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“ASHER”: Gray gun

December 6, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Ron Perlman

“ASHER” My rating: C+ (Opens Dec. 7 at the AMC Town Center)

96 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Asher” is a by-the-numbers aging hit man movie somewhat enlivened by its weirdly charismatic star — Ron Perlman — and by  being a crime drama in which virtually all the characters are Jewish.

White-haired Asher (Perlman) kills people.  He’s got it down to routine.  He stands in the hallway outside his victim’s door, lights up a cigarette and opens an umbrella. When the smoke alarm goes off and the overhead sprinklers start spraying, he waits until the alarmed target throws open the door to see what’s up and then…BLAM!!!

Or, more accurately, ZIIIIP!!!, since Asher uses a silencer.

Jay Zaretsky’s screenplay is unclear about just who Asher works for.

He gets his assignments at a Brooklyn tailor shop where the yarmulke-wearing owner passes out info and cash in plain manilla envelopes. The big boss is Avi (Richard Dreyfuss), who runs a whole crew of assassins, but whether they’re all in the employ of the Israeli government or some organized crime enterprise is left fuzzy.

Anyway, Asher is beginning to feel his age. The plum assignments are now going to the killers Asher taught.

Even more troubling, some of Asher’s colleagues — and their families — are being mysteriously slaughtered.

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“AT ETERNITY’S GATE”: Painting for people not yet born

December 6, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh

“AT ETERNITY’S GATE” My rating: A-

110 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-12

Epically poetic yet aching personal, “At Eternity’s Gate” may be the best film ever about Vincent  Van Gogh.

For that matter, it is among the best movies ever made about a visual artist. Undoubtedly much of the insight and emotion radiating off the screen can be traced back to writer/director Julian Schnabel who was, of course, a famed painter long  before he began  making films.

Visually lush and aurally haunting, “At Eternity’s Gate” follows Vincent through the last year or so of his life.

It is told in fragmented fashion, with scenes built around a series of dialogues between Vincent (Willem Dafoe in the best performance of his career) and others: his supportive brother Theo (Rupert Friend), his combative fellow painter Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac), a fellow patient in a mental institution (Niels Arestrup), a disapproving priest (Mads Mikkelsen), a sympathetic physician (Mathieu Amalric).

And when he’s not talking, this Vincent is painting, creating before our eyes the colorful masterpieces that would not be appreciated until long after his death at age 37. A good chunk of “At Eternity’s Gate” is devoted to following Vincent on his nature walks, easel and canvasses strapped to his back, head shaded with a floppy straw hat.

This is a transcendental Vincent, a man who stands in the sunshine with his arms outstretched, smiling ecstatically at the light that bathes him.

Our first encounter with this Vincent, though, occurs in darkness. We can only hear his voice. He’s talking about loneliness, about how he feels set apart from the rest of humanity: “I just want to be one of them…I’d like them to give me some tobacco, a glass of wine, or even ask: ‘How are you?’…from time to time I’d make a sketch of one of them as a gift.”

The key to Dafoe’s inspiring, heartbreaking performance is the way in which Vincent’s almost religious love affair with the world’s beauty is undercut by his sad “otherness.”  Most people don’t like him. They make fun of him. His eccentricities, poverty and neediness bring out the worst in his fellow man. (An art dealer of my acquaintance once explained that “Everybody wants a Van Gogh in their dining room; nobody wants Van Gogh in their  dining room.”)

Thus he’s an apologetic mystic, aware that he rubs others the wrong way, but unable to escape the almost epileptic thrall into which he is forever being plunged by the beauty of the world around him.

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“MARIA BY CALLAS”: The inconstant diva

December 6, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Maria Callas

“MARIA BY CALLAS” My rating: B 

115 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Maria Callas seemed bigger than life in just about everything she pursued.

Her voice was legendary. As was her romance with millionaire Aristotle Onasis. She was a fashion icon. And she came to embody the very idea of “diva,” gaining a reputation for temperamental behavior after she was fired by The New York Metropolitan Opera.

During her lifetime it seemed that just about everyone had an opinion about Callas. Now, decades after her death from heart attack at age 53 in 1977, first-time filmmaker Tom Volf lets her speak for herself.

The idea behind “Maria by Callas” is to let the great singer tell her own story, employing dozens of filmed interviews, tape recordings, and excerpts from her memoir (read by K.C. native and current opera star Joyce DiDonato).

Clearly, Volf is a big-time Callas fan (“fan,” of course, being a shortened version of “fanatic”) and he seems to have scoured the planet for photos and footage of his idol.  This is an exhaustive presentation.

