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“EYE IN THE SKY”: The “clean” war

March 31, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

eyesky“EYE IN THE SKY”  My rating: B

102  minutes | MPAA rating: R

 

In the wars of the 21st century drones and robots do all the dirty work, directed by mouse jockeys on the other side of the world who risk little more than a case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

But even if you’re one of those remote-control button pushers, it’s still war. It’s still killing. There are still ethical consequences.

Gavin Hood’s “Eye in the Sky” offers a fingernail-gnawing look at this new kind of warfare. Scripted by Guy Hibbert, it’s a taut well-acted thriller that raises all sorts of moral questions — Hitchcock with a conscience.

Aaron Paul

Aaron Paul

At various points around the globe, high-tech warriors gather to capture a husband-and-wife team of Islamic terrorists (she’s a British citizen, he’s an American) operating in East Africa.

The actual takedown will be executed on the ground by Kenyan security forces. The operation will be observed from 22,000 feet by an armed American drone, the mission’s “eye in the sky” operated by an Air Force pilot [Air Force Lt. Steve Watts] (Aaron Paul) from the desert outside Las Vegas.

In charge of the overall mission is a calculating British Army colonel [Col. Katherine Powell] (Helen Mirren), who from her bunker in the English countryside has been directing a manhunt lasting more than six years. She can almost taste the long-awaited victory.

In a comfortable London office a British general (Alan Rickman in one of his last roles) sits with a group of civilian government officials watching it all unfold on closed-circuit television. They’re standing by to give their legal opinions and, ultimately, permission for the mission to continue.

But from the beginning the operation hits snags. The targets relocate to a village in terrorist-controlled territory where ground forces are denied entry.

A sole undercover agent (“Captain Phillips’” Barkhad [Barked] Abdi) gets close enough to set loose a tiny surveillance drone that looks like a large flying insect (apparently our arsenal holds all sorts of marvelous toys); from its fly-on-the-wall vantage point inside the house this tiny spy reveals that the residents are suiting up for a suicide bomb attack.

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“CITY OF GOLD”: Savoring the city, one bite at a time

March 31, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Jonathan Gold...dining out

Jonathan Gold…dining out

“CITY OF GOLD” My rating: B+

96 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Every big city needs a Jonathan Gold.

Gold — who looks like a hippie Wilford Brimley (big gut, rusty ‘stache, bald on top with long scraggly hair hanging down) — is the only food/restaurant writer to have won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. As Laura Gabbert’s insightful documentary makes clear, he received that honor not just for what he says about eating in Los Angeles, but for his depiction of the city as a living, breathing,  vibrant entity.

The son of probation officer who raised his children in a high-art environment (“The culture of the nation was flowing through our living room,” Gold recalls), he grew up playing cello, both in a youth orchestra and in a punk rock band.

Gold’s fascination with both the high and low end of the musical spectrum is reflected in his approach to restaurant writing. While he’s done haute cuisine, Gold’s real joy is the hole-in-the-wall, mom-and-pop restaurant (or food truck) that specializes in ethnic dining, sometimes in just one particular dish.

He has an astoundingly discerning palate. Chefs note Gold’s ability to pick out the various flavor elements and ingredients of even the most complex dishes.

As the doc shows again and again, an endorsement by Gold on the pages of the Los Angeles Times or the L.A. Weekly has the power to change the lives and fortunes of restauranteurs. The chefs he writes about and his fellow journalists all describe him as a hugely empathetic writer.  (One of the film’s main flaws is that it never examines the impact of bad reviews…in fact after watching “City of Gold” one might assume that all of Gold’s reviews are raves.)

Gold’s prose is wonderfully literary without ever dipping into pretentiousness. He writes about food with same marvelous readability that A.J. Libeling brought to the “sweet science” of boxing or Pauline Kael to movies. The film’s soundtrack often features Gold reading from his critiques. You’ve got to love a guy who rhapsodizes about a meal “whose aftertaste can go on for hours” and argues that “taco should be a verb.”

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“I SAW THE LIGHT”: Are you sure Hank done it thisaway?

