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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Sugar,” “A Gentleman in Moscow,” “Apples Never Fall”

May 20, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Colin Farrell

“SUGAR”(Apple+):

The year’s biggest gotcha!!! moment arrives at the end of Episode 6 of “Sugar,” and it’ll leave you reeling.

And that’s all I’ll say about that.

But there’s plenty of other stuff to relish in creator Mark Protosevich’s smart, stylish and thought-provoking re-examination of classic private eye tropes.

Colin Farrell is at his absolute best as John Sugar, a private investigator specializing in missing person cases.  

Noir usually requires a protagonist who is essentially honest but bummed out and bitter, a guy sickened by the corruption of the big city but driven to discover the truth.

Sugar, though, loves L.A.  For him it’s like a trip to Disneyland.  For one thing, he tools around town in a vintage Corvette convertible while sporting immaculately tailored suits. Even when facing down despicables he’s gentlemanly, more curious than judgmental.

Moreover, he loves working in the motion picture capital of the world. One  of the show’s cleverest conceits is that he’s always encountering characters and situations that remind him of classic films…and brief clips from those films are scattered reverentially throughout the series.

It’s been said that everything we need to know we learned in kindergarten.  John Sugar learned  it watching movies.

Sugar’s current case involves the disappearance of a young woman bred of Hollywood royalty.  Her grandfather (James Cromwell) is a financial titan; her father (Dennis Boutsikaris) is a ruthless producer, and her half-brother (Matt Corddry) is a former child star now wallowing in a drug-infused career burnout.

Sugar appears to have no close friends (an abandoned dog becomes his main bud), though he has a sort of Girl Friday (Kirby) who assigns cases to him and is always warning against getting too involved with the clients.

And in the course of the investigation Sugar finds himself spending time with the missing girl’s one-time stepmother (Amy Ryan), an actress and recovering alcoholic who finds herself attracted to this cooly empathetic white knight.  (Aside from the missing persons case, the series’ biggest mystery is whether these two will ever make a romantic connection.)

Now all this sounds intriguing enough, but it’s only a prelude to the mind-blowing reveal that comes halfway through.

“Sugar” is so good it’s worth subscribing to Apple+ just for this one series.

Ewan McGregor, Alexa Goodall

“A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW” (Paramount +):

Ewan McGregor gives what may be a career-high performance in “A Gentleman in Moscow.” 

He’s so good that one is willing to overlook some of the production’s flaws just to luxuriate in his presence.

Based on Amor Towles’ best-selling novel, “Gentleman…” over eight episodes follows the life of Alexander Rostov, a Russian count caught up in the Revolution.  

Being rich, cultured, erudite and well-educated, Alexander seems destined for a firing squad.  He’s saved when he is credited (erroneously) with composing a popular pro-Communist poem; instead of death he is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel.

Which is ironic, since the Metropol, an art nouveau masterpiece, is a last bastion of Western decadence in the economically devastated USSR. The Communist Party uses it as a showplace so foreign visitors can experience posh accommodations while the rest of the country starves.

 Alexander may be an impoverished prisoner sleeping in a frigid attic room, but he’s free to move about the building, to hobnob with guests and staff.  He becomes a waiter…and the in-house wine expert. And he even creates his own secret salon, a sort of throwback to his former life of luxury, this time furnished with pilfered items.

The heart of McGregor’s interpretation lies in Alexander’s mix of fatalism (the old world order is gone and isn’t coming back) and his innate humanism, which allows him to see the good in all people (though in the case of certain Party die-hards, it’s a rough go). And despite his view of himself as a loner, he becomes a father — twice.

There are four basic plot threads interwoven here.

Initially there is  Alexander’s relationship with Nina (Alexa Goodall), the daughter of a hotel guest who becomes his best friend and guide to the wonders of the hotel (the child  has somehow gotten her hands on a master key.) Years later, after the grown Nina and her husband become victims of a Stalinist purge, Alexander will care for their daughter Sofia (Billie Garson), who becomes a brilliant pianist.

Throughout his 30-year stay in the Metropol Alexander will carry on an affair with Anna Urbanova (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a star of Soviet cinema who enjoys her decadent pastimes and especially the Count’s old-world charm. This is one of the series’ big flaws: I didn’t buy Winstead (in real life she is Mrs. Ewan McGregor) as a jaded European; there’s too much all-American girl about her. Sometimes it feels she’s playing dress-up in Mom’s closet.

Finally there’s Osip (Johnny Harris), Alexander’s bald, brutal KGB overseer. Osip is Red down to his toenails; he hates the nobility and is looking for any excuse to condemn Alexander.  But over the decades theirs becomes the series’ most intriguing relationship.  Initially Osip demands that Alexander spy on the hotel’s guests; eventually the thug finds himself relying on Alexander’s cultured past and obvious “people” skills to navigate the dark twists and turns of a Stalinist society. Weirdly enough, they almost become friends.

The physical production is sumptuous, with the Metropol Hotel presented as a sort of funhouse  wonderland.  We explore this castle from the cellar furnace room to the rooftop (as close as Alexander can get to the great outdoors), luxuriating now and then in the posh dining room and bar, and the luxurious suites…not to mention the back stairways, kitchens and offices.

Finally, there’s one aspect of the series that bugged me. Usually I’m all for non-traditional casting, but the makers of “Gentleman…” have taken it to extremes. Black actors here take roles that for historic accuracy should be portrayed by…well, people who look Russian. The Russian minister of arts is black, an American diplomat (in the 1940s and ‘50s) is black; even Alexander’s boyhood best friend (Fehinti Balogun) is black (and with braided dreadlocks, even). 

These instances took me out of the show and temporarily derailed my attention and enjoyment. 

But then I come back to McGregor’s display of unassuming decency.

Left to right: Alison Brie, Sam Neill, Annette Bening, Conor Kerrigan Turner, Essie Randles, Jake Lacey

“APPLES NEVER FALL” (Peacock):

First-rate players never get the payoff they deserve in “Apples Never Fall,” a murder mystery (sort of) about a hugely dysfunctional family that hints at becoming something dark and revealing before turning all soft and squishy.

The Delaney family of Palm Beach are local legends by virtue of running a tennis academy that has turned out the current world champion.

Mom Joy and dad Stan (Annette Bening, Sam Neill) are currently enjoying an uneasy retirement…he’s a bit of a boor who radiates possible violence, she’s a bored matron.

They’ve got four grown kids — played by Jake Lacy, Alison Brie, Conor Kerrigan Turner and Essie Randles — all of whom seem lost, professionally and/or personally.

Creator Melanie March mixes two genres here.  First there’s the arrival of Savannah (Georgia Flood), an abused woman (or so she claims) who washes up on Joy and Stan’s doorstep, is taken in my them, and slowly makes herself indispensable in ways their actual children won’t. Is Savannah a con artist? Dangerous?

Then there’s Joy’s disappearance, Stan’s stubborn refusal to cooperate with the cops, and lots of bloody evidence suggests she has been the victim of foul play.

“Apples Never Fall” dishes a ton of armchair psychology, a mess of subplots that do little more than pad the proceedings, and a jumbled time frame that makes it hard to figure out exactly where we are in the 7-episode story.

Finally, there’s a payoff that is more “meh” than “damn!”

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Franklin,” “A Man in Full,” “Secrets of the Octopus”

May 6, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Michael Douglas

“FRANKLIIN” (Apple+): 

 I love just about everything about “Franklin”…except for Franklin himself.

So let’s be brutally honest here: Michael Douglas as Benjamin Franklin? Just doesn’t work.

I’m not saying Douglas makes the series unwatchable. It’s not that off-putting.

But Michael Douglas the movie star is here wrestling with Michael Douglas the actor…and the movie star wins.  More on that later.

This 8-part series (the writers are Kirk Ellis and Howard Korder, adapting Stacy Schiff’s non-fiction A Great Improvisation; all episodes are directed by TV vet Timothy Van Patten) takes us to Paris in the late 1770s.  

Inventor/journalist/all-round Renaissance man Benjamin Franklin, now 71, has been dispatched by the rebellious American colonies to seek France’s aid in the fight for freedom.

Accompanied by his teenaged grandson/secretary Temple (Noah Jupe), the wily old Franklin gets to work seducing French society, determined to secure money, arms and men for the American cause. Meanwhile British agents are bent on undermining those efforts.

“Franklin’s” scripts are the very model of effective historic drama. The intrigues of the French court are presented in all their complexity (the French characters speak French with English subtitles); meanwhile more personal dramas are playing out. (Every time a character or situation popped up that seemed like a writer’s invention, I’d do a bit of research and discover that it’s all based on fact.)

Despite his age, Franklin sets the French ladies aswooning…especially Madame Anne-Louise Brillon (Ludivine Sagnier), a composer who sees in Franklin the possibility of sexual equality. (The series is coy about whether Franklin had physical relations with these women, but controlling his active libido apparently was a lifelong struggle.) 

Meanwhile in a parallel story line, young Temple finds himself seduced by the many vices of upper-crust French society.  

The physical production is spectacular; much of the series appears to have been filmed in the actual historic settings.  The costuming (and the ladies’s wigs, oh, my!) are sumptuous.

All good.  

And then you have Douglas’ central performance.  I’m not sure exactly how I envisioned Franklin as a personality, but this wasn’t it.  Douglas’ Franklin in grumpy, dour and, frankly, not nearly charming enough.

But what really bugged me was his hairline.

Portraits of Franklin show him with long locks, but bald from his brows to the crown of his head. Douglas, though, has a hairline positioned several inches lower than that.  

Another thing: the real Franklin had a physique not unlike a potbellied stove.  But Douglas’ Franklin is notably trim.

The overall effect is less balding old man than aging rock star.  I came away with an impression of an actor more concerned with looking good than with nailing an historic truth.

Jeff Daniels

“A MAN IN FULL”(Netflix):  

Jeff Daniels is so adept at playing good guys (he was Atticus Finch on Broadway, for Chrissake) that when he shows a dark side (as in the Western “Godless”) it’s a shock.

In “A Man in Full” he portrays a fellow who in another show might be a villain. But because he’s played by Daniels we get a more nuanced approach.