In fact, Volf seems not so much to have shaped all this material as to have taken a bath in it.

Some may take exception with his decision to devote at least one quarter of the two-hour documentary to musical numbers, either footage of Callas performancing on stage or sound recordings played against archival photos and footage.

On the other hand, to understand Callas you’ve got to hear her. So there.

Arranged chronologically, “Maria by Callas” follows its subject from her New York childhood to her late adolescence in Greece, her emergence as a European singing sensation and her rapid recognition on this side of the Atlantic.

Her life was beset by scandal both professionally and personally.

In 1958 she dropped out of a performance in Rome after the first act. She was vilified as a temperamental diva; Callas claims the drafty old theater gave her a devastating case of bronchitis.

Later she was cut from the Met; she claims it was about not wanting to participate in lazily-assembled retread productions of old standards. (Nearly a decade later she returned to the Met in triumph.)

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“THE GUILTY”: One step removed

November 29, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Jakob Cedergren

“THE GUILTY” My rating: B

90 minutes | MPAA rating

“Guilty” is a gimmick movie, but at least it’s an effective gimmick.

Denmark’s nominee for this year’s Oscar for best foreign language film is a real-time drama that unfolds in 90 uninterrupted minutes and has, essentially, a cast of one.

Jakob Cedergren plays Asger Holm, a tough Copenhagen cop who, while awaiting a hearing on some unspecified major infraction, has been handed a set of headphones at the department’s emergency services office.

Early on we realize his heart’s not in it.  To a frantic man who calls seeking an ambulance because he may have overdosed on illegal drugs, Asger responds: “It’s your own fault, isn’t it?”

He also humiliates a fellow who reports he’s been mugged by a woman who stole his laptop; Asger recognizes the call is originating from the city’s red light district.

His boring night picks up in intensity with a call from a frantic woman who reports she’s been kidnapped by her ex-husband. She has told her captor that she is calling their young daughter, but in fact has dialed the police.

Asher quickly sizes up the situation and alerts other cops to intercept the vehicle in which the woman is being held prisoner.

He also spends phone time with the couple’s daughter, traumatized after witnessing her parents’ brawling. Asher dispatches an officer to visit the home; he reports back a grisly scene.

It’s pretty clear to Asger that the estranged husband/father went ballistic and did something awful.  At least it’s clear until a big plot reveal turns the table on the officer and the audience.

Writer/director Gustave  Moller confines the action pretty much to Asger’s desk; there’s relatively little interaction with the other cops in the room. And of course we never see any of the people Asger is talking to…we only hear their voices.

In a cleverly perverse way, this seemingly limiting approach pays off. We’re forced to use our imaginations to picture the scenes as they are reported to Asger, who over the course of 90 minutes goes from  smug arrogance to genuine emotional investment.

One actor in  a confined space doesn’t sound particularly dramatic, but “The Guilty” makes it work.

| Robert W. Butler

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“BORDER”: Sensitive soul

November 22, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Eva  Melander

“BORDER” My rating: B+

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

When we first set eyes on Tina, the insanely unlikely heroine of Ali Abbasi’s “Border,” we can’t even be sure of her sex.

In fact, Tina (Eva Melander) looks like nothing so much as one of our prehistoric ancestors.  She’s got the thick brows, big buck teeth and unmanageable mop of hair of a cave-dwelling Neanderthal. She’s so ugly people must force themselves not to stare.

For about half its running time, “Border” plays like a character study of a sensitive soul trapped in a grotesque body.

And then it takes off into high-blown fantasy territory.  It’s not stretching things to say the film is this year’s “The Shape of Water.”

Despite her animalistic looks, Tina is an intelligent young woman. She’s a Swedish customs agent and amazes her co-workers with her ability to smell (literally…with her nose) when travelers are trying to hide something. She can even pick up whiffs of guilt on objects handled by smugglers. Through her olfactory talents Tina is largely responsible for alerting authorities to a child pornography ring.

Her personal life is odd, too. She shares a cabin in the woods with Roland (Jorgan Thomsson), a long-haired doofus trying to breed pit bulls (the dogs hate Tina). Apparently their cohabitation is a chaste one; Tina repels Roland’s advances, but she does pay his way. He’s not much of a boyfriend, but at least Tina has someone.

She also has a father (Sten Ljunggren) slipping into dementia in a retirement home. Tina dotes on the old man.

Tina is given to long walks in the primordial forest where deer and foxes allow her to approach; she has a fascination with insects, though she can’t exactly say why.

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“GREEN BOOK”: Predictably satisfying

November 20, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali

“GREEN BOOK”  My rating: B 

130 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Most of us will go into “Green Book” knowing — thanks to the ads — what the film is about. We can predict with some certainty what notes it’s going to hit, what emotional buttons it’ll be pushing.

None of this detracts from the movie’s immense pleasures.

The latest from director Peter Farrelly (yes, of the raunch-humor Farrelly Brothers) is a fact-based buddy film that dabbles in race and ethnicity, the universal appeal of music, and the glory of Detroit engineering at a time when bigger was definitely better.

It’s 1962 in NYC where Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) is bouncing drunks at the Copacabana nightclub. He’s Brooklyn Italian down to his toenails…which he can barely see thanks to his pasta-packed middle-aged spread.

Looking for a temporary gig while the club is undergoing a facelift, Tony signs up for a job driving a musician on  a tour of the Deep South.  And not just any musician.

Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) is a Phd. pianist who studied music in the Soviet Union, writes and performs classical scores (although on this tour he’s offering a popular jazz sound) and also has doctorates in psychology and liturgical arts. (The real-life Shirley also was fluent in six languages.)

Oh, yeah. He’s black, too.

But the money is good and Tony swallows his ethnic prejudices. He kisses the Missus (Linda Cardelli) goodbye and gets behind the wheel of a big aquamarine land shark for an eight-week tour leading up to Christmas.  Continue Reading »

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“THE FRONT RUNNER”: Fair game

November 20, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Hugh Jackman as Gary Hart

“THE FRONT RUNNER” My rating: B-

113 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It is easier to appreciate “The Front Runner” as a pivotal point in our political history than it is to warm up to it as a film.

The subject is Sen. Gary Hart’s 1988 run for the Democratic nomination for President,  the allegations of sexual impropriety that brought him down, and the media’s recognition (however reluctantly) that from here on out a candidate’s private life is fair game for coverage.

It’s been well acted and incisively directed by Jason Reitman (“Up in the Air,” “The Descendents”), yet even as it carefully lays out the parameters of the Hart affair “The Front Runner” seems remote and chilly. Perhaps there are no warm fuzzies in the film because there were no warm fuzzies in the true story.

Hart (Hugh Jackman) was a charismatic liberal with all the right responses. For those who swung left he hit the mark on race, economic disparity, the rapidly evaporating Cold War and other matters.  He might very well have made a great President, one who, according to an admirer, could “untangle the bullshit of politics so anyone can understand.”

Problem is, Hart was far easier to appreciate as a policy wonk than as an individual.  His marriage to Lee (Vera Farmiga) seemed solid — children, rustic home in the Colorado Rockies — but Hart bristled at any attempts to plum the depths of their relationship.  He insisted that the reporters covering him stick to the issues; his life behind the public image was off limits.

He wasn’t even on board with the usual photo ops, complaining that he was caught smiling “like some game show host.”

The screenplay by Reitman, Jay Carson and Matt Bai (on whose book it was based) runs on two parallel tracks.

There’s the insider workings of the Hart campaign, with an emphasis on tough-as-nails manager Bill Dixon (J.K. Simmons) and a host of young volunteers who see in Hart a politician who reflects their generational concerns.

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“ANCHOR AND HOPE”: Baby dreamin’

November 20, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

David Verdaguer, Natalia Tena, Oona Chaplin

“ANCHOR AND HOPE” My rating: B (Available Nov. 20 on Video on Demand)

113 minutes | No MPAA rating

Hovering delicately between knowing comedy and eventual heartbreak, “Anchor and Hope” sets itself up for romcom cliches and then cannily sidesteps all the traps it has laid.

Directed by Spaniard Carlos Marques-Marcet (who co-wrote the original screenplay with Jules Nurrish), this gay-themed yarn unfolds mostly on a residential boat floating on a London canal. (There also may be a reference here to “L’Atlante,” director Jean Vigo’s celebrated 1934 film about newlyweds living on a canal boat.)

The residents of this bohemian abode are Eva (Oona Chaplin…yes, Charlie’s granddaughter) and the tomboyish Kat (Natalia Tena), a lesbian couple in their mid-’30s.

As the film begins the two are burying their recently deceased cat in the back yard of Eva’s mom (Geraldine Chaplin, Oona’s Chaplin’s real-life mother), a latter-day hippie so insistently (insanely?) spiritual that even the agnostic Kat finds herself om-ing the dead feline into eternity.

“Anchor and Hope” (that’s the name of the pub where Kat works as a barmaid…though it may also have symbolic meaning) centers on two plot developments.