March 30, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams

Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams

“I SAW THE LIGHT” My rating: C-

123 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The Hank Williams songbook runs deep and rich, which makes the shallow ineffectiveness of “I Saw the Light” all that much more dispiriting.

Williams, of course, was the country/western genius who in the late ’40s and early ’50s produced some of popular music’s most lasting tunes (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Cold Cold Heart,” “Hey Good Lookin’,” “Lovesick Blues,” “Jambalaya,” “I Can’t Help It,” “Move It On Over,” Kaw-Liga”) then succumbed to drugs and alcohol, dying at age 29 in the back seat of a limousine on New Year’s Day 1953.

The story has been told cinematically once before, in “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” with Coppertone poster boy George Hamilton in the lead role. That 1964 release remains the best screen treatment of Williams’ life and music.

Going in, my hopes were high for “I Saw the Light.”

I was looking forward to seeing what Brit actor Tom Hiddleston (a scene stealer as the evil Loki in the “Thor”/Marvel franchises) could bring to the role of  an iconic American country artist.

And there was hope behind the camera as well, inasmuch as writer/director Marc Abraham had helmed the solid 2008 biopic “Flash of Genius” (about the inventor of the variable-speed windshield wiper, who sued the Detroit carmakers over patent infringement) and produced films ranging from “The Commitments” to “Dawn of the Dead” and “Children of Men.”

Well, “I Saw the Light” gets the music right, though there’s not near as much of it as there could have been.

But as drama this one is dead in the water.

The major issue here is Abraham’s lack of a coherent vision. What story is he telling here? He throws around a lot of ideas but never settles on one that can carry the weight of a two-hour-plus feature film. Continue Reading »

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“KNIGHT OF CUPS”: Tinseltown wanderer

March 24, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Christian Bale, Natalie Portman

Christian Bale, Natalie Portman

“KNIGHT OF CUPS”  My rating: C-

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There lurks in “Knight of Cups” the makings of a pretty good travelogue.

But on most other counts the latest feature  from the increasingly irritating Terrence Malick shows him firmly stuck in the same prison of self parody that doomed his last outing, the unromantic romance “To the Wonder.”

Malick, of course, is the low-profile cinematic genius who back in the ’70s gave us “Badlands” and “Days of Heaven,” then moved on to offbeat period pieces (“The Thin Red Line,” “The New World”) before delivering his ultimate statement, 2011’s memorable (for all the right reasons) “The Tree of Life.”

“Knight of Cups” is ostensibly a Hollywood insider tale, a sort of “La Dolce Vida” look at feckless, amoral living among the beautiful people.

In fractured, impressionistic style it follows a screenwriter named Rick (Christian Bale), as he engages in romantic wanderings, professional and family issues, and hedonistic pastimes.

That description makes the film sound coherent. It isn’t.

Malick eschews conventional narrative construction and character development in favor of sweeping, swooning handheld cinematography of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the desert by frequent collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki (“Gravity,” “Birdman,” “The Revenant”). His characters almost never actually speak lines, except in the form of vacuous party chatter. Instead we hear their innermost thoughts, whispered in voiceover.

As for the story…what story?

Rick goes through a series of lovers, all of them willowy beauties whose personalities are best summed up by their pre-Raphaelite tresses. Presumably he has sex, although there’s nothing remotely romantic or erotic going on here (Malick has never done sexy).

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“PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT”: The lonely life

March 17, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Peggy-Guggenheim_web_3

“PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT” My rating: B (Opens Jan. 22 at the Tivoli)

96 minutes | No MPAA rating)

She never wielded a brush or a hammer and chisel, yet Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) was one of the most important art figures of the 20th century.

Born into a fabulously wealthy family — although her fortune was a mere pittance compared to that of most of her relatives — Guggenheim grew up in an environment awash with dysfunctional eccentricity. She seems to have failed in most of the so-called normal aspects of life (notably marriage and motherhood) but she had something few others possessed: a eye for recognizing great outsider art before anyone else did and the drive to push that art into the mainstream.

Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s “Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict” is the first full-length documentary devoted to this fascinating woman who was instrumental in the success of artists like Jackson Pollack, Wassily Kandinski, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Mark Rothko, Constantin Brancusi and many others.