Charlie Croker (Daniels) is an Atlanta real estate mogul who mixes good ol’ boy charm with a cutthroat business sense.  The plot of this David E. Kelley-scripted three-parter centers on Charlie’s efforts to avoid ruin…he’s a billion dollars in debt to a local bank that’s maneuvering to seize his assets.

Now Charlie probably deserves whatever comeuppance awaits him, but Daniels is so good we end up rooting for him to find a way out.  Also, the bank executive bearing down on him (the great Bill Camp) is such a nasty piece of work Charlie seems benign by comparison.

“A Man in Full” is less about finance, though, than about characters.

There is, for instance, Charlie’s current trophy wife (Sarah Jones)  who turns out to be a whole lot smarter and empathetic than one anticipates.

There’s  his ex Martha (Diane Lane) and their son (Evan Roe), who view the old mover and shaker with equal parts resignation, affection and wariness.

And especially there’s a bank underling (Tim Pelphrey), a sort of milquetoast everyman seeking to redress old hurts.  He ends up dating Lane’s character…but whether he’s bent on revenge or actual romance (this is Diane Lane we’re talking about) even he can’t decide.

As directed by Regina King and Thomas Schlamme, “A Man in Full” swoops in, throws some dramatic haymakers and sharply drawn performances, and concludes before wearing out its welcome.

“SECRETS OF THE OCTOPUS” (Disney +):

Octopi may be the coolest animals on Earth.

That’s the impression left by the three-part “Secrets of the Octopus,” a Paul Rudd-narrated nature documentary.

I mean, an octopus can change its color and skin texture to blend in with its surroundings.  We see one of these creatures using tools…a discarded shell becomes a shield to protect the octopus from predators.

Octopi appear to show other signs of intelligence, including a sense of curiosity about human visitors. And despite a reputation for being loners, some species live in colonies and one displays a relationship with a fish…the fish serves as a hunting dog, sniffing out and pointing to prey hidden in the coral and sand.

Think of this series as an expansion of the Oscar-winning “My Octopus Teacher.” 

It’s almost too much (the three hours feel a bit padded). But the underwater cinematography is so gorgeous — and the creatures themselves so weirdly compelling — that you can’t tear yourself away.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Anna,” “Hans Zimmer: Hollywood Rebel,” “Bob Marley: One Love”

April 26, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Sasha Luss

“ANNA” My rating: B- (Netflix)

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Anna” is a guilty pleasure, delivering just enough cheese/sleaze to satisfy a viewer’s baser instincts but wrapping it all up in a clever storytelling style that keeps us on our toes and guessing.

I didn’t realize until watching the final credits that this spy thriller was written and directed by French icon Luc Besson…but I should have guessed.  “Anna” is basically a remix of Besson’s 1990 hit “La Femme Nikita.”

Both films center on a young woman recruited by a spy agency and trained as a ruthless assassin specializing in seduction and mayhem.

This time around our heroine is the Russian orphan Anna (Sasha Luss), a loner who becomes one of the KGB’s most relentless killers while working as a fashion model in Paris. Besson’s plot finds her undertaking a host of dangerous missions, often disguised by wigs.

What’s intriguing is the film’s structure.  After each kill the film flashes back to reveal that what we assumed about the mission was in fact wrong, that there were hidden intentions and meanings that shot right by us. With this setup what might otherwise be just a series of violent encounters instead triggers jaw-dropping revelations.

The supporting cast ain’t bad, either.  “Anna” counts two Oscar winners on its roster:  Helen Mirren is a delight as the chain-smoking cynical Russian spymaster who controls Anna’s life; Cillian Murphy is a CIA agent who tries to turn our girl to America’s interests.  And Luke Evans is just fine as the Anna’s field handler.

I was initially unimpressed by Luss’s turn as Anna…pretty but vacant.  Over time, though, one realizes that Anna is playing a long con on everyone…the Russians, the Americans and especially the audience. She’s revealing to each of these demographics only enough about herself to keep her plans in play.

Smart girl.

Hans Zimmer

“HANS ZIMMER: HOLLYWOOD REBEL”My rating: B (Netflix)

60 minutes | No MPAA rating

Checking out composer Hans Zimmer’s IMDB page is pretty mind-boggling.  The two-time Oscar winner has scored some of the seminal films of the last 40 years: 

“Gladiator,” “Dune,” virtually all of Christopher Nolan’s movies, “Thelma & Louise,” “A League of Their Own,” “The Lion King,” “Muppet Treasure Island,” “The Thin Red Line,” the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, “Black Hawk Down,” “The Last Samurai,” “The Da Vinci Code,” “The Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, “Kung Fu Panda,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Hidden Figures,” “Blade Runner 2049,” “Dune,” “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Not to mention a ton of documentaries and a little TV show called “The Simpsons.” 

Francis Hanly’s “Hans Zimmer: Hollywood Rebel” can’t really explain Zimmer’s astonishing productivity and creativity (“superhuman” doesn’t seem too hyperbolic), but it does provide in a neat, one-hour session an intriguing overview of the man’s life and career.

What struck me most about the German-born Zimmer’s work is his reliance on atmosphere and rhythm over melody.  Some of my favorite movie scores (Jerry Fielding’s work on “The Wild Bunch,” for example) are less about delivering tunes than creating a sonic background reflecting the emotional tenor of the scene. 

