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“BEFORE YOU KNOW IT”: Sisters

September 26, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Hannah Pearl Utt, Jen Tullock

“BEFORE YOU KNOW IT” My rating: B-

98 minutes | No MPAA rating

A family comedy with just enough edge, “Before You Know It” is the creation of Hannah Pearl Utt and Jen Tullock, who co-wrote the script and star as mutually exasperated sisters.

In addition, Utt directed.

The end results aren’t earth-shaking, but there’s a good deal of talent on display.

As she approaches 30 Rachel Gruner (Utt) still hasn’t had a chance to discover herself…she’s got a full-time job being the only grownup in a household where delusion reigns.

Her widowed father, playwright/actor Mel Gruner (Mandy Patinkin), is an overgrown child who has spent the last 50 years writing and starring in plays no one sees.  He mounts them in the basement theater of the Greenwich Village building he owns; the family lives upstairs.

Rachel’s older sister Jackie (Jen Tullock) is an always-aspiring actress who spends too much time chasing men to pay much attention to her 12-year-old daughter Dodge (Oona Yaffe).

By default, Rachel runs the family’s struggling theater company and serves as surrogate mother to Dodge, catering to her father’s artistic dreams and ignoring Jackie’s more maddening behavior.

But when Mel suffers a fatal heart attack, Rachel and Jackie discover that the mother they thought died nearly 30 years earlier is still alive. Indeed, she is a soap opera star named Sherrell (Judith Light) who has been paying the mortgage on the theater/apartment all this time. If they want to keep a roof over their heads, the sisters had best reach out to Mama.

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“DOWNTON ABBEY”: Happy gentility

September 24, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

“DOWNTON ABBEY” My rating: B+ 

122 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Feature film spinoffs of successful TV series have an iffy track record (“Sex and the City,” “Entourage,” “Absolutely Fabulous”), but the folks at “Downton Abbey” have done it right.

The new “Downton Abbey” movie is an astonishingly effective piece of work, one that hits all the notes that made the TV show so successful and then adds a couple of new ones.

Will the movie make sense to anyone who wasn’t glued to PBS on Sunday nights?  Well, maybe, but the real pleasure here comes from continuing our relationships with characters we already know inside out.  It’s like a family reunion…only you actually like hanging with this family.

Writer Julian Fellowes, who created the series and scripted most of its episodes, provides a screenplay that gives almost every member of the huge cast at least one memorable moment and effortlessly balances multiple story threads.

Director Michael Engler deftly handles the pacing and the impressive technical production (he’s in charge of the actors, too but since most of these players have been doing their characters for the better part of a decade, how much coaching could they have required?).

The plot? Well, there are a dozen of them, but the overriding one has the King and Queen visiting Downton. It’s like when the FBI takes over a local murder investigation…Their Majesties’ arrogant retainers invade the Abbey, relegating the resident staff to observer status.  But not for long, thanks to machinations that come off as a more genteel iteration of “Revenge of the Nerds.”

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“AD ASTRA”: Lost in space

September 19, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Brad Pitt

“AD ASTRA” My rating: B

124 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Equal parts “2001” and “Apocalypse Now,” James Gray’s “Ad Astra” is meditative journey to both outer and inner space punctuated with moments of high melodrama.

The film is drop-dead beautiful and features a contemplative performance from Brad Pitt which is among his finest; best of all, one leaves it feeling we’ve truly been on an intergalactic journey.

In the near future Major Roy McBride (Pitt) is a model astronaut, though in voiceover narration he reveals the price of the clear, dispassionate thinking that makes him the equal of any situation.

McBride is a master at suppressing his emotions, a skill that has wrecked his marriage (his ex, who is seen only briefly, is played by Liv Tyler) but made him the poster boy of space program efficiency. Only the occasional twitch of an eyelid suggests Roy’s inner turmoil.

Moreover, Roy comes by his heroism genetically — his father, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones), was an astronaut who decades ago went off on a mission to Neptune to look for extraterrestrial life and hasn’t been heard from for 30 years.

As “Ad Astra” begins Roy is doing maintenance work on a radio tower so tall its upper reaches scrape the stratosphere.  A mysterious electrical pulse blows the tower’s power grid, sending our man in freefall back to Earth.

