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“BOMBSHELL”: Fanny patters

December 19, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman

“BOMBSHELL”   My rating: B

108 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Simultaneously an insider’s look at Fox News, a record of the rise of Trump, and an examination of sexual harassment in the workplace, “Bombshell” can boast of terrific timeliness and a killer cast of women (and one man).

What it doesn’t have is much emotional pull — aside, of course, from the indignation it’s sure  to generate in response to the culture of crassness fomented by the late Roger Ailes.

Jay Roach’s film centers on three women struggling to forge and maintain careers at Fox  News.

Two of them — network stars Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) and Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) — are of course real people.  The third, a newcomer to the network named Kayla Pospisi (Margot Robbie), is fictional.

Early in Charles Randolph’s screenplay Carlson secretly meets with a couple of lawyers. She’s on thin ice at the network, both for her show’s ratings and her feminist inclinations (doing one broadcast sans makeup as a sort of statement of solidarity with women viewers). Her chafing at being Barbie-tized will likely lead to her demotion or dismissal; when that day comes she wants to have plenty of documentation about groping and sexual intimidation in the hallowed halls of Fox.

Meanwhile Kelly (Theron looks so eerily like the real Kelly that audiences will end up doing double takes) makes the mistake of daring to ask tough questions of then-candidate Trump and so becomes the public object of the Donald’s ridicule (“She had blood coming out of her whatever”). Suddenly she’s the story; it’s not a comfortable place to be.

Finally there’s Robbie’s Kayla, daughter of conservatives from Out West, evidently religious, and fiercely ambitious.  She learns the Fox ropes from her cubicle mate (Kate McKinnon), a closeted lesbian, but has to make a decision when given the choice of trading a blowjob for a promotion.

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“RICHARD JEWELL”: Score one for the little guy

December 12, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Paul Walter Hauser

“RICHARD JEWELL” My rating: B

129 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Nearly 50 years ago the great New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wondered (in a review of Sam Peckilnpah’s “Straw Dogs,” I recall) whether fascist art was even possible.

Of course she hadn’t met late-stage Clint Eastwood.

Not that Eastwood is a fascist. But his right-leaning attitudes (in this case a big-time distrust of big government and the media, an attitude he shares with our President) are on full display in “Richard Jewell,” the fact-based story of a hero who overnight became a scapegoat.

Jewell, of course, was the security guard who at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta discovered an abandoned backpack containing several pipe bombs. He was instrumental in clearing civilians from the area; nevertheless, in the ensuing explosion two persons died and more than 100 were injured.

For a few days Jewell was a national hero; then the FBI decided he perfectly fit the profile of the hero bomber, a man (usually white, often a law enforcement wannabe) who sets up a crisis situation so that he can play the role of a hero in saving lives. And from that point on Richard Jewell’s life became a living hell.

Billy Ray’s screenplay introduces us to Richard  (a spectacular Paul Walter Hauser) in the months before the incident. He’s working in a government office pushing around a supply cart when he meets Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), a combative attorney chafing under civil service bureaucracy.

Watson is initially amused by Richard, an obese fellow who years earlier had been fired from his job as a deputy sheriff and has a desperate (and wildly unrealistic) desire to get back into law enforcement. Richard is a doofus, no doubt, but a sweet and polite doofus. The two start sharing lunches, at least until Richard gets a job as a security guard at a nearby college.

That doesn’t last, either. He gets into physical confrontations with the students; he pulls over speeders on a nearby highway even though he has absolutely no jurisdiction off campus. Good news, though…with the Olympic games coming to town there’s a big demand for security personnel.

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“THE AERONAUTS”: Butterflies

December 10, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne

“THE AERONAUTS”  My rating: B  (Now showing at the Glenwood Arts; on  Amazon Prime Dec. 20)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

An aerial thriller packed with gobsmacking visual splendors, “The Aeronauts” is also historically based…though not so much as to let facts muck up our enjoyment.

In 1862 two Londoners — one a sort of female daredevil and the other a stuffy scientific sort — risk their lives on a balloon ride into sky. Their goal is to set an altitude record for human survival…at that time about 20,000 feet.

They’ll go considerably higher than that.

Our protagonists are Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones), an experienced balloonist thanks to her late lamented husband, and James Glashier (Eddie Redmayne), who is something of a laughing stock in the science community for his theories on weather prediction.

For her the ascent is a chance to commune privately with the spirit of her dead love and revel in the wonders of our atmosphere; for him this initial ride into the sky will allow him to take measurements that will bring about understanding of the nature of this envelope of air in which our Earth resides.

There really was a James Glashier, although in 1862 he was an overweight middle-aged husband and father and already respected in scientific circles. Amelia Wren, however, is the fictional creation of director Tom Harper and co-writer Jack Thorne, an obvious attempt to create a heroic female protagonist who will resonate with women viewers.  Not that I’m complaining.

The film begins with the pair’s sendoff before a wildly cheering crowd in a London park.  Amelia arrives in paint and shortened petticoats to do cartwheels before the wicker gondola and pose prettily.  Glashier is embarrassed by all the show-biz hoopla.

But before long they’re airborne for a ride that in just 90 minutes will test them to the limit.

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“WAVES”: Inching toward forgiveness

December 5, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Kelvin Harrison Jr., Alexa Demie

“WAVES” My rating: B+

135 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Waves” is about a suburban American family coming apart at the seams.  Featuring plot elements like teen pregnancy, substance abuse — even murder — it promises a melodramatic rollercoaster ride.

But writer/director Trey Edward Shults’ third feature (after the dysfunctional-family-reunion drama “Krisha” and the end-of-the-world-horror entry “It Comes at Night”) is more insightful than exploitative.  He’s aiming at something profound:  forgiveness.

The film’s first hour concentrates on Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a handsome and charismatic high school senior with the world ahead of him.  He hopes to parlay his wrestling skills into a college scholarship; he has a beautiful girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie); he’s a conscientious student and a talented pianist.

He lives in a nice home in Florida with his father Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), his stepmother Catharine (Renee Elise Goldsberry) and his younger sister Emily (Taylor Russell).

But small chinks are apparent in this happy facade.  Ronald, a homebuilder, practices tough love.  He insists on training with Tyler, injecting an element of unhealthy competition into the father/son dynamic. Ronald belongs to a generation of black men who see America as a racially charged environment, and so is always pushing his son: “We’re not afforded the luxury of being average.”

(For the young people depicted here, being black or white is a non-issue. They live in their own world of racial fluidity, leaving all the breast thumping to their elders.)

Tyler’s world comes crashing down when an MRI reveals a career-ending shoulder injury.  The doctor tells him to immediately stop physical activities and prepare for surgery; instead Tyler keeps this devastating diagnosis to himself, continues wrestling (until the pain won’t allow him to any more) and self medicates with liquor and pills stolen from his parents.

And for the perfect frosting on his very bad week, Alexis reports that she has missed her period. Tyler, panicked, pushes her to have an abortion. Result: an acrimonious breakup.

Then things get really ugly.

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“DARK WATERS”: Scorched earth

December 5, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Mark Ruffalo

“DARK WATERS” My rating: B+ (Opens wide on Dec. 6)

126 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

If in the New  Year America’s landfills are suddenly overflowing with discarded cooking paraphernalia you can blame “Dark Waters,” Todd Haynes’ fact-based examination of how DuPont, in developing Teflon, pretty much poisoned the world.

This legal procedural follows a decade long effort by Robert Bilott, an attorney whose firm counts DuPont as one of its major clients, to determine why first the cattle and later the people living around Parkersburg, West Virginia, began exhibiting bizarre birth defects, horrendous tumors and unexpectedly high death rates.

This isn’t the first time that Haynes have gone off on an environmental tangent. in 1995’s “Safe” he examined the plight of a woman who is literally allergic to just about aspect in modern life. But “Dark Waters” is unique in that it is the most straightforward, unambiguously non-artsy film in a directorial career marked by titles like “Far from Heaven,” “Velvet Goldmine” and “I’m Not There.”

In fact, the artsiest thing in the movie is its gray/blue palette…surely the sun sometimes shines in West Virginia?

Bilott, played with quiet intensity by Mark Ruffalo, is a big-city lawyer whose job is to defend chemical companies.  Then he’s approached by farmer Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), an acquaintance of his grandma, who demands that the high-priced attorney investigate the death of more than 100 of his cows after they drank from a stream on his land.

The Tennant property  abuts a decades-old DuPont waste storage facility; almost from the get-go Bilott (and those of us in the audience) knows where this is going. The problem is proving it.