This is what Zimmer does so well, often working alone at a keyboard/synthesizer to create sonic landscapes that only later are performed by a full orchestra (or not…Zimmer excels at mimimalist arrangements as well).  

The man appears to be unflaggingly good natured, if dangerously obsessive about his work.  His grown children describe him as an absentee father, though in recent years he’s been working to make up for lost time.

His coworkers and the directors he’s composed for — James L. Brooks, Stephen Frears, Ron Howard, Barry Levinson, Steve McQueen, Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, etc. — can’t wait to team up with him again and again.

Kingsley Ben-Adir

“BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE” *My rating: B (Apple+)

107 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

I never saw “Bob Marley: One Love” in the theater. This may have been an OK thing, since I would have missed half the dialogue, which is delivered in a thick Jamaican/Rasta patois.

So let’s hear a round of applause for streaming service captioning.

Reinald Marcus Green’s film (it was written by  Terence Winter, Frank E. Flowers and Zach Baylin) is essentially hagiographic, but still compelling. 

We get the essentials on Marley’s brief but impactful life…his conflicts over the white father he never knew, his Jamaican nationalism (during the violent 1976 national election he was the target of an assassination attempt), his embracing of Rastafarianism (if you’re going to go whole hog into religious silliness, that’s the coolest option), his prodigious ganga consumption.

Marley is played by Brit actor Kingsley Ben-Adir, who doesn’t resemble Marley all that much but who nails his body language and stage presence.  Lashanda Lynch is fine as his wife and backup singer Rita Marley (and she has a terrific third-act eruption confronting her husband over his infidelities). 

But the real star of the show is the music itself.  It’s just one damn great song after another; Marley was reggae’s greatest tunesmith and lyricist, laying down spectacularly produced tracks that are yet to be equalled.  

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Manhunt,” “The Regime” 

April 23, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Tobias Menzies

“MANHUNT” (Apple +): A largely overlooked but crucial moment of American history gets an almost microscopic examination in “Manhunt,” a gripping and immersive dive into the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and its aftermath.

Created by Monica Beletsky (“Fargo,” “Friday Night Lights”), this seven-episode series focuses on Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), Lincoln’s Secretary of War who, as the show begins is celebrating the defeat of the Confederacy and looking forward to implementing his boss’s reconstruction program in the South.

When Lincoln is assassinated near the end of Episode One, it becomes Stanton’s obsession to find the killer and uncover a conspiracy that might lead directly to Jefferson Davis, the former Confederate President now in federal custody.

The assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle, doing a 180 from the selfless bomber navigator he played in the recent “Masters of the Air”), spends nearly two weeks on the run, determined to reach Richmond VA where, he is sure, he will find shelter and a hero’s welcome. Aside from his rampant racism, Booth’s salient characteristic is his ego…he’s a matinee idol despite lacking the acting chops of his more famous brother Edwin. Killing a President seems to him a pretty good way of achieving immortality.

As a history lesson “Manhunt” will be, for most viewers, a revelation.  

Killing Old Abe  was just one facet of a plan to bump off the major figures in the Lincoln administration. The killers missed most of their targets; eventually several individuals were convicted and hanged.

Though battlefield hostilities had ceased, a Confederate government in exile in Canada continued its attempts to manipulate events in the U.S.

Lincoln’s Veep, Andrew Johnson (Glenn Morshower), won a place on the ticket because his conservative credentials might draw voters dubious about Lincoln.  It worked and Lincoln won re-election;  with the President’s death, though, Johnson took over and jettisoned the former administration’s ambitious plans to bring hundreds of thousands of former slaves into American society.

The dismayed Stanton prophetically protests that the result will be a permanent underclass. 

Menzies, perhaps best known as the sneeringly vile villain of “Outlander,”  is spectacularly good as Stanton, creating a character whose conscience pushes him to act even when his body is breaking down (an asthmatic, he outlived Lincoln by only two years). When Johnson attempted to replace him on the cabinet, Stanton barricaded himself in his office for nearly three months to prevent the transfer of power.

Lincoln (Hamish Linklater) is prominently featured only in the first episode,  but is seen in flashbacks throughout the production. Getting more screen time is Lili Taylor as his widow, Mary Todd Lincoln.

The series revels in some of its minor characters, like Oswell Swann (Roger Payano), a freed black man who for a price guided Booth through a swamp;  Mary Simms (Lovie Simone), an enslaved woman who became a key witness in the trial of the conspirators, and Boston Corbett (William Mark McCullough), a former drunk turned Union soldier and religious fanatic who fired the shot that killed Booth.

Indeed, the series has been extremely well cast, the one big mistake being Patton Oswalt as a self-serving “detective” helping track down the killers.  Despite a luxurious beard, I kept expecting him to crack wise.

Matthias Schoenaerts, Kate Winslet

“THE REGIME” (Max):  As a black comedy about fascistic populism “The Regime” could hardly be more timely.

Yet it nevertheless wore out its welcome well before reaching its eighth and final episode.

First, the good stuff:  Kate Winslet is at the top of her game as Elena Vernham, the chancellor of a small Eastern European country whose outward charisma covers a host of insecurities (mold in the palace…eek!!!) and a casual brutality inherited from her late father, a former chancellor whose ghastly corpse resides in a glass coffin.

