Yearly Archives: 2013

Instant Gratification: “Shadow Dancer” and four other good movies to watch on Netflix

shadow-dancer07

Pick of the week: “Shadow Dancer”: My full review is here. In this downbeat, unsentimental film that’s like a British miserablist version of a John Le Carre novel, an IRA terrorist (Andrea Riseborough) turns informant for an MI5 agent (Clive Owen). The film, made by “Wisconsin Death Trip” and “Man on Wire” director James Marsh, is short on thrills but long on mood, building an atmosphere of increasing paranoia around Riseborough’s beautifully controlled lead performance.

Documentary of the week: “21 Up”: Actually, every one of Michael Apted’s landmark series, following a group of British folks every seven years of their lives, is up on Netflix from “21” to this year’s “56 Up.”

Continue reading →

Madison-area drive-ins stay ahead of the digital tsunami

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Over the weekend, I wrote a story for The Cap Times on the precarious existence of many of America’s drive-in theatres. The future was already shaky for drive-ins (only about a tenth of the 4,000 to 5,000 drive-ins operating in the 1950s) still exist, and they now face an existential threat — digital cinema.

Most theaters have already switched from 35mm film to digital projection (in Madison, only the second-run Market Square and on-campus venues still show 35mm) as the studios make fewer and fewer film prints available. Digital looks better, it never degrades, and playing a film is as easy as pressing a button, unlike swapping and threading film reels.

But digital projectors also cost $80,000 to $100,000, and that cost has been prohibitive for many drive-ins. Now, as the summer season is over, studios have said they’re all but stopping 35mm prints in 2014, which could wipe a lot of drive-in theaters out. Honda attempted to draw attention to the problem with its projectdrivein.com contest, where fans got to vote for which drive-in theater got one of nine free projectors courtesy of Honda.

Luckily for Madison fans of retro al fresco cinema, our local drive-ins were ahead of the curve. Goetz Sky-Vu Drive In Monroe went digital last year, and Hi-Way Outdoor Theatre in Jefferson was one in the first in the nation to go digital back in 2010.

Read the story here.

 

“Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey”: It goes on and on and on and on

dontstopbelievin03

“Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey” screens Monday through Thursday at Point and Eastgate Cinemas. R, 1:53, two and a half stars out of four.

In 1981, while Journey was packing arenas around the world on its “Escape” tour, the band’s future lead singer was a kid on the streets of Manila, singing for his supper.

Arnel Pineda grew up poor, and for a time was homeless, performing for spare change to live on. His unlikely journey to the spotlight is chronicled in Ramona S. Diaz’s engaging but shallow documentary “Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey.”

Steve Perry’s voice was the essential ingredient in ’80s hits like “Open Arms” and “Faithfully,” and he left Journey foundering when he quit the band in the mid-1990s. They went on with a replacement singer, seemingly chosen as much for his physical resemblance to Perry has his vocal resemblance, but when his voice gave out a decade later, the band was stuck.

Continue reading →

The anti-cynical tonic of Cinematic Titanic

CT Group Shot

Did anybody ever deliberately start watching “Mystery Science Theater 3000” on purpose? It feels like every fan I run across (myself included) has an origin story with the cult ’90s TV series that sounds like this: “There was this show on, and I didn’t know what was going on! But it was just so funny, and I just kept watching more and more and more . . .”

That was from the woman sitting next to me at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee for “Cinematic Titanic,” which features five of the creators/performers of the series, including the trio that begun it back in its Minneapolis public-access days — Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, and J. Elvis Weinstein, along with Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl. (The trio who ended the series on Syfy in 1999 — Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett — went on to start the equally worthy Rifftrax.)

Rifftrax has focused on doing new commentaries for famous and recent films that can be synced up to your DVD, as well as live nationwide broadcasts. Cinematic Titanic has kept its focus on old movies, mixing DVD releases with live shows like the Pabst Theatre two-night stand.