Roy survives, thanks to his parachute, but he subsequently learns in a top secret briefing that the authorities believe the damaging electromagnetic pulses are coming from Neptune, the last-known location of the elder McBride’s exploratory ship. If Roy’s father is behind these pulses — which threaten human life — perhaps a message from his son will bring a happy resolution.

The plan is for Roy to radio his Pops from an outpost on Mars.  First, though, he has to take a commercial shuttle to the moon (a pillow and blanket kit costs $150), then make his way to a launch complex on the dark side of that satellite (apparently the moon is an international combat zone with marauding pirates on speeding lunar rovers attempting to highjack official vehicles).

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“HUSTLERS”: Ladies’ night

September 12, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez

“HUSTLERS” My rating: C+

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Hustlers” arrives on a wave of fest-generated hype: It’s one of the year’s best!!!  Jennifer Lopez is a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination!!!

Uh, sorry, but I don’t see it.

Writer/director Lorene Scafaria’s film is ambitious, certainly, telling the fact-based story of a group of exotic dancers who in the decade after the big market meltdown reacted to economic challenges by luring, drugging and ripping off wealthy men, sometimes for as much as $50,000 a pop.

It offers a charismatic and glamorous turn from Lopez, who is compellingly watchable as the nurturing (until she isn’t) pole dancer/housemother of this group of female marauders. Even more of a revelation is Constance Wu (“Crazy Rich Asians”) as the new girl at the strip joint through whose eyes we witness it all.

But despite its welcome depiction of mutually supportive sisterhood, Scafaria’s film becomes bogged down in sticky moral entanglements.  Even more problematic, this is an emotionally chilly yarn exhibiting little warmth or open compassion for its characters.

Given that the few men depicted here are unsalvageable swine and the ladies are equally predatory…who are we supposed to root for?

The story begins in 2006 with Destiny (Wu) struggling to get into the swing of things at a noisy, dark, raunchy NYC exotic dancing club.  She’s quickly taken under the wing of Ramona (Lopez), who gives her an impressive tutorial of pole moves (I particularly liked “the table”) and coaches her in the art of squeezing money out of arrogant Wall Street sphincters.

But in the wake of the big crash the high rollers aren’t rolling much.  Ramona cooks up a special drug cocktail — it makes its victims gleefully happy while erasing their short-term memories — and with Destiny and a small crew of out-of-work dancers targets and rips off moneyed fat cats.

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“OFFICIAL SECRETS”: Whistleblowing

September 12, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Keira Knightley

“OFFICIAL SECRETS” My rating: B- 

111 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There are moments when “Official Secrets” doesn’t seem to know just whose story it is telling; others when the dialogue sounds more like speechifying than regular conversation.

Still, there’s something so vital about the material it covers — the British government’s complicity in the Bush White House’s half-assed plan to invade Iraq — that Gavin Hood’s fact-based docudrama demands to be seen.

In 2003 Katharine Gun, an analyst with Her Majesty’s spy service, received an unexpected email.  In this message — also received by all of her co-workers — the American CIA urged everyone to be on the lookout for dirt that could be used to force recalcitrant members of the United Nations Security Council into voting for a US/British invasion of Iraq.

Gun was both surprised that she received the email — her regular gig was translating intercepted Chinese telephone communications — and appalled that the Yanks and her own people were so nonchalantly encouraging the entire apparatus of British intelligence to participate in a blackmail scheme for the purpose of rushing into an unjust war.

So she surreptitiously copied the email and gave it to an anti-war activist friend, who passed it on to a newspaper reporter, who with his colleagues spent months verifying the truth of the communication.

Eventually the story was published, but not without some unexpected blowback.  Before it hit the printed page, an unsuspecting editor ran the copy through Spell Check, which changed all the American spellings in the CIA email to British, thus leading to accusations that this was a British-generated fake document.

Spell Check strikes again.

As scripted by Hood, Gregory Bernstein and Sara Bernstein (from Marcia Mitchell and Thomas  Mitchell’s book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War), “Official Secrets” is essentially a procedural docudrama populated by an A-list British cast.

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“FIDDLER: A MIRACLE OF MIRACLES”: “It’s so Japanese”

September 12, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

“FIDDLER: A MIRACLE OF MIRACLES” My rating: B 

92 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Since it debuted on Broadway in 1964, not a day has passed when “Fiddler on the Roof” was not being performed somewhere on Earth.

The universal appeal of this musical about life in a Jewish village in Czarist Russia is examined every which way in “Fiddler” A Miracle of Miracles,”  Max Lewkowicz’s documentary summation of the show, its creators and its lingering appeal and influence.

Drawing as its starting point two recent NYC productions of “Fiddler,” one that ran on Broadway for two years and a second performed entirely in Yiddish, the film dips into the creation  of this most unusual effort. Scenes from these revivals — as well as clips from the 1971 movie version — hammer home once again just how spectacularly good the work is.

We’re talking goosebumps moments.

Happily, the geniuses behind the show — composer Jerry Bock, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, playwright Joseph Stein and producer Hal Prince — lived to ripe old ages and before their deaths (Prince left us only last month) sat down for insightful interviews on how the show came together.  (Jerome Robbins, the brilliant director, passed in 1998).

The film is part history, part testimonial, with actors, directors and others who have been associated with the musical — Lin-Manuel Miranda, Austin Pendleton, the Israeli actor Topol — commenting on its life-changing power.

Actor Joel Gray offers a common analysis when he says that “it works in so many languages — and everyone thinks it’s about them.”

Author Stein recalls attending a Tokyo production where an audience member asked him: “Do they understand ‘Fiddler’ in America? It’s so Japanese.”

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“LINDA RONSTADT: THE SOUND OF MY VOICE”: Hit after hit

September 12, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Linda Ronstadt then

“LINDA RONSTADT: THE SOUND OF MY VOICE” My rating: B+

95 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

This seems to be the season for music documentaries (“Echo in the Canyon,” “David Crosby: Remember My Name”) but the hands-down winner when it comes to pure musical pleasure is “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice,” which will send you away convinced that its subject was the greatest pop female vocalist of all time.

Ron Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s film is covers Ronstadt’s life in straightforward fashion, beginning with her grandparents (her father’s people hailed from Mexico despite the Germanic-sounding name), her childhood in Tucson with a musical family, her move to LA as an 18-year-old, her brief stint as lead singer with the Stone Ponies…and then 30-some years of recording and performing greatness.

Ronstadt narrates the film — we don’t see her as she appears today until the very end — but the story is told from a variety of perspectives:  her fellow musicians (Jackson Browne, Dolly Parton, Don Henley, Rhy Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris), her producers and managers (David Geffen, Peter Asher), her one-time lover J.D.Souther and journalists who covered her (Cameron Crowe, Robert Hilburn).

This is the story of an immensely talented woman who often doubted her own abilities, yet nevertheless challenged herself to new heights…not only in pop fame but on Broadway (starring in Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance”), as a purveyor of Sintra-ish torch songs (arranged by Nelson Riddle, no less), in a country trio with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, and with traditional Mexican musicians (Ronstadt’s is the best-selling trad Mexican LP of all time).

Along the way she established an image (not that it was in any way calculated) as a playful, sexy, smart woman who went her own way.  She was a matter-of-fact feminist; no stridency, just effectiveness. (One source says that in her prime Rondstadt was “the Queen…like Beyonce is now.”)

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“TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID”: Little warriors

September 5, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

“TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID” My rating: B 

83 minutes | No MPAA rating 

Combining the grittiness of Luis Bunuel’s 1950 landmark “Los Olivdados” with the psychological fantasy pioneered in recent years by Guillermo del Toro, “Tigers Are Not Afraid” plunges into the life-and-death struggles of orphaned children  on the mean streets of a contemporary Mexican metropolis.

The young actors starring in Issa Lopez’ brooding and violent drama were never shown a script. The film was shot in sequence, so that the players didn’t know what was coming next; their reactions are more-or-less genuine.

The resulting film is equal parts documentary realism and  nightmarish fairy tale.

Estrella (Paola Lara) and Shine (Juan Ramon Lopez) are at the heart of a “family” of children who do what it takes to survive. They sleep in makeshift tents, or in abandoned buildings, on rooftops and in alleys.

