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“HOSTILES”: Funereal Western

January 25, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Christian Bale

“HOSTILES” My rating: B-

133 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Westerns have always been a guilty pleasure (violent melodramas aimed at little boys and grown men who still think like little boys), but one cannot recall another Western that so openly oozes guilt as does “Hostiles.”

Written and directed by Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart,” “Out of the Furnace,” “Black Mass”) and based on a 20-year-old manuscript by the late Donald E. Stewart (“Missing” and three of the Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan films), this revisionist oater unfolds in 1892 when the Indian wars are winding down and the frontier is giving way to civilization.

But not quite yet.

Capt. Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale) rounds up renegade Indians.  His methods are matter-or-fact brutal. He nurses a slow-burning racial hatred fueled by the ugly deaths of comrades over the years and the atrocities he’s witnessed.

So he’s furious when for his last mission before retirement he’s ordered to accompany Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), a dying Cheyenne war chief, from a New Mexico prison to his tribe’s hunting grounds in Montana. No sooner does their little expedition get out of sight of the fort than Joe claps irons on the old man, less to prevent escape than to humiliate the cancer-riddled warrior.

Wes Studi

Joe is, of course, a direct descendant of Ethan Edwards, the Indian-hating antihero of John Ford’s great Western “The Searchers.” Both films are about a character on a moral and geographical journey.

The difference is that everyone in “Hostiles” is being eaten alive by hate or regret.

Joe’s second-in-command is Sergeant Metz (Rory Cochrane), who’s been diagnosed with “melancholia” but more accurately is being consumed by his conscience after decades of dogged persecution of Native Americans.  Then there’s Corporal Woodsen (Jonathan Majors), a black buffalo soldier who found acceptance in the white man’s world by hunting down another minority.

A young lieutenant (Jesse Plemons) straight out of West Point is about to get a crash course in frontier justice. And then there’s the military convict being taken to another outpost for hanging after butchering a local family. An old colleague of Joe’s, the prisoner (Ben Foster, naturally) wonders why he’s going to swing when he’s seen Joe do worse.

Finally there’s Rosalie (Rosamund Pike), traumatized almost to insanity after witnessing her husband and children slaughtered by renegade Comanches in the brutal episode that opens the movie.

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“CALL ME BY YOUR NAME”: Summer of discovery

January 18, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer

“CALL ME BY YOUR NAME” My rating: A-

132 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Call Me By Your Name” could be categorized as a coming-out story, but that’s oversimplifying things… like saying “Citizen Kane” is a movie about the newspaper business.

Director Luca Guadagnino (“I Am Love,” “A Bigger Splash”) and screenwriter  James Ivory (yes, the director of “Howards End,” “A Room with a View” and the Kansas City-lensed “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge”) are painting on an intimate canvas here, yet their adaptation of Andre Caiman’s novel is an epic of mood and emotion.

It’s about youth, sexual awakening, family love and the warm glow of summers past. It’s enough to make you swoon.

Set in the summer of 1983, “Call Me…” chronicles a lazy but significant six weeks for 17-year-old Elio (an unbelievably good Timothee Chalamet).  The son of an American father and an Italian mother, he’s been raised in Italy with all the intellectual stimulation he can handle. He’s smart, multilingual and maybe some sort of musical prodigy.

Enter Oliver (Armie Hammer), the American grad student hired by Elio’s professor father (Michael Stuhlbarg) for a summer of research on Roman statuary. Oozing a big grin, Yankee self-confidence and nonchalant studliness, Oliver makes a big wave among the town’s young women.

Initially this visitor strikes Elio as arrogant. But Oliver also stirs something else in Elio. Not that Oliver seems at all receptive…if anything he appears oblivious.

Interestingly enough, it’s Elio’s father and mother (Amira Casar) who first notice the slow-burn sexual sizzle that’s been introduced to their household…not that they comment on it directly. But their sidelong looks speak volumes. (They must be the most understanding movie parents of all time. Atticus Finch could take lessons from them.)

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“PHANTOM THREAD”: Epic self-absorption

January 18, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Daniel Day-Lewis

“PHANTOM THREAD” My rating: B 

130 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Phantom Thread” is an exquisite love story.

“Phantom Thread” is a cynical black comedy.

That both of these statements are accurate suggests the complex mix of ideas, emotions and impulses percolating through Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film.

That “Phantom Thread” also features what is allegedly Daniel Day-Lewis final screen performance (he and Anderson collaborated earlier on “There Will Be Blood”) makes it a must-see event.

Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis) is the premiere dress designer in ’50s London. He caters to the rich and titled; his fashions are elegant and controversy-free.

His effete manner and rep as a lifelong bachelor might suggest to some that the graying Reynolds is gay, but they’d be wrong. Reynolds enjoys women on the physical level.  In fact, as the film begins he indicates over breakfast to  his sister-collaborator-facilitator  Cyril (Leslie Manville) that his current paramour has worn out her welcome.

It falls to Cyril to deliver the bad news and escort the rejected young woman from the premises; a great artist like Reynolds cannot be bothered with such mundane duties.

“Marriage would make me deceitful,” he says, as if using and discarding women somehow makes him honest.

Anderson’s screenplay follows Reynolds on a side trip to his family’s seaside cottage.  At a local tearoom he encounters  Alma (Vicky Krieps), an Eastern European immigrant waiting tables. She’s a woman with a real physical presence, not one of those wraithlike models he’s used to dealing with, and she knows nothing about Reynolds or his work.

Her lack of guile, non-glamorous appearance and forthright emotional bearing appeal hugely to the jaded dress designer. He brings her to London, installs her in his household, looks to her as his creative muse  and, finally, marries her: “I feel like I’ve been looking for your for a very long time.” Continue Reading »

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“SMALL TOWN CRIME”: More, please

January 18, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Robert Forster, John Hawkes

“SMALL TOWN CRIME”  My rating: C+ 

91 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Ex-cop Mike Kendall is a “shit heel” according to one of the other characters in “Small Town Crime.” It’s hard to disagree with that assessment.

Mike is an alcoholic who’s usually wasted by noon. He drives his souped-up car like an irresponsible teen; one morning he awakens to find his ride parked in the front yard amongst the wreckage of a picket fence.

Mike has been jobless since the unfortunate incident that led to the death of a fellow patrolman. To keep getting unemployment benefits he goes through the motions of applying for jobs, but should a prospective employer actually show an interest, Mike scotches the deal by confessing to being a hopeless drunk.

The good news is that Mike, as played by the great John Hawkes, isn’t a mean drunk. He loved being a cop and has a hopeless dream of once again wearing a badge. And despite his maddeningly childlike behavior, he’s just charming enough that you can’t hate him.

This noir drama from siblings Echo and Ian Nelms finds Mike thrust back into the game when he discovers a young woman dying in a roadside ditch. His cop instincts kick in, and despite warnings from his old colleagues on the force, Mike starts poking around into her death.

Posing as a private detective, he contacts the girl’s rich grandfather (Robert Forster), who is infuriated by the cops’ sloppy handling of the case (“To them she’s just another toe tag”). Despite his granddaughter’s self-destructive history of drug addiction and prostitution, he’s ready to spend big bucks to find out how and why she died.

Mike’s dogged digging eventually reveals a murderous conspiracy.  Before it’s over, other young prostitutes are being murdered and Mike is himself a target.  Not to mention his “sister” (Octavia Spencer), with whom he grew up in foster care, and her husband (Anthony Anderson) and their kids.

 

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“THE POST”: Do the right thing

January 11, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts, Tom Hanks

“THE POST” My rating: B+ 

115 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Steven Spielberg’s powers as a storyteller are so secure that not even the miscasting of one of “The Post’s” two leads can do much damage to the narrative.

This sprawling effort — it begins with a firefight in Vietnam and winds down with a firestorm over the Second Amendment — hits the ground running and rarely slows down for a breath. It’s like a Spielberg master class in taking a complicated story and telling it cleanly and efficiently.

And like other major movies about real-world journalism — “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight” especially — “The Post” could hardly be more timely.  With a president who shows every indication that he’d love to roll back freedom of the press, this film is so relevant it hurts.

The subject, of course, is the 1971 scandal over the Pentagon Papers.  That massive study, commissioned by LBJ’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, looked at American involvement in Vietnam going back to the Truman administration. It revealed that the experts had always known a land war in Vietnam was unwinnable — but had plowed ahead anyway, sacrificing billions of dollars and countless lives on what amounted to political face-saving.

The papers showed that the Johnson administration had systematically lied to the public and to Congress so as to continue the war.

McNamara suppressed the study; the public only learned of its existence when one of its authors, Rand Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), made an illegal copy of the top secret document and passed it on to The New York Times.

Today  The Washington Post sits at or near the top of American newspapers (thanks to its reporting on the Watergate Scandal in 1972-’73).  But in 1971 The Post was at best a regional paper…and not a very good one.

Its new editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), was pushing it toward greatness, but still felt himself outclassed by the journalistic aces at The Times. He was particularly concerned about rumors that The Times was about to scoop The Post (and every other news outlet) with a major story.

That big story was the Pentagon Papers. No sooner had the first in a series of articles been published than a federal judge — at the behest of the Nixon administration — enjoined The Times from printing additional material.

Bradley’s Post, however, was under no gag order. Working back channels Bradley got his hands on another copy of the papers and prepared to publish even more revelations on the pages of The Post.

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“WAIT FOR YOUR LAUGH”: Ms. Show-Biz

January 5, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Dick Van Dyke, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam

“WAIT FOR YOUR LAUGH” My rating: B+

85 minutes | No MPAA rating

Most of us remember Rose Marie, who died last week at the age of 94, as the wise-cracking comedy writer Sally Rogers on TV’s “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

But that was only one stage in a show-biz career that lasted nine decades and was crammed with dozens of firsts.

“Wait for Your Laugh,” Christina Tucker and Jason Wise’s loving documentary, covers Rose Marie’s remarkable life, in the process delivering a pretty comprehensive look at the evolution of entertainment in the 20th century.

Based on a series of filmed interviews with the still-sharp-as-a-tack Rose Marie — as well as with colleagues and friends like Van Dyke, Carl Reiner, Tim Conway and Peter Marshall — the film reveals a remarkable life.

Rose Marie Mazzetta became a child star at age 4, winning a talent contest by belting out songs in the style of Sophie Tucker.  This led to radio appearances as Baby Rose Marie. When listeners refused to believe that a child could sing like that, she hit the vaudeville circuit in its final days. Audiences couldn’t deny their eyes and ears.

Al Capone and other gangsters (“the boys”) treated little Rose Marie as an adopted daughter, offering protection. They could’t protect her from her father/manager, who siphoned off millions before she was old enough to declare her emancipation. (The old man was arrested 128 times for violation of child labor laws.) Continue Reading »

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“I, TONYA”: White trash wonder

January 5, 2018 by butlerscinemascene

Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding

“I, TONYA” My rating: A-

120 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Everybody knows that spunky figure skater Tonya Harding was behind the plot to smash the knee of  her teammate and strongest competitor, Nancy Kerrigan. Right?

Well, maybe not. The astounding “I, Tonya” suggests that Harding  may not deserve her rap as the poster girl for unsportsmanlike conduct.

“Based on irony free, widely contradictory, totally true interviews” with the major participants (under the closing credits we see some of the actual news and police interview footage), this savage and breathtakingly entertaining black comedy from Craig Gillespie (“Lars and the Real Girl”) is also a powerful dramatic and emotional experience, one that forces a total reassessment of the Harding/Kerrigan affair.

By the time it’s over you don’t know whether to laugh or weep.

Along the way it gives Aussie glamor girl Margot Robbie the opportunity to display world-class acting chops as Tonya, while cementing Allison Janney’s reputation as the cinema’s greatest bad mother (we’re talking a perf that leaves “Mommie Dearest” in the dust).

Steven Rogers’ screenplay (a huge step up from his usual stuff…”Hope Floats,” “Stepmom,” “Love the Coopers”) centers on a series of recreated interviews with the main characters, illustrating their memories with flashbacks.

The tone is set early on with Janney’s appearance as LaVona, the stage mother from hell. She’s like a human skull beneath a Beatles wig with an ever-smoldering cigarillo. In the present-day interview scenes she always has a parakeet on her shoulder.

LaVona is a foul-mouthed waitress and (mostly) single mother who motivated her little athlete with psychological and occasional physical abuse. (“She skated better when enraged.”) She practically crows at the memory of  Tonya wading out onto the rink for the first time and blowing away the privileged little girls who had been at it for years. (“Those bitches didn’t know what hit them.”)

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“DOWNSIZING”: Half the fun

December 21, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

Kristen Wiig, Matt Damon

“DOWNSIZING” My rating: C+ 

135 minutes | MPAA rating:

There’s a work of genius lurking inside “Downsizing,” one that struggles to make itself heard and ultimately loses steam and dribbles away.

Bottom line: The first half of Alexander Payne’s sci-fi/fantasy satire/end-of-the-world warning is pretty wonderful. After that, things get iffy.

In the film’s first moments we’re introduced to the concept of “downsizing” — not corporate layoffs but rather the shrinking of human beings to the size of Barbie Dolls.

Downsizing could be the answer to, well, everything.  An ear of corn could feed a dozen people for a week.  Tiny homes require almost no power to heat and cool efficiently.  Moving around is easy — downsized citizens ride in shoebox-sized containers that can fit easily in a bus or airplane’s overhead rack.

Omaha residents Paul and Audrey Safranek (Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig) are initially bemused by this new technology.  But after a decade of hand-to-mouth living they come to the conclusion that downsizing is the key to a prosperous future — especially when it is explained to them that after downsizing their modest savings will translate into millions of dollars.

So they contract to live in a downsized community (a glass dome offers protection from predatory birds). This mini-metropolis takes up only a couple of acres of real-world real estate but, in shrunken form, is the size of greater New York City. Their built-to-order mansion awaits.

