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“THE JUSTICE OF BUNNY KING”: Always on the edge

September 30, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

Essie Davis, Thomasin McKe3nzie

“THE JUSTICE OF BUNNY KING”  My rating: B (On demand)

101 minutes | No MPAA rating

Thanks to cable’s popular “Miss Fisher” mysteries and her knockout turn in the horror entry “The Babadook,”  Aussie actress Essie Davis has been working her way toward name recognition with American audiences.

In “The Justice of Bunny Fisher” the versatile actress slips effortlessly (or so it seems) into the skin of a homeless woman battling personal demons and a system that seems designed to grind her down.

We meet the title character of Gayson Thavat’s ashcan drama (his feature directing debut) on the streets of a New Zealand burg.  The middle-aged woman is equipped with squeegee and bucket; with a crew of fellow jobless citizens she picks up a few bucks washing the windshields of motorists waiting for the lights to change.

Despite her circumstances Bunny puts up a positive front (no doubt she’s learned that a happy facade results in bigger tips) — at least until she pays a visit to a shelter where her two children (a 14-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl) are being housed.

Bunny, you see, has a criminal record. The government has doubts about her ability to care for her children.  And it’s not just a question of means…Bunny’s mental health is an iffy thing.

Thavat’s film, co-written with Sophie Henderson and Gregory King, follows Bunny’s determined efforts to be reunited with her kids.  But it’s just one damn thing after another.

Bunny has been crashing with her sister and brother-in-law (Angus Stevens). a creep with a thing for teenage girls and an eye for his stepdaughter Tonyah (the great Thomasin McKenzie). When things go south with her relations Bunny lands on the couch of one of her fellow windshield wipers…briefly, at least, she can bask in the warm vibes of the guy’s big Maori household.

We see her hitting the thrift shops, looking for an ensemble that will allow her to pass for semi-solvent.  But  the never-ending maze of bureaus and regulations she must navigate would prove daunting even for a mom with major resources. How’s Bunny supposed to pull it off?

With its social conscience on its sleeve, sympathetic depiction of working-class life and semi-documentary style (mostly handheld cameras and a real eye for detail), “…Bunny King” bears more than a little resemblance to the films of Brit rabble rouser Ken Loach.

And like a typical Loach effort, the film puts us through some majorly disheartening moments that are made endurable by the terrific acting, which discovers human truths that transcend the misery.

Eventually the film settles down to a situation recalling “Dog Day Afternoon.” Our heroine goes on the run with her willing niece (technically, it’s kidnapping) and the film’s final segment is a tense nail-biter. A happy ending does not seem to be in the cards.

Davis’ performance here is jaw-droopingly nuanced.  Beneath Bunny’s maternal drive we sense a woman who is simultaneously furious and frantic, who makes astonishingly bad decisions for the right reasons, who earns our respect and our pity.

Breathtaking stuff.

| Robert W. Butler

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“LOU”: Bad-ass woman

September 25, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

June Smollett, Allison Janney

“LOU” My rating: C (Netflix)

107 minutes | MPAA rating: R

As a general policy it’s wise to see every movie in which Allison Janney appears.  Even in a small role she can can be the difference between dreck and a watchable experience.

“Lou,” though, pushes that thesis to the edge.

Not that Janney isn’t good.  In fact, she is more than effective in what I’m pretty sure is her first attempt to join the ranks of bad-ass action women.

It’s just that the movie around her is pretty sketchy.

Her Lou is a semi-hermit living deep in the woods on an island off the Washington coast.  She’s tall and gray-haired and makeup free (this performance is utterly without vanity) and silently misanthropic.

Lou hunts deer with her dog (often out of season…she doesn’t care) and has a survivalist thing going…a freezer full of meat and, we learn, a small fortune in cash buried out behind the house. Not to mention her familiarity with weapons.

Her closest neighbors are Hannah (Jurnee Smollett) and her adorable little girl Vee (Ridley Asha Bateman).  They rent a mobile home from Lou, who exhibits  little sympathy for the plight of a single working mom.  When the rent is due, it’s due. Period.

