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“ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER”: Kubrickian crazy

October 11, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

Leonardo Di Caprio

“ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER” My rating: B+ (In theaters)

161 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Rarely has a journey from cautious cringing to outright admiration been as marked as in the case of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another.”

For the first 20 or so minutes of this epic satiric actioner I feared that the movie was going over a cliff.  Anderson is here practicing a form of exaggerated realism that, until you lock into his ethos, feels like slapstick caricature. And not very clever slapstick at that.

The dialogue in the opening minutes — most of it spoken by a sexuality-fueled young black woman with the unlikely name of Perfidia Beverly Hills (she’s played with feral ferocity by Teyana Taylor) — seems almost a parody of blaxploitation/hippie era speechifying.  

The target of her taunting is one Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn, looking as if he grooms with a dull-bladed Lawn Boy), the turkey-necked commander of an immigrant detention camp being raided by the French 75, the underground army of which Perfidia is one of the most outspoken and violence-prone members.

Sean Penn

Clearly Colonel Lockjaw (the names alone should have provided me with a clue as to how to navigate this material) is torn: He’s a racist being held at gunpoint by a young black woman, which is humiliating.  At the same time, this situation fulfills his most twisted  fantasies;  Perfidia sneeringly comments  on the involuntary bulge in his camouflage pants.

If all this sounds pretty over the top…well, I thought so, too.  But a funny thing happened…as the film progressed I found myself warming up to its unique blend of violence, “Dr. Strangelove”-level social/political black comedy and goofball characters.  Weirdest of all, perhaps, is “Battle’s”  genuinely moving depiction of father/daughter bonding.

The film’s prologue depicts Perfidia’s life with her lover and fellow terrorist, a bomb-maker played by Leonardo DiCaprio.  When the two find themselves facing the prospect of parenthood, he’s all for dialing back on the radical behavior.  But not Perfidia…she keeps pushing for more and bigger actions against the Establishment.  

The segment ends with Perfidia’s arrest.  Her lover and their baby girl are relocated by the underground army to a small city  in what appears to be the Pacific Northwest. He changes his name to Bob and devotes his spare time to weed.   His daughter  Willa (Chase Infiniti) grows up hearing stories of her legendary mother; she’s an overachiever who seems determined to make up for her doofus dad’s dropout lifestyle.

The bulk of the film (it’s 2 1/2 hours long but feels much shorter) centers on Colonel Lockjaw’s obsessive hunt for Perfidia’s lover and child. To that end he orders the military invasion of the sanctuary city where the pair reside.  In the chaos father and daughter are separated; the heart of the film centers on Bob’s quest to get Willa back.

Chase Infiniti

Willa is abetted in her escape by one of her parents’ old French 75 comrades (Regina Hall), while Bob (clad in plaid bathrobe) relies on the vast underground network run by Willa’s karate instructor (a scene-stealing Benecio Del Toro), who blends zen calm with barrio bravado. 

Along the way Anderson dishes some genuinely biting satire.  Willa finds herself sheltered in a leftist convent where the nuns have daily machine gun practice. And there’s an entire subplot involving the billionaire members of the Christmas Adventurers, a clandestine ultra-right cabal dedicated to racial purity (Tony Goldwyn and Kevin Tighe are among the fat-cat members).  

DiCaprio has a truly hilarious segment in which he phones the underground army’s call center (the music you hear while on hold is Gil Scott Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”) and totally freaks out because after years of drugs he can no longer remember the password that will allow him to talk to his old French 75 buddies.

Now it’s pretty clear that a movie like this takes several years to get off the ground, yet “One Battle…” feels as if it was torn from today’s headlines.  Its depiction of alien roundups, concentration camps and ICE-type military actions smack of our evening news.

And the Christmas Adventurers are a savage sendup of American oligarchy that in the long run feels less satirical than prescient.

I mentioned earlier that “Battle…” features “Strangelove-ean” humor.  There are moments, in fact, when the film feels like a homage to Kubrick.  A meeting of the Adventurers unfolds with the same stiff-necked formality we saw in “2001” in the office gathering on the moon. And who is Lockjaw if not a descendant of Gen. Jack D. Ripper?

Given the outrageousness of it all, it’s a miracle that the players achieve a surprising level of depth and believability.  Exhibit No. 1 is Penn’s Lockjaw, a cartoon of military macho (the guy literally walks as if there’s a ramrod up his butt)  who somehow segues from silly to weirdly chilling and maybe even a little compelling.

“One Battle After Another” is so diverting that it’s easy to overlook Anderson’s dead-serious ideas about radicalism and the difficulty of keeping one’s idealistic edge in this America of consumer excess and moral erosion. Laugh until you cry.

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “House of Guinness,” “Peacemaker,” “Alien: Earth”

October 6, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

Anthony Boyle. Louis Partridge

“HOUSE OF GUINNESS” (Netflix): 

Rich people misbehaving.

It’s not exactly a groundbreaking notion in the world of television (“Dynasty,” “Dallas,” “Succession”), but “House of Guinness” tosses in a few nifty  variations on a familiar theme.

Plus it may be the most perfectly produced/photographed/edited miniseries I’ve ever seen.  

Set in the 1860s, this series from Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”) zeroes in  on the Guinness family of Dublin, brewers of a stout that remains a favorite of barflies the world over.

It begins with the death of the brewer’s founder and the power struggle that ensues.

