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“DOWNHILL”: Chilly reception

February 13, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

“DOWNHILL”  My rating: C 

89 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There’s a chill in the air of “Downhill,” and it’s only partly the result of five feet of perfect white powder.

Set in an Austrian ski resort, the latest from directing duo Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (“The Way Way Back”) offers Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell as vacationing Yanks who see the fissures in their relationship only widened by their high-altitude visit.

Billie and Pete seem pretty average.  She’s an attorney and appropriately self-assertive.

He’s some kind of executive who cannot put down his cel phone and tends to plan things out for his family — they have two tweener sons (Julian Gray, Ammon Jacob Ford) — without asking for their input. He maintains a Father-knows-best attitude behind his doofus-y exterior.

This is how they end up at a high-end resort at which the boys are the only kids in sight and the hot tubs tolerate only nude soaking.

Things come to a head when an outdoor lunch is interrupted by a controlled avalanche. The resort operators routinely set off blasts to loosen dangerous snowpack; this time the boiling wall of white comes shooting down the mountain and directly toward the diners.

Billie instinctively grabs her sons and hunkers down behind the table.  Pete grabs his phone and hightails it out of there. Turns out it’s a false alarm — just a cloud of mist reaches the visitors — but Pete’s act of cowardice will haunt him ever after.

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“LES MISERABLES”: Boiling point

February 6, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Issa Perica

“LES MISERABLES” My rating: B+

104 minutes | MPAA rating: R

From its first shot Ladj Ly’s Oscar-nominated (for best international feature) “Les Miserables” informs us that, no, this is not yet another remake of Victor Hugo’s classic 19th century tale.

The first thing we see is the face of young Issa (Issa Perica), a 14-year-old African immigrant living in a crime-riddled Paris suburb (ironically, the same burg in which Hugo wrote his masterpiece).  Issa is wrapped in the flag — literally — to attend a rally celebrating the French national soccer team’s recent victory. With thousands of other sports-mad Parisians he stands in the Champs-Élysées  singing “The Marseillais” and letting loose with victory roars.

For one glorious, transcendent moment Issa feels genuinely French.  It won’t last.

Ly’s film is a rapidly percolating thriller that views life in an immigrant enclave from several perspectives.

As with “Training Day,” our guide to this world of crime and social upheaval is a cop new to the scene. Ruiz (Damien Bonnard) has just come to this seething ‘burb from a cozy provincial post. He’s assigned to a three-man team to learn the ropes…and is less than comforted by what he observes.

His new partners are Chris (Alexis Manenti), a cocky casual racist who relishes every opportunity to bully and bend the rules, and Gwada (Djebril Zonga), a long-time resident of the neighborhood who’s regarded by his fellow citizens as a traitor for becoming a cop.

The police are only one element of the neighborhood’s ever-changing social order.  The place is run by the Mayor (Steve Tientcheu), a former gangster who now serves as the town’s fixer; he’s like an old-fashioned ward heeler who wins votes by dishing favors, and he’s not above turning to violence to enforce his will.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood, bearded dudes trying to coax the local kids into more-or-less civilized behavior, have little but contempt for both the Mayor and the police.

Meanwhile the gypsy operators of a traveling circus are on the warpath because some black teen has stolen the owner’s beloved lion cub.

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2019 OSCAR-NOMINATED LIVE-ACTION SHORTS

January 30, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

2019 OSCAR-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY SHORTS  Overall rating: B+ 

“A SISTER” (Belgium, 16 minutes)  My rating: B  

It would be hard to find a more tension-filled 15 minutes of screen time than is delivered in Delphine Girard’s “A Sister.”

A car heading down the highway at night. At the wheel is a man; beside him a woman using her cel phone to call her sister to check in on her kids. We view them from the back seat, so we don’t really get a good look.

On the other end of the line is a police emergency dispatcher (Veerie Baetens) who quickly deduces that a kidnapping is in progress, asks carefully-posed questions (all “yes” or “no” answers, lest the driver catch on) and dispatches patrol cars to intervene.

It’s very well done, but here’s the catch:  It’s almost like a condensed remake of “The Guilty,” a 2018 Danish film with almost precisely the same premise.

