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“BEACH RATS”: Adrift in Brooklyn

September 12, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

“BEACH RATS”  My rating: B

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Thirty years ago a film dealing with the subject matter of “Beach Rats” would have been labeled a “gay” film and aimed specifically at audiences looking for  a satisfying coming out story.

Well, that was then.

Eliza Hittman’s second feature (after “It Felt Like Love”) is about a young man who is probably gay, but it’s less obsessed with his sexuality than with his general cluelessness.

Frankie (Brit actor Harris Dickinson) lives in Brooklyn with his mother, younger sister and soon-to-be-dead cancer-riddled father. He’s out of school and jobless, and spends his summer hanging out on the beach with a few of his childhood friends, know-nothings whose world view is limited to vaping and the availability of pot and pussy.

Frankie has a secret. He’s been visiting online gay chatrooms, tentatively exploring the possibilities. Every now and then he’ll arrange for a tryst with one of these men, who are clearly smitten with Frankie’s body and all-American good looks.

Writer/director Hittman takes it for granted that Frankie’s gay.  But like a lot of young people he’s not sure what he is.

Early in the film he’s picked up by a local girl, Simone (Madeline Weinstein), who spots him at a Coney Island fireworks display and zooms in.  Frankie begs off that he’s too tired to have sex, but over several weeks he and Simone will get intimate.   It’s hard to say whether he enjoys the sex or simply views it as good camouflage, throwing off any friends or family members who suspect he swings another way.

If our protagonist were, say, a middle-class suburbanite, he’d probably find himself in an LGBT teen support group.  But Frankie’s living in a macho-drenched working-class corner of Brooklyn. About all he knows about being gay is that it’s majorly uncool with his vaguely criminal buds. Continue Reading »

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“MARIE CURIE: The Courage of Knowledge”

September 9, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

Karolina Gruszka

“MARIE CURIE: THE COURAGE OF KNOWLEDGE” My rating: B

100 minutes | No MPAA rating

Well, this certainly isn’t your Greer Garson version of physicist Marie Curie.

Marie Noelle’s film is about the trials the brilliant Curie endured because she was a woman in a man’s world; it’s also about the  affair with a married co-worker that nearly scuttled her chances for a second Nobel Prize and admission to the French Academy of Science.

This combination of feminism and heavy breathing could have been a recipe for diaster.  But Noelle and co-writer Andrea Stoll keep all the parts in narrative and emotional balance, with the result that “Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge” feels low-keyed and classy even when its leading lady is lounging about in the altogether.

The film begins with the idyllic marriage of Marie (Karolina Gruszka) and Pierre Curie (Charles Berling), partners both in life and in the lab. They’re raising a large family, experimenting with radium as an anti-cancer therapy, and sharing a Nobel Prize for science. In just a few quick, impressionistic scenes director Noelle depicts their blissful, fulfilling lives.

Then Pierre is killed in a street accident, and Marie is left to continue her work alone.  Well, not exactly alone.

Her colleague Paul Langevin (Arieh Worthalter)  provides intellectual and, to a degree, moral support as Marie comes to terms with Pierre’s death. Eventually the attraction gets physical.

Paul has a rather common wife who wants him to give up pure science for a well-paying job in industry. Eventually the wronged spouse steals love letters between her husband and Marie and launches a very public scandal. Marie’s sexual transgression only proves to the stick-in-the-muds of academia and science that a woman has no business in their calling. (That plenty of male scientists keep a mistress without anyone raising an eyebrow is just one more example of the double standard at work.)

Continue Reading »

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“NEITHER WOLF NOR DOG”: Lessons from Dan

September 7, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

David Bald Eagle, Christopher Sweeney, Richard Ray Whitman

“NEITHER WOLF NOR DOG” My rating: B-

100 minutes | No MPAA rating

In attempting to de-romanticize white notions of Native Americans,  “Neither Wolf Nor Dog” often comes perilously close to having just the opposite effect.

You can only hear so many words of wisdom from a 95-year-old Lakota elder before the mind starts wallowing in cliches about the noble red man.

Happily Steven Lewis Simpson’s film sidesteps most of the major cultural traps that make negotiating this particular landscape so dangerous.

This low-budget effort — filmed mostly on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation — is one of the more perceptive films about white/Indian relationships.

Based on Kent Nerburn’s semi-autobiographical novel, the bulk of “Neither Wolf…” is a reservation road trip in which an outsider gets a crash course in modern Indian ethos.

Continue Reading »

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“CROWN HEIGHTS”: Long time comin’

September 7, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

Lakeith Stansfield

“CROWN HEIGHTS” My rating: C+ 

94 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The real-life miscarriage of justice depicted in Matt Ruskin’s “Crown Heights” is both outrageous and all too common.

In 1980 Colin Warner, a native of Trinidad living in Brooklyn, was implicated in the shooting death of another young man. A witness claimed that Warner drove the killer’s getaway car; the victim’s brother said Warner’s mug shot (Warner had a history of car theft) looked like one of the shooters.

Warner had never met any of these individuals and was at a loss to explain his predicament. Even the detectives who arrested him  suspected that he probably didn’t do it…but they needed to clear the case and move on.

