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“SARAH’S KEY”: Little girl lost

August 19, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Kristen Scott Thomas

“SARAH’S KEY” My rating: B (Opening wide on Aug. 19)

111 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Sarah’s Key” is actually two movies, one set in World War II and the other in the present.

The first is a devastating look at the horrors of the Holocaust as witnessed by a child.

The latter is a not-terribly-compelling detective story.

In the end they dovetail to make a more-or-less complete whole.

Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas), an American-born writer for a Paris magazine, is researching a story on one of the darkest blots on French history — the July 1942 roundup of 13,000 Jews, not by the occupying Germans but by the French police.

The prisoners were herded into a covered sports stadium without food, water or sanitation facilities. Those who survived several days in this hellhole (one character compares it to the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina, only 10 times worse) were then shipped off to labor or death camps.

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“IF A TREE FALLS”: Friends of the Earth, enemies of the people

August 19, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“IF A TREE FALLS”  My rating: B+ (Opens Aug. 19 at the Screenland Crossroads)

85 minutes | No MPAA rating

Watching “If a Tree Falls,” Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman’s excellent documentary about the lumberyard-burning, development-hating Earth Liberation Front, I was reminded of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”:

“Good and bad, I define these terms, quite clear, no doubt, somehow…”

This film isn’t just a terrifically informative and insightful history of a radical movement that over several years committed acts of domestic terrorism (at least that’s what the government argued) to limit what its members regarded as the systematic rape of the Earth.

It’s also a meditation on youth, idealism, the political process and the very essence of human nature, especially our impulses for self preservation.

Above all else, this film asks unanswerable questions about right and wrong, good and bad, and leaves its audience both incensed and sad.

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

“TABLOID”: Torn from the headlines

August 19, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Tabloid girl Joyce McKinney back in the scandalous '70s...

“TABLOID”  My rating: B (Opening Aug. 19 at the Tivoli and Glenwood at Red Bridge)

87 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Tabloid” finds heavy duty documentarist Errol Morris happily slumming. And boy, is he having fun.

The maker of such noteworthy non-fiction films as “Gates of Heaven” (pet cemeteries), “Mr. Death” (a Holocaust denier), “The Thin Blue Line” (prosecutorial malfeasance in Texas) and the Oscar-winning “The Fog of War” (Robert McNamara), Morris tends to gravitate toward weighty subject matter.

But with “Tabloid” he delves into a torn-from-the-headlines scandal to reveal the face of a true American eccentric.

Morris’ subject is Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen from North Carolina who in 1977 set off a media feeding frenzy when she and several confederates traveled to England and kidnapped her former boyfriend, a young Morman doing missionary work.

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“BUSKING THE SYSTEM”: Playing for life

August 19, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Kansas Citian Phillip Bradley is one of the subjects of "Busking the System," a documentary about musicians playing in NYC's subways

“BUSKING THE SYSTEM” My rating: C+  (Opening Aug. 19 at the Screenland Crown Center)

80 minutes | No MPAA rating

An art form? An irritation? Begging with a fancy label? Or perhaps just a legitimate expression of personal thoughts and impulses?

However you view it, busking — performing in public places for contributions from the crowd — is a fact of life in NYC, especially down on the subway platforms.

Justin Morales’ documentary “Busking the System” follows several aspiring buskers (two with Kansas City connections) to the Big Apple where they try their hands at playing their music for crowds of commuters and tourists.

It’s not an easy gig, despite efforts in recent years by the subway authority to legitimize busking by holding auditions with the winning acts getting the most visible locations and time slots.

Among the subjects of this likable but unremarkable documentary are Phillip Bradley, a Kansas City singer/songwriter/guitarist, and Nathan Corsi, a native of Akron, Ohio, whose family has since relocated to KC.

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

The best movie-going month of the year is…August?!?!?

August 18, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Generally speaking, August sucks.

It’s hot and humid. My lawn dies.

But August does have one thing going for it. It’s the best month of the year for watching movies.

Granted, this wasn’t planned. In fact, it’s kind of like one of those experiments where a lab geek is trying to develop a new hemorrhoidal jelly and ends up discovering a cure for cancer.

If you’re into big, expensive (and dumb) popcorn pictures, you might want to stick to May, June and July.

If your taste runs to portentous Oscar hopefuls then November and December will be your months.

August is my favorite movie month by default.

It just sort of happened. I realized that so far this month we’ve seen the debuts of “Another Earth,” “Sarah’s Key,” “The Help,” “One Day” and “The Trip.”  Not to mention “Crazy Stupid Love,” “Project Nim,” and “The Double Hour,” all of which opened on July 29 and so in a sense are actually August releases.

In some months I wait in vain to see even one reasonably smart film. That’s not a problem in August.