As we see in flashbacks, most of these kids once had normal lives: parents, school, a permanent address.

But now they are on their own, their mothers and/or fathers murdered or “disappeared” in the roiling drug war  that has claimed 160,000 Mexican lives over the last two decades. They spend a good part of each day outsmarting members of the Huascas gang, local drug lords who would shanghai the the boys as runners and soldiers and pimp out the girls.

It’s a grim life, and as a survival mechanism young Estrella — through whose eyes the story is told — imagines herself allied with fantastic creatures.  Traumatized by her mother’s sudden disappearance, she’s convinced that a fierce tiger graffiti-sprayed on a wall comes to life to protect her. At other times she imagines that a flowing trickle of blood follows her, climbing stairs and zig-zagging across walls and ceilings.

She also hears eerie whisperings — ghosts giving her warnings.

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“DAVID CROSBY: REMEMBER MY NAME”: Big ego. No brains.

September 5, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

David Crosby now

“DAVID CROSBY: REMEMBER MY NAME” My rating: B-

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

As a founder of the Byrds and a long-standing member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young,  David Crosby can claim to be rock ‘n’ roll royalty.

His musical accomplishments, though, are overshadowed by a personal history that features three heart attacks, a liver transplant, diabetes and epic drug addictions which in 1983 earned him a five-years sentence in a Texas prison.

Now 78 years old, estranged from his former bandmates  and still touring to keep a roof over his family’s head, Crosby looks back on his life and career in “David Crosby: Remember My Name,” the first feature documentary from director A.J. Eaton.

The film has a solid first hour, then loses focus and sort of drifts off in its final 30 minutes.

Still, there is much to admire here, for this is no warm dip into fuzzy nostalgia. The white-haired Crosby comes off as brutally honest about his failures: “Big ego. No brain.”

He was, he admits, a massive jerk.  Only after his legal comeuppance forced him to go cold turkey in a jail cell did he get his life in order; he reports that until his stint in prison he had never performed straight.  Not once.

In matters of sex, he recalls, “I was a caboose to my dick…there are borders I’ve crossed you’ve never heard of.”

The son of Hollywood cinematographer Floyd Crosby (“High Noon”), young David grew up in an emotionally stifled environment.  Rock music was his salvation.

The doc features vintage footage of the mid-60s Byrds in performance; Crosby’s main contribution was an unerring ear for vocal harmonies.

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“BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON”: Life lessons

September 5, 2019 by butlerscinemascene

Jillian Bell

“BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON” My rating: B 

113 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The title character of “Brittany Runs a Marathon” does indeed participate in the famous 26.2-mile run through New York’s five boroughs…but Paul Downs Colaizzo’s film isn’t really about running.

Rather this comedy/drama, alternately hilarious and emotionally abrasive, is about the slow journey to self acceptance.

That may sound like a slog, but — like training for a marathon — it pays off in unexpected ways.

Brittany (Jillian Bell) is a 28-year-old Queens resident with a lifestyle that is slowly killing her.  She subsists on junk food, she gets drunk regularly, she dispenses b.j.s in a nightclub men’s room.

According to her physician, Brittany’s  body mass index qualifies her as obese (she indignantly accuses him of fat shaming); meanwhile her blood pressure is soaring and her liver isn’t looking so good.

Brittany is a lonely mess, although she works to hide that with buckets of self-deprecating and/or aggressive humor.  lf she can’t be loved (she’s never been in an actual relationship) she might as well be amusing.

Sometimes, though, all she can do is bawl.  One of her wailing sob sessions draws the attention of her upstairs neighbor, Catherine (Michaela Watkins), a middle-aged photographer Brittany usually ridicules as a bourgeoise poseur.  But Catherine ignores the abuse and in a display of compassion invites Brittany to join her  weekend running group.

Our girl’s first attempt at jogging is hilariously terrible — at least she can share her shame and frustration with another newbie, Seth (Micah Stock), a funny gay guy running to fulfill a promise to his husband and their young son.

But with the support of Catherine and Seth — and encouraged by the loss of a few pounds — Brittany devotes herself to loping through the mean streets of NYC. The trio make a pact: they’ll run in next year’s New York Marathon. Continue Reading »

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