In the first episode we are introduced to Corporal Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts). a thug who eagerly butchered a group of striking workers and now finds himself promoted to the position of Chancellor Verhnam’s body guard.  It doesn’t take all that long for the dead-eyed Zubak to find his way into the boss’s bed and a position of real power.

We’re given a handful of nervous advisers whose main job is to keep the Chancellor from doing anything too ruinous while trying to ensure their own survival (sounds  lot like the Trump White House), and a chief of household (Andrea Riseborough, looking even more androgynous than usual) whose young son the childless Verhnam insists on raising as her own.

At its best, “The Regime” (it was created by Will Tracy) bears a close kinship to the savage political satires of  Armando Iannucci (“The Death of Stalin,” “Veep,” “In the Loop”).

Problem is, once having set up its premise, the show seems stuck in a loop, hitting the same notes over and over with few variations. Thank heaven for Hugh Grant, who shows up midway as a sardonic former chancellor now residing in one of Verhnam’s prisons. 

Production values are high, and the acting solid enough that I stuck with it. Still, I hoped for more. 

| Robert W. Butler

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“SASQUATCH SUNSET”: Life with father

April 18, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

“SASQUATCH SUNSET” My rating: B (At the Screenland Armor)

89 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Sasquatch Sunset” arrives with a reputation: Apparently at early screenings it set near-records for audience walk-outs,

Well, screw those guys.  

I found this bizarro fantasy from sibling filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner to be pretty damn wonderful, a sort of comic tragedy with no dialogue, a jaw-dropping matter-of-factness when it comes to bodily functions, and a cast of players so hidden behind fake hair and prosthetics that they are unrecognizable.

Unfolding in the what appears to be the forests of the Pacific Northwest (the luscious cinematography is by Mike Gioulakis), this is the story of a family struggling to survive.

Our protagonists are Papa Sasquatch (Nathan Zellner) and Momma Sasquatch (Riley Keough) and their two boys (Jessie Eisenberg and Christopher Zajac-Denek). They live a nomadic life, always in search of food.

Initially “Sasquatch Sunset” mimics nature films (or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that it’s like the “Dawn of Man” sequence of “2001: A Space Odyssey” blown up to feature length).  The camera captures these shaggy hominids foraging, interacting with other wildlife (elk, skunk, badger, cougar), and employing branches to construct temporary lean-tos for sleeping. They also horse around. Recreational play is part of their daily existence.

They don’t talk, exactly, but they do communicate through grunts, moans and shrieks. 

Periodically they will use heavy logs to pound in unison on tree trunks.  This is their version of jungle drumming; they hope to make contact with others bigfoot clans.   Alas, their messages elicit no response. Perhaps they’re the last of their kind.

The National Geographic aspects of the film are often in counterpoint to a thick current of humor running throughout.

There’s a slapstick encounter with a turtle, and much emphasis on bodily functions. (Like the great apes, the sasquatch throw their own feces at interlopers.) 

Papa Sasquatch is particularly amusing. He’s a hirsute Homer Simpson with a taste for fermented berries and psychedelic ‘shrooms. When his amorous advances are angrily rejected by Momma Sasquatch, he becomes fascinated by a log featuring a seductive-looking hole. (Thus cementing his genetic kinship with human males.)

About halfway through, though, the mood darkens.  We discover that the Sasquatch bury their dead, leaving little abstract sculptures of bent twigs on the grave in tribute.

And it comes as something of a shock when our hairy heroes encounter a tree marked by a huge red X in spray paint.  Later they will angrily tear up a human campsite (but not before gorging themselves on Cheetos).  And their minds are completely blown when they stumble across a roadway winding its way through the woods.

There’s no plot to speak of, just a series of episodes.  But over “Sasquatch Sunset’s” brief running time we come not only to recognize these animals as individuals with their own personalities, but as  representatives of a much larger struggle between survival and extinction. There might just be a lesson there for the rest of us.

| Robert W. Butler

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WHAT I’M WATCHING: “Ripley”

April 9, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Andrew Scott

“RIPLEY” (Netflix):   

Patricia Highsmith’s charming/creepy con man Tom Ripley has been a favorite of filmmakers ever since the character first saw the light of print in 1955.

Over the years he’s been portrayed by Matt Damon, Barry Pepper, John Malkovich, Alain Delon and Dennis Hopper, among others. 

So I approached writer/director Steve Zaillian’s new adaption on Netflix with a few misgivings. What could this 8-part series possibly bring to the table that I hadn’t already encountered in all those other movies?

Silly me. 

This is now officially my favorite Ripley of all.  Andrew “Hot Priest” Scott is both seductive and repellant in the title role, deftly sliding between charm and creepiness, between superficial warmth and a near-reptilian indifference.

But sharing star billing is the series’ use of Italian backdrops, captured in black-and-white footage so jaw-droopingly rich that you want to linger on every frame, soaking up the unerringly “right” compositions and mesmerizing interplay between light and dark.

In fact, cinematographer Robert Elswit just might singlehandedly make b&w a thing again.  The format has the almost mystical ability to capture and magnify textures ranging from worn marble to fabrics. This “Ripley” is more than a crime story or a personality study…it’s a freakin’ sensory adventure.