Continue reading →

What’s playing in Madison theaters, Sept. 20-26, 2013

pr-02706c

All week

“Prisoners” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Sundance) — Once I heard that “Incendies” director Denis Villeneuve was directing this thriller, I had a hunch it would be something unusually dark and disturbing. Hugh Jackman and Terence Howard play fathers trying to find their abducted daughters, resorting to unsavory means when the detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) comes up empty-handed.

“Battle of the Year” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema) — Even by dance-competition movies, this one is supposed to be mighty cheesy, with Josh “Sawyer” Holloway leading a ragtag group of dancers all the way to the top. In 3D.

“Thanks for Sharing” (Sundance) — My full review is here. The ads portray this as some kind of fizzy romantic comedy, but it’s about one-third comedy, two-thirds drama, and all about sex addiction. Still want to take that first date to it? Actually, it’s pretty good, refreshingly grounded for such potentially salacious material.

“Hannah Arendt” (Sundance) — My full review is here. Barbara Sukowa plays the intellectual and New York writer who coined the phrase “banality of evil” to describe the Nazis, and took tremendous flak from fellow Jews as a result.

“The Wizard of Oz IMAX 3D” (Star Cinema) — Remember how you endured “Oz The Great and Powerful” and wished that you were seeing the original Wiz on the big screen. Now you can, and the 3D upgrade is supposed to put you righ there on the yellow brick road.

Friday

“The Punisher” (7 p.m., UW Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall) — Doug Goldblatt knows action. The UW-Madison alum was the editor on such essential ’80s action films as “The Terminator” and “Rambo,” and he’ll present his 1989 version of “The Punisher,” starring Dolph Lundgren as the vengeful anti-superhero. FREE!

“This is the End” (7 p.m, Union South Marquee Theatre, 1208 W. Dayton St.) — My full review is here. Looking back, I think “The World’s End” gets the nod as apocalypse comedy of the summer, but this raunchy and bloody comedy is a close second, as Seth Rogen, James Franco and others play themselves dealing with end times. FREE!

Continue reading →

“Thanks for Sharing”: A movie about sex addiction that rubs you the right way

thanks-for-sharing

“Thanks for Sharing” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 1:52, three stars out of four.

“is that even a thing?” one character in “Thanks for Sharing” asks about sex addiction. “I thought that was just something guys said when they got caught cheating.”

Sex addiction is a thing, although the movies haven’t done much with it, aside from the overwrought “Shame,” which turned it into an epic tragedy. Stuart Blomberg’s “Thanks for Sharing” is refreshingly grounded because it treats it like any other addiction. Substitute booze and pills for online porn and prostitutes, and this could be any other addiction drama.

While the ads are selling “Sharing as a fizzy Nancy Meyers-esque romantic comedy, in truth it’s about two-thirds drama and one-third comedy. Blomberg (who co-wrote the superior “The Kids Are All Right”) balances the light and dark well, and if the film goes into the familiar places we expect from addiction dramas, it does so with realism and empathy.

Adam (Mark Ruffalo) is a successful Manhattan environmental consultant who is five years “sober” with sex addiction. Yep, it’s the same 12-step program as any other, with meetings, sobriety medallions, bad coffee. He takes pragmatic steps to avoid temptation — he doesn’t have a TV, his laptop is locked in Ultra SafeSearch mode, and he stays off the subway, where close quarters can lead to unwelcome contact.

Adam meets Phoebe (Gwyneth Paltrow) at a gourmet bug-eating party (hey, no carbs!) and is smitten with her. She’s a cancer survivor and marathoner, and Adam is reluctant to tell her about his sordid past. But it comes out, of course, and the couple have to wrestle with trust issues.

Meanwhile, Adam’s sponsor is Big Mike (Tiim Robbins), a gregarious small-business owner who has both sex and alcohol addiction in his past. His sins were revisited on his son (Patrick Fugit), a former drug addict trying to stay clean. They’ve also got trust issues to work out.

thanks-for-sharing03

Thirdly, and most comedically, is Adam’s sponsee, Neil (Josh Gad), who is a straight-up pervert, rubbing up against women on the subway and taking upskirt photos of his co-workers. Forced into the program by the courts, he’s reluctant to go along, but starts wising up by helping a female sex addict (the singer Pink), a novelty in the meetings.