“BROTHERHOOD” (Tunisia, 25 minutes) My rating: B

Family issues and sociopolitical concerns permeate Maryam Joobeur’s “Brotherhood,” in which a son’s return from fighting in Syria for Isis triggers upheaval in a family of Tunisian goat ranchers.

Father Mohammed (Mohamed Grayaa) is suspicious when his oldest boy Malek mysteriously appears with his new wife in tow. She’s covered from head to toe in black — all you can see are her eyes — and this display of fundamentalist piety only infuriates Mohammed, who views Isis fighters as murderers. His wife Salha, though, is thrilled to have her boy back in the fold.

Tensions percolate until Mohammed does something that can never be taken back, and which will probably mean the breakup of his family.

“THE NEIGHBOR’S WINDOW” (USA, 20 minutes) My rating: A

Marshall Curry’s “The Neighbor’s Window” is not only the best movie about voyeurism since Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,”  it’s one of the best movies of the year, period.

Brooklyn thirtysomethings Alli and Jacob (Maria Dizzia, Greg Keller) find themselves obsessed with the new neighbors across the street — a young couple who are forever having sex in front of their curtainless apartment windows.

For Alli and Jacob this is both titillation and a rebuke…she’s pregnant, they have two toddlers, and their sex life is nonexistent.

Curry’s script starts out darkly humorous as the couple watch their neighbors’ sexual shenanigans (“Disgraceful.” “Stop drooling.” “Whoa, that’s a new one.”) They even get a pair of binoculars to better catch the show. (“They’re like a car crash you can’t look away from.”  “Do they have jobs…or clothes?”)

But all this leads to jealousy and anger…our protagonists are too exhausted to even think about that sort of unbridled passion.

And then Curry’s film shifts effortlessly from comedy to tragedy, becoming a humanistic triumph that will leave viewers dealing with killer throat-lumps.

“SARIA” (USA, 23 minutes) My rating: B+

Set in a Guatemalan “orphanage” that feels uncomfortably like a Nazi work camp, Bryan Buckley’s “Saria” tells the true story of rebellion and mass escape by the teenage inmates.

It’s all seen through the eyes of Saria (Estefania Tellez), who dreams of making her way to the United States and, perhaps, making a little whoopee with Green Shirt, a resident of the boys’ dormitory.

These are kids who’ve been left to fend for themselves, first on the crime-riddled streets and now in an institution where they awaken each day to a matron banging on the bunkbeds and screaming, “Time to get up, bitches!”

No sense giving away the film’s tragic denouement…let’s just say “Saria” gives us reason to hope before having it all crash down on our heads.

“NEFTA FOOTBALL CLUB”  (Tunisia/France, 17 minutes) My rating: B

A couple of soccer-crazed Tunisian brothers (Eltayef Dhaoul, Mohamed Ali Ayari) are puzzled when they come across a headphone-wearing mule in the mountainous desert that separates Tunisia from Algeria.  Searching the baskets on the animal’s back, the older boy discovers a fortune in heroin. He tells is younger sibling that it’s laundry detergent and makes plans to sell the drugs.

Meanwhile two smugglers (Lyes Salem and Zichem Mesbah) wonder what has happened to the mule they trained to carry contraband across the border (it’s a drug mule, literally).  Turns out the animal is guided  by an Adele song that plays on the headphones.  But somehow the wrong song got played and now the animal is in the wind.

Yves Piat’s film is an extended joke, but a satisfying one featuring an ironic conclusion worthy of O. Henry.

| Robert W. Butler

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OSCAR-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY SHORTS

January 30, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

2019 OSCAR-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY SHORTS  Overall rating: B+ 

“LIFE OVERTAKES” (Sweden/USA, 39 minutes) My rating: B+

In recent years Sweden has become a haven for refugees fleeing unrest in the Balkans and some of the former Soviet republics. But the children of these displaced families are paying a price.

Resignation Syndrome is a previously undiagnosed condition in which young children retreat from the insecurities of their world by going into a sort of coma. We meet youngsters like Daria, Karen and Leyla who gradually slipped into a dream world. Now they must be bathed and exercised by their parents; most are nourished through feeding tubes.

