Laemmle's Playhouse 7

7:30 PM

Has anyone ever been so perfectly cast as Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused? Sculpted entirely of charisma and cheekbones yet still seedier than a stash of gym-locker pot, McConaughey’s radiant stoner exemplified high school promise gone... More »

Has anyone ever been so perfectly cast as Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused? Sculpted entirely of charisma and cheekbones yet still seedier than a stash of gym-locker pot, McConaughey’s radiant stoner exemplified high school promise gone bad. He looked like the little man of top of trophies, just horny, stupid, sapped of ambition and only likely to use his physical gifts for the least public-spirited of ