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“ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS: THE MOVIE”: Maybe with enough drugs…

July 21, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Edwina and Patsy

Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as Edina and Patsy

“ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS: THE MOVIE” My Rating: C-

90 minutes | MPAA rating:  R

Making “Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie” must have been a blast.

Think about it: A reunion of old coworkers and their beloved characters, awesome scenery in the south of France, and a never-ending stream of famous-face  cameos — Rebel Wilson, Jon Hamm, Joan Collins, Chris Colfer, Lily Cole, Jerry Hall, Lulu (yes, the “To Sir With Love” singer), Graham Norton, Gwendoline Christie, Perez Hilton, Stella McCarthy and more skinny supermodels than the brain can process — that turns the movie into a celebrity version of Where’s Waldo.

If only some of the fun had ended up on the screen.

Fans of the old “Ab-Fab” TV show will be bitterly disappointed. Newcomers will wonder why anybody bothered.

It’s enough to make you look back fondly on the “Sex and the City” movies.

The long-running ’90s Brit sitcom featured Jennifer Saunders (who scripted the series and this movie) as Edina Monsoon, a  hoplessly inept p.r. maven to London’s fashion industry, and and Joanna Lumley as her running buddy Patsy Stone, an aging former model who can rarely think past where her next alcohol/pharmaceutical fix is coming from.

It was a savage comedy about a couple of reprehensible people.

Eddie and Patsy are still reprehensible, but the charm has worn very, very thin.

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“WEINER DOG”: A dog’s life

July 14, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

WIENER-DOG-01“WEINER-DOG” My rating: B+

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

A new Todd Solondz movie should be approached with equal parts anticipation and trepidation.

Trepidation because Solondz’s take on the human condition is a grimly amusing collision of the tender and the terrifying. And because while other American filmmakers cannily hedge their bets, diluting the astringent bite of their messages (or avoiding messages altogether), Solondz appears incapable of delivering his shocking assessments at anything less than full strength.

Oh, he’s got a sense of humor. But it’s a comic vision so dark that many won’t find it comic at all.

His latest, “Wiener-Dog,” follows a format most famously established by the great French director Robert Bresson in 1966’s “Au Hasard Balthazar,” the story of a hard-laboring donkey who passes through the hands of various cruel or indifferent human beings.

But “Weiner-Dog” is also a sequel of sorts to Solondz’s debut feature, 1995’s “Welcome to the Doll House,” which followed the unhappy adolescence of outsider geek Dawn Wiener.

The canine of the title is a female dachshund bought from a pet store by a middle-aged man (the playwright/actor Tracy Letts) as a gift for his son, Remi, who has only recently beat a cancer diagnosis.  Mom (Julie Delpy) is furious — one look at her sterile, uber-modern home tells us she has enough issues with a messy little boy, much less a shedding, shitting animal.

Little Remi (Keaton Nigel Cooke, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Heather Matarrazo, the star of “Dollhouse…” back in the day) lives an isolated life and is thrilled with his new pet, whom he dubs “Wiener-Dog.” The pooch is the one touch of spontaneous joy in his chilly world and his love for Wiener-Dog only intensifies with his parents’ growing irritation with this latest member of the household.

For Wiener-Dog whines and barks all night from her cage, refuses to be house trained and cannot obey Dad’s frustrated commands (“Heel, motherfucker!”). And when Remi objects to his  pet being spayed, Mom delivers a ghastly story from her own childhood about how her pet dog  was “raped” by a neighborhood cur named Muhammud and died giving birth to stillborn puppies. (Like so many memorable moments from the Solondz canon, you don’t know whether to recoil in horror or collapse in bitter laughter.)

Following an epic case of canine diarrhea — recorded by Solondz in a long tracking shot that feels like a nod to the traffic jam in Godard’s “Weekend” — the dog is sent to the vet’s to be destroyed.  But a lonely veterinary aide (Greta Gerwig) adopts Weiner-Dog, aptly renaming her Doody.

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“THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS”: Universal language

July 14, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma

“THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS” My rating: B-

96 movies | MPAA rating: PG-13

That music is the universal language is one of the hoariest of cliches…which doesn’t make it any less true.

Since 2000 the Silk Road Ensemble, a band of international musicians spearheaded by classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma, has been making music that defies easy description.

“The Music of Strangers,” a documentary by Morgan Neville (maker of “20 Feet from Stardom,” that lovely non-fiction film about rock’n’roll backup singers), follows this esoteric orchestra from its inception to the present and across continents (including footage shot at K.U.’s Lied Center), offering plenty of ear-catching music and along the way highlighting the lives of several of the group’s outstanding players.

The film is inspiring, sure — the personal stories of some of these musicians are painful and the music is uplifting — but “The Music of Strangers” sometimes feels a bit like an in-house promotional effort. The film doesn’t shy away from criticisms that by participating in the Silk Road project these players may be diluting the indigenous music they seek to champion, but overall a feel-good mood carries the day.

The film begins by concentration on Yo-Yo Ma, who admits that he never actually chose to go into classical music, that it just sort of happened to him and he went along. The Silk Road project gives him a chance to branch out and explore other musical idioms.

Other segments focus on four ensemble members whose lives have taken interesting turns.  Spain’s Cristina Pato, who plays bagpipes native to her region,  is known as “the  Jimi Hendrix of the gaita” (in fact we see her tearing up the stage as a member of a rock band). She’s a live wire both on and off the stage and a champion of the traditional music of her often-overlooked region.

Wu Man is the reigning champ of the pipa, a Chinese lute, who grew up in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and felt she had to flee her country if she was to expand her world by playing with foreign musicians. Now she frequently returns to her country to encourage young people to study traditional instruments.

 

 

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“THE INFILTRATOR”: Breaking good

July 12, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Bryan Cranston

Bryan Cranston

“THE INFILTRATOR” My rating: B 

125 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Bryan Cranston became a household name on cable’s “Breaking Bad” by playing a decent family man seduced by the the money, violence and power of the drug trade.

In “The Infiltrator” he works an interesting variation on that setup. Here he’s a real-life lawman who goes deep undercover to undermine Pablo Escobar’s Columbian cocaine syndicate.

Director Brad Furman’s film (the screenplay is by his mother, Ellen Brown Furman) is a sort of police procedural enriched by intriguing psychological conflicts.

Set in the mid-1980s in Florida, “The Infiltrator” centers on Robert Mazur, a federal agent who comes to believe that seizing cocaine shipments is a losing strategy since there’s always more coming through the pipeline. A far more promising approach, Mazur believes, is to follow the money. The heads of the cartel can afford to lose drugs; they deeply resent losing their cash.

With the approval of his bosses (among them Amy Ryan and Jason Isaacs), Mazur creates an alter ego, shady businessman Bob Musella, who dresses well, lives big and has created a plan for laundering millions in the cartel’s ill-gotten gains. He begins by befriending the hard-drinking, whore-running street-level drug chieftains and rung by rung works his way up to the biggest movers in the Escobar cartel.

This is all very tricky, and Bob eventually finds it a challenge to separate the venal but charming Musella from his real life with a astonishingly understanding wife (Juliet Aubrey) and two kids. It must mess with your mind going from a coke-fuelled party in a topless joint to a cozy nest in the ‘burbs.

So that he won’t have to betray his wife by sleeping with a hooker (a gift from one of his new drug buddies), Bob claims to be engaged. A fellow agent, Kathy (Diane Kruger), must then step up to portray his trophy fiance. She’s a knockout, and you’ve got to wonder if under the pressure of their shared deception the two agents might not slip into a relationship of a more than professional nature.

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“THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS”: Animal frolics

July 7, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

secret-life1“THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS”  My rating: C+

90 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

The good news: There are some very solid laughs in the animated “The Secret Life of Pets.”

The not-so-good news:  The funniest moments are in the trailer.

This film from co-directors Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney (“Despicable Me”) starts out with a terrific depiction of New Yorkers going to work and saying goodbye to their pets. It appears our animal buddies have figured out how to move freely from apartment to apartment (open windows, fire escapes and ventilation ducts come in handy) so as to while away the human-less hours.

The ads promise an animal version of “Toy Story,” the idea being that when humans aren’t watching our toys and our pets cavort with impunity. And the animators have done a terrific job of nailing the characteristics of various canine and feline breeds.

But the film soon slips into what I call “runaround” plotting. I.e…run over here. Now run over there. Now run over THERE.