Horrifying and heartbreaking, John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson’s film shows what these families have gone through.  Daria’s parents were targeted by death squads for running an internet system independent of the government. Both were tortured and imprisoned; the mother was raped.
But in Sweden they are uninvited guests who must repeatedly apply for political asylum, and it is that uncertainty about the future — especially the possibility of deportation back to a country that wants to kill them — that triggers Resignation Syndrome in these youngsters.
But get this…once the family is granted permanent asylum in Sweden, the children start improving.  As one doctor observes, the parents’ almost mystical sense of hope is somehow transmitted to the sleeping child.
“LEARNING TO SKATEBOARD IN A WARZONE (IF YOU’RE A GIRL)”  (UK, 39 minutes) My rating: B
For more than a decade a private school in the heart of Kabul, Afghanistan, has quietly defied that country’s conventional thinking about the role of women by educating girls.
Here girls  get the expected instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, as well as daily lessons in personal courage and standing up for one’s rights.
But as Carol Designer’s doc reveals, there’s more.  The girls are taught to skateboard in a large gymnasium outfitted with ramps and platforms for various stunts.  Yeah, they still wear head scarves and are pretty much covered from head to foot, but now they also sport helmets and knee pads.
All this is done on the QT.  Some of the instructors refused to have their faces shown in the film…they live in a dangerous world.  Others, like the tough lady in charge of the school, introduces a bit of swagger into their lives: “I’m not afraid of anything except God.”
“IN THE ABSENCE” (South Korea, 28 minutes) My rating: B
Yi Seung-Jun’s riveting and saddening film focuses on the 2014 sinking of the Korean ferry Sewol; more than half its nearly 500 passengers died.
This doc — which combines news footage, cel phone videos shot by the victims (most of the dead were high school students) and interviews with survivors and rescuers — is essentially a scream of rage.
The Korean Coast Guard was patently unprepared to deal with the disaster, the captain abandoned the ship early on, and passengers were told to stay in their rooms instead of going to the deck where they might have a chance pop rescue.

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2019 OSCAR-NOMINATED ANIMATED SHORTS

January 30, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

2019 OSCAR-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY SHORTS  Overall rating: B+ 

Once upon a time animated shorts were simple amusements.  No longer…at least not if this year’s Oscar-nominated animated shorts are any yardstick.
Here we have five brief films. A couple are charming. Cute, even.  You might get a chuckle or two.
But none of them are overtly comic, and in fact most deal with dead-serious issues. A common theme is familial relationships (parents and children, husbands and wives, siblings). Three of these movies have no dialogue at all; the remaining two are in foreign languages.  What this means is that viewers have to pay attention…no falling back on words to explain what’s going on.
But here’s the thing…on one level or another each of these nominees is an emotional workout.  You will cry.  I repeat: You WILL Cry.
You’ve been warned.

“HAIR LOVE” (USA, 7 minutes)  My rating: B+

Childlike yearning, parental concern and family crisis merge effortlessly in Matthew A. Cherry’s “Hair Love,” which finds a young African American girl coming to terms (well, sort of) with her unruly head of hair.

It starts out almost like a classic Disney cartoon with our little heroine interacting with her cat, a fussy creature who seems utterly disdainful of her mistress’ issues. But some sort of big day is approaching, and our girl is determined to look her best.  To that end she goes into the bathroom and —  armed with a sheet of photos of current Afro-centric hair styles, scissors, combs, brushes and unguents — attempts to do her ‘do.

It’s a disaster. When her father discovers what’s going on he intervenes. But let’s face it…dads are rarely great at their little girls’ hair, and this dad is combatting an unruly Afro that seems to engulf him in an explosion of ever-expanding follicle. After some comic confrontations, though, the father-and- daughter team get the job done, just in time for an emotional reunion.

“DCERA  (DAUGHTER)”   (Czech Republic, 15 minutes) My rating: B

“Daughter” opens with the beeping of a medical monitor; we find ourselves in a bedroom where a man lies dying. His adult daughter stands at the foot of his bed.

 Daria Kashcheeva’s film is rendered with what appears to be classic stop-action animation. The man and his daughter have been very roughly rendered — it’s almost as if their heads were carved from blocks of wood — and they move through a detailed environment.