Like most addiction dramas, this a film about addicts trying to go straight, and the sober trying not to stray off the path. But the performances are uniformly appealing, especially Ruffalo’s low-key charm and earnestness in the lead role, and Robbins as Mike, who wants to be sort of a Super Sponsor to others so he doesn’t have to make his own amends.

The characters are connected through empathy, one helping another and then turning around and being helped in return. For a topic that could be so potentially sensational, and characters whose behavior is sometimes appalling, “Thanks for Sharing” is surprisingly affirming.

 

 

“Hannah Arendt”: A great thinker looks at evil through a haze of cigarette smoke

hannaharendt

“Hannah Arendt” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:49, three stars out of four.

In 2009, writer-director Margarethe Von Trotta and actress Barbara Sukowa made a film called “Vision,” about the life of a 12th-century Benedictine nun who fought against church elders over some of the doctrines of her church. Filmmaker and actress reunite for “Hannah Arendt,” another film about a strong-willed woman willing to defy all around her to pursue what she believes to be right. But this woman is by no means — for one thing, she smokes a lot.

Other than that, “Hannah Arendt” is a fascinating look inside the philosopher and writer, and in particular the one series of articles she did for the New Yorker that made her the most famous, and notorious. The magazine’s William Shawn (Nicholas Woodeson) assigned Arendt to cover the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann. As Arendt sat in the court, she didn’t see Eichmann as a monster, but rather a chilly bureaucrat who insisted that he was just a cog in a very large machine, serving his function, and as such shouldn’t be held accountable for the morality or immorality of that machine. When someone describes Eichmann as a scary creature, she responds, with a touch of wonder, “He’s a nobody.”

Arendt wrote about this in her New Yorker articles, coining the famous phrase the “banality of evil” to describe the atrocities committed by ordinary men who truly believe they are not doing wrong. The articles would come to change the way the Western world thought about the nature of evil, but at the time, Arendt was excoriated by her fellow Jewish thinkers as an apologist for the Nazi regime.

If they thought they could cow Arendt into recanting her articles, they had another thing coming. Sukowa (a frequent collaborator with Von Trotta going back to “Berlin Alexanderplatz”) makes Arendt a flinty, wily woman, always seeming to appraise people through the haze of her cigarette smoke. It’s both an amazing piece of impersonation and a subtle, canny performance that suggests the sharpness of Arendt’s thinking. But Arendt is not an unfeeling person — she dotes on her ailing husband Heinrich (Axel Milberg). She just has no use for nationalism. “I never loved any people,” she tells one colleague from Israel. “I only love my friends.”

hannah2

Like “Vision,” “Hannah Arendt” is a story of what happens when ideas clash with emotions, the individual against groupthink. The film ends with a stirring defense by Arendt in front of her classroom that should convince anybody, but her detractors on the faculty are unmoved. They see her as a monster, therefore her views are monstrous, therefore they will not even engage with them.

Some of the film is a little stage-y, and some minor characters in party scenes speak as if they are reading directly from editorials, rather than talking as human beings. But overall “Hannah Arendt” is an engaging look at a small skirmish in one corner of 20th-century thought that illuminates an age-old battle between reason and emotion.

Instant Gratification: “The Robber” and four other good movies to watch on Netflix Instant

The-Robber-DER-RAEUBER_additional-STILL-11

Pick of a week: “The Robber” — My full review is here. An Austrian marathon runner finds a new method of pushing his body to the limit — robbing banks in broad daylight and outrunning the cops. This thriller is as lean and mean as its protagonist, with minimal dialogue and stunning foot chase scenes.

Drama of the week: “The Kids Are All Right” — A lesbian family’s life is turned upside down when their children want to contact their biological father. What could be a high-concept premise turns into a comic and dramatic look at family and responsibility, with great performances all around.

Classic of the week: “Giorgio Moroder Presents Metropolis” — Far from the definite restoration of Fritz Lang’s dystopian classic, Moroder (heard on the latest Daft Punk album) added color tinting and an ’80s pop soundtrack.