Vee’s AWOL father, we learn, was a Green Beret who turned to the dark side — going rogue, killing civilians, stealing and extorting.  That’s when he wasn’t beating Hannah. He may be dead.

Or not.  

“Lou” kicks into gear when Vee is abducted.  The perpetrator leaves behind a bomb in Lou’s car; obviously, the kidnapper is the girl’s father, Phillip (Logan Marshall-Green).  

But we soon learn that Phillip isn’t the only the government-trained killer in the neighborhood.  Lou has skills that could only have been honed in the service of the CIA.

The chase is on.

Director Anna Foerster (among her credits are an “Underworld” feature and episodes of “Outlander”) has turned in a good-looking movie (the lush Northwest forest is hauntingly beautiful) and she delivers a nice action sequence set in a cramped cabin in which Lou goes toe to toe with a couple of Phillip’s nefarious ex-military buddies.

The problem is the screenplay by Maggie Cohn and Jack Stanley, which grows increasingly forced and phony. A little over halfway through they drop a big surprise reveal that elicited from me not a gasp but a shrug.

Marshall-Green can’t do much with his cut-and-paste psycho-soldier role.  Faring better are Janney and Smollett, who become female action buddies. They’re fun to watch even as the movie falls apart around them.

| Robert W. Butler

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“TRAVELIN’ BAND”: Creedence gets its due

September 21, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

Creedence in concert: (left to right): Tom Fogerty, Stu Cook, Doug Clifford, John Fogerty

“TRAVELIN’ BAND: CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL” My rating: B (Netflix)

89 minutes | No MPAA rating

For weeks at a time in the late 1960’s  and early ‘70s Creedence Clearwater Revival was the biggest band in the world.

Talk about a seemingly unending stream of hits…the pen of singer/guitarist John Fogerty churned out memorable tunes with startling regularity (“Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising,””Fortunate Son,” “Green River,” “Down on the Corner,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain“…and that’s only brushing the surface),

But the thing about Creedence was that they were damn near image free.  The musicians (Fogarty, bassist Stu Cook, guitarist Tom Fogerty, drummer Doug Clifford) did not exude big personalities. Moreover they were squeaky clean by Summer of Love standards — no issues with drugs, violence, offstage misadventure. 

Guys like Jim Morrison and John Lennon got all the press.  CCR was content to play good music and cash the check.

As a result relatively little mythology has grown up around the group. Aside, of course, from the number of excellent songs/recordings they left behind.

That’s rectified in rock documentarian Bob Smeaton’s “Travelin’ Band.” 

The last hour of this 90-minute effort is the full concert Creedence gave in 1970 at London’s Royal Albert Hall.  For decades the footage was rumored to exist, but this is its first public exposure.

The doc’s first 30 minutes give a crash course in CCR history.  Jeff Bridges narrates.

 I learned that far from being an overnight success the band had been around for a decade before scoring (they guys were high school pals from suburban San Francisco).

All four were enamored of black r&b (Ray Charles and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins were big influences), and John Fogerty began writing songs reflecting his fascination with Cajun culture and New Orleans rock.  Amazingly, the guy who gave us “Born on the Bayou” and “Bad Moon Rising” never ventured south of the Mason-Dixon line until after those songs were hits.  It’s a testament to his imagination.

Another reason for the band’s relatively low profile was the simplicity of their style.  No studio magic.  No overdubs.  Just four instruments.

Interestinly enough, that simplicity affected Creedence as a stage band, since they were able to almost perfectly reproduce their recordings in a live setting. Yes, Fogerty occasionally gets to cut loose on an unexpected guitar solo (see the show’s finale, “Keep On Chooglin’ “), but mostly they stuck to the sound fans expected.  