The film benefits greatly from its reliance on a series of audiotaped interviews Guggenheim submitted to shortly before her death. Never before released to the public, these tapes allow her to more or less narrate her own life story.

She came from a clan of Jewish immigrants who grew from peddling to banking, amassing huge fortunes. Peggy’s father died on the Titanic. Her uncle would become the namesake for NYC’s landmark Guggenheim Museum. Murder, madness and tragic death seemed to stalk the family.

 

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“CREATIVE CONTROL”: Cyber love

March 17, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Writer/director/star ** and avatar girlfriend

Writer/director/star Benjamin Dickinson and avatar girlfriend (Alexia Rasmussen)

“CREATIVE CONTROL” My rating: B-

97 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Creative Control” is set in a near future of rapid technical advances. Human nature, though, hasn’t had a chance to catch up.

The impressive if sometimes muddled effort from director  Benjamin Dickinson (who also co-wrote and stars) centers on David, the creative director at a New York advertising firm.

The film’s world looks a lot like ours, except for some telling details.  The Soho district streets appear pretty much the same, as do most fashions. But inside David’s workplace, computers are now nothing more than translucent slabs of plastic that sit on desks and are operated by flicking one’s fingers across the screen.

As the film begins David — a tense guy in a high stress job — is drifting away from his yoga-instructor girlfriend Juliette (Nora Zehetner). She’s mellow and he’s…well he’s kind of Woody Allen-ish neurotic.

He finds escape in the new product his firm has been hired to debut. It’s a computer in the form of a pair of eyeglasses.  Called Augmenta, this system pretty much makes virtual reality a reality.  Whatever your mind can think, Augmenta can make it happen right before your eyes.

For David it’s an opportunity to fantasize about Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), the clothing designer squeeze of his best friend Wim (Dan Gill), a womanizing high fashion photographer.

With Augmenta David can not only conjure up a Sophie avatar in his head, he can augment her body to make her his dream girl right down to the last freckle.

Is this cheating? Adultery? Rampant chauvinism?

More to the point, what happens now that David cannot separate the real Sophie from the manufactured one he sees through the Augmenta specs?

“Creative Control” bites off a bit more than it can comfortably masticate. It simultaneously satirizes the ad game, our increasing dependence on electronic stimulation, and the sort of relationship foibles that have long been a staple of Manhattan-based romantic comedy. Moreover, there’s not much warmth here — David is a rather pathetic fellow whom we view strictly from the outside. (It might have gone smoother if Dickinson had chosen a more charismatic actor to carry the show.)

But the film is ruthlessly sardonic. And it’s been filmed in glorious widescreen black and white (the cinematographer is Adam Newport-Berra) with only a hint of color in some of David’s wilder imaginings.

| Robert W. Butler

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HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS”: Wallflower

March 17, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Sally Field

Sally Field

“HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS”  My rating: B-

95 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Hello, My Name Is Doris” shouldn’t work.

But it has Sally Field front and center, and the two-time Oscar winner demonstrates that she’s still got it even when the movie around her does not.

Doris (Field) is a 60-something spinster who, as “Hello…” begins, is burying the mother she has lived with her entire life. In fact, Doris has never spent a night anywhere but in the modest Staten Island home where she grew up.

In lieu of social lives, they were hoarders. Now Doris’ brother and sister-in-law are eager to clean out the house and sell it while the market is booming. The thought of living anywhere else terrifies our heroine.

At least Doris isn’t a total hermit. She has a job as an accountant at a Manhattan clothing design company, where she’s the weird old lady hardly anybody talks to. Her bizarrely colorful fashion sense (among other affectations, she always has a huge bow in her hair) produces much eye rolling among her younger, hipper co-workers.

Except that the newly arrived art director, John (Max Greenfield of TV’s “New Girl”), sees something interesting in this introverted lady who wears two pairs of eyeglasses simultaneously (because it’s cheaper than buying bifocals).