First there’s Eva’s growing certainty that she wants to be a mother. This is a discussion Kat would just as soon delay as long as possible, but now Eva senses her biological clock kicking into overdrive.

Secondly, there’s the arrival from Barcelona of Kat’s party-hearty buddy Roger (David Verdaguer).  He’s a raffish charmer of a Spaniard who sprouts muttonchops whiskers, a deliciously droll sense of humor and a shitload of testosterone.

Eva wants a baby. Roger is a nice guy with, presumably, healthy sperm. And after night of drunken carousing, Eva and Roger agree that he will donate the required spunk.  Kat, who apparently was spared the mothering gene, is appalled.

Nevertheless, soon their houseguest finds himself in the bathroom with a plastic vial and a cell phone tuned to pornography.  In a show of solidarity Kat wields the semen-filled syringe with which her partner will become preggers.

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“THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS”: Western gothic

November 18, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Tim Blake Nelson as Buster Scruggs

“THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS”  My rating: B (Now available on Netflix)

132 minutes | MPAA rating: R

At one point In the Coen Brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” several condemned miscreants stand on the scaffold awaiting the long drop.  One man sobs inconsolably; the guy to  his right tries to be sympathetic: “Your first time?”

Now playing on Netflix, “Ballad…” might be considered a toss off…but it’s a hugely enjoyable toss off.

The brothers — Joel and Ethan — have given us six short films set in the Wild West.  They are filled with loquacious characters, memorable faces, off-the-charts beautiful scenery.

In tone they range from comedy (usually of a very dark variety) to O. Henry-ish irony. There are a few moments of sweetness…not that they last. And there are a couple of terrific action sequences.

Zoe Kazan

Of course, the Coens aren’t exactly new to the genre, having given us a brilliant version of “True Grit,” not to mention the sobering modern Western “No Country for Old Men.”  Here they seem to be reveling in the opportunity to pay  homage to traditional Western tropes while playfully thumbing their noses at same.

A broad comic tone is set with the opening segment, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” which features Tim Blake Nelson as a geeky parody of singing movie cowboys.  Buster wears an all-white suit, strums his guitar while riding (“he was mean in days of yore/now they’re mopping up the floor”), and cheerfully blows away anyone who gets in his way, employing a variety of trick shots. Of course, there’s always someone faster on the draw.

“Near Algodones” finds James Franco playing an outlaw with the world’s worst luck. A banker (Stephen Root) doesn’t take kindly to being robbed and fights back wearing armor made of kitchen pots and pans. The outlaw survives one lynching (it’s interrupted by an Indian attack) but he can’t rely on that sort of happy coincidence the next time he’s got a rope around his neck. The whole thing looks as if it were lifted from a Sergio Leone film.

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“A PRIVATE WAR”: First draft of history

November 18, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Rosamund Pike as Marie Colvin

“A PRIVATE WAR” My rating: B+ 

110 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There have been enough movies about war correspondents to make up a cinematic subgenre, yet I can recall none with the pure emotional power of “A Private War.”

No doubt much of that has to do with the fact that it’s a true story.  Marie Colvin was a native of Long Island who got into the journalism game and by middle age was one of the most renowned war correspondents on the planet. By the time she died in 2012 covering the civil war in Syria for Britain’s The Sunday Times, she had seen more war than most career soldiers.

No amount of hyperbole can quite express how good Brit actress Rosamund Pike is in the leading role. Her nuanced performance paints an indelible portrait of a woman who was simultaneously heroic and horrified, driven into the arms of danger by a fatal idealism most of us can understand but few of us could emulate.

Kudos to screenwriter Arash Amel, who in adapting Marie Brenner’s Vanity Fair profile has found just the right balance of the intensely personal and sweepingly epic; and especially to first-time feature director Matthew Heinemann, whose background in documentaries (his “City of Ghosts,” about volunteer Syrian rescue crews who risk death by pulling  victims from the rubble of bombed-out cities) provided the perfect on-the-job training for this scarily realistic hand-held depiction of modern warfare.

Early in the film Colvin loses an eye covering a revolution in Sri Lanka.  For most of us that would be it…time for a nice cushy desk job.

Not this woman.  (“I’m not hanging up my flak jacket.”)

Driven by a near-pathological need to experience and report the hardships of citizens in war zones, she returns again and again to dangerous environs, focusing not on soldiers but on the suffering of the common man. Even while the bullets were still flying in the U.S. occupation of Iran, Colvin hired heavy equipment to unearth a mass grave where Saddam’s minions had secretly murdered and buried hundreds of villagers who had defied his reign.

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