But while the live show was light on surprises, the tightness of the band was hard to beat.  I was especially impressed by Clifford’s drumming…it never struck me as all that special on the records but, dang, watching that guy pound out an inexhaustible beatreedence Clearwater Revival is hypnotic.

| Robert W. Butler

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What I’m watching…

September 20, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

Lu is Partridge as Sid Vicious, Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten

“Pistol”  (Hulu): I never cared much for the angry artlessness of the Sex Pistols. Even so, one must admit that for a band that existed for less than three years, these Brit oafs made an indelible impression on rock ‘n’ roll.

The miniseries “Pistol” was created and largely written by Craig Pearce, frequent collaborator (“Moulin Rouge,” “The Great Gatsby” “Elvis“) of fellow Aussie Baz Luhrman. 

Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Steve Jobs”) directed all six episodes, and is undoubtedly the single biggest factor in the show’s successful nailing of the punk scene.  Even for those who have no taste for the music, “Pistol” brilliantly presents — through camera angles, film stock, editing, set and costume design and especially some brilliant acting — the environment that birthed that rebellious genre.

It’s a social history lesson presented on a scale that is both epic and intimate. Not to mention overflowing with nervous energyl

After watching this series I finally understood the band’s importance.  (And it wasn’t for their music.)

The source material is Lonely Boy, the 2016 memoir by Steve Jones, the band’s guitarist and ostensible leader. Toby Wallace approaches the role of Jones with equal parts sex appeal, inner intelligence and outer oafishness. In the mid-70s he was on his way to becoming a career criminal when he drew the attention of  clothing shop entrepreneur Malcolm McLaren (a stone-cold brilliant Thomas Brodie-Sangster), an erudite and foppish hustler who avows anarchy but is at heart a voracious capitalist.

It is this Svengali’s idea to start a band with which to promote his clothing boutique, SEX.  Thus the birth of the Sex Pistols, an ensemble initially possessing few musical skills but exhibiting a full tank of rage, contempt  and ironic detachment.

As lead singer John ”Johnny Rotten” Lydon Anson Boon commands his every scene like a snarling feral rat.  Johnny is an insufferable asshole but don’t accuse him of duplicity; he’s just as snide, repellant and bitter in real life as in the spotlight. Later they’re joined by heroin-soaked Sid Vicious (Luis Partridge), who cares much more about getting his hair right than hitting the proper notes.

All the high (and low) points of the Pistols saga is on display here — the bad behavior, eyebrow-raising encounters with Britain’s staid media, drugs and drink.  In a sense it’s a predictable rise-and-fall-of-a-rock-band saga, but the details turn it into something truly memorable.

The series has a superb and expansive cast of supporting players, including Sydney Chandler as Jones’ Ohio-born squeeze Chrissie (the final episode delivers a forehead-slapping reveal: she is the future Chrissie Hynde of “Pretenders” fame);  Emma Appleton as Sid’s maddening groupie-with-a-vengance American muse and needle partner Nancy Spungen, and Maisie Williams (yes, GOT’s Arya Stark) as a punk fashion icon so buried beneath spiky hair and garish face paint that I didn’t recognize her until I read the cast list. 

Paul Walter Hauser, Taron Egerton

“Black Bird”  (Apple +): This prison drama from Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River”) features possibly the finest acting now available on streaming.

And, no, I’m not exaggerating.

Taron Egerton (“Kingsman,” “Rocketman”) does a complete transformation to get into the skin of Jimmy Keene, a swaggering real-life crook and lady’s man who after his conviction for drug distribution agreed to go undercover in a prison for mental cases.  

He was offered a full pardon if he could get a confession — or at least compelling evidence — of the crimes of fellow inmate Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), who is being held for the murder of a young girl but in fact may have a dozen or more victims across several states.

There are the usual prison pic tropes at work here…Jimmy must negotiate a dangerous inmate heirarchy (Tony Amendola is chilling as a Mafia don who quietly rules the roost),  corrupt guards and other scary stuff.  Moreover, Jmmy cannot reveal his secret mission, meaning he’ll get no help from the prison administration and will have to survive by his own wits.