A little friendly attention sends Doris into fantasies of being swept off her feet by this attractive young fellow. And with the assistance of the granddaughter of her one friend (Tyne Daly), she trolls the Internet for info about her dream lover. Continue Reading »

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“THE BRONZE”: Hometown heroine

March 17, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Melissa Rauch

Melissa Rauch

“THE BRONZE”  My rating: C-

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

I spent much of “The Bronze” wondering what drugs (or combination of drugs and alcohol) might make it as funny as it thinks it is.

This staggeringly raunchy (yet overwhelmingly morose) comedy from Melissa Rauch (a regular on TV’s “The Big Bang Theory,” she stars and wrote the screenplay with her husband,  Winston Rauch) centers on Hope, a small town shrew who for more than a decade has been milking her limited fame as a bronze-medal-winning Olympic gymnast.

Hope retains the blonde bangs and ponytail that were her trademark as an adolescent athlete. She never goes out unless she’s wearing a red, white and blue star-spangled warmup suit to remind local residents that a giant walks among them.

She has her own designated parking space on Main Street. She gets free food at the local restaurant. For goods that cost money there’s the cash she steals from letters in the mailbag of her dad (Gary Cole), an employee of the  U.S. Postal Service.

Hope is profane,  hateful, conceited, mean-spirited, drunk, doped-up and entitled.

All that would be okay if she were also hysterically funny, but most of the laughs in this film either miss the mark or have such sharp edges that it’s like swallowing ground glass.
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“10 CLOVERFIELD LANE”: Misdirection

March 10, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

**, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman

John Gallagher Jr., Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman

“10 CLOVERFIELD LANE” My rating: B

105 minutes | MPAA rating:PG-13

Intensely claustrophobic and impeccably acted, “10 Cloverfield Lane” is a mind-messer of a thriller with a forehead-slapping payoff.

In the wordless opening sequence, a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) packs her bags and flees her apartment, leaving behind a wedding ring and a ring of keys.

She’s cruising through the Louisiana countryside at night — listening to radio reports of a catastrophic electrical blackout along the Gulf Coast — when she’s involved in a bone-jarring accident.

Michelle (that’s her name) awakens in a musty cinderblock room, her leg in a splint and a chain limiting her mobility. Enter big beefy Howard (John Goodman), who explains that he pulled Michelle from the wreckage of her car and brought her here, to a bunker beneath his farmhouse. She should be thanking him for saving her life.

According to Howard, the world has come to an end. He’s not sure if it’s the result of nuclear or chemical war. Maybe it’s the doing of the Russians. Or possibly space aliens. (The film’s title, a reference to the 2008 found-footage alien invasion flick “Cloverfield,” should put canny viewers on alert.)

In any case, the air above ground is deadly and Howard announces that they’ll be holed up here for at least a year or two.  But not to worry — he’s been planning for this day for a long time. The bunker has enough supplies and equipment to easily keep three people alive.

Oh, yeah, there’s a third resident of the bunker.  Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) is a mildly goofy good ol’ boy about Michelle’s age who for the last decade or so has been hired by Howard to work on the bunker.  At the first sign of trouble he showed up at Howard’s door. He seems like a doofus, but he may have more going on than can be gleaned at first examination.

Emmett assures the panicked Michelle that despite Howard’s ever-present sidearm and rampant paranoia, their host is an OK guy.

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“HITCHCOCK / TRUFFAUT”: Cinema genius

March 10, 2016 by butlerscinemascene

Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut

Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut

“HITCHCOCK / TRUFFAUT” My rating: B+ (Opens Feb./ 27 at the Tivoli)

79 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

By now it’s an article of faith among film lovers that Alfred Hitchcock was far more than a mere maker of suspense movies.

He was a true cinema genius who used the medium to plumb the depths of his own soul, his phobias, his impish sense of humor.

There’s no shortage of film-themed documentaries that have dealt in some way with Sir Alfred and his career, but “Hitchcock / Truffaut” introduces a new element by allowing Hitch to comment on his movies.

In 1965 French NewWave filmmaker Francois Truffaut sat down with his idol in an office at the Universal Studios in Hollywood. For an entire week they talked movies, aided by a translator.  The result was Truffaut’s classic 1966 book Hitchcock by Truffaut. 

Fifty years later the audio recordings that were the basis for that book have been utilized by filmmaker Kent Jones for this documentary. Continue Reading »

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