Our hero is a dog named Max (Louis C.K.) who is absolute dedicated to his owner Katie (Elle Kemper).  At least until Katie brings home a new dog from the pound, the massive and massively ravenous Duke (Eric Stonestreet).  A doggy version of sibling rivalry erupts.

But before long Max and Duke find themselves on the street and navigating the danger of the big city (Just like Woody and Buzz Lightyear, right?), including a manic white bunnywabbit named Snowball (Kevin Hart) who is leading a sewer-dwelling army of lost pets on a crusade against their human oppressors.

The voice cast is deep (Albert Brooks, Jenny Slate, Lake Bell, Steve Coogan, Hannibal Burress, Dana Carvey, Bobby Moynihan) and the animation is great.

But the middle portion of “The Secret Life of Pets” never feels like it’s going anywhere.

| Robert W. Butler

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“CARNAGE PARK”: What’s in a name?

July 7, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Ashley Bell

Ashley Bell

“CARNAGE PARK”   My rating: C+ 

90 minutes  | No MPAA rating.

You’d expect sleazy and exploitative from a movie called “Carnage Park,” and this one pretty much delivers.

Horror/crime purveyor Mickey Keating (“Pod,” “Ritual,” “Ultra Violence”) can’t be called original — his ideas have been lifted from several sources (“Hostel,” Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriquez) — but he has the knack for putting together a good-looking, effectively creepy feature on a bare-bones budget.

The film begins with two lowlife criminals, Scorpion Joe (James Landry Hebert) and Lenny (Michael Villar), tearing down a desolate highway after a botched bank robbery.

Lenny is gut shot and clearly on the way out. Scorpion Joe is a redneck egotist with a manic faith in his own invincibility.

Also in the car is Vivian (Ashley Bell), who had the bad luck to be at the bank protesting the foreclosure on her family farm. She was taken hostage.

dkdkdkdkd

Pat Healy

Basically this is Vivian’s story, and Bell does a nice job of tracking the character’s emotional orbit as she bounces between sheer hysteria and desperate survival efforts.

Most of the film takes place on the hilly, arid spread lorded over by Wyatt (Pat Healy), a Vietnam vet living in survivalist isolation. (The time is 1976, which frees writer/director Keating from any concerns about someone using a cell phone to contact the authorities.)

Wyatt is never seen except in combat fatigues, complete with helmet, gas mask and sniper rifle. He talks calmly enough, but the guy is clearly batshit crazy.

Apparently over the years he’s made a habit of kidnapping travelers on a nearby highway, subjecting them to hideous tortures and then holding big-game hunts with his prisoners as the prey. (He collects ears as trophies.)

Keating’s screenplay is heavy on flashbacks (providing backstories on characters whose deaths we’ve already seen) and oddball musical choices.  This isn’t Shakespeare, but the players are solid.  Healy’s heavy is particularly interesting.

Fans of gross-out cinema should enjoy this one.

| Robert W. Butler

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“NUTS!”: Goat glanding in Kansas

June 30, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Dr. John R. Brinkley...cartoon version

Dr. John R. Brinkley…cartoon version

“NUTS!” My rating: B+

79 minutes | No MPAA rating

John R. Brinkley has earned his own pedestal in the pantheon of flimflammery.

In the 1920s and ’30s Brinkley became a mega-millionaire thanks to his “cure” for impotence.  This involved transplanting goat testicles (goats being incredibly horny creatures) into the scrotums of human males. (I wonder…how many of the little boys born after their fathers underwent this unorthodox treatment were named “Billy”?)

All of this was done out of his privately financed clinic in Milford, Kansas. Not only was “Doc” Brinkley pioneering dubious medical therapies, he was also the proprietor of America’s most powerful radio station, from which he sent forth a steady diet of “hillbilly” music and editorials read by the Good Doc himself.

The Brinkley saga is a documentarian’s treasure trove, and with “Nuts!” filmmaker Penny Lane (that’s what her parents named her) delivers a hugely enjoyable yet deeply troubling look into a master manipulator.

The first thing you notice about “Nuts!” is its look.  While there are a couple of taking-head interviews and some old photos and home movies, “Nuts!” consists mostly of  a half-dozen  animated segments — each in a different style. These provide a sort of comic book spin on Brinkley’s biography…which as it turns out was pretty much a comic book from start to finish.