While a couple of cops (Greg Kinnear, Sepideh Moafi) work the case from the outside, Jimmy must befriend Hall, a muttonchopped mountain who talks in a soft childish voice and is infuriatingly slow to reveal much about himself. Hauser, who was terrific as one of the goons in “I, Tonya” and the star of Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell,” smashes this one out of the park. Comparisons to Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter are appropriate.

There’s also a heartbreaking subplot involving Jimmy’s father, a broken-down ex-cop played by the late Ray Lotta in his last film role.

Ultimately it comes down to an acting duel between Hall as a quietly terrifying psychopath and Egerton as a wiseass egotist who undergoes a near-total mental/emotional meltdown under the pressures of his assignment.

| Robert W. Butler

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“I CAME BY”: Steal from the best

September 16, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

Hugh BonnevilleI “

“I CAME BY” My rating: B (Netflix)

110 minutes | No MPAA rating

If you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.

Which brings us to the Brit-made “I Came By,” a modestly effective thriller that cannily recycles characters and ideas from Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

Along the way this effort allows Hugh Bonneville to join his former “Downton Abby” co-stars in making the leap from genteel civility to bonkers psychopathology.

Bonneville here plays our Norman Bates character…with a dash of Brit class-consciousness stirred in.  His Sir Hector Blake  is a much-admired former jurist who ended his law career ostensibly because he opposes the racial prejudices baked into the English legal system.  

In fact, he’s a killer who keeps a series of young men (at least one of them an illegal immigrant) imprisoned in his basement torture chamber, toying with them until it’s time to dispose of their remains in his late wife’s pottery kiln.

Now I’m not dishing spoilers here…Sir Hector’s secret life is revealed early on in “I Came By.”  What makes the film of interest is the way writer/director  Babak Anvari toys with our perceptions of just who we’re supposed to root for here.

“Psycho,” of course, was notorious for killing off its leading lady, Janet Leigh, at the end of Act I in that spectacular shower sequence. Nobody saw it coming.

Something like that happens here.  

Toby (George McKay) and Jameel (Percale Ascott) are a couple of young activists who have made a career of breaking into the homes of London’s rich and privileged,  leaving behind spray-painted graffiti on the living room walls.  Their signature message: “I Came By.”

Their partnership breaks up when Jameel learns he’s about to become a father.  Thus only Toby shows up to burgle Sir Hector’s posh house…and discover some ugly secrets in the cellar.

Not having much respect for the police, Toby decides to investigate on his own.

Bad decision.  The film then shifts to Toby’s mother Lizie (Kelly Macdonald), who alarmed by her son’s disappearance, starts sleuthing on her own.  (Think of her as the Vera Miles character in “Psycho”…or is she the Martin Balsam character?)

Anyway, “I Came By” does a nifty job of twisting our expectations.  Bonneville’s quietly sinister killer is the stuff of nightmares.  That he’s a smug upper class twit only makes his comeuppance more satisfying.

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| Robert W. Butler

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“PINOCCHIO”: Once more to the well…

September 16, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

Tom Hanks and friend

“PINOCCHIO” My rating: C (Disney +)

106 minutes } MPAA rating: PG

Disney’s policy of systematically cannibalizing its animation classics and spewing out new live-action versions hits a wall with “Pinocchio.”

Not even Tom Hanks in front of the camera or Robert Zemeckis behind it  can make this blatantly opportunistic effort resonate.

The film does raise some interesting questions, though.

 The script of this  “Pinocchio” is probably 80 percent faithful to that of the 1940 animated effort…and yet the very things that work in the original fall flat here.  

Why?  If pressed I’d have to say that traditional cel animation (you know…hand-drawn cartoons) employs its obvious artificiality to mentally and emotionally prepare us for the fairy tale fantastic.  

It’s weird, but I find myself responding emotionally to the cartoon (for instance, Geppetto’s heartbreaking longing for a son) when the same scenes, played out with a real actor (Tom Hanks, working to project from behind an Einstein-level ‘stache and wig of exploding hair) feel phony.

Thus the cartoon Figaro the kitten is utterly charming (amazing how the animators captured his cat-ness) while the photo-realistic, CG-generated Figaro of the new film evokes barely a “Meh.”