Comedy of the week: “Love Actually” — Not all of the many, many plotlines work (Colin Firth and the maid?), but there’s enough good stuff, and certainly enough good British actors, to carry this tale of Londoners looking for love.

Foreign film of the week: “Poetry” — My full review is here. In this beautifully sad South Korean drama, a grandmother tries to make sense of her life, including her grandson’s role in a horrific crime, through a poetry class.

“Between Us”: Taking turns hosting the dinner party from hell

between-us-movie-stiles-george-harbour-diggs-kitchen-hr-blue

“Between Us” screens Monday through Thursday at Point and Eastgate Cinemas, check marcustheatres.com for showtimes. R, 1:30, two-and-a-half-stars out of four.

Most dramas would be content with one disastrous evening that ruins the obliterates the friendship between two couples, but Dan Mirvish’s “Between Us” opts for two. By the end of it all, I’m guessing nobody’s getting a Christmas letter this year.

A brief prologue shows the friendship that once was, between two talented photographers and their wives, Carlo (Taye Diggs) and his wife Grace (Julia Stiles), and Joel (David Harbour) and his wife Sharyl (Melissa George). In grad school, the photographers were inseparable, even as their friendly rivalry laid the groundwork for recriminations to come.

In the first dinner party, Carlo and Grace are invited out to the gigantic exurban home of Joel and Sharyl. Joel has “sold out” and made a fortune in advertising, “spending 113 billable hours trying to get honey to drip just right off a granola bar.” He’s filled with self-loathing, with extends to loathing everyone in his life, including the tightly-wound Sharyl.

The second dinner party — really more of an extended argument over milkshakes — happens a couple of years later. Joel has found some measure of inner peace, possibly religious-driven, and he and Sharyl have come back to New York to make amends. Only now Carlo and Grace are the ones at each other’s throats — Carlo’s run out of high road in his pursuit of being an art photographer, and living in New York has put the couple massively in debt.

Instead of presenting these scenes sequentially, the film cuts back and forth between them, creating mirror images of tension. Some may complain that it’s essentially a stage play on film, but limiting the locations and keeping the interest squarely on the characters works to its benefit — whenever Mirvish tries to break the theatrical mold, such as in a dream sequence where Grace imagines visiting Brazil, the momentum of the film dissipates.

Between Us

The dialogue gives the actors plenty to dive into, like a doubles match Neil LaBute play, and the performances are uniformly strong. Diggs finds layers of resentment and insecurity under his cool-guy exterior, and between this and “Silver Linings Playbook,” Stiles is coming close to perfecting the brittle spouse role. But it’s the lesser-known Harbour who steals the show, consumed by self-hatred in one scene, touchy-feely entitlement in the next, but all the while somewhat amused at the predictable downward arc his life has taken.

It’s the script that lets these four actors down, shifting the characters from real humans to broad types and back again. Every time we think we’ve gotten to something real, the screenplay inserts a “This is what a rich person would say” or “This is what a New York boho would say” line that pulls us back out. “Between Us” is a showcase for great actors who could have used more consistent material to springboard off of.

What’s playing in Madison theaters, September 13-19, 2013

FAMILY1-superJumbo

All week

“The Family” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema, Sundance) — A mob family relocates to the south of France’s in  Luc Besson’s high-concept R-rated comedy, which is not getting very good reviews.

“Insidious: Chapter 2” (Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema) — Geez, we’re only on Chapter 2? The PG-13 jump-scare series about spirits haunting ghosts and people continues onward.

“Austenland” (Sundance) — My full review is here. Most critics are panning this Keri Russell film, but I thought it was a refreshingly goofy entry in the increasingly formulaic rom-com genre.

“Crystal Fairy” (Sundance) — My full review is here. Michael Cera and Gaby Hoffmann are two very different Americans lost in Chile and looking for a magical cactus in this shaggy road comedy with surprising bite.

Friday

“The Great Gatsby” (6:30 p.m., Union South Marquee Theatre) — My full review is here. Baz Luhrmann’s attempt to jazz up the Jazz Age classic with hip-hop and 3D didn’t work, although Leonardo DiCaprio is perfectly at ease in the title role. FREE!

