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“THE SKIN I LIVE IN”: Deliciously sick

November 18, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya

“THE SKIN I LIVE IN”  My rating: B 

117 minutes |  MPAA rating: R

“The Skin I Live In” is one spectacularly sick movie.

I kinda loved it.

This heady mashup of “Frankenstein”/mad scientist horror story, sexual fantasy, revenge yarn and existential escape caper shows Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodovar indulging numerous of his well-chronicled obsessions.

The resulting film is simultaneously creepy and beautiful. Think of it as a less offensive (but equally disturbing) “Human Centipede” for the art house crowd.

Vera (Elena Anaya) is the only patient in a private clinic in the home of brilliant plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Almodovar stalwart Antonio Banderas).

Vera lives in a hermetically sealed, sterile-looking room. She wears a form-clinging body stocking outfitted with various flaps and zippers so that Robert can examine his handiwork. Clearly, Vera has undergone some major skin grafts.

What tragedy — accident, disease or birth defect — required such extensive surgery? Continue Reading »

Posted in Cinema Espanol, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

“LIKE CRAZY”: It isn’t nice to fool Uncle Sam

November 18, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones

“LIKE CRAZY” My rating: B- 

90 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

A great screen romance makes those of us in the audience feel that we’re falling in love, too.

By that criteria “Like Crazy” is a just-OK romance that dishes up two hugely attractive young performers, a frustrating dilemma and a big question mark of an ending that is a lot more honest about love than 99 percent of the romance movies you’ve ever encountered.

That was enough for Sundance audiences, who gave the film top jury honors and laid a best actress award on newcomer Felicity Jones.

Well, I can certainly get behind the green-eyed, rosebud-lipped Jones. But I’m not nearly so enthusiastic about Drake Doremus’ film. It’s fun while its young protagonists are falling in love. And then they started acting stupid and much of my sympathy waved bye-bye.

Continue Reading »

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“THE OTHER F WORD”: From anarchy to domesticity

November 18, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“THE OTHER  F  WORD” My rating: B- (Opening Nov. 18 at the Screenland Crossroads)

98 minutes | No MPAA rating

The whole punk movement was about giving the finger to the Establishment, about spreading political, musical and social anarchy, about just not giving a damn.

So what happens when hard-core punkers become parents?

That’s the intriguing question posed by Andrea Blaugrun Nevins’  “The Other F Word,” a documentary that allows a dozen or so punk rockers to comment on their lives as fathers.

The film’s subjects — like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Duane Peters of U.S. Bombs, Lars Frederiksen of Rancid and especially Jim Lindberg of Pennywise — remain working musicians. They tour, they sing angry songs, they rant and spit from the stage.

But all describe a profound change brought on by having their own children.

“Nothing in the punk rock ethos prepares you for parenthood,” one observes.

Continue Reading »

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New on DVD: A mess of movies for Christmas gift giving

November 16, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Dominic Cooper as Uday Hussein

“The Devil’s Double”:

If Brit actor Dominic Cooper doesn’t get an Oscar nom for his work here we should start an Occupy Hollywood movement.

In Lee Tamahori’s film Cooper (he was the bridegroom in “Mamma Mia!”) plays both Uday Hussein — Saddam Hussein’s psychotic and murderous older son — and real-life Iraqi officer Latif Yahia, who looked enough like the young despot to become his double, filling in for Uday at boring affairs of state and, on at least one occasion, drawing an assassin’s bullet.

It’s a delicious star turn, with Cooper reveling both as the piggish, ultra-violent Uday, and as Latif, a decent guy forced to live side-by-side with a man he despises.

Tamahori doesn’t bring a whole lot of style to the proceedings, but then he doesn’t have to. This is Dominic Cooper’s movie and he owns it from first frame to last.

“13 Assassins”:

Takashi Miike’s samurai tale may not score many points for originality (it’s yet another clone of Kurosawa’s timeless “Seven Samurai”), but it’s hugely enjoyable.

A dozen jobless ronin and a comical forest-dwelling goofball join forces Continue Reading »

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“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 »

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“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 »

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“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

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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 »

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