And don’t even get me started on Jimmy Cricket, a brilliantly conceived character in the original who comes off as grotesquely creepy when rendered in three-dimensional detail. God…that green face! (By the way…that’s Joseph Gordon Levitt providing the insect’s voice…he does a pretty spot-on imitation of Cliff Edwards’ cracker-barrel Americana Jimmy from 1940.)

Zemeckis and co-writer Chris Weitz work a few changes practically guaranteed to raise accusations of wokeness…like casting a black performer (Cynthia Erivo) as the Blue Fairy, giving the puppet master Stromboli a physically handicapped apprentice (Laquita Tale) and turning Pleasure Island from an all-boy environment to one to which naughty girls are enticed as well.

They pay lip service — barely — to the brilliant songs from the original — “When You Wish Upon a Star,” “An Actor’s Life for Me,” “I’ve Got No Strings” — while adding a couple of lackluster new tunes.

Most dismaying of all is that the CG Pinocchio (voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) is impossibly bland.  Disney’s original puppet was a much sanitized version of the mischievous imp in Collodi’s book,  but this one registers a big zero.

If the new “Pinocchio” is largely underwhelming, it does have a couple of nifty moments.  Our wooden hero’s debut performance as the star of a puppet show is very nicely handled, with the evil Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston) at the helm of a steam-powered Rube Goldberg-ish backstage contraption.

Geppetto’s workshop, with its dozens of synchronized cuckoo clocks (many clever referencing other Disney animated films), is a visual wonderland worth getting lost in. 

The conniving Honest John the fox gets  terrific voice coverage from Keegan-Michael Key; less effective is Luke Evans as the evil singing Coachman who shanghai’s Pinocchio to Pleasure Island.

And that paradise for bratty kids has been conceived as a sort of anti-Disneyland, complete with “It’s a Small World” boat canal on which our hero cruises the premises.

One benefit of modern streaming technology:  You can watch the 2020 “Pinocchio” and then immediately switch over to the 82-year-old original…make up your own mind about which works best.

For me, there’s no contest.

| Robert W. Butler

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What I’ve been watching…

September 5, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

In which I dish thumbnail sketches of various shows I’ve been streaming over the last month.

“A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN” (Amazon Prime):  It’s an extended riff on Peggy Marshall’s classic 1992 movie about all-female professional baseball during World War II…with a couple of major differences. 

For starters, this is the gayest TV show since “Pose.” Series creator Abbi Jacobson  found in her research that something like 70 percent of the professional women baseball’s were lesbians; indeed, Jacobson plays the lead character, a married catcher (her hubby’s off to war) confronting her own conflicted sexuality. And then there’s a major subplot centering on an African-American woman who dreams of becoming a pro pitcher (and, yes, she’s gay, too).

Series creator Abbi Jacobson (center)

 The only major male role — that of a washed up professional ballplayer hired to coach the ladies (played in the film by Tom Hanks) — is taken here by Nick Overman, but he is given little to do and vanishes halfway through. 

The series does a pretty decent job of balancing comedy and drama (and it’s got the biggest collection of authentically 1940’s faces I’ve ever seen in a modern production). It’s also a MAGA-ite’s worst nightmare.  Despite the utmost in modesty when it comes to woman-on-woman action (the language is far raunchier than anything we see), this show undoubtedly will trigger seizures in those uninformed folk who tune in expecting inoffensive nostalgia and instead  get a massive dose of baked-in wokeness.

Ewan McGregor

“OBI-WAN KENOBI”(Disney +):  Got through an episode and a half of this “Star Wars” prequel before bailing.  Too bad…I looked forward to seeing Ewan McGregor as the Jedi legend in exile on Tatooine, but wretched writing and awful acting (especially from the heavies) quickly soured me.

“LOSING ALICE” (Apple +): If Alfred Hitchcock had made “All About Eve” you might get something like this Israeli mind-twister.