As the oldest son, Arthur (Anthony Boyle) inherits the factory and the family fortune.  But he’s spent the last decade in London engaging in a decadent gay lifestyle and knows almost nothing of the business.

Second son Edward (Louis Partridge) has lived at his father’s elbow and knows brewing inside out. He’ll continue running the biz while Arthur reluctantly campaigns for Parliament and searches for a wife who can provide cover for his true proclivities.

The third son, Benjamin (Fionn O’Shea) is a hopeless dipsomaniac barely sober enough to remain upright at the funeral.

The one daughter, Anne (Emily Fairs), is stuck in a joyless marriage but is determined to use some of the family fortune on social projects.

These familial struggles unfold against a background of political upheaval.  The Guinnesses represent the Protestant, Brit-leaning rich who control Ireland; they are opposed by a growing army of Irish rebels, among them the charismatic fire-breather Ellen Cochrane (Niamh McCormack) who, improbably enough, will find romance with a member of the Guinness clan.

There are several breakout performances here.  Boyle (“Masters of the Air”) is fascinating, infuriating and a bit heartbreaking as Arthur, whose true nature is constantly at war with the facade he’s expected to maintain.

James Norton

James Norton steals virtually every scene as Rafferty, the brewery foreman and fixer who’s not above brutality in protecting the family name and fortune.

And I find my thoughts returning often to Danielle Gilligan’s Lady Olivia, who marries Arthur knowing they’ll never share a bed.

A real left-field surprise is Jack  Gleeson.  This young actor was hated the world around for his portrayal of the spoiled, vindictive King Joffrey Baratheon in “Game of Thrones.” Here he’s almost unrecognizable as Hedges, a sort of leering human leprechaun who talks his way into becoming the Guinness brand’s agent in America and gradually takes over the clan’s political fortunes.

So, yeah, it’s a bit of a soap opera.  But an imminently watchable one.

John Cena

“PEACEMAKER” (HBO Max):

We’ve already got one ultra-violent, gleefully profane genre-busting superhero series in Prime’s “The Boys.”  HBO Max’s “Peacemaker” is in the same ballpark, but more overtly comic.

Now in its second season, this James Gunn-created series centers on one of the peripheral characters in the DC Universe.  Christopher Smith — aka Peacemaker — is a brawny, not-too-bright vigilante with a collection of masked headgear that impart to him special properties.

The joke here is that Peacemaker (John Cena) is so thick that he’s ready to kill as many people as possible in the name of peace (nothing more peaceful than a corpse, right?).  

He’s abetted in his often misguided efforts by a gang of fellow misfits (Danielle Brooks, Freddie Stroma, Steve Agee) and a foul-tempered pet eagle (brilliantly animated).  He’s also got a slow burn crush on a government spy/assassin (Jennifer Holland) who can’t decide if she likes or hates the big hunk.

The show’s comic tone is set with the opening credits, a huge dance number featuring most of the cast members in costume. That about half of them cannot dance to save their lives only makes the experience more pleasurable.

Season One found Peacemaker and crew battling an alien invasion.  Season Two centers on an alternate universe which appears far more copacetic than ours.  In this parallel world Peacekeeper never killed his brother and their father is a hero rather than a thuggish peckerwood.

Much of the fun comes in watching the characters interacting with their parallel universe doppelgängers. Not to mention an absolutely wonderful late-in-the-season reveal — turns out this isn’t the utopia Peacemaker hoped for.

Actually, our hero seems to be getting smarter and more empathetic. Nice to know he’s capable of change.

Not for the kiddies, put perfect for guys still working their way out of adolescence.

“ALIEN: EARTH”(Hulu):  

So much has already been written about this series that there’s not much I can add.

I will say that the first couple of episodes left me cold…I was tempted not to keep watching.

Glad I did. The series finds its voice by episode four and the final four installments offer an ever-tightening narrative noose.

Plus I’d watch Timothy Olyphant in anything…even as an emotionless cyborg.

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE LOST BUS”: Hellscape

October 4, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

“THE LOST BUS”  My rating: A-(Apple+)

129 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Forget your chest-busting aliens and serial killers.  The scariest monster I’ve ever seen on film is the fiery holocaust depicted in Paul Greenglass’ “The Lost Bus.”

Long a master of the historical recreation (“Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “United 93,” “Captain Phillips”), Greenglass here turns his attention to the 2018 Paradise fire, the devastating inferno that ripped through a wooded California town, killing more than 80 people and leaving thousands homeless.

The sneakily benign title refers to the real-life experiences of school bus driver Kevin McCay and elementary school teacher Mary Ludwig, who with a busload of 22 youngsters spent a hellish day surrounded by ever-mounting flames in a desperate search for a safe route out of the burning town.

The screenplay (by Greenglass and Brad Ingelsby) finds a few minutes in which to explore the backgrounds of these two heroes.  Kevin (Matthew McConaughey) is a life-long screwup with an angry ex-wife and a teenage son who hates him.  Mary (America Ferrera)  is a wife and mother who has always regarded her backwoods California community as a refuge from a larger and more inhospitable world.

But the bulk of the film is an  almost documentary look at what happened that day, cutting between the frantic efforts of firefighters to contain the blaze (Yul Vazquez portrays the overwhelmed local fire chief) and the efforts of Kevin and Mary to get the children to safety.