Matthew Michael Carnahan and Mario Correa’s screenplay (adapted from Nathaniel Rich’s magazine article) simultaneously focuses on Billot’s long search for answers and his personal journey, using what’s he’s learned representing chemical giants to go after them.

At the same time his singleminded devotion to the case threatens his marriage to Sarah (Anne Hathaway) and his job at a big Cincinnati law firm, where the partners (led by Tim Robbins)  only give him leave to pursue the Dupont matter in the hopes of getting a piece of a massive settlement.

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“MARRIAGE STORY”: Breaking up is hard to do

December 5, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Scarlett Johanssen, Adam Driver

“MARRIAGE STORY” My rating: B+

136 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The opening moments of Noah Baumbach’s latest film finds a couple — Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) and Charlie (Adam Driver) — rhapsodizing about the other’s best features.

Each has a laundry list of his/her spouse’s positive attributes.  My God, you think, these two are wildly in love.

Uh, no.  The cataloguing of lovable traits is simply an exercise developed by a marriage counselor.  In fact, Nicole and Charlie seem destined for the big split.

“Marriage Story” — which more accurately might have been entitled “Divorce Story” — is a black comedy that leaves audience suspended between laughter and wincing.  It’s about how despite the best efforts of the people involved, a marital breakup takes nightmarish turns.

It’s funny and heartbreaking.

Nicole and Charlie live in NYC with their adorable son Henry (Azhy Robertson).  Charlie is the director of a semi-celebrated experimental theater company; Nicole’s the leading lady  in most of their productions.

But Nicole has long felt stifled, artistically and emotionally. Over Charlie’s objections she takes a role in a TV series being filmed in Hollywood and with young Henry heads West to live — temporarily Charlie assumes — with her mother Sandra (Julie Hagerty). It eventually dawns on Charlie that Nicole won’t be returning to their life in New  York.

Now Nicole and Charlie are decent folk and they agree up front that while the marriage may be doomed, there’s no reason to become enemies.  They have a child to think of and, anyway, who wants to get all wrapped up in recriminations and resentments?  Why not just split up the common property and make it all as painless as possible? Continue Reading »

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“HONEY BOY”: Brutal and poetic

December 3, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Noah Jupe

“HONEY BOY”  My rating: B

94 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Fathers and sons have long been a staple of the dramatic arts; even so, “Honey Boy” stands apart as a brutal yet poetic bit of personal storytelling.

Scripted by actor Shia LaBeouf, whose battles with the law and substance abuse are the stuff of Hollywood legend, the yarn is based on his own boyhood as a child actor being raised — well, sort of — by a troubled father.

And here’s the kicker: LaBeouf plays his own dad, delivering a performance that is simultaneously lacerating and tender.

Twelve-year-old Otis (Noah Jupe) spends his days on movie and TV sets where he is a respected actor.  Usually hanging around — when he isn’t at an AA meeting — is his father James (LaBeouf), an odd duck with scraggly long hair and outsized wire rim glasses who devotes much energy to trying to score with the women working there.

James is a former rodeo clown who once had an act featuring a live trained chicken; he’s  a nonstop talker whose tales are so outlandish you can’t be sure what to believe.  He’s actually kind of pathetic.

He and Otis reside in a rundown motel on the edge of the desert and travel exclusively by motorcycle.

Ostensibly James is the father…but Otis is technically his boss. The kid makes  the money; the father gets an allowance for looking after him. (There’s a divorced mother somewhere, but we never see her.)

You can see the possibilities for conflict.

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“QUEEN AND SLIM”: Love on the run

December 2, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Daniel Kaluuya, Jodie Turner-Smith

“QUEEN & SLIM” My rating: B

131 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Bonnie and Clyde” (or perhaps “Thelma and Louise”) meet Black Lives Matter in “Queen and Slim,” the impressive feature film directing debut of television and video veteran Melina Matsoukas.

Penned by Lena Waithe (an Emmy winner for her writing for Netflix’s “Master of None”) from a story by James Frey, this tale of lovers on the run soars on a pair of killer perfs from stars Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith.

We meet Queen and Slim — they have real names but we won’t learn them until the movie’s end — in the midst of a disastrous first Tinder date.  Queen (Turner-Smith) is a lawyer bummed because one of her clients has received the death penalty.  She called up Slim because she likes his looks and because she badly needs to vent to someone.

They’re about as different as can be. She’s angry, cynical, judgmental and, on some level, elitist.