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“THREE CHRISTS”: Holy is as holy does

January 16, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Bradley Whitford, Peter Dinklage, Walton Goggins

“THREE CHRISTS”  My rating: C-

117 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The title “Three Christs” suggests the possibility of blasphemy.

If only.

Jon Avnet’s film — shot in 2017 and on ice since then — is an adaptation of psychiatrist Milton Rokeach’s The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, about his experiences working in a mental institution outside Detroit in the late 1950s.  The three Christs of the title are schizophrenics  suffering from the delusion that they are, well, Jesus.

Going in there’s reason for optimism.  Stone, the physician handling their cases, is played by Richard Gere, who in recent years has enjoyed a late-stage career resurgence (“Arbitrage,” “Norman,” “The Dinner”).

His three “holy” patients are played by heavy hitters Peter Dinklage, Walton Goggins and Bradley Whitford.  Even the supporting cast has depth: Julianna Margulies, Kevin Pollack, Stephen Root, Jane Alexander.

So why does this feel like a waste of time?

Richard Gere

Neither Avnet nor his screenwriter, Eric Nazarian, seem to have a clue as to how to proceed with this yarn.  We get the basic setup — Dr. Stone attempts a revolutionary new therapy by putting his three “Christs” together in isolation; it’s an experiment to see if each can be cured of his delusion by observing his fellow’s delusions.

But what ensues doesn’t play like drama, comedy, or anything in between.

There are digressions into Stone’s personal life — the Missus (Margulies) is developing a drinking problem and he must  perennially steel himself against viewing his pretty young assistant (Charlotte Hope) as anything more than a professional colleague.

But the three Christs themselves remain ciphers. We should be feeling for these seemingly hopeless cases, but while the players are occasionally amusing, they never really engage our emotions.  The characters’ manias are too extreme to seem like anything but a sideshow. They are — I hate to say it — cardboard crazy men.

| Robert W. Butler

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“63 UP”: Will you still love me when I’m 64?

January 16, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

“63 UP”  My rating: A- (Playing Jan. 17, 19 and 20 at the Tivoli at the Nelson-Atkins)

125 minutes | No MPAA rating

When Brit director Michael Apted first launched his “7 Up” documentary series back in 1963, among its major themes were politics and class.

The project’s big idea was to take a bunch of 7-year-olds from various social backgrounds and study them over time, returning every seven years with an update of how they’re doing (“21 Up,” “35 Up,” “56 Up”).  Originally much was made of the differences between the privileged kids and those who were struggling in the lower levels of the British beehive.

More than a half century later the world’s longest-lasting cinematic experiment continues, but the emotional tenor of the piece has mellowed. At age 63 Apted’s subjects have been seasoned by the death of parents and friends and the expectations of their own demises (in fact, we learn that one woman subject died just a couple of years ago).

So now it’s not so much about Tories vs. Labour or even Brexit (though the subject does come up) as about figuring out what to do with the time you’ve got left.

Apted’s methodology remains unchanged. He approaches his still-participating 12 subjects one at a time, alternating past footage with current interviews. It’s weird watching someone age instantaneously before our eyes; in the dad guts and double chins and graying (or missing) hair we are forced to confront the forces working on our own bodies.

Tony, the once-aspiring jockey who became a London cabbie, now laments that Uber is putting him out of business. The self-described “Cheekie Chappie” augments his income with walk-on film roles and retains his working-class childhood belief that in class warfare “it’s us or them.”

Corporate lawyer Andrew at age 63 laments that he was so career driven he failed to make time for his family.

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“DISTURBING THE PEACE”: Just goofy

January 15, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Guy Pearce

“DISTURBING THE PEACE” My rating: C- 

90 minutes | MPAA rating:

Apparently Aussie star Guy Pearce is the newest member of the don’t-send-the-script-send-the-check club. That’s the only explanation for his presence in the laughably inept “Disturbing the Peace.”

In York Alec Shackleton’s unintentionally goofy actioner, Pearce plays Jim Dillon, who left the Texas Rangers after accidentally shooting and paralyzing his partner in a hostage standoff. Now he’s the law in the tiny burg of Horse Cave. Apparently the place has a very low crime rate, because Jim has for years refused to carry a gun.