America Ferrara, Matthew McConaughey

Initially they’re far from a perfect partnership.  Kevin is dismayed/angered by Mary’s calm, slow, don’t-alarm-the-kids approach to the situation; all he can think about is the red glow getting bigger  in his rear-view mirror. But surrounded by flames and facing the likelihood that they’re going to die in this big yellow oven, the two find a common bond in the need to be strong for the children.

The acting is terrific without ever looking like acting.

But the real star of “The Lost Bus” is the production itself.  It’s impossible  here to differentiate between practical real-world effects and computer-generated imagery; they combine effortlessly to depict the horrors of  that day.  

“Awesome” doesn’t seem too hyperbolic a word to describe the accomplishment of  cinematographer Pal Ulvik Rokseth and his editors (Peter Dudgeon, William Goldenberg and Paul Rubell). They have created a vision of flame and chaos so convincing that you almost imagine heat radiating from your TV screen.

And talk about tension!  No Hitchcock movie ever had me perched so dangerously on the edge of my seat.

Seriously, folks. There were moments here so intense that even after a lifetime of moviegoing I found myself fighting the urge to freeze the action and take a break.  It’s that effective.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Superman,” “Swiped”

October 2, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

“SUPERMAN” *My rating: C+ (HBO Max)

129 minutes | MPAA: PG-13

Well, it’s an improvement over the dour Zack Snyder’Henry Cavill adaptations, but James Gunn’s “Superman” mostly made me appreciate the insanely clever balancing act of the first Christopher Reeve “Superman” (1978).

No origin story here. It begins with Clark Kent (David Corenswet) already co-habiting with fellow reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), who is well aware of his  powers. Evil mastermind Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult, strangely uncompelling) wants to bring down our hero.

Superman’s alien origins are at the heart of the yarn.  Our man comes to believe (mistakenly, it turns out), that he was sent to Earth not to serve its people but to rule them.  This leads to a crisis of conscience.  Meanwhile Luthor picks up that idea and runs with it to justify his persecution of the Man of Steel.

Corenswet makes for a likable if not particularly dynamic Superman.  But he’s got no chemistry with Brosnahan.  Far more engaging is Superman’s apparently untrainable dog Krypto, a computer-animated mutt who combines puppy-like misbehavior with insane strength and speed.

Gunn’s “Superman” has been accused of woke-ness, apparently because it presents its hero as an illegal immigrant and because a subplot — about one country’s invasion of its impoverished neighbor — strikes some viewers as a commentary on the war in Gaza. Maybe. Maybe not.

“Superman” isn’t bad. Nor is it particularly good.

Lily James

“SWIPED” My rating: B (Hu;u)

110 minutes | No MPAA rating

Save your Coke bottles, ladies.  Men are shit.

That’s the unstated but inescapable message percolating through “Swiped,” a tale of female empowerment (and frustration) based on the career of Whitney Wolfe Herd, who was instrumental in creating the dating app Tinder.

Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s film (she co-wrote with Bill Parker and Kim Caramele) follows Herd (Lily James) as she navigates the treacherous waters of the social media industry in the 2000 teens.

Geeks will appreciate the tech history laid out here, but the film’s real concern is the hellish mistreatment Herd was subjected to.  If you thought the computer  world was enlightened and egalitarian compared to old school business…well, no.  Her male co-workers take credit for her innovative ideas.  And when she dares complain, she finds herself the object of corporate slut shaming.

On the personal side, the co-worker she falls in love with turns out, after a period of charming behavior, to be a sexist sleaze ball.  Herd  goes solo to develop her own app, using funds provided by a Russian tech magnate (Dan Stevens) who seems too good to be true. He is; the dude’s got Epstein-level baggage.

Ultimately Herd found true love (with someone well outside her business circles) and founded the wildly successful female-oriented dating app Bumble. She is now rich and powerful.

“Swiped” is inspirational, sure.  It’s also unsettlingly cautionary. 

| Robert W. Butler

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“28 YEARS LATER”: Just another zombie flick?

September 23, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

“28 YEARS LATER”  My rating: B (Netflix)

115 minutes |MPAA rating: R

“28 Years Later” has plenty of gruesome action, a good chunk of suspense and even, in its final moments, a crushing emotional component.

And zombies, of course.

What it doesn’t have is a sense of completion.  This continuation of the series, directed by “28…” veteran Danny Boyle, ends with an abrupt cliffhanger that leaves characters and plot points dangling.  Obviously there will be a Part II.  In the meantime, the film feels incomplete.

Fans of post-apocalyptic nihilism will no doubt be transported; your hard-core zombie freak will find plenty of new revelations to discuss with the like-minded; and action junkies should get satisfaction. But let’s be honest…this is just another zombie movie.  Well made and with a deep pedigree, perhaps, but it’s going to appeal mostly to the already converted.

Basically Alex Garland’s screenplay delivers two stories and a snippet of a third that sets up the next film.

After a brief (and kinda pointless) prologue set back at the beginning of the “rage virus” infestation, Part One picks up 28 years later on an  island off the coast of England.  Here human survivors have established a zombie-free commune, a just-the-basics but nurturing environment where 14-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) has grown up in. 

Not that everything is copacetic in this island refuge.  Spike’s mother Isla  (Jodie Comer) suffers from some debilitating condition, and his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has sought solace in the arms of other women.

The bulk of this segment finds Jamie leading Spike off the island for a sort of coming-of-age initiation on the mainland.  Under his Dad’s firm but encouraging tutelage  Spike is expected to use his bow and arrow to dispatch  a zombie, thus cementing his manhood.