(Elswit uses only a brief moment of color…it’s at the end of Episode 6. Look for it.)

The plot is pretty much as you remember it.  In the late 1950s New York scammer Tom Ripley is recruited by a rich man to seek out the  wayward son who has decamped to Italy.

Ripley barely knows the young fellow he’s supposed to bring back to the States, but at the very least he can spend a couple of months living high on the old man’s money.

His target, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), is a wannabe writer and painter who has a taste for the expensive things — like the  original Picasso on his villa wall — that a plebe like Ripley can only dream of. 

In fact, our man soon realizes he isn’t satisfied with being Dickie’s drinking buddy and traveling companion…Ripley wants to take over Dickie’s life, to actually become Dickie.  Which will of course necessitate the real Dickie disappearing.

Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn, Andrew Scott

Two of the series’ episodes are devoted to depicting separate murders and Ripley’s coverup efforts. Zaillian has filmed these with virtually no dialogue, studying Ripley’s efforts to clean his messes and hide the evidence in practically microscopic detail.

Along the way he ratchets up the tension to painful levels…time after time it looks as though Ripley is going to be found out…and like a cat he somehow always lands on his feet. Whether by luck or strategic thinking, he always turns the odds in his favor.

“Ripley” is pretty much a one-man show, and Scott is nothing short of hypnotic.  You find yourself rooting for Ripley against your good judgment; there’s perverse pleasure (and in several instances sardonic humor) in watching him run circles around everybody…including us viewers.

It’s not entirely a one-man show. Dakota Fanning is effective as Dickie’s girlfriend, whose almost instant dislike of Ripley may put her in his cross hairs. Eliot Sumner has some fine moments as Freddie, Dickie’s fey friend, and Maurizio Lombardi is quite wonderful as the Roman police inspector wrapped up in Ripley’s wild goose chase.

| Robert W. Butler

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“CAROL DODA TOPLESS AT THE CONDOR”: Skin game

April 4, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Carol Doda

“CAROL DODA TOPLESS AT THE CONDOR”  My rating: B- (At the Glenwood Arts)

100 minutes | MPAA rating: R

One of the more obscure outliers of modern American social history gets examined in “Carol Doda Topless at the Condor,” a documentary that succeeds more in recreating a bygone era than in coming to any definitive conclusions about its central figure.

Carol Doda (she died in 2015 at age 78) was, for a decade or so beginning in the mid-1960s.  a household name. She was famous/notorious for dancing topless at the Condor Club in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood.

Doda was not a stripper. Or even an exotic dancer.  She did a standard go-go routine with the difference that she was nude from the waist up.

This was in an era when even burlesque stars wore pasties; by freeing the nipple one might claim that Doda opened the door to a whole new approach to public nudity.

Whether she intended to do so or was just in the right place at the right time is one of many questions Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker’s film leave unanswered.

The film does a nice job of establishing how San Francisco became “the off-season Vegas,” a nightlife center offering tourists a plethora of jazz and comedy clubs that earned the town the nickname “Baghdad by the Bay.”

Carol Doda was a waitress at the Condor Club.  But she delivered drinks with a wiggle and exuberant dance movies while wearing a white leotard.  Eventually the club’s owners suggested that she might do her dance from atop the grand piano on the bandstand.

At the same time fashion designer Rudy Gernreich was introducing his topless swimsuit (or monokini);  Doda and her bosses decided to up the ante by having her dance in the breast-baring outfit. Result: standing-room crowds and queues around the block.

Ere long Doda was making her entrance on a specially rigged piano that lowered from a hole in the ceiling with the star performer already on top and gyrating.  And she began beefing up her modest bosom with silicon injections.

Overnight virtually every club in town went topless.  The cops responded with a city-wide raid; Doda and her fellow topless dancers prevailed in court and as a result San Francisco became the  first city to recognize the legality of topless performance.

“Carol Doda Topless…” eschews narration and instead relies on dozens of talking-head snippets featuring Doda’s old bosses, fellow dancers, even bartenders at clubs where she worked.  

There are also a handful of female scholars attempting to establish Doda’s place in the feminist continuum, and they are wildly contradictory.  Was Doda exploited or was she a canny exploiter?  Was she a photo-feminist?  And if so, deliberately or accidentally?  

The film employs lots of footage of Doda being interviewed, but it’s just about impossible to pin down her personality. For a woman who nightly bared it all, she was remarkably shy.

“I want to be in show business and I don’t know any other way than showing my bosoms,” she says at one point.  In another interview she calls her act “another form of art, like a nude painting or statue.”

So who was this woman?  There are hints that she came to San Francisco after a failed marriage, leaving behind one or two children.  The movie raises the idea that Doda developed serious health problems as the result of her regular use of silicon  injections to maintain her breasts, but never comes to any conclusions.

In interviews she could be self-effacing, but there’s no evidence that irony played a role in her act.  She was a naked lady dancing. Period.

Doda never discussed her personal life; even women who worked with her for years knew little about her.  She is alleged to have had a liaison with Frank Sinatra; thereafter she preferred young men…one commentator suggests that guys barely out of their teens were more malleable and less troublesome.