This proves problematical when a gang of rogue motorcyclists invade the place, robbing the local bank and hanging around so that they can rip off an armored car bringing big bucks from a nearby casino.

With many of his fellow residents being held captive, Jim must use his wits (we’re talking MacGyver-style booby traps) to foil the baddies; it’s just a matter of time, though, before he picks up a firearm and gets down to serious business.

Chuck Hustmyre’s screenplay is a mashup of ideas from “High Noon” (a more-or-less real-time narrative), Brando’s “The Wild One” (bad boys on bikes) and “Die Hard” (with a small town instead of a high-rise office building).

Hustmyre’s bio claims he’s a retired federal agent who has written several crime books, yet there’s nothing even remotely authentic about “Disturbing the Peace.”  Its depiction of small town life and law enforcement plays like the work of someone whose entire world view has been shaped by watching straight-to-video crime thrillers in his mother’s basement.

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“1917”: War is hell

January 9, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

George MacKay

“1917”  My rating: B+

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Both epically sprawling and remarkably intimate, “1917” instantly establishes itself as one of the great war films.

Here’s the ugly truth of trench warfare during World War I: Rotting corpses, feasting rats, clouds of carrion-colonizing insects.

Yet along with these ghastly images, “1917” delivers a profoundly human story that taps into all sorts of emotions: terror, comradeship, compassion, bravery, hubris.

That the entire two-hour film is told entirely in what appears to be one uninterrupted shot makes it a technical tour de force (Roger Deakins is the d.p. and his work is jaw-dropping). But this is more than a cinematic gimmick. Without editing and alternating camera angles we’re forced to focus on the conflict in much the same way as its participants. There’s no way out.

The screenplay by Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns (reportedly inspired by wartime tales related by Mendes’ grandfather) is straightforward enough.

Two lance corporals in the British army in northern France — Blake (Dean Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay) — are sent on foot across nine miles of no man’s land to deliver a message. Another British unit  is planning an attack on “retreating” German troops.  But aerial surveillance shows that the enemy withdrawl is merely a strategic realignment, and that the Tommies are walking into a trap that could mean death for 1,600 of them.

So it’s a race against time that takes the two young soldiers through a shell-pocked landscape, into abandoned enemy trenches, through rubble-strewn farms and villages and down swollen rivers.

Though their journey is marked by growing suspense and flashes of real danger, there’s relatively little in the way of conventional combat here — just one incident with a German sniper. Mendes and Wilson-Cairns find plenty of moments of relative calm in which to explore their characters.

Blake, who was picked for the mission because his older brother is an officer in the target battalion (evidently the brass figure that a chance to save his sibling will prove motivational), is gung ho to get moving.  Schofield, several years older and much more combat savvy, wants to wait for nightfall. He’s overruled and bitter that his fate is in the hands of an amateur.

The two marvel at the complexity of German engineering (the Huns’ trench network is made of concrete with subterranean barracks outfitted with bunk beds; the Brits basically squat in the mire). They talk about duty and valor. The still-idealistic Blake is shocked to learn that Schofield has traded his combat medal to a French officer for a bottle of wine (“I was thirsty”).

They witness an aerial battle between British and German planes; from the ground it’s a weirdly peaceful, balletic experience…at least until fate drops one of the plummeting aircraft into their laps.

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“JUST MERCY”: Truth to power

January 8, 2020 by butlerscinemascene

Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx

“JUST MERCY”  My rating: C+

136 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

In “Just Mercy” an A-list cast does its best with movie-of-the-week execution; the results are simultaneously inspiring and off-putting.

Destin Daniel Cretton’s film is based on the true story of attorney Bryan Stevenson and the founding in Alabama in the late 1980s of the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization devoted to re-examining the cases of Death Row inmates.  These were condemned men  — most of them black — whose convictions may have been based on perjured testimony, suppressed evidence and inadequate defenses.

In addition to its truth-to-power narrative and the obvious dramatic power of men awaiting death at the hands of the state, the film boasts a lead performance by Michael B. Jordan as Stevenson, a New Englander who came to the South to right wrongs.

Oscar winner Brie Larsen takes a supporting role as the local activist who becomes his assistant and guide to the workings of Southern justice.

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