Their trek reveals to us the changes that have undergone Merrie Olde England after all three decades of being quarantined from the rest of civilization.  

On the neat side there are the huge herds of deer that race across the landscape like stampeding bison. 

On the not-so-neat side are the zombies, which have evolved into two species. Easiest to deal with are the obese, sluggish, worm-eating “slow-and-lows.” More problematical are the more humanoid zombies — thin, naked wraiths that move with remarkable speed.  Worst of all are the zombie leaders, the “alphas,” who look like Jason Momoma after a long night of binge drinking and seem capable of at least minimal strategizing.

Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes

So that’s the movie’s first half.  Part Two offers a different sort of quest.  

Desperate to find a cure for his mother’s condition, young Spike hatches an audacious and dangerous plan. Leaving his father behind, he will sneak Isla to the mainland to find the physician reputed to be living there. Surely there is a cure for what ails her.

Along the way they team up briefly with a young Swedish soldier (Edwin Ryding) marooned while enforcing the quarantine. They witness a female  zombie giving birth (apparently the walking dead have active sex lives) and finally meet the fabled medico (a delightfully scenery-chewing Ralph Fiennes), who still retains his diagnostic skills after having spent 30 years building a massive pyramid of human skulls.

What’s remarkable about all this is that young Williams and Comer — despite all the mayhem surrounding them — are able to create a genuinely touching mother/child relationship. Which provides the film with a quietly heartbreaking pivotal moment.

Production values are strong, offering a thoroughly convincing view of what England might look like once people are gone. 

And the action scenes benefit from fiercely kinetic editing that allows us to see the zombies and splashes of gore mostly in staccato flashes.  It’s a lesson learned from “Jaws” — what you can’t clearly see is far more unsettling than what you can.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Sunday Best,” “High Ground,” “Warfare”

September 18, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

“SUNDAY BEST: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ED SULLIVAN” My rating: B+ (Netflix)

90 minutes | No MPAA rating

For millions of Americans in the 1950s and ‘60s, Sunday night meant gathering around the TV to watch Ed Sullivan’s variety show.

Sullivan was notoriously stiff on camera and dismissed by many a teenager as a hopeless square.  Nevertheless he gave us our first glimpses of Elvis and the Beatles, no small thing.

But his greatest achievement, according to the new documentary “Sunday Best,” was defying the societal norms of his times to promote black entertainers in the face of widespread racism.

Directed by Sacha Jenkins (he’s done docs on Louis Armstrong, Wu-Tang Clan and the roots of rap), this surprisingly moving and thoroughly entertaining effort charts Sullivan’s early career as a newspaper sportswriter and, later, Broadway editor of the NY Daily News. He ended up on television almost by accident and in fact Sullivan’s lack of charisma had critics howling for his replacement.

But audiences got on his unconventional wavelength and he settled in to write more than 20 years of broadcast history.

The doc features several vintage TV interviews of Sullivan and testimony from dozens of entertainment figures (Harry Belafonte, Berry Gordy, Smoky Robinson, Oprah Winfrey), but the film’s greatest selling point is its jaw-dropping collection of great on-air performances.

We’re talking a teenage Stevie Wonder, Ike and Tina Turner, The Supremes, Nina Simon, Gladys Knight, Mahalia Jackson, Sammy Davis Jr., Bo Diddley, the Jackson Five, Nat King Cole…and that’s just scratching the surface.

What comes through loud and clear here is that Ed Sullivan truly loved show people. Race didn’t matter. Talent did.

Turns out that wooden exterior masked a great heart and a very good soul.

Simon Baker, Jacob Junior Nayinggul

“HIGH GROUND” My rating: B (Prime)

104 minutes | No MPAA rating

Civilization, observes a character in the Australian-lensed “High Ground,” is the story of bad men doing bad things to pave the way for the rest of us.

Among those “bad things” is blatant racism, a trait the Aussies historically share with us Americans.  Here we enslaved black men and killed Native Americans; in Australia it was all about the destruction of Aboriginal culture.

Set in the decade after WWI, this visually devastating film from writer Chris Anastassiades and director Stephen Johnson  depicts one small outlier in a greater race war and how two men — one white, one black — find themselves caught in the middle.

The film begins in 1918 with the massacre of a clan of Aborigines by white police officers. Among them is Travis (Simon Baker), a former army sharpshooter dismayed when his fellows go on a killing spree.

Only two Aborigines survive the mayhem.  One is Gutjuk,  8 years old when he loses his family. More than a decade later we find Gutjuk (now played by an excellent Jacob Junior Nayinggul) living at a remote Outback mission where he has been renamed Tommy and reared in a more or less caring  environment.

The other survivor is his uncle Bawara (Sean Mununggurr), left for dead but now staging retaliatory raids on white-owned ranches.

Travis is assigned to kill or capture Bawara; Tommy/Gutjuk accompanies him as a guide and interpreter.  Neither man wants to be there.

Among the supporting players are Callan Mulvey as Travis’ old army buddy, now a squinty-eyed hater, and the great Jack Thompson as the local head of police; his mere presence provides a link to the glories of the Australian New Wave of the ‘70s.

