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“BAD EDUCATION”: Too good to be true

April 28, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney

“BAD EDUCATON” My rating: B 

108 minutes | TV-MA

In the world of public education Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) is a rock star.

The superintendent of the Roslyn School District in a posh corner of Long Island, Frank has over a decade ratcheted up his district’s reputation. Currently the high school he oversees is rated as the fourth best in the country; Frank promises his cheering fans that he won’t stop until Roslyn is Number One.

Moreover, Frank melds educational excellence with personal charisma. His wardrobe is right out of GQ. As are his daily ablutions. Like a veteran pol, he knows the names of innumerable students, their parents and civic supporters. He’s charming and selfless and handsome…small wonder this widower periodically must gently turn aside the romantic ministrations of newly divorced soccer moms.

His teachers and staff adore him and the city fathers are no less enthusiastic.  Like school board member Big Bob Spicer (Ray Romano), a real estate broker who knows that a top school district is a magnet for rich, upwardly mobile families looking to buy in the ‘burbs.

And behind closed doors with his confidants — especially business administrator Pamela Gluckin (Allison Janney) — he enjoys a good cussing session.

In short, Frank Tassone is too good to be true.  And you know where that can lead.

Scripted by Mike Makowsky (who was a Roslyn student during Tassone’s celebrated tenure) and directed by Cory Finley, “Bad Education” emerges as a black comedy so seductive that, like most of the folks in his orbit, we don’t want to believe that Frank Tassone could be anything but the white knight he appears to be.

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“VANILLA”: Bland meets wham

April 24, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Kelsea Bauman, Will Dennis

“VANILLA”  My rating: B

87 minutes | No MPAA rating

If Elliott (Will Dennis) was ice cream he’d be vanilla.

His shirts are always buttoned tightly around his neck. He carefully charts out each day’s schedule (most days the big entry is “Lunch”).

Elliott spends many hours mooning about the girlfriend who got away. In his remaining time he is developing an app that will allows hungry users to literally scream for ice cream into their cell phones; a delivery man will be dispatched with the desired cones, scoops, toppings and other accoutrements.

Elliott is such a boring, lame-o character that one cannot imagine him holding down a feature film all by his lonesome. Happily he shares the screen with Kimmie (Kelsea Bauman), a sort of sarcasm-steeped gamine who hopes to become a standup comic. Between the two of them they make “Vanilla” a low-keyed, off-beat pleasure.

Making this all the more remarkable is that Dennis, who also wrote and directed the film, and Bauman have no feature film experience.  Until recently he was a product design consultant; “Vanilla” is his feature debut and while it isn’t earth-shaking, it’s kinda huggable.

The central premise has Will and Kimmie joining forces to drive his old van (it’s white, naturally) from NYC to New Orleans, where his ex, Trisha (Taylor Hess) is a P.A. on a film shoot and desperately needs an old beat-up white van for a stunt.

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“ELEPHANT”: Search for sustenance

April 10, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

“ELEPHANT” My rating: C+

86 minutes | MPAA rating: G

Yes, there’s some terrific nature photography on display is Disney’s “Elephant.” And, let’s face it, elephants are astonishingly compelling creatures.

But this nature documentary, directed by Mark Linfield and Vanessa Berlowitz, is as frequently irritating as it is inspiring.

When Walt Disney introduced his series of “True Life Adventures” (beginning in 1948 with “Seal Island” and continuing with nearly a dozen other titles like “The Vanishing Prairie,” “White Wilderness” and “The Painted Desert”) he almost immediately caught flak. Commentators admired the documentaries’ spectacular images and wealth of information, but protested that the films shamelessly anthropomorphized their animal subjects.

Film critic Bosley Crowther complained of Disney’s “playful disposition to edit and arrange…so that it appears the wild life is behaving in human and civilized ways…all very humorous and beguiling.  But it isn’t true to life.”

Some things never change.

When it’s showing, “Elephant” is fine.  But most of the time it’s telling.

The credits for “Elephant” do not list a screenwriter.  Perhaps that’s protective camouflage, because the film has been painfully and clumsily overwritten.