In later life, when the topless bookings dropped off, Doda sang with a heavy metal band, did  phone porn, developed her own  line of face creams  and opened a boutique specializing in  intimate wear (apparently she would look at a female customer and know immediately what design and size of bra would be appropriate).

Ultimately we’re left with the sense that Carol Doda wanted desperately to be a star despite her lack of conventional talent, and had the insight or blind luck to find the one way to get there.

| Robert W. Butler

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“BUTCHER’S CROSSING”: Whale of a tale

March 30, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Nicolas Cage

“BUTCHER’S CROSSING” My rating: B (Hulu)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

An unintended consequence of the rise of streaming services is that the once-ubiquitous Western has been pulled back from the brink of extinction.

The oater is, if no longer the box office giant of old, at least widely available over the Net. What’s more, filmmakers are  making new Westerns.

Granted, most of them are cheap, indifferently acted and recycle  the same old revenge plot…which makes an aberration like “Butcher’s Crossing” that much more remarkable.

Directed and co-written by Gabe Polsky, “Butcher’s Crossing” is nothing less than a landlocked Moby Dick, a tale of obsession and madness on a sea of grass.

Our Ishmael is young Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger), an Easterner who has dropped out of college to pursue his dreams of adventure in the Wild West.

Now, a decade after the end of the Civil War, Will has arrived in the ramshackle Kansas burg of Butcher’s Crossing determined to hook up with a party of buffalo hunters so he can experience the wonders of this new world first hand.

Will finds himself financing a hunting expedition under the leadership of Miller (Nicholas Cage, with shaved head and untamed beard).  

A veteran buffalo hunter, Miller claims to have years ago discovered an isolated valley in the Rockies absolutely jammed with bison.  And not the raggedy leftovers being brought in by other hunters; these are prime animals, Miller claims. Their skins will bring top dollar.

There are two other members of the party. The one-handed cook Charlie (Xander Berkeley, unrecognizable) is an old coot whose religious mania may be an indicator of more serious psychological problems.

And then there’s Fred (Jeremy Bobb), a surly skinner who prepares the hides to be hauled back to what passes for civilization.

For all his outward show of competence, Miller is an unsettling risk taker, leading his party into the heart of Indian country (they don’t encounter any natives but come across the gruesome remains of a fellow who did) and choosing a route which has them running dangerously low on water.

Eventually they reach the hidden valley in the mountains. And it’s exactly what Miller promised.

He starts shooting…and won’t stop. Not when they have harvested three times as many skins as they can haul out. Miller appears to be on a quest to kill every last buffalo.

Which is bad enough from an ecological standpoint, but it also delays the group’s return to Kansas.  Trapped by an early snowstorm, they’re stranded until spring, short on provisions and with inadequate shelter.

Under these circumstances the worst in men comes out.

The screenplay by Polsky, Liam Satre-Meloy and John Williams is spare and economical. And while the film cannot overcome a meandering last act that left me wanting more, the journey to get there is gripping and harrowing.

The acting is solid without making a big deal of things.  One half expects Cage to slip into full eye-rolling mode to depict the madness of this prairie Ahab, but he never overplays his hand.  In fact, his quiet menace is far more intimidating than angry histrionics.  

As our young hero, Hechinger is mostly placed in the position of observer.  Yet I was particularly impressed by the way this kid is drained by months of fear and deprivation.  He starts out frat boy and ends up practically an old feller.

Special kudos to cinematographer David Gallego, whose images of a largely uninhabited landscape are mesmerizing (the film was short largely on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana), and to editor  Nick Pezzillo, who creates some hallucinogenic montages reflecting the characters’ mental and emotional deterioration.

The production values are solid, from the equipment carried by the party to the wrangling of the bufalo…if I didn’t know better I’d say some of these big shaggies can actually act.

(One small complaint…when will Hollywood realize that there exists in Kansas no town from which you can view a mountain? Just sayin’.)

Finally, the film doesn’t address the near-extermination of the American bison directly…although the opening and closing credits do feature old photos of piles of buffalo bones and bales of skins. The filmmakers have enough faith in their audience that they saw no need to preach — and it pays off.

| Robert W. Butler

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“ASPHALT CITY”: Urban jungle

March 28, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Sean Penn, Tye Sheridan

“ASPHALT CITY” My rating: B (In theaters)

120 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It’s been so well done that you’re compelled to keep watching, but along the way “Asphalt City” will have you wondering just how much ugliness and trauma an audience is expected to take.

Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s third feature is a grim, gritty and existentially challenging study of a young man going slowly bonkers.  But that isn’t immediately clear.

For the first 45 minutes the film employs a semi-documentary style (handheld camera, a cacophony of screams, the almost constant shriek of ambulance sirens) to sink us neck-deep in the daily grind of Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan), a new EMT for the NYC Fire Department.

Along with Cross’s partner, the much more experienced and disturbingly cynical Rutkovsky (Sean Penn), we are almost immediately thrown into the chaos of a shooting in a housing project.  It’s a scattered, splattered dreamlike (or, more accurealy, nightmarish) collage of pulsing gore, angry voices and intimidating gestures.