The actual process of downsizing is cleverly laid out in Payne and Jim Taylor’s screenplay…and it’s a techno-nerdish wonder. Once sedated, the client’s dental fillings are removed (only organic tissue can be shrunk…a ceramic filling could cause the client’s head to explode).  All body hair is shaved (again, hair follicles are not alive…only the roots).

Once downsized, the comatose clients are moved about on spatulas, like burgers on a short-order grill.

It’s all very amusing, yet weirdly plausible.

Just one problem. Upon awakening Paul learns that Audrey got cold feet at the last minute. She now wants a divorce from her tiny husband and most of  their savings.

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‘THE GREATEST SHOWMAN”: Long con

December 19, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) and his band of oddities

“THE GREATEST SHOWMAN” My rating: B-

105 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

The most memorable utterance attributed to P.T. Barnum — “There’s a sucker born every minute”  — appears nowhere in the original film musical “The Great Showman.”

This is understandable. The quote is thick with contempt/condescension for the everyday idiot.  Michael Gracey’s film, on the other hand, is all about openness and a childlike sense of wonder.

Ostensibly a biography of the 19th-century con man and entertainment entrepreneur, “The Greatest Showman” is a passion project from Aussie actor Hugh Jackman, who has long wanted to tackle the role. (Aside from subject matter, the film is in no way related to the fine 1980 Broadway musical “Barnum.”)

The real Barnum was a wart of a fellow and a self-proclaimed “humbugger,'” certainly not the dashing charmer we get in this production. But then “The Greatest Showman” has been conceived and executed not as history or actual biography but as a colorful commentary on dreaming big and embracing diversity.

The characters are paper thin and the historic details iffy (there appear to be electric lights in a house in the 1850s, the women’s costumes are all over the place).

But it is undeniably entertaining, especially in several of the musical numbers and in a garish presentational approach that reminds of Baz Luhrmann’s work on “Moulin Rouge,” with maybe a touch of Bob Fosse-inspired choreography thrown in for good measure.

Zendaya

We follow the rise of Jackman’s Barnum from struggling shipping company clerk to national prominence. He woos and wins a wealthy young woman (Michelle Williams), in the process alienating her family, who find his work very low class.

He buys a run-down museum in NYC and goes on a world-wide hunt to stock it with human and animal oddities. Before long Barnum can claim among his attractions the world’s smallest man, Tom Thumb, a bearded lady (Keala Settle), Siamese twins, the Dog Boy, the Tattooed Man and  a fellow with three legs.

Far from presenting Barnum as an exploiter of these unfortunates, the film depicts him as a father figure who creates an outcast clan whose members band together for mutual support in defiance of a cruel world.

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“THE SHAPE OF WATER”: Weightless love

December 14, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones

“THE SHAPE OF WATER” My rating: B+

122 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Blend the whimsey of “Amelie” with the sci-fi fantasy of “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” wrap it all up in Cold War paranoia, and you’ve got Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” an interspecies love story that will leave you swooning.

Horror and beauty are never far apart in del Toro’s cinema; what’s noteworthy about this picture is that the horror is generated not by the fantastic creature at its heart but by human fear and loathing. This time around we’re the monsters.

Set in early ’60s Baltimore, where it’s always raining and everything is tinted bottom-of-the-sea green, “The Shape of Water” opens with Elisa ( Sally Hawkins) awakening from a watery dream and getting ready for work. Elisa is mute and communicates through sign language (we get subtitles); she works the night shift mopping floors at a top-secret government research station that looks and feels like a giant concrete mausoleum.

Michael Shannon

The scientific staff is all agog over their new acquisition, an amphibious creature captured in a river in South American, where the natives worshipped him as a god. The current condition of this beautiful/disquieting creation (that’s frequent del Toro collaborator Doug Jones under the spectacular prosthetics developed by Legacy Effects) is anything but god-like; he’s in chains and is the subject of the sadistic cattle-prod attentions of Strickland (Michael Shannon), a malevolent CIA type who can’t wait to vivisect this new species.

Using her passkey to gain entrance to the creature’s prison, the empathetic Elisa brings hard-boiled eggs and a portable phonograph player with a collection of jazz LPs. This frog/man may not be able to speak, but he digs eggs and music.

Elisa soon discovers that the captive is not a mindless beast; before long they’re conversing in sign language. And and as her affections for this scaly  newcomer deepen, Elisa hatches a plan to spirit the amphibian man out of the lab before he can be vivisected. He can live in her claw-footed bathtub.

She is abetted in this quest by her co-worker, the mop-swinging Zelda (Octavia Spencer),  by her neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), a mild-mannered commercial artist, and by one of the scientific eggheads, Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), who wants to preserve this great discovery at any cost. Continue Reading »

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