Narrated by Meghan Markle (merely adequate…there’s no authority in that voice, royal affiliations notwithstanding), “Elephant” tells a compelling story of a 1,000-mile annual migration of the big beasts across Africa’s Kalahari Desert in search of water and sustenance.

Almost immediately we learn that our central character is one-year-old Jomo, whose mother Shani is the sister of the herd’s matriarch…which makes her a sort of vice-president. (Yeah, yeah, in the wild animals don’t have names.  This is the movie’s way of identifying the various characters.)

On one level the film concentrates on Jomo’s determination to cavort with every creature he encounters (sometimes the intercutting of unrelated images to create a “story” is all too evident). A secondary plot has Shani assuming the burden of leadership and continuing the journey to safety in faraway wetlands.

All this is presented with maddening cuteness…cute musical passages, cute dialogue (Markle occasionally speaks for one of the animals)…I was tempted to turn off the sound and just go with the visuals.

Okay, okay…kids will probably love “Elephant” for the same reasons I’m irritated. They’ll no doubt be entertained and pick up some useful information about Earth’s biggest land mammal. In other words, they’ll learn a few things.

Hmmm…now I’m reminded of a song from another Disney movie.  Something about a spoonful of sugar.

| Robert W. Butler

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“NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS”: One girl’s story

April 9, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder

“NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS”  My rating: B 

101 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

A hot-button issue gets minimalist treatment in Eliza Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always.”

Yet despite the austerity of Hittman’s effort, this is a film that hooks us emotionally and intellectually.

Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) is a high schooler in small-town Pennsylvania. When we first meet her she’s singing at a local open-mic showcase.

After the performance she and her family (her mom is played by Sharon Van Etten, the singer; her vaguely indifferent stepdad by Ryan Eggold) decamp to a local restaurant. At an adjacent table a group of teenage boys are hanging out.   Autumn takes offense at something they’re doing and tosses her drink on one of them.

What’s that all about?   We follow Autumn to a clinic where she’s told she’s 10 weeks pregnant and treated to an anti abortion video.  She learns that as a minor in Pennsylvania she must get a parent’s permission before having an abortion.

And so in the dead of night Autumn and her supportive cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) grab a bus to the Big Apple where there are fewer restrictions.

What is supposed to be a one-day trip turns into something rather more complicated.  The Planned Parenthood doctor tells Autumn she’s more like 20 weeks gone; that’ll mean a two-day procedure and a longer stay in NYC.  Strapped for money the girls will basically have to spend a night bumming around the city. Continue Reading »

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“UNCORKED”: Wine and ribs

April 7, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Courtney B. Vance, Mamoudou Athie

“UNCORKED” My rating: B

104 minutes | No MPAA rating

In “Uncorked” a young man must choose between fulfilling family expectations or following his own drummer.

It’s a universal story that in the hands of writer/director Prentice Penny takes on a very specific cultural sensibility while remaining a gently satisfying experience.

Elijah (Mamoudou Athie) has pretty much had his future planned for him since childhood.

His parents, Louis and Sylvia (Courtney B. Vance, Niece Nash), have for years operated a Bar-B-Que joint in Memphis.  Dad has pretty much assumed — without asking — that Elijah will take over the biz…or at least step up to run a second eatery being readied.

But the young man has other ideas.  Currently he works in a liquor store whose owner (Matthew Glave) is a certified sommelier, and Elijah has over the months developed a tremendous interest in fine wines.  So much so that he risks disappointing his judgmental Papa to enroll in a sommelier class that will drain his savings and even send him off to France for several months.

“Uncorked” is at heart a family drama; it also is a sort of rough introduction to the world of wine afficianados who can with a sniff and sip tell you the grape variety, the country of origin, the specific vineyard and even the year of the vintage.

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“THE OTHER LAMB”: Ladies’ night

April 3, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Raffey Cassidy

“THE OTHER LAMB” My rating: B-

97 minutes | No MPAA rating

The feminist allegory “The Other Lamb” flirts mightily with pretension.  Good thing it’s so visually ravishing that it keeps you from asking the sort of questions that could deflate the whole affair.