Fortysomething director Alice (Ayelet Zurer) comes out of retirement to make a film based on a hot screenplay by first-time writer Sophie (Lihi Kornowski). Along the way she decides to cast Sophie in the leading role, opposite Alice’s actor husband David (Gal Toren).

Ayelet Zurer, Lihi Kornowski

Thing is, Sophie is a sly, seductive, infuriating trickster.  She does awful things, but always talks her way out of hot water. It’s even possible that she swiped her screenplay from a fellow film school student (who has mysteriously vanished. GULP!).

Both Zurer and Kornowskii are borderline brilliant here. The former is a mature woman starting to come apart amidst the pressures of a problematic film production, a marriage starting to unravel and the gnawing insecurities. The latter is a sly minx who can shift from charm to hysterical betrayal in the blink of an eye; one moments she’s radiating youthful cheerfulness, the next she’s oozing malevolent sensuality.

At the same time “Losing Alice” is a nifty insider’s look at the nuts and bolts of putting together a movie.

“BAD SISTERS” (Apple +):  This black comedy actually makes a solid case for murder.

Adapted by the prolific Sharon Horgan (“Catastrophe”) from a Belgian series, “Bad Sisters” centers on five Irish siblings who conspire to kill one of their husbands, a supercilious male chauvinist schemer played with such malevolent relish by Danish actor Claes Bang that you’ll hang on every episode just to see what evil shit he’ll come up with next. 

Bang took the starring role in the 2020 Amazon Prime miniseries “Dracula,” but his bloodsucker was actually pretty likable compared to the character of John Paul.

Sharon Horgan, Klaus Bang


Here the actor more than holds his own against a cast of great female performers, psychologically tormenting his wife (Anne-Marie Duff) while infuriating/defying his sisters-in-law, all of whom have personal reasons to consider homicide.

He sabotages Eva (Horgan) at the office where both work, reneges on a promise to finance a massage studio for little sister Becky (Eve Hewson), threatens to expose the extramarital affair of Ursula (Eva Birthistle), and simply infuriates the bad-tempered, one-eyed Bibi (Sarah Greene).

The show’s narrative runs on two intertwined timelines: One follows the siblings’ often comically inept efforts to kill John Paul; the other post-murder scenario finds the sisters dogged by a couple of insurance drones who suspect foul play. 

The dialogue is absolutely wicked. Can’t wait to see where this takes us.

| Robert W. Butler

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“KLEO”: Girl with gun

August 29, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

Jella Haase

“KLEO” My rating: B+ (Netflix)

Establishing and maintaining a consistent attitude in a feature-length film isn’t easy.  It must be harder still in a limited series with a running time of nearly eight hours that walks a tightrope between conflicting moods.

Yet the German “Kleo” pulls it off with an attention-grabbing blend of action, intrigue, social satire and flat-out hilarity.

The titular heroine of this series (Jella Haase)  is a round-faced orphan who has been raised by her grandfather — one of East Germany’s security czars — to be the perfect deadly tool of Communism.

The first episode — set just before the collapse of the Soviet Union — follows young Kleo into West Berlin where, guzzled up in decidedly non-proletariat wig and costume, she assassinates a reveler at a disco. She returns to kudos from her spymaster bosses and warm embraces from her boyfriend/handler Andi (Vladimir Burlakov), by whom she is pregnant.

But Kleo’s world is turned upside down when she is falsely accused of treason, convicted by a kangaroo court and thrown into prison.  Released only after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kleo — who has miscarried — is determined to find out why she was betrayed. It all seems to harken back to that disco mission.

Over the series she works her way through the hierarchy of the now-defunct Stasi (the East German secret police), looking for answers and leaving a trail of bodies. (Think former Nazis scurrying like rats for cover.)

It’s easy enough to spot the influences behind this series from creators Hanno Hackfort, Bob Konrad and Richard Kropf.

Most obviously there’s “La Femme Nikita” and “Killing Eve,” both of which featured young female assassins who are masters of both murder and disguises.