As a result, Colin Warner spent nearly two decades in prison before an extraordinary effort on the part of one of his friends led to his release.

“Crown Heights” is basically a legal procedural that takes a docudrama approach. This is both its strength and its weakness.

Writer/director Ruskin appears to hew closely to the facts of the case. But he also refuses to speculate on his characters’ inner lives…with the result that the film, despite its incendiary nature, feels emotionally neutral.

It’s easy enough to become furious about what happened to Colin Warner; but as drama “Crown Heights” leaves us wanting.

Continue Reading »

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“IT”: Things that go bump

September 7, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

“IT” My rating: B-

135 minutes | MPAA rating: R

First, let’s all take a slow, non-hyperbolic breath.

Rarely has a mere horror movie gotten the advance raves and widespread cultural attention being lavished on “It,” the new film based on Stephen King’s novel (it was filmed once before, for a 1990 TV miniseries).

Well, it’s a good movie. Not great. It’s way overlong and trips over a few narrative dead ends.

It’s not as interesting or satisfying as either “It Follows” or “Get Out,” two recent groundbreaking examples of the horror genre.

But “It” — written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Doberman and directed by Andy Muschietti (“Mama”) — does hit the sweep spot between jump-in-your-seat thrills and the sort of Spielberg-influenced 1980s adolescent adventure most recently championed by Netflix’s hit series “Stranger Things.”

Basically you’ve got a group of pre-pubescents taking on a supernatural evil that resurrects every three decades or so to snatch unwary children. This creature is a sinister circus clown called Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard) who lives in a small town’s sewers and marks his approach with red balloons.

There’s no explanation of Pennywise’s back story; the screenplay presents him as the pure embodiment of every child’s deepest fears (making him a clown was a brilliant stroke on King’s part) and pretty much leaves it at that.

Dramatically, “It” is a deft balancing act between growing creepiness, an often hilarious examination of youthful behavior, and a compassionate (but superficial) look at adolescent angst.

The leader of these young misfits is Bill (Jaden Lieberher, so terrific in “St. Vincent” and “Midnight Special”), whose little brother vanished a year earlier when he ventured too close to a street grating during a rainstorm. Motivated by sibling love, the stuttering Bill is determined to face his own fears to stop Pennywise’s quiet rampage. Continue Reading »

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“THE VAULT”: Genre blending

August 31, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

James Franco

“THE VAULT” My rating: C

91 minutes | No MPAA rating

At the very least you’ve got to give the makers of “The Vault” props for daring genre blending.

Imagine “Dog Day Afternoon” mating with John Carpenter’s “The Fog.”

The first 45 or so minutes of Dan Bush’s film (he co-wrote it with Conal Byrne) is a fairly standard bank robbery flick.  A crew of thugs invade a downtown bank, take the employees and customers hostage, and prepare to loot the place.

There’s the usual assortment of big hulking tough guys.  But heading up the operation are a couple of women — sisters no less. Leah (Francesca Eastwood, Clint’s daughter) is more or less the cool brains of the outfit.  Sister Vee (Tamryn Manning) is a hot-tempered, fly-off-the-handle type (a role she perfected on “Orange is the New Black”).

There’s also their brother Michael (Scott Haze), on whose behalf they’re robbing the place.  Michael is deep in debt to some very bad guys, so the sisters view this as a rescue mission.

Among the hostages is Ed (James Franco), an assistant bank manager who sports a decades-out-of-style ‘stache and scuzzy sideburns. To save the hostages he lets the robbers know that most of the money is in an old vault down in the cellar.

Early on Leah poses as a potential bank employee and is told during her job interview that it’s hard to keep cashiers at this branch because people think it’s haunted.  Add to that our growing knowledge that 40 years ago this bank was the site of a robbery-gone-wrong and world-class massacre, and you can sense elements of the supernatural creeping in.

Sure enough, once the crooks are down in the basement drilling open an old bank vault weird stuff happens.  Electric lights flicker.

Turns out there’s more than just cash in the vault.

And there you have it.  The well-armed tough guys soon find themselves prey to a small army of shadowy figures who’ve spent decades locked up. Now they’re free to wreak havoc.

Yep, it’s pretty goofy. At least Bush and his players don’t let on that they know it’s goofy.

| Robert W. Butler

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“PATTI CAKE$”: Hey, mofos, let’s put on a show!

August 31, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

Danielle MacDonald, Siddharth Dahanajay

“PATTI CAKE$” My rating: B+ 

108 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Think of “Patti Cake$” as a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney teen musical for the new millennia.

As with those old M-G-M productions, the premise is hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show. But the details have changed.  Now the setting is America’s urban wasteland, the “show” is rap, and the language is, well, salty.

“My life is fucking awesome” announces Patricia Dumbrowski (Danielle MacDonald), a 250-pounder  who tends bar and is known around her backwater New Jersey neighborhood as “Dumbo.”

“I’m 23 and I ain’t done shit.”

About all Patricia has going for her is a way with words, spunk, and this vague idea that given half a chance she could be one of the great rappers.