This story could be plopped down in the American West (there are more than a few similarities to “Dancing with Wolves”). What makes it especially noteworthy is “High Ground’s” quiet respect for native culture and its awed admiration for the rugged yet beautiful topography, captured by cinematographer Andrew Commis in almost unbearably evocative images and not a few soaring drone shots that momentarily transform the viewer into a hawk floating above a “Lawrence of Arabia”-level landscape.

Several of the executive producers of the film are themselves Aborigine, and it shows. There’s no attempt to romanticize the tribe’s hunter/gatherer lifestyle; an almost documentary observation takes over certain scenes.

A pall of uncertainty and sadness hang over the yarn. We’re not sure who to root for; nor does there seem to be any easy answer to the long-simmering hatreds on display.

But I found myself unexpectedly moved by the film’s brutal yet inescapable conclusion.

“WARFARE” My rating: B (HBO Max)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Warfare” is an almost minute-by-minute depiction of an actual firefight that took place during the American occupation of Iraq.

It’s about as accurate a look at modern combat as we’re likely to see.

In fact, Ray Mendoza, who co-wrote and co-directed the picture with veteran Alex Garland, is a former Navy SEAL and was a participant in the action recreated here.

There’s no plot. No character development. Instead we spend a night with a group of SEALS who have taken over an Iraqi home to observe terrorist activity in the neighborhood.  

The clan that lives there have been sequestered in a bedroom. The Americans haven’t threatened them, but it’s easy to understand the family’s anxiety and, as time passes, their outrage.

Not a word is wasted here.  Most of the dialogue is radio chatter and ordered commands. The first half of the film displays the boring side of war…sitting around waiting for something to happen.

And when it does happen, the mayhem is anything but glorious.

The cast is peppered with familiar faces (Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Michael Gandolfini) but nothing here even remotely resembles a star turn.  

Under the stress of combat these are less individuals than extremely well-oiled cogs in a killing machine.

At the film’s conclusion we see the actors with the real-life SEALs they portray. There could hardly be a more resounding endorsement of the movie’s truthfulness.

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Pernille,” “The Gardener” 

September 6, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

Henriette Steenstrup

“PERNILLE” (Netflix)

I cannot say enough good things about “Pernille,” a funny/touching Norwegian series about a single mother, her two daughters and the people in their lives.

How good is this show?  So good that when I had watched all 30 episodes (five seasons of six half-hour episodes) I was bereft.  Felt like I’d lost good friends, or maybe a family member.  

The show was created and written by Henriette Steenstrup, who also plays the title character. What a performance!!!

Steenstrup’s Pernille is a 45-year-old divorce who works in child protective services (the source of the show’s most sobering moments).  Caring for others is Pernille’s thing — her two spoiled daughters shamelessly manipulate her and she’s also got her fingers in the life of her widowed father (Nils Ole Oftebro), who at age 75 announces he’s gay.

As the series begins the family is mourning the traffic accident death of her sister Anne.  Almost every night Pernille retreats to her garage to call her sibling’s number and leave confessional messages that will never be answered.

Pernille is aflood with conflicting emotions, all of which flicker across Steenstrup’s features like lightning dapplling a clouded sky. In the wrong hands this display of unfettered expression could seem gimmicky and off-putting. Overacting with a capital “O.”

Instead it is ingratiating.  Steenstrup’s Pernille has more than a little in common with Jason Sudiekis’ Ted Lasso; both are flawed characters whose humane cores confirm that with the right perspective this world can be a blessing.

So over the course of the series we find her engaged in an on-again off-again relationship with a municipal lawyer (Gunnar Eiriksson) more than a decade her junior.  The daughters (Vivild Falk Berg, Ebba Jacobsen Oberg) slowly discard their maddening petulance and entitlement and become good people. Grandpa finds love and in one of the show’s more amusing plot lines becomes a veritable bridezilla planning his same-sex marriage.

The show is nothing if not charitable when it comes to the human condition. Even the shows’s erstwhile heavy, Perille’s ex (Jan Gunnar Roise) is allowed to reveal the man-boy insecurities beneath his pompous intellectualism.

Give this show a chance and it will hook you with the first episode.

Cecilia Suarez, Alvaro Rico

“THE GARDENER” (Netflix)

The old gimmick  about a hit man who falls for the woman he’s supposed to kill gets buffed up and turned inside out in “The Gardener,” a six-part Spanish miniseries that is my current guilty pleasure.

Our killer is Elmer (Alvaro Rico), a bespectacled twenty something who runs a nursery/greenhouse operation with his mother China (Cecilia Suarez).  Elmer has a spectacular green thumb…his lush gardens are practically tourist attractions. 

His secret? All the decomposing human bodies beneath the beds.

But Elmer isn’t your typical movie tough guy or skin-crawling ghoul. After suffering head trauma in the same childhood auto accident that cost his mother her leg, Elmer lost his emotions.

No love. No joy. No fear. No envy. No guilt. No regret.  The kid’s an emotional blank slate, an innocent, really.  The ideal state for a killer.

China, once a minor movie star, now accepts murder contracts which are executed by her stoically efficient son. 

All goes well until Elmer is hired to eliminate Violeta (Catalina Sopelana), a young elementary school teacher. Wouldn’t you know…for the first time Elmer feels stirrings of romantic love. This complicates things.

Created and written by Miguel Baez Carral, “The Gardener” delivers its ridiculousness with a mostly-straight face. We’re talking telenovello-level melodrama, but instead of laughing it all off the screen we go along for the ride.