The violence — often mixing shock and black comedy — seems a clear reference to the work of Quentin Tarantino.  Indeed, late in the series Kleo finds herself targeted by one of her former Stasi colleagues, played by Vincent Redetzki with a manic eccentricity that brilliantly mimics Tarantino’s onscreen persona.

And “Kleo” is a hugely satisfying “buddy” picture.  Our girl teams up with a bumbling West German cop who witnessed the long-ago disco assassination and ever since has been obsessed with getting to the bottom of it.  He’s played by Dimitrij Schaad, whose performance is blitheringly endearing. (If there’s an American remake, he MUST be played by Charlie Day.)

Dimitrij Schaad, Jella Haase

As much as it is a spy mystery, “Kleo” is a commentary on Communism and the collision of Soviet repression with Western hedonism.  Kleo has only known the buttoned-down life  of socialist dogma; now she must negotiate a world of wide-open possibilities and capitalist idiocy.  

The latter is perfectly embodied in the person of Thilo (Julius Feldmeier), a druggie slacker from West Berlin she finds squatting in her old apartment (he moved to the East to take advantage of cheaper rents). Thilo believes he is an alien from a distant star and keeps looking for signs that the mothership is coming to bring him home. In the old Soviet-backed regime he’d be eliminated as an undesirable; here he’s practically status quo.

Now none of this works without a terrific actress holding down the crucial role of Kleo.  And the series has a brilliant leading lady in Jaase. 

Her Kleo is clever when it comes to spy craft, but she’s an emotional infant.  Jaase interprets her as a big (if deadly) child whose training as a government killer hasn’t  entirely erased her humanity.

The question that keeps us always guessing is which side of Kleo we’ll encounter in any given situation –K the ruthlessly effective assassin or the eternal adolescent looking for love.

To be honest, I can’t recall just what answers Kleo finds during her blood-soaked search.  It’s probably because what happens around the central mystery and the world in upheaval through which our girl moves is far more compelling.

| Robert W. Butler

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“BREAKING”: The new Denzel

August 26, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

John Boyega

“BREAKING” My rating: B (In theaters)

103 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

At some point early in the riveting “Breaking” most viewers are going to say to themselves that John Boyega is the new Denzel.

By the time the film is over they’ll be thinking that Denzel is the old John Bpyega.

The British Boyega has covered a lot of territory in just a few years on screen, from being a regular in the “Star Wars” universe to playing an alien-battling London punk in “Attack the Block” and an African American security guard with a conscience in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit.”

If starring as a rebel Imperial storm trooper made Boyega a household name in some quarters, his performance in “Breaking” should sling him into the ranks of  Oscar contenders.  

As Brian Brown-Easley, a real-life Marine veteran undergoing a mental-emotional meltdown, Boyega gives a performance that is by turns subtle, in your face and heartbreaking.

For its first 30 minutes writer/director Abi Damaris Corbin’s film is basically a three-character drama unfolding in real time.  In a setup that will remind many of “Dog Day Afternoon,”  Boyega’s character walks into an Atlanta-area bank and passes a teller a note announcing that his backpack contains a bomb.

But it’s not a robbery.  We soon learn that Brian is at the end of his rope because his monthly veteran’s benefit has been seized by a collection agency to cover the unpaid tuition incurred in his brief and disastrous attempt at a college education. As his last stand he’s decided to hold the bank hostage until the media gets his story out and he gets his money back.

As hostage situations go, this one is unsettling for its civility.  Brian lets everyone in the bank leave save for a cashier (Selenis Leyva) and the branch manager (Nicole Beharie). And despite waving around what he claims is a detonator (looks like he assembled it with parts from the junk drawer), Brian fights his own peaking anxiety to present himself as polite and non-threatening…or at least as non-threatening as one can be in these circumstances.

In fact, Brian finds an ally of sorts in the manager, who turns down an opportunity to escape because she figures she’s all that’s between this desperate fellow and a sniper’s bullet.  The cashier, on the other hand, is perennially poised on the edge of hysteria.