Turns out that’s enough.  This is a movie, after all — probably the crowd-pleasingest movie of the fall.

“Patti Cake$” — that’s Patricia’s rapper moniker — is a winning combination of rude/lewd grit and warm good feelings. Over the course of Geremy Jasper’s feature debut audiences will fall in love not only with Patti but with her weird and weirdly innocent collaborators.

Like the Pakistani-American Jerhi (Siddhartha Dahanajay),  during the day a lab-coated pharmacist’s assistant but at night a high-energy parody of a rapper.  Or Bastard Antichrist (Mamoudzou Athie), a dreadlocked freak with one blue eye, a covert recording studio in a hovel in the woods, and an electric guitar that can etch glass.

Continue Reading »

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“COLUMBUS”: Architecture of yearning

August 31, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

“COLUMBUS” My rating: B 

100 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Columbus” is an art film with all the good and not-so-good that suggests.

This audacious feature debut from Kogonada (the one-named video director who creates special DVD features for many of the Criterion Collection classic film releases) is a visually brilliant experience that sometimes feels as if it’s in no hurry to go anywhere.

It’s been very well acted, but keeps its emotions under wraps.

Set in Columbus, IN, this hard-to-classify effort (not quite drama, certainly not a comedy) centers on Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), a recent high school graduate, a volunteer at the local library and an architecture geek.

She’s in the right town, since Columbus is a virtual showcase of buildings by modernist masters like I.M. Pei, Robert A.M. Stern, Eero Saarinen and Richard Meier. Casey knows these structures inside out; she’s even figured out how to sneak into some of them at night so that she can enjoy her own private reveries.

To the extent that “Columbus” has a plot it involves the arrival of Jin (John Cho), who has traveled from Korea to the States because of a developing family tragedy.

Jin’s father, a famous architectural historian, has suffered a stroke on the eve of a lecture at the local university. Now he’s in a coma and Jin, being the dutiful Korean son, is expected to sit at his bedside until the old man either recovers or succumbs.

Except that Jin and his father have long been estranged. Instead of hanging around the hospital, Jin looks for diversion, and he finds it in Casey, from whom he bums a cigarette and with whom he tours the local architectural hot spots.

Continue Reading »

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“MENASHE”: Bumbling toward heaven

August 31, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

Menashe Lustig

“MENASHE” My rating: B

82 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

It takes a while to get a handle on Menashe (Menashe Luskin), the hapless, rotund Hasidic grocery clerk at the center of documentarian Joshua Z. Weinstein’s first foray into fictional filmmaking.

Ruddy cheeked, balding and bearded, Menashe is like a clumsy, disheveled dancing bear. He’s got plenty to do at the tiny shop where he works in Brooklyn’s Borough Park — carrying crates, mopping floors, helping customers — but he’ll ignore his duties in a heartbeat if he spies an opportunity for a philosophical discussion on some obscure point of religious practice. His employer is perennially exasperated.

Menashe wants more than anything to live the life of a good, pious Jew, but fate conspires against him. His wife Leah recently passed after a long illness, and his rabbi has ruled that Menashe’s son Rieven (Ruben Niborski) must live with his holier-than-thou brother-in-law Eizik (Yiel Weisshaus). Tradition maintains that a child must be reared by a mother.

Remarriage isn’t likely. Menashe and his late wife did not get along and he much prefers the life of an ascetic bachelor. A coffee date with an eligible widow is a disaster; it ends with her eye-rolling diss of Hasidic men: “Your mothers spoil you; then your wives take over.”

Continue Reading »

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“UNLOCKED”: Betrayed at every turn

August 31, 2017 by butlerscinemascene

Noomi Rapace

“UNLOCKED” My rating: C

98 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Despite a “name” director and an impressive cast of solid B-listers, the spy drama “Unlocked” feels terribly generic.

Viewers may be forgiven for thinking they’ve seen it all before.

CIA interrogator Alice Racine (Noomi Rapace), on the rebound from a disastrous assignment that led to mass civilian casualties, is now posing as a London social worker, collecting evidence on possible terrorist activities within the Islamic community.

When the agency snatches a courier carrying messages between a radical imam and a terrorist developing a biological bomb, Alice is called in to break the captive’s will and get details on the impending attack.

Except that the CIA dudes running the interrogation seem a bit dicey…in fact, Alice finds  herself a pawn in a rogue operation. Marked for death by her own people, she barely escapes and goes on the run.

Among her supposed allies are a CIA bigwig back in the States (John Malkovich) and her agency mentor (Michael Douglas). Unsure who to trust among her own colleagues, Alice turns to a Brit intelligence master (Toni Collette) and at one point teams up with a petty crook (Orlando Bloom) whom she discovers burglarizing an apartment where she has taken refuge.

Peter O’Brien’s screenplay keeps us guessing; almost nobody in this movie is what they first seem.

There is much running around and the bodies pile up, but nothing about “Unlocked” is particularly compelling.  Director Michael Apted (whose impressive resume includes “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Gorillas in the Mist,” lots of first-rate HBO and Showtime offerings  and the brilliant multi-decade “7 Up” documentary series) keeps things moving but never makes us care.

| Robert W. Butler

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