“The Gardener” is crammed with rcultural eferences and plot twists.  For starters, there’s the China/Elmer relationship, an Iberian permutation of “Bates Motel,” with a manipulative mother and her loving boy. 

And periodically we find ourselves hanging out with a couple of local cops (Francis Lorenzo and Maria Vazquez), middle-aged drones bored to tears with their gig on the missing persons desk and energized when they stumble onto their very own a serial killer. Their scenes are a hoot.

In fact, the acting here is way better than required.  Rico’s Elmer is a lost soul who gets our sympathy despite his high body count; we want desperately for him to find love.  Sopelana’s Violeta is dead on as an good-girl educator who, as it turns out, has a few secrets of her own.

But the star here is Suarez’s China.  Born in Mexico, educated in the States and a veteran of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, Suarez  oozes a hypnotic blend of sexy/crazy. With her black hair and penchant for long black capes she seems to be taking her cues from the Wicked Queen in Disney’s “Snow White.” It’s an eye-rolling perf without any actual eye-rolling. Very sly.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Sisu,” “Black Bag,” “The Amateur”

August 25, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

Jorma Tommila

“SISU” My rating: B (Peacock)

91 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The Finnish actioner “Sisu” feels like a Road Runner cartoon directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Not that it’s funny, exactly.  Jamari Helander’s film is crammed with gloriously gruesome mayhem meted out by a silent fellow who, like the beep-beeping star of those old Chuck Jones cartoons, survives every attempt on his life, absorbing punishment after punishment.  

The violence is utterly outlandish, but presented with such a straight face (and with so much stage blood) that we get caught up in the whole silly premise.

It also helps that the Wile E. Coyote of the piece is a platoon of goonish Nazis.  Nature’s perfect bad guys.

We first see Astami (Jorma Tommila) in the vast treeless plains of Lapland.  Accompanied only by his dog, this heavily scarred fellow with a white beard is prospecting.  One day he finds a vein of gold so rich that he soon has a couple of backpacks crammed with fist-sized nuggets.

Up to this point we don’t really know whether this is taking place in the present or the distant past.  Then we’re introduced to a unit of retreating Germans. Okay…so World War II.

Basically this is an elaborate chase.  The Nazi commander (Aksel Hennie) takes Astami’s gold and leaves him for dead. Figuring the war is lost, the German plans on using the treasure to build a new life.

But it turns out that Astami is a Finnish national hero, a sniper/survivalist who before leaving the war behind racked up hundreds of kills. 

Now he wants his gold back. He goes after the Germans like some sort of Scandinavian Terminator.

Along the way he will be shot, nearly blown apart, set on fire, hanged and drowned. He’ll even survive a plane crash.

 You can’t keep a good Finn down.

Oh…and with the Germans is a truckload of Finnish women being used as sex slaves.  Astami makes sure that before it’s all over the ladies will be well armed and ready for vengeance.

Among the film’s “huh?” elements is the dialogue, which drifts unexpectedly between English, German and Finnish for no obvious reason.

Then there are the many virtues of “Sisu” (a Finnish word that roughly translates as “unstoppable”):  drop-dead gorgeous cinematography, spectacular fight coordination and especially the slow-burn performance of Tommila, who doesn’t say a word until the final scene but commands the screen every time a camera (or gun) is pointed at him.

Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender

“BLACK BAG” My rating: B+ (Peacock)

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

About the highest praise I can give Steven Soderbergh’s “Black Bag” is that it is of John le Carre quality, a spy thriller less about violence than about the toll the business of espionage takes on the human soul.

Michael Fassbender (who seems to be in every movie) is George Woodhouse, a Brit intelligence agent who after a legendary field career is now holding down a desk. His specialty is rooting out double agents.

David Koepp’s script is set in motion when George is given a list of five fellow agents suspected of selling secrets to Britain’s enemies.  

Just one problem: One of the suspects is George’s wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). The big question: If it turns out that Kathryn is a turncoat, will George serve  his country or his heart?

After much preliminary sleuthing, George decides to hold a dinner for the potential traitors (the others are played by Tom Burke, Regé-Jean Page, Naomie Harris and Marisa Abela). 

It’s borderline Agatha Christie (everyone assemble in the dining room where the killer will be revealed) but thanks to the intricacies of the screenplay and a fistful of great actors playing duplicity to the hilt, “Black Bag” becomes a hold-your-breath thriller.

And then there’s the title. “Black Bag” refers, of course, to black bag operations, meaning an assignment so secret that you must keep it from your friends and loved ones. While superficially about rooting out a mole, on a deeper level this film is about living in an environment where no one — not your boss, your best friend or your lover — can be trusted.

Amazingly, all this is there in Fassbender’s quietly contained performance.  Like Le Carre’s George Smiley, George is a bespectacled straight man with a volcano of suppressed and rarely-expressed emotion smoldering within. 

Now that’s some acting. 

 

Rami Malek, Caitriona Balfe

“THE AMATEUR” My rating: B-(Hulu)

122 minutes | MPAA: PG-13

The Rami Malek starrer “The Amateur” has little of the depth of “Black Bag,” but as a sort of underdog espionage yarn it’s diverting and generally satisfying.

Malek is Heller, who writes top-secret computer code for the CIA.  He’s essentially a nerd, but he does have a deeply satisfying marriage to Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), whose job requires her to travel internationally.

On one such trip Sarah becomes a hostage when terrorists take over a London hotel.  She is executed in front of the television cameras.