Little by little the screenplay by Corbin and Kame Kwei-Armah introduces other characters. There’s a police hostage negotiator (the late Michael Kenneth Williams) who must work his away around a shoot-first commanding officer (Jeffrey Donovan) and  a new police chief determined to establish his bona fides as tough on crime.

Michael Kenneth Williams

Brian manages to get a call through to a news producer (Connie Britton) at a local TV station.

And periodically he rings up his estranged wife (Olivia Washington) and their precocious young daughter (London Covington), whose home has been invaded by a couple of grimly unhelpful FBI agents. 

“Breaking” moves with a sort of grim inevitability, balancing fear and suspense against Brian’s desperation.  And while everyone in the film is solid, Boyega’s performance is a tour de force as it shifts back and forth between depression, hope, anger, guilt…there are few emotional bases this young actor doesn’t tag here.

It’s one of those performances you’ll want to see twice, just to figure out how he pulled it off.

| Robert W. Butler

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“EMILY THE CRIMINAL”: She’s breaking bad

August 13, 2022 by butlerscinemascene

Aubrey Plaza

“EMILY THE CRIMINAL” My rating: B (Theaters)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

A seemingly normal young woman finds a new career on the wrong side of the law in “Emily the Criminal,” a low-keyed drama that argues persuasively that when the system is rigged crime actually does pay.

Aubrey Plaza is our titular protagonist, a young woman with a dead-end job hauling catered lunches to high-rise L.A. offices, a huge college loan debt, and an art degree she can’t put to use.

As John Patton Ford’s film begins Emily is undergoing a job interview in which she is caught trying to hide the fact that she has a criminal record. Evidently she once assaulted a boyfriend…whether or not he deserved it is an open question. The fact of her arrest is enough to keep Emily  from being hired by any reputable business.

A catering co-worker suggests something, well, a bit dicey.  And soon Emily finds herself with a dozen or so other economic burnouts being addressed by Youcef (Theo Rossi), who informs them that they are needed as “dummy shoppers.”  

The gig is not dangerous and no one will be physically hurt, Youcef announces in businesslike tones that eerily echo every new-employee orientation session you’ve ever sat through. But it is illegal, he admits.

Basically Emily and her fellow shoppers will be given a credit card — the information is stolen, Yuocef acknowledges — with which to buy a big flat-screen television.  They will bring the electronics to Youcef; he will pay them $200 in cash.

Easy money.

Emily is ready to walk out but there’s something about Youcef — perhaps it’s his honesty in revealing the illegality of the operation — that makes her put her conscience on the back burner.  Her first gig goes smoothly.

Her second, though, quickly turns hairy.  She’s supposed to use a credit card and forged money order to pick up a luxury car, and it’s pretty clear that the foreign types who are doing the selling are a bit shady themselves. Emily barely gets away with the vehicle and a bloody nose.

Theo Rossi

She’s shaken…but also stirred.  One of the marvels of Plaza’s performance is the way she mines her character’s central core of anger and alienation.  If the world won’t give Emily a  break, she’ll make her own.

Emily gets one last chance to go straight with a gig at a hipster ad agency;  during the interview the CEO (Gina Gershon) reveals that it’s a non-paying internship that may — or may not — result in actual employment. It’s one indignity too many for our girl, who storms out more determined than ever to make it any way she can.

Meanwhile her relationship with Youcef segues from student/mentor to hot and heavy.  Youcef (you may remember Rossi as one of the biker regulars on “Sons of Anarchy”) is a sweet fella who takes Emily to meet his Lebanese mama (Sheila Korsi); in fact, Emily will learn that Youcef is way too nice a guy for the illegal business in which he’s involved. 

Ford’s screenplay so matter-of-factly presents Emily’s situation that her bad moral choices make perfect sense; meanwhile he’s slowly turning up the tension as our girl’s escapades become ever more dangerous.

Holding down the whole shebang is Plaza, who plays Emily absolutely straight but with a deep pocket of percolating rage.  There’s not a sign of the actress‘ trademark snark; in fact, aside from some grimly satiric jabs at the 21st century work environment, the film is humorless.

| Robert W. Butler

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