Realizing that  Malgorzata Szumowska’s drama is about life in a religious cult, one might expect it to follow the template of other movies on that subject.

But Szumowska and screenwriter C.S. McMullen are more interested in establishing a dreamlike state than depicting harsh reality. And while their film eventually wears out its welcome, at least in the early going it’s fabulously seductive.

In a forest that looks like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale there is a small religious community.  It consists of nine adult women clad in long red dresses — they call themselves “the wives” — and nine younger females in blue identified as “the daughters.”

There’s only one man in sight. He’s known as The Shepherd (Michael Huisman, a veteran of HBO’s “Treme” and “Game of Thrones”) and he rules his flock with a seductive self-assurance.

His theology…well, it’s hard to say.  Occasionally the ladies will break out in a traditional Christian hymn, but The Shepherd practices a form of monotheism in which he’s at the top of the food/sex chain.

The women do all the work…herding real sheep, preparing meals, maintaining the shacks in which they live.  The Shepherd thinks deep thoughts, allows himself to be pampered like a pasha and each night takes a different bride to bed. Continue Reading »

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“RESISTANCE”: Tears of a clown

April 1, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

“RESISTANCE” My rating: C 

120 minutes | MPAA: R

Fiercely earnest but curiously unaffecting, Jonathan Jakubowicz’s “Resistance” is an inspired-by-fact World War II drama that shows a generally unrecognized side of Marcel Marceau, world’s most famous mime.

In pre-war France Marcel Mangel (Jesse Eisenberg) works in his father’s butcher shop but dreams of a life in the arts. At night he takes the stage at a local cabaret…we see him doing an act based on Charlie Chaplin.

Marcel is Jewish…nominally so.  His obsession with performing overshadows even the encroaching threat of Hitler’s forces.  His brother Sigmund (Edgar Ramirez) must shame Marcel into helping deal with newly-arrived German Jewish orphans who have been ransomed from the Nazi government.

Marcel claims to hate children, but warms up when he realizes that these traumatized kids are receptive to his mime routines…he at least can take their minds off the horrors they have endured. He forms a special bond with Elsbeth (Bella Ramsey, the tweener scene-stealer from “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”). He also sticks around because he has the hots for Emma (Clemence Poesy), who is dedicated to the relief effort.

With the arrival of the Germans the young people in Marcel’s circle go underground, joining the Resistance and risking their lives to hide Jewish children (often by passing them off as Catholic orphans) and leading the youngsters on dangerous treks to sanctuary in Switzerland.

Though it has been sumptuously mounted and features several suspenseful sequences, “Resistance” is a dramatic mess.  Jakubowicz’s screenplay has no real center…it zigs and zags between numerous characters, including the infamous Gestapo torturer Klaus Barbie (Matthias Schweighofer), who has made it his mission to wipe out these Hebrew agitators.

There’s also a clunky framing device, a post-war segment featuring Ed Harris as American Gen. George S. Patton (the multi-lingual Marcel, reborn as Marcel Marceau, actually served as a liaison on Patton’s staff).

The major stumbling block here, though, is the film’s leading man.  Jesse Eisenberg just isn’t right as Marcel. He lacks gravitas, and would need Brando-level charisma to keep this sprawling yarn centered. He gets to recreate a couple of Marceau’s famous mime routines, but the results are uncomfortable…like swimming in a three-piece suit.

Also, he looks really uncomfortable in a beret.

| Robert W. Butler

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“LOST GIRLS”: Theraputic rage

March 22, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Amy Ryan

“LOST GIRLS” My rating: B (Now on Netflix)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Anger radiates from “Lost Girls” like steam from a boiling pot.  It swirls around us; we inhale it; we burn with it.

Liz Garbus’ film is about the decade-old (and still unsolved) case of the Long Island serial killer, believed responsible for the deaths of at least 10 young women.

But it’s not a police procedural. More like a study of official indifference and incompetence.

