept thinking what a great gift this would be for the fighting men of the “greatest generation.”

And then I realized that there aren’t that many of them left.

My own father, a Navy veteran in the Pacific Theater, just turned 90. I’m guessing the youngest combat veterans of the war are at least 85.

Which means that the lasting value of these two series lies not with the men who are their subjects, but with the rest of us, who will learn some moving things about love of country, sacrifice and doing the right thing.

Yeah, that’s kind of a sappy way of putting it, and it may seem incongruous coming from someone who once considered himself a pacifist.

But these monumental TV programs are like nothing we’ve ever seen before, an examination of both combat and the American character spread out on a vast canvas.

Continue Reading »

Posted in New on DVD | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

“ANONYMOUS”: All the world’s a stage

November 4, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“ANONYMOUS”  My rating: B (Opening wide on Oct. 28)

130 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Here’s a sentence I never expected to read, much less write:

Director Roland Emmerich has made a movie of ideas.

Yes, the man who gave the world high-concept, nutritionally light hits like “Stargate,” “Independence Day,” “Twister,” “Godzilla,” “The Patriot,” “The Day After Tomorrow” and “2012” has put on his thinking cap and delivered a Gordian knot of convoluted history from Elizabethan England.

And if his “Anonymous” is a largely chilly and cerebral affair, it’s positively overflowing with brain-tickling notions.

Nominally this is the story of Edward DeVere, Earl of Oxford, a member of the court of Elizabeth I who in some quarters has been credited with being the true author of Shakespeare’s plays and poems.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

“MOZART’S SISTER”: Doomed to a supporting role

November 4, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Marie Féret as "Mozart's Sister"

“MOZART’S SISTER” My rating:  C (Opening Nov. 4 at the Tivoli)

120 minutes | No MPAA rating

The very title — “Mozart’s Sister” — suggests the film’s approach.

This is the story of a woman — Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart — whose public identity will be irrevocably chained to that of her famous sibling. No matter what her own accomplishments, she will always be viewed through the distorting lens of little brother Wolfgang, perhaps the greatest musical genius of all time.

René Féret’s film is a lushly produced look at 18th-century life that undoubtedly will prove a bit of cultural catnip for Mozart lovers ever on the prowl for new insights into an immensely talented family.

But despite its feminist take on the material, “Mozart’s Sister” is a surprisingly nonengaging affair: slow-moving, almost painfully formal and generating little or no emotional juice.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

“TAKE SHELTER”: It’s twister season

November 4, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Michael Shannon...madness in the Midwest

“TAKE SHELTER”  My rating: B+  (Opening Nov. 4 at the Glenwood at Red Bridge)

120 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There’s a certain kind of movie that almost drives you nuts but which, if you stay with it, leaves you transformed through a process you really can’t quite figure out.

The great Australian director Peter Weir had two such idiosyncratic masterpieces early in his career: “The Last Wave” and “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” films that defy rational analysis but have haunted me for more than 30 years.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols (the underrated “Shotgun Stories”) may have created a similar effort in “Take Shelter,” a big winner at this year’s Cannes and Sundance film festivals.

This might be a movie about a man going mad…or perhaps it’s about a man who simply senses things — bad things — that the rest of us cannot.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

“MARGIN CALL”: Meltdown on Wall Street

October 28, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“MARGIN CALL” My rating: B+ (Opens wide on Oct. 28)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

First-time features don’t get a whole lot more assured than “Margin Call,” an incisive, biting look at the Wall Street mindset and machinations that led to our current economic doldrums.

A bunch of suits standing around talking may not sound all that interesting, but J.C. Chandoor’s writing/directing debut (after several years in advertising and music videos) succeeds both as a personal drama of individuals and as an allegory about what plagues American capitalism in this still-young century.

And he has an ensemble cast to kill for.

Unfolding over 24 hours in a major New York banking/investment firm, this boardroom thriller unfolds like a finely-tuned stage play, with sharp characterizations and killer dialogue. (You may be reminded of Mamet in his prime.)

But if it feels claustrophobic, it’s claustrophobic in just the right way, suggesting a much bigger world where the decisions made overnight in this tower of glass will have devastating repercussions.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

“LOVE CRIME”: About as French as “Dallas”

October 28, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“LOVE CRIME” My rating: C+ (Opening Oct. 28 at the Tivoli)

104 minutes | no MPAA rating

They’re speaking French in “Love Crime,” but in just about every other respect this a decidedly non-Gallic movie, a formulaic “thriller” that has Hollywood’s thick fingerprints smudged all over it.

At least this effort — the final film from the late director Alain Corneau (“All the Mornings of the World”) — can boast of bilingual thesp Kristin Scot Thomas in wicked witch mode. That, at least, is something to see.

Scott Thomas plays Christine, a vice president at a French multinational company. She’s suave, well-heeled, charming (when it’s called for) and utterly ruthless.

Always at her elbow is the prim, proper Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier), who seems not to have much personality of her own. Utterly capable and equally nonglamorous, Isabelle appears to live vicariously through her older boss, happily diving into whatever chore needs doing and observing –with just a hint of yearning — as Christine beds their associate Philippe (Patrick Mille).

Continue Reading »

Posted in Art house fare | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »