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“WHERE HANDS TOUCH”: Wrong color for the Reich

September 13, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

George MacKay, Amanda Stenberg

“WHERE HANDS TOUCH”  My rating: C

122 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Initially intriguing but ultimately ineffective, “Where Hand Touch” is an odd blend of “Romeo and Juliet” romance and “Pianist”-style Holocaust horror.

Its heart is in the right place. Alas, good intentions aren’t enough.

While the film mines a real-life situation rarely recognized by the arts or the history books — the plight under the Nazis of mixed-blood Germans whose mothers were Aryan  and fathers African — “Where Hands Touch” is tough going. And not just because of the downbeat subject matter.

Writer/director Amma Assante rarely opts for subtlety when a heavy hand can be employed. The result is a film that, in theory anyway, should move us deeply.  Except that it doesn’t.

Sixteen-year-old Lenya (Amanda Sternberg) comes to Berlin with her mother (a dowdied-down Abbie Cornish) and little brother (Tom Sweet) in the hopes of becoming lost. Back in their provincial burg the authorities are looking for Jews and mixed-race children. Perhaps Lenya, whose father was an African soldier with the occupying French at the end of WWI, can hide her racial heritage among the city’s masses.

The irony here is that Lenya considers herself 100 percent German…and so does the law, which defines citizenship as being passed down from mother to child.  But mixed-race children are widely viewed as a blemish on the Reich, so Lenya must be very careful where she goes and who she sees.

It’s a small miracle, then, when she is befriended by Lutz (George MacKay), a blonde Hitler Youth who is not only prejudice free but romantically taken with his exotic new neighbor.

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“PICK OF THE LITTER”: Every dog has its day

September 13, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

“PICK OF THE LITTER” My rating: B 

81 minutes | No MPAA rating

Even if you’re not a dog lover, “Pick of the Litter” has an AWWWWW factor that’s off the charts.

But canine-generated sentimentality aside, this documentary leaves the viewer deeply impressed by the effort that goes into training a Guide Dog for the Blind, and by the sacrifices of dozens of humans who are behind each animal that completes the program.

Don Hardy Jr. and Dana Nachman’s film begins with the birth of five puppies and follows their growth and training over two years as they prepare to join the ranks of what used to be called “seeing-eye dogs.”

It starts out cute — few things are as heart-melting as a wriggling newborn Labrador retriever — and gradually works its way into some surprisingly territory.

We’re told up front that only three out of every eight dogs bred by the California-based Guide Dogs for the Blind will graduate from the program.  Which means that of our five littermate subjects — the staff names them Potomac, Poppet, Primrose, Patriot and Phil — only two should be expected to make the final cut. And even that’s not guaranteed.

Most will at some point be “career changed,” meaning that they’ll be scrubbed from the program for reasons ranging from intelligence to excitability to the ability to focus on the task at hand.  One of the more intriguing issues raised centers on how much of the failure is due to the individual animal’s nature and how much to the shortcomings of  its human handlers.

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“AMERICAN CHAOS”: Welcome to Trumpland

September 13, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

“AMERICAN CHAOS” My rating: B

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Every liberal -minded American should see “American Chaos.”

Good luck with that.

Because however insightful it may be, Jim Stern’s documentary about Trump supporters is almost too painful to watch.

The film begins with a montage of Presidential campaign newsreel footage, starting with Teddy Roosevelt and ending with Donald Trump.

Stern then goes on to describe himself as growing up in a classic Kennedy Democrat household in Chicago. He still reveres Bobby Kennedy, whom he describes as generating “a feeling of empathy so deep it was infectious.”  Not until Obama did he feel a similar level of enthusiasm for a Presidential candidate.

But shortly after the beginning of the 2016 race Stern noticed something different about Trump and his adherents, something that bothered him so much that he grabbed his camera and spent several months crisscrossing America to interview Trump  voters.

The resulting documentary doesn’t tell us anything we haven’t heard elsewhere, but it’s interesting /frightening to hear these citizens explain their support.

Stern went into these conversations knowing that he wasn’t going to debate with his subjects, make snide comments or even speak disapprovingly of Trump (which doesn’t mean you can’t catch him biting his tongue on numerous occasions). He genuinely wanted to know what these folks believed…and why.

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“OPERATION FINALE”: The banality of evil

August 31, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley

“OPERATION FINALE” My rating: B

122 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Israel’s 1961 show trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann has spawned several documentaries, a hit stage play (Robert Shaw’s “The Man in the Glass Booth,” later filmed) and numerous other movies. Particularly noteworthy was 2012’s “Hannah Arendt,” about the political philosopher who covered the trial for The New Yorker and was so unimpressed by Eichmann’s demeanor that she coined the phrase “the banality of evil.”

With “Operation Finale” first-time screenwriter Matthew Orton and director Chris Weitz (“About a Boy,” “A Better Life”) have tackled the Eichmann saga and in effect given us two films.

The first is a suspenseful procedural about Mossad agents who track down the “architect of the Final Solution” in Argentina, risking life and limb to spirit their kidnapped prey back to Israel and a final judgment.

But wrapped in the middle of that thriller is an equally absorbing drama, a psychological duel between Eichmann (Ben Kingsley) and the Jewish agent (Oscar Isaac) who must somehow bend the will of this egocentric anti-Semite.

Much of the film’s first half is devoted to planning the mission. Like many of his fellows, the first inclination of agent Peter Malkin (Isaac) is to simply pop a bullet into Eichmann, who under an assumed identity has been working as a foreman at a Buenos Aires auto plant and devoting his spare time to nurturing an underground Nazi movement. (Under Juan Peron’s fascist leadership Argentina was already halfway Nazi; Eichmann and his goose-stepping pals had plenty of friends in politics and law enforcement.)

But Israeli bigwigs very much want Eichmann alive.

The skillfully depicted abduction goes as planned — but there’s a hiccup.  The El Al plane that is supposed to whisk the agents and their captive to Israel is delayed by red tape.  Eichmann and his guards must spend a week in a safe house, keeping a low profile as outraged Argentine law enforcement launch a citywide manhunt. (Here’s a bit of irony…15 years after the war we have a houseful of Jews still hiding from right-wing thugs).

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“THE BOOKSHOP”: Bait and switch

August 30, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Emily Mortimer

“THE BOOKSHOP” My rating: B

113 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

“The Bookshop” is an insidious bit of bait and switch.

As it starts out a viewer is confident that he or she is entering familiar territory.  In 1959 a war widow opens a bookshop in  picturesque British coastal town.

So this is going to be a feel-good movie about the power of literature to illuminate gray lives, right? And the lady storeowner will undoubtedly find romance with one of the locals…maybe a handsome fisherman?

Also, our  heroine sells controversial books like Nabokov’s Lolita. So the film will depict the conflict between the local blue noses and everybody else’s right to read, eh?

Uh, no.

Isabel Coixet’s film, adapted from Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel, is much darker than that.  Here the common man is something less than noble and the good guys shouldn’t expect to win.

All might have gone swimmingly had Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) not chosen as the site of her new book shop the long-abandoned  Old House, a historic structure fallen on hard times. She buys the place at bargain prices, installs shelves and orders crates of books.

She hires Christine (Honor Kneafsey), the child of local laborers, as her after-school assistant.

And she cultivates the attentions of the  eccentric  town hermit, Edmund (Bill Nighy), a voracious reader living in a slowly decaying mansion. He’s this movie’s version of Miss Havisham.

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“JULIET, NAKED”: Swooning and cynicism

August 30, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Ethan Hawke, Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd

“JULIET, NAKED” My rating: B+

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The drolly amusing “Juliet, Naked,” isn’t my favorite film based on work by Nick Hornby (that would be the sublime “Brooklyn”) but it’s right up there with “About a Boy” and “High Fidelity.”

And like the latter, it’s a comedy/drama that pivots on a guy obsessed with rock music.

Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) teaches pop culture at a small British community college. He’s the kind of geeky prof who, for a course on HBO’s
“The Wire,” supplies his students with a glossary of American inner city words and phrases. You can imagine him leading serious  classroom discussions about the etymological roots of “mofo” and “ho.”

His biggest crush, though, is on a marginal American singer/songwriter named Tucker Crowe whose LP “Juliet”  holds the 43rd place on at least one list of great heartbreak albums.

Duncan loves “Juliet” and scarfs down every bit of information he can find about Tucker Crowe, who vanished a quarter century ago.  Duncan is also the proprietor of a Tucker Crowe web site where he trades theories with other Crowe disciples and writes rambling blogs about how Tucker is the J.D. Salinger of alt rock.

In short, Duncan is perfectly ridiculous. (Not that we can’t relate. Most of us have our little hard-to-explain musical fixations: Richard Thompson. Eric Andersen. The Beau Brummels.)

Anyway, Duncan’s live-in girlfriend Annie (Rose Byrne) has just about had it with the whole Tucker Crowe thing.  When an early stripped-down demo recording of the songs on “Juliet”starts circulating on the Internet, Annie writes a withering (and anonymous) review of what is being called “Juliet, Naked.”

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“SEARCHING”: Life online

August 30, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

John Cho

“SEARCHING” My rating: B 

102 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Most of us spend too much time staring at screens. So why has it taken so long for Hollywood to deliver a feature film that tells its story exclusively through Internet images?

In Aneesh Chaganty’s “Searching” a single father sets out on a desperate quest to find his missing teenage daughter. We never see or hear him — or any of the characters — except via some sort of electronic device …especially a computer monitor or a smart phone.

Initially it would seem that this approach — it’s a kind of variation on the “found footage” gimmick –would be limiting, both narratively and visually.

But that’s not the case. Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian find ingeniously inventive ways of telling their story. Often we’re looking at a computer screen overflowing with various windows between which our eyes flit…at least at those times when the filmmakers don’t employ editing and zooms to focus us on a particular bit of business.

The movie opens with a montage of home videos featuring David Kim (John Cho), his wife and daughter. Through these we see the family in good times and bad — the Missus is eaten away by cancer over years. The heart-grabbing effect is not unlike the brilliant photo album introduction of Pixar’s “Up.”

Post-tragedy, David and daughter Margot (Michelle La) appear to have a more or less normal relationship. We see them exchanging texts and communicating over FaceTime. He’s a concerned parent, but in no way smothering.

Which may be his big mistake.  One night Margot goes to a friend’s house for a late-night study session.  It’s almost 24 hours before David realizes she never came home and is no longer answering her cell phone.

He starts tracking down and calling Margot’s friends. They know nothing (they’re not really friends…more like acquaintances); worse, David begins to realize that his girl had a private life to which he wasn’t privy. For years he’s been giving her $100 a week to pay for her piano studies; now he discovers that she abandoned those classes months ago, but has continued to collect the cash.

The panicked father contacts the cops and Detective Vick (Debra Messing) takes the case. Despite her admonitions that he should leave the investigating to the professionals, David cannot help digging ever deeper into Margot’s digital history. What he finds is starting to look like a parent’s worst nightmare.

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“NICO, 1988”: End of the rope

August 24, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Trine Dyrholm as Nico

“NICO, 1988” My rating: B

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The German model/singer Nico — real name Christa Paffgen — had her 15 minutes of fame in the late 1960s when Andy Warhol cast her as the blonde monotone figurehead of the Velvet Underground.

She really didn’t sing all that much — mostly she banged a tambourine and looked ethereal — but for a brief time she was the embodiment of cool Teutonic eroticism.