That’s because Hollywood views August as the dog’s-ass end of the movie year. The big summer releases have already opened. The kids are getting ready for school and won’t be packing the megaplexes any more.

And so by default August has become the month when the industry unloads all the films they weren’t sure how to market, the films in which they have no faith.

The serious dramas. Movies with downbeat elements. Smart films. Subtitled films.

In other words, good films.

So, thank you, August. And thank you, Hollywood, even though you had no idea what you were doing.

| Robert W. Butler

Posted in Deep thoughts...maybe, KC Film Scene | 3 Comments »

“Pawn’s Move” ready for its closeup

August 15, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Tyler Roberds in "Pawn's Move"

Local filmmaker Caleb Vetter will premiere his second feature, “Pawn’s Move,” at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 28, at the Palazzo 16 Theater, 135th and Metcalf.

Admission is $6.

Written by northeast Missouri screenwriter Kim P. Wells, “Pawn’s Move” is about a shy young man who inherits from his boss, the late proprietor of an antique story, an item worth several million dollars.

With his life turned around and pursued by a money-hungry young woman, our hero relocates to another town where he encounters an equally shy girl with a clouded past. They’re brought together by chess and faith.

“Pawn’s Move” was produced by CV Productions, Vetter’s faith-based film company, and stars Tyler Roberds, Jami Harris and Sheena Pena.

The film will be shown at the upcoming Kansas International Film Festival (KIFF) at the Glenwood Arts, and at the Marantha International Christian Film Festival. At the Bare Bones International Film Festival it was named Best Family Film and took home the Audience Choice award for best feature.

Vetter’s previous feature was “Anyone Accept David.” He also worked on the sound for the locally-lensed “Works in Progress.”

For more information visit the film’s web site at  www.pawnslinkthemovie.com.

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“ANOTHER EARTH” : World-crossed lovers

August 12, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“ANOTHER EARTH”  My rating: B+  (Opening Aug. 12 at the Tivoli and Glenwood)

92 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

The unassuming, modestly budgeted “Another Earth” offers the best of both worlds.

It works wonderfully as a piece of speculative fantasy fiction;  it’s equally effective as a moving human drama.

Here we’ve a film that grabs you while you’re watching it and keeps you talking about it long after the lights come up.

Basically we have two stories, one playing out in the public arena and the other in the intensely private.

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“THE HELP”: Sweet potato pie with a side of Jim Crow

August 11, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis in "The Help"

“THE HELP”  My rating: B+  (Now playing wide)

137 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

You can’t throw a rock at “The Help” without hitting an Oscar-worthy performance, making this adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s best-seller one of the best-acted films since, well, “The King’s Speech.”

All that thespian power comes in handy in diverting our attention from some of the story’s more Hollywood-ish plotting and an unimaginative visual style.

OK, maybe I’m being too much of a critic here. There may be a few pedestrian elements in this sure-fire box office smash, but there’s no ignoring the pure emotional power of this story set in the Jim Crow South.

This is a movie that will set audiences to laughing, then bawling, then laughing and bawling all over again.

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Posted in Popcorn movies | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

DVD reviews: Freedom fighters, Cossacks and the addled rich

August 9, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

“OUTSIDE THE LAW” (Now available)

The latest from French/Algerian filmmaker Rachid  Bouchareb takes the same three Algerian brothers featured in his sweeping WW2 yarn “Days of Glory” and plops them down in post-war France, where they become urban terrorists on behalf of their homeland’s independence movement.

The oldest, Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), is a former French soldier who returns from the Indochina debacle missing an eye. He hopes to marry, settle down and never again raise a weapon.

Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila), the intellectual, has spent years in a jail for his opposition to French colonialism. He’s a particularly dangerous sort — an doctrinaire revolutionary (think Robespierre) who loves ideology but apparently has little use for people. He doesn’t think twice about ordering the murders of those who disagree with him politically — even family members.

Baby brother Said (Jamel Debbouze) is apolitical. He gets involved in the Parisian crime scene, runs a nightclub and wants only to be left alone to make money.

Bouchareb’s epic tale,  nominated for a foreign language Oscar, has stirred controversy in France, Continue Reading »

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Big screen, small screen, KC screen

August 9, 2011 by butlerscinemascene

On the set of CinemaKC...

If you love film you can’t afford NOT to watch”CinemaKC,” the homegrown half-hour TV program that spotlights area filmmakers.

The show’s production values are terrifically high — even though just about everyone involved is working for free — and the locally-made short films exhibited are really, REALLY impressive.

Turns out our town has cinematic talent to burn.

Problem is, “CinemaKC” is aired late on Saturday night…not exactly a primo time slot.

Worse, often it wasn’t there when it was supposed to be. Continue Reading »

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

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