Heller is crushed. Then  he wants to get even, badgering his boss (Holt McCallany) to undergo field training so that he can track down the terrorists. The bigwigs figure this hopeless amateur will soon tire of the whole business.

Uh, no.

One of the virtues of Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli’s screenplay (based on James Hawes’ novel)  is that it tricks the viewer in the same way Heller tricks his handlers.  Just when you think the jig is up and our man is going down, the film reveals that Heller has been way ahead of us all the time.

His bosses — who secretly organized the illegal terrorist action that took Sarah’s life — find they can’t keep track of Heller as he galavants around Europe because the computer programs designed for that purpose were written by Heller himself. He knows all the loopholes.

“The Amateur” has a deep supporting cast (Laurence Fishburne, Jon Bernthal, Julianne Nicholson, Caitriona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg) and the direction by James Hawes keeps the yarn chugging along.

As for the Oscar-winning Malek, this film will undoubtedly come to be regarded as a toss-off in a career of some depth. But as toss-offs go, it’s enjoyable enough.

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Smoke,” “Stick,” “Woman of the Dead”

August 17, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

Taron Egerton, Jurnee Smollett

“SMOKE” (Apple+)

Sociopaths and psychopaths  are the common currency of today’s streaming environment. 

The problem, of course, is that now we’re so inundated with psychotic characters that they’ve become a bit ho-hum. It really takes something special to grab our attention.

Enter “Smoke,” a miniseries from crime specialist Dennis Lehane that delivers not one but two world-class psychos, both of whom specialize in setting things on fire.

Loosely based on the real case of an arson investigator who spent his spare time starting the blazes he was allegedly trying to solve, this show stars the chameleonic Taron Egerton as Dave Gudsen, chief arson detective for a municipal fire department in the Pacific Northwest.

Davis is a fascinating study in two-faced fiendishness.  He’s got a huge ego which he tries to hide behind a facade of professional composure and good-guy cameraderie,  but his megalomania keeps oozing out around the edges. He loves to give presentations in which he shocks his audience by planting incendiary charges in wastepaper baskets, timing them to go off at key moments during his talk. 

At home Dave’s ass-hat smugness  is quickly alienating his wife and stepson.

And he’s writing a novel (a desperately bad one) about an arson investigator very much like himself, a brilliant fellow who can run circles around the bad guys while satisfying every erotic fantasy of his curvy female partner.

Dave’s real-life female partner, Michelle (Jurnee Smollett), can only roll her eyes at this fiction.  She rather quickly goes from admiring her new mentor to suspecting that Dave may himself be responsible for a series of fatal arson incidents.

The scripts take a slow burn approach (sorry about that) in revealing Dave’s double life and the reluctance of his long-time boss (Greg Kinnear) and other colleagues to grasp just what’s going on.

Ntare Guam Mbaho Mwine

Meanwhile, there’s that second psycho, a pathetically sad but genuinely scary fellow named Freddy Faso (Ntare Guam Mbaho Mwine). This friendless loner lives in a shabby apartment, mans a grill at a fast-food franchise and dreams of joining the mainstream.  Fat chance. Freddy is a loser in virtually every way. A man without a voice, he makes himself heard by setting fires to punish those individuals (other customers celebrating at the local bar, his bosses) who he blames for his own misery.

Freddy is such a weirdly compelling/repellant character that Mwine’s performance should be incorporated into college courses about mental health.

And the fact that “Smoke” gives us one arsonist tracking down another arsonist (kinda like Dexter stalking other serial killers) turns the show into a sort of moral yo-yo.

And  while we’re cataloguing the series’ assets, let’s not forget a late-in-the-proceedings appearance by John Leguizamo, nothing short of superb as Dave’s former partner, who has long suspected he was teamed with a firebug and has now come out of a boozy, drug-riddled retirement to lend his hand in the investigation.

That said, not everything about “Smoke” works.  There’s a rather unnecessary backstory about Smollett’s character, who as a child was almost burned to death by her crazy mom.  And in the next to the last episode the writers throw Michelle a wildly improbably curveball that the show almost can’t recover from.

At nine episodes “Smoke” feels a bit padded.   But the high points compensate in the end.

Owen Wilson, Peter Dager

“STICK”(Apple+)

I didn’t expect many surprises from “Stick,” and I didn’t get many.

But what I got was sufficient. The show is funny and diverting and occasionally even shows a little heart.

Owen Wilson plays Pryce Cahill, a former professional golfer now fallen on some very hard times. Then he discovers Santi (Peter Dager),  an unknown teenage golfer who might just be the lovechild of Lee Trevino and Tiger Woods.  

Pryce decides to go on a tour of golf tournaments with the kid, bringing along the boy’s mother (Mariana Trevino) and Pryce’s former caddy, the gloriously misanthropic Mitts (Marc Maron).The goal is to somehow recover his long-lost pride and, hopefully, humiliate his long-time rival Clark Ross (Timothy Olyphant), who now runs a world-class golf club. (Is this supposed to reference Trump? Not sure.)

Among the supporting players are Judy Greer as Price’s long-suffering but still supportive ex-wife, and Lilli Kay as the evocatively gender jumbled waitress who becomes Santi’s first love.

Anna Maria Mühe

“WOMAN OF THE DEAD”(Netflix)

A female undertaker becomes an angel of vengeance in “Woman of the Dead,” a German thriller that is more nuanced than it first sounds.