Basically the first half of the movie is a rapid-fire montage of what Cross and Rutkovsky endure daily: Heart attacks, overdoses, the ugly fallout of physical mayhem.  A bedsore-riddled patient in a cheap nursing home. A body discovered after weeks in fly-infested apartment. 

Many of the people they serve speak no English and are antagonistic whenever anyone in a uniform shows up. Like the middle-aged female junkie brought back from the edge who cusses out her saviors for not letting her out of the ambulance to score.

“We cant save everyone, not even with all the toys and the training,” Rutkovsky tells the newbie.

The screenplay (by Ben Mac Brown, Shannon Burke and Ryan King) doesn’t provide Cross with much respite in his off-duty hours. He  sublets a beyond-shabby room in a China Town tenement; he’s hoping to save enough money for medical school…if he can pass the entrance exams.

About the only calming element in his world is a young single mother (Raquel Nave) he meets at a dance club; the mostly wordless scenes between the two are frankly intimate, but the effect is less eroticism  than lyrical escapism. For a minute, anyway, Cross can forget the horrors of his workday.

After 45 minutes “Asphalt City” tones down the frantic editing and bobbling camerawork and settles down enough to dig a bit into its characters.

Rutkovsiy introduces the kid to a woman (Kathleen Waterston) who wryly identifies herself as “the most recent ex-wife and mother of his only child.” Indeed, in the presence of his young daughter the grizzled Rutkovsky is all gentleness and loving language.

A couple of segments stand out for their fierceness.  In one Rutkovsky loses it and attacks a surly wife beater; in another the pair frantically work on a young woman (“True Detective’s” Kali Reis) found in a blood-soaked bed.  She has given birth to what appears to be a dead baby. Plus she used heroin to try to dull the pain of labor.

Slowly it dawns on us that Cross is losing it.  Initially he sees himself as a good guy (out of uniform  he sports a flashy red jacket with angel wings embroidered on the shoulders), but no one could remain unaffected by the daily diet of anger and anger’s bloody fallout.

“We carry the misery and nobody gives two shits about it,” observes one of the EMTs.

Indeed, among the paramedics the most effective retirement plan seems to be  suicide.

“Asphalt City” ends on a more-or-less upbeat note, but not before pushing its young protagonist into primal scream territory.

Along the way it delivers a few notable surprises.

Mike Tyson (yes, that Mike Tyson) is absolutely believable as a tough/weary NYFD chief in charge of the EMTs.

Michael Pitt (where’s he been for the last decade?) is astonishingly good as a soul-dead paramedic  perfectly happy to deny treatment to a wounded drug dealer — if the creep dies in the back of an ambulance it would be a public service.

And there’s a small army of performers (I’m guessing relatively few of them are professional actors) who are devastatingly effective as the New Yorkers our heroes encounter on their runs.

In its last 20  minutes “Asphalt City” flirts with pretentiousness. But by then it’s earned our trust.

| Robert W. Butler

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“DAMSEL”: “Princess Bride” meets “Die Hard”

March 28, 2024 by butlerscinemascene

Millie Bobby Brown

“DAMSEL” My rating: B- (Netflix)

110 minutes | MPAA: PG-13

The female-centric actioner “Damsel” is, in a weird way, a twisty homage to “The Princess Bride.”

Except that whereas the title character that 1987 classic was an imperiled  beauty who relied on brawling menfolk for a rescue, in “Damsel” it’s the princess who kicks ass.

Bonus points: Robin Wright, who of course played Princess Buttercup back in the day, is this time around cast as a beautiful/evil queen in the classic Disney tradition.

“Damsel” stars Millie Bobby Brown as a fairy tale princess who  singlehandedly takes on a fire-breathing dragon. Brown became a near-household word for her work (beginning at age 12)  in the “Stranger Things” series, had a supporting role in “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” and proved quite charming as a Victorian-era teen sleuth in “Enola Holmes.”

One hopes that some day soon she will tackle a role commensurate with her talent.  But for now we’ll have to be content with lightweight diversions like this one.

Brown’s Elodie is the daughter of the provincial Lord Bamford (Ray Winstone) who rules a fairly inhospitable region of the film’s Middle Earth-ish world.  Bayford’s realm is always on the verge of starvation/bankruptcy, so when a marriage proposal arrives from a much more wealthy kingdom he jumps at the chance to benefit his people by marrying off Elodie.

In due course Elodie and Prince Henry (Nick Robinson) are wed in an elaborate ceremony in the crazily ornate castle lorded over by Henry’s Mom, Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright). 

Elodie finds herself falling for Henry…until she finds herself falling literally down a chasm into the dragon’s lair.  Seems that Isabella’s family has for centuries been placating the dragon with sacrificial virgins…Elodie discovers the remains of earlier brides as she navigates a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers.

“Damsel” plays something like a “Die Hard” parody, with Elodie overcoming her panic to get down to the task of evading and hopefully eliminating the great beast. Think of the dragon’s mountain lair as a Medieval version of a high-rise office building.

Despite some gruesome fiery deaths, this film from director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo may be too sanitized for hard-core action fans.  The ideal audience appears to be young girls, who will glom onto the sword-waving heroine while overlooking some of the more creaky plot points.

No biggie, but a decent enough way to pass a couple of hours.

| Robert W. Butler

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