The victims, you see, were call girls. No big loss, right?

The point of view taken by the filmmakers (Michael Were adapted Robert Kolker’s non-fiction book) is not that of a dedicated cop finding answers but of a grieving mother, wracked with uncertainty and played with extraordinary fierceness by Amy Ryan.

Mari Gilbert (Ryan) lives in a small town in upstate New York.  She’s a single mother (no mention of any man in her life, past or present) making ends meet with blue-collar gigs (waitressing, driving heavy construction equipment) and struggling with domestic issues.

One daughter, Sherre (Thomasin McKenzie of “Jojo Rabbit” and “Leave No Trace”), has a bad case of late-teen resentfulness. The second, tweener Sarra (Oona Laurence), is bi-polar, jerked between phases of defiance and crushing melancholy.

There’s another daughter whom we never really get to meet. Shannan, we learn, hasn’t lived with her mother since  puberty; she was raised by the state in foster homes. Now she resides in New Jersey, returning home on rare occasions but regularly contributing money to support her mother and siblings.

Shannan is a prostitute who uses Craig’s List to troll for customers. Mari undoubtedly knows this; she just won’t say it out loud.

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“BLOW THE MAN DOWN”: Quaint rot

March 19, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

“BLOW THE MAN DOWN” My rating: B- 

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Easter Cove, Maine, is just as picturesque as the name implies.

Lots of boats, weather-worn houses, gray winter skies, residents bred of  tough New England stock…hell, the commercial fishermen even punctuate their daily grind by singing sea chanties directly to the camera.

But beneath the quaint facade things are rotten. At least according to Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy’s noir-ish “Blow the Man Down.”

Our protagonists are sisters Pris and Mary Beth Connolly (Sophie Lowe, Morgan Saylor), who as the film begins are burying their mother and discovering that Mom’s retail seafood shop is on life support and the mortgage on the house is way past due.

Their current economic crisis only exacerbates the differences between the two young women. Priss is the “good” sister who runs the shop and toes the line. Mary Beth is a bit of a wildcat, resentful that she had to suspend college to care for her dying mother and desperate to leave Easter Cove behind.

Which is why the night after the funeral Mary Beth goes bar hopping (actually, there’s only one bar in town), picks up a scuzzy and vaguely threatening fisherman (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and ends up defending herself with an old harpoon.  (Murder by harpoon…you don’t get more New England than that.)

The panicked sisters opt not to talk to the cops. Instead they stuff the body in a big styrofoam ice chest (some dismemberment required…a fish filleting knife comes in handy), weigh it with an old anchor and toss it off a cliff into the roaring sea.

Oh, yeah…in the dead man’s shack they discover a plastic bag with a small fortune in cash. Continue Reading »

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“THE HUNT”: The great divide

March 12, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Betty Gilpin (right)

“THE HUNT” My rating: C+

89 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The premise of “The Hunt” —  a bunch of rich sphincters go hunting for other humans on a private game preserve — has been recycling through the cinema ever since 1932’s “The Most Dangerous Game.”

But this is the first time the hunters have been  elite libtards and their prey Trumpers.

Okay, okay. Step back and take a deep breath.

Craig Zobel’s film lets us know early on with a bombastic musical score that it isn’t meant to be taken too seriously.  Ditto for the laughably over-the-top violence.

Which is not to say that “The Hunt” doesn’t have some fairly serious subtext.  At its core it’s about how America’s deep political and social divisions are leading to self-destruction.

Mostly, though, the picture is played for thrills and yuks.

A dozen individuals awaken in a forest. Rubber gags have been locked onto their faces. They discover a large wooden crate containing a small arsenal of weapons and a key that opens their mouthpieces.

And then all hell breaks lose. These individuals — some played by familiar faces like Emma Roberts, Jake Barinholtz, and Justin Hartley (Kevin on TV’s “This is Us”) — must negotiate a dangerous landscape.  They may be shot with bullets and arrows, blown up by land mines, poisoned with dosed donuts or skewered in pits filled with sharpened wooden stakes. Continue Reading »

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