He says grace before eating (even in restaurants), has a license plate that reads “Trust God,” works at Costco, doesn’t drink and maintains a live-and-let-live attitude. He eats with his mouth open; she’s grossed out.

He’s driving her home after what will surely be their one and only date when they’re pulled over by a cop. A white cop (played very well by country star Sturgill Simpson).  Things quickly escalate when the hot-headed Queen throws accusations at the officer. Within seconds she has a bullet hole in her leg and the policeman is dead, shot by Slim with his own service weapon.

Slim wants to stay put; Queen quickly convinces him he’ll be shot on sight.

“We can’t just leave him here.”

“Yes we can.”

“I’m not a criminal.”

“You are now.”

They take off with a vague plan to find Queen’s uncle in New Orleans and then, maybe, catch a plane to Cuba. Continue Reading »

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“THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN”: Words matter

November 29, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Mel Gibson, Sean Penn

“THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN” My rating: B (Now on Amazon Prime)

124 minutes | No MPAA rating

Given that it was initiated three years ago by Mel Gibson’s production company, that its release was delayed by internal controversy, and that its director has insisted on using an alias in the credits, one expects “The Professor and the Madman” to be a hot mess.

Instead it is a fascinating slice of history and a moving tale of friendship and salvation. Plus it features one of Sean Penn’s greatest performances.

Be thankful the film was picked up by Amazon, where it will be experienced by far more people than would have paid to see it in a theater.

Based on Simon Winchester’s non-fiction best seller of the same name, “Professor…” stars Gibson as James Murray, a self-taught Scotsman who ended up leading a team that over 70 years produced the Oxford English Dictionary, an attempt to catalogue and parse the history of every word in the English language.

A genius with an almost encyclopedic memory when it came to language, Murray set up a system by which everyday British citizens from throughout the Empire could contribute postcard-sized analyses of words, quoting examples of their use in great literature.

His work created problems on the domestic front — Murray’s obsession with the project led to tension with the Missus (Jennifer Ehle). And he was forever being undercut by the titled snobs attached to the project, who resented Murray’s Scottish background and his lack of a university degree.

Murray is the “professor” of the title.  The “madman” is a veteran of the American Civil War, surgeon William Minor (Penn), who suffered from what today might have been diagnosed as PTSD, along with a good dose of schizophrenia.

Minor was convinced he was being targeted by an assassin; in Lambeth in 1871 he shot to death George Merrett, a man he believed was stalking him. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and incarcerated in an asylum.

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“KNIVES OUT”: The family that sins together grins together

November 26, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Daniel Craig…Southern fried private eye

“KNIVES OUT” My rating: B (Opens wide on Nov. 27)

130 minutes | MPAA rating:

The genteel drawing-room murder mystery gets roughed up but emerges more or less intact in “Knives Out,” the latest from “it” director Rian Johnson (“Looper,” “The Last Jedi”).

What you’ve got here is a dead man, a house full of suspects (played by some very big names),  a Southern-gentleman detective who seems to have been dipped in molasses — and a gleefully satiric sense of humor.

Plus a lot of snarky attitude when it comes to privileged white folks.

The film begins with the housekeeper for famed mystery writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) discovering her employer’s corpse.  His throat has been cut.

Apparently the crime (if it is a crime…it might be a very bizarre suicide) took place shortly after Harlan’s 85th birthday party, an event attended by a pack of relations crammed into the old man’s semi-spooky turn-of-the-last-century mansion (described by one cop as “practically a Clue board”). Apparently the evening (which we see in flashbacks) was marked by some discord — old Harlan was no pushover and he loved rubbing his family’s noses in their inadequacies.

The local officer in charge of the investigation (LaKeith Stanfield) has his hands full with the various children, in-laws and others, all of whom seem to have some motive for killing their Sugar Daddy and a bad attitude when it comes to dealing with authority. So he’s mildly relieved when a famous private eye, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), mysteriously shows up.

Benoit, who talks with a slow drawl so thick it drips sorghum, has been hired by an anonymous client to look into the case. He won’t stop until he gets answers. Think Matlock on Thorazine with a cannabis chaser.

Murder mysteries in this  vein (“Murder on the Orient Express,” “Gosford Park”) rely on a large cast of eccentrics to keep us engaged and guessing. “Knives Out” has a colorfully hateful bunch.

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