When her policeman husband is killed in a hit-and-run outside their mortuary in the Austrian  Alps, Blum (Anna Maria Mühe) goes looking for answers.  What she uncovers  over the course of two seasons is a conspiracy of very rich men who make snuff films starring illegal immigrants lured to Germany by the promise of good jobs.

Blum is a fascinating character, a doting mom of two who spends her days embalming corpses. Even weirder, the recently dead often talk to her from their perch on the slab.  Is this her imagination? Is Blum a bit bonkers?

She apparently has no qualms about personally eliminating the men she blames for her husband’s demise. So as viewers we’re torn between her need for answers and her shocking vigilantism. Will she get away with it?  Do we want her to?

It helps that Mühe isn’t movie-star glamorous.  We can definitely see her as a wife and mother.

And should your attention wander, there’s always the spectacular mountain scenery.

| Robert W. Butler

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Short Takes: “The Penguin Lessons,” “Death of a Unicorn”

August 10, 2025 by butlerscinemascene

Steve Coogan and friend

“THE PENGUIN LESSONS” My rating: B(Netflix)

115 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

I’ve avoided watching “The Penguin Lessons” because, well, penguins and lessons. Sounded just a bit too emotionally pushy, you know?

Having finally watched this Peter Cattaneo-directed effort, I can report that my misgivings were misplaced.  The film is subtle, unsettling and about as unsentimental as a movie with a two-foot-tall feathered costar could be.

It helps that the film is based on the real-life story of Tom Michell, a British educator who in the 1970s found himself teaching English to the boys in a posh boarding school in Argentina.

When we first meet Michell (Steve Coogan), he’s a wryly caustic fellow oozing ennui.  We’ll learn much later that he’s attempting to outrun a personal tragedy.

On a seaside vacation to nearby Uruguay, Michell stumbles across a flock of penguins who have succumbed to a massive oil spill.  He retrieves the lone surviving bird and cleans it up in his hotel room (to be honest, his kindly display is intended to impress the woman he met that night at a dance club).

Anyway, once rescued the penguin refuses to leave. Michell is stuck with the fishy-smelling creature, reluctantly smuggling it back to Argentina in a backpack. He tries to pawn off the bird on anyone who’ll take it (a customs official, the local zoo) but ends up secreting it in his on-campus apartment.

The setup screams “cute,” but director Cattaneo and screenwriter Jeff Pope deftly sidestep all the pitfalls. For one thing, there’s no attempt to anthropomorphize the penguin.  He’s basically an eating machine that waddles. No personality to speak of — although just by being his cute, mute self he elicits confessional revelations from the humans who hang with him.

The eccentric creature — dubbed Juan Salvador by his savior — also proves a classroom asset, focusing the attention of the normally unruly rich twits who attend the school. Grades actually start improving, much to the delighted surprise of the stuffy headmaster (Jonathan Pryce).

Here’s where “The Penguin Lessons” turns the tables.  Michell was on hand for the military coup that for several years turned Argentina into a fascist camp where more than 30,000 citizens were “disappeared” for their political, intellectual and moral proclivities.

One of these unfortunates is Anna (Julia Fossi), a young cleaning lady at the school who is an outspoken liberal and always taunting Michell for his political indifference. Michell witnesses Anna being snatched off the street by a pack of government thugs. Appalled by his own cowardice for not interfering, he joins the girl’s grandmother (Vivian El Jaber) in a months-long search to discover Anna’s fate.

Now this is pretty dark stuff…and darker still because it mirrors recent images of masked ICE agents snatching dark-skinned people off America’s streets.

Coogan is a specialist at humanizing vaguely repellant characters, and here he quietly and efficiently limns Michell’s moral journey.  The supporting players are all fine, from the leads to the entitled adolescents who occupy Michell’s classroom (they could have called this “The Dead Penguin’s Society”).

Jenna Ortega

“DEATH OF A UNICORN” My rating: C (Netflix)

107 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Not even an A-list cast can do much with “Death of a Unicorn,” a hodgepodge of myth, father-daughter bonding, greedy rich folk and a big dose of gut-splattering violence.

Alex Scharfman’s film (he both wrote and directed) finds corporate attorney Elliott (Paul Rudd) and his surly daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) cruising down a mountain road en route to the alpine compound occupied by Elliott’s employers, a family of pharmaceutical robber barons.

At first Elliott thinks he’s hit and killed a deer.  Actually it’s a honest-to-God unicorn, a creature whose long horn is capable of delivering psychedelic experiences, healing diseases and even bringing the dead back to life.

Their moneyed hosts (Richard E. Grant, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni) quickly realize the creature’s powers could be a game-changer and launch plans to harvest whatever other unicorns may be frolicking in the woods.

What they don’t realize is that these creatures are malevolent, with the fangs of a carnivore, the speed of a charging rhino and the ability to crash through doors and walls.

The tone is all over the place.  “…Unicorn” wants to be a satire of corporate greed, but it’s hitting at a pretty obvious target. (Drug executives? Really?) Meanwhile it’s hard to root for the unicorns…they’re some mean mofos. 

And the violence is wildly gruesome…yet we’re supposed to laugh.  Those are some mixed messages.

Adolescent Ridley advocates a more humane approach to the whole situation; gradually bringing Dad Elliott into her corner.  Of course, you can’t exactly wave the flag of peace when these monsters are laying siege to your aerie.

| Robert W. Butler

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