“L’Avventura” (7 p.m., UW CInematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall) — The Cinematheque presents a newly struck 35mm print of MIchelangelo Antonioni’s seminal 1960 Italian film. FREE!

“Frances Ha” (9:30 p.m., Union South Marquee Theatre) — My full review is here. Greta Gerwig absolutely sparkles in Noah Baumbach’s French New Wave-inspired comedy about a New York dancer finally moving into adulthood. FREE!

“Spring Breakers” (midnight, Union South Marquee Theatre) — Harmony Korine gives the people what they think they want in this candy-colored tale of guns and bikinis in south Florida. FREE!

Saturday

“The Great Gatsby” (6 p.m. and 9 p.m., Union South Marquee Theatre) — See Friday listing.

“Army of Shadows” (7 p.m., UW Cinematheque) — Jean-Pierre Melville’s grimly unsentimental thriller about the French Resistance only surfaced a few years ago, and it’s a masterpiece, suspenseful but also eloquent in the moral compromises good makes to fight evil. FREE!

“Spring Breakers” (midnight, Union South Marquee Theatre) — See Friday listing.

Sunday

“River of No Return” (2 p.m., Chazen Museum of Art, 800 Langdon St.) — Otto Preminger’s 1954 film follows a river rat (Robert Mitchum) help a saloon singer (Marilyn Monroe) find her husband on the raging rapids in this CinemaScope classic. FREE!

“The Great Gatsby” (3 p.m., Union South Marquee Theatre) — See Friday listing.

Monday

“Between Us” (1:45 and 9:30 p.m., Eastgate, 9:30 p.m. Point) — This lacerating indie film stars Julia Stiles and Taye Diggs in a tale of two couples who reveal secrets over the course of a dinner party.

“Dazed and Confused” (4 p.m. Eastgate and Point) — School’s out for summer in Richard Linklater’s knowing evocation of ’70s high school life. Twenty years after its release, we get older, but it still stays the same.

dazed_wooderson

“Paul McCartney and Wings — Rockshow” (6:30 p.m. Eastgate and Point) — Did you miss Paul at Miller Park? Catch him in his prime in this concert film, taking during Wings’ 1976 world tour.

Tuesday

“Between Us” (4 p.m. Point and Eastgate) — See Monday listing.

“Paul McCartney and Wings: Rockshow” (6:30 p.m. Point and Eastgate) — See Monday listing.

“Frances Ha” (7 p.m., Union South Marquee Theatre) — See Friday listing.

“Dazed and Confused” (9:30 p.m., Point and Eastgate) — See Monday listing.

Wednesday

“Between Us” (4 p.m., Point and Eastgate) — See Monday listing

“Dazed and Confused” (6:30 p.m, Point and Eastgate) — See Monday listing.

“Frances Ha” (9:30 p.m. Union South Marquee Theatre) — See Friday listing.

“Paul McCartney and Wings: Rockshow” (9:30 p.m. Point and Eastgate) — See Monday listing.

Thursday

“Between Us” (4 p.m., Point and Eastgate) — See Monday listing.

“Dazed and Confused” (6:30 p.m, Point and Eastgate) — See Monday listing.

nicole-kidman-new-stoker-stills-clip-08

“Stoker” (7 p.m., Union South Marquee Theatre) — My full review is here. Park Chan-wook’s American debut is an exercise in style, but what style, a Gothic thriller in which a teenage girl (Mia Wasikowska) contends with a mysterious uncle (Matthew Goode) who arrives after her father’s death. FREE!

“This is the End” (9:30 p.m., Union South Marquee Theatre) — My full review is here. Looking back, I think “The World’s End” gets the nod as apocalypse comedy of the summer, but this raunchy and bloody comedy is a close second, as Seth Rogen, James Franco and others play themselves dealing with end times. FREE!

“Paul McCartney and Wings: Rockshow” (9:30 p.m. Point and Eastgate) — See Monday listing.