During  his lifetime Brinkley built a rags-to-riches history for himself. He was a masterful marketer and promoter of ideas and music.
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“OUR KIND OF TRAITOR”: Reheated le Carre

June 30, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Ewan McGregor, Naomie Harris

Ewan McGregor, Naomie Harris

“OUR KIND OF TRAITOR” My rating: B-

107 minutes | MPAA rating: R

With “Our Kind of Traitor” Hollywood may have gone to the John le Carré well one too many times.

It’s not that the feature from director Susanna White (“Nanny McPhee Returns” and a whole load of TV)  is bad.

It just feels overly familiar. PBS, cable channels, Amazon and Netflix seem awash in Brit espionage fare, particularly titles with the le Carré pedigree. “Our Kind of Hero” tends to get lost in the mix.

Stellan Skarsgaard

Stellan Skarsgaard

Brit couple Perry (Ewan McGregor), a university lecturer, and his girlfriend Gail (Naomie Harris), an attorney, are vacationing in Marrakesh. Alas, the exotic setting is doing little to alleviate their relationship issues.  Having sex seems like more of a chore than a pleasure.

Soloing at a local restaurant, Perry is befriended by Dima (Stellan Skarsgard), a garrulous Russian accompanied by a bunch of fellow Russkies whose sharp clothes do little to disguise their thuggish demeanors.

Dima drafts the reluctant Perry for a night of clubbing. The next day he schedules a tennis game with his new bud. And Dima introduces Perry and Gail to his family (wife, three or four kids).

Anyone who’s ever seen a spy thriller knows that the unsuspecting Englishman is going to get in way over his head.

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“THE BFG”: Spielberg’s sense of awe

June 30, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

bfg“THE BFG” My rating: B-

117 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

Among the great gifts given by young Steven Spielberg to the movies was a  sense of wonder.

Films like “Close Encounters,” “E.T.” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” are plenty smart, but they work because of the childlike awe with which Spielberg approaches his stories.

A 69-year-old Spielberg brings back the awe with “The BFG,” a fantasy designed to tickle the kid in each of us.

Based on Roald Dahl’s 1982 children’s book, “The BFG” (it stands for “Big Friendly Giant”) soars on a couple of terrific lead performances, astonishing special effects work and a droll sensibility.

The film also represents the last screenplay by the late Melissa Mathison, whose kid-friendly credits include “The Black Stallion,” “E.T.”  and “The Indian in the Cupboard.”

Ten-year-old Sophie (a terrific Ruby Barnhill) lives in a London orphanage and dreams of escape. One night she spies an immense dark figure moving furtively through the streets.

Confronting this vision she soon finds herself in Giant Land where she is a guest/captive of The BFG (Mark Rylance), whose job it is to collect and redistribute children’s dreams.

The BFG is a benign eccentric who converses in his own brand of Yoda-speak, tossing around tongue-twisting words like “frobscottle” and “snozzcumber.”

BFG is a vegetarian, but the same cannot be said for the other giant inhabitants of the place. These skyscraper-sized Neanderthals have a taste for human flesh (especially children) and bear appropriately gruesome names like Bloodbottler and Fleshlumpeater (their voices are provided by Bill Hader, Jemaine Clement and Rafe Spall, among others). Continue Reading »

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“TICKLED”: Playful sadism

June 30, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

tickled“TICKLED” My rating: B

91 minutes | MPAA rating:R

As if the Internet wasn’t creepy enough, along comes “Tickled,” a documentary so suffused with anxiousness and oozing such an intimidating pall that it turns even the childlike act of tickling into a perversion.

David Farrier is a New Zealand broadcast journalist who specializes in offbeat human interest stories.  When he found an Internet site devoted to “competitive endurance tickling” he figured it was worth looking into.

The videos showed young men being tied up and tickled by other young men with fingers, feathers, even electric toothbrushes. The videos are both playful and sadistic, seemingly innocent yet weirdly homoerotic.

But as soon as he began making inquiries, Farrier received cease and desist letters from Jane O’Brien Media, the company apparently behind the videos. The firm sent a trio of “negotiators” from the U.S. to Aukland to confront Farrier and threaten him with legal actions that would gobble up his time and resources.

Most of us would bail. Not Farrier: “I didn’t want to give in to a bunch of bullies.”

And so — with friend and co-director Dylan Reeve — he began sniffing around the world of competitive tickling. Continue Reading »

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