That’s not the Nico writer/director Susanna Nicchiarelli is interested in.  No, this  Nico is 20 years of hard living down the road, a bloated brunette addicted to heroin and pretty much pissed at everyone and everything.

Nicchiarelli’s docu-drama follows Nico in her last two years, when she toured Europe with a ragtag bunch of musicians in a broken-down van and worked hard at alienating anyone who cared about her.

As portrayed by Danish actress Trine Dyrholm, this Nico is no longer beautiful…but she’s a force of nature. Rebelling at being window dressing for other, better musicians, she is determined to live her life her way, even if it means (and it will) an early grave.

“Nico, 1988” unfolds as a series of one-night stands as the singer — who wants to be known by her real name but cannot outrun the Nico legend — alternately enthralls and alienates her audiences. When the mood is upon her she can be an arresting presence, prowling the stage and snarling out the lyrics to her compositions.  At other times she looks bored  and contemptuous.

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“PAPILLON”: Iron butterfly

August 23, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Charlie Hunnam, Rami Malek

“PAPILLON” My rating: C

136 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There are moments in the new “Papillon” when Brit actor Charlie Hunnam looks so much like the late Steve McQueen that it’s startling.

McQueen, the cinema’s King of Cool throughout the ’60s and early ’70s, starred in the original 1973 film version of Henri Charriere’s best-selling memoir about surviving and escaping from a hellish penal colony in French Guiana. For all of McQueen’s arresting screen presence (and a strong supporting performance from Dustin Hoffman), that Franklin Schaffer-directed adventure was a snooze.

So is this remake.

Still, Hunnam looks so right in the role that one wishes he was making better choices in his projects and directors.

He showed his Yankee bona fides by playing the hunkily charismatic heir to a California motorcycle gang in cable’s long-running “Sons of Anarchy” (aka “Hamlet on Harleys”), but his movie resume has been all over the map, from the low-keyed and under appreciated jungle adventure “The Lost City of Z” to the overblown and nearly unwatchable “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.”  His best films, ironically, have been those in which he played minor character parts: “Children of Men,” “Green Street Hooligans,” “Cold Mountain.”

This “Papillon,” scripted by Aaron Guzikowski and directed by Michael Noer, looks plenty expensive, what with its massive set of a tropical prison and hundreds of extras slaving away like Hebrews building the pyramids.

But on the two vital points on which Charriere’s story pivots — his daring escape attempts and his refusal to break under inhuman treatment — the film loses steam and momentum and ends up drifting in the doldrums. Continue Reading »

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“FAR FROM THE TREE”: Once more, with empathy

August 23, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Joseph and Leah  Stramodo

“FAR FROM THE TREE” My rating: B+

93 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Far from the Tree” is an effortlessly empathetic documentary about being different.

From a technical and presentational standpoint it’s pretty run of the mill.  But the subject matter of Rachel Dretzin’s heart-grabber is so compelling that once seen it’s doubtful anyone will quickly forget the supercharged emotion this film generates.

The inspiration is Andrew Solomon’s book of the same name, a massive examination of parents and children who are emphatically unalike.

Solomon was inspired by his own gayness (he appears in this film frequently clothed in an incendiary flamboyant wardrobe) and his struggle to gain acceptance from his disapproving parents.  But as he notes in a filmed interview, he wanted to expand the scope of his study to parents of all kinds of special/unusual children.

Between glimpses of Solomon’s life (he’s now married to another man and the father of two) Dretzin’s camera studied a variety of individuals.

There’s Jason Kingsley, born with Down Syndrome and something of a poster boy in his teens for his advanced intelligence. His mother relates the difficulties of having a Down Syndrome child and Jason’s brief triumph.

We see Jason now as a 40-something living in a house with two other Down Syndrome men. He holds down a job. But while his intellect remains sharp, his emotional life is stunted. He’s fallen in love with Elsa, the heroine of the animated “Frozen,” and while he knows she’s fictional he still wants desperately to travel to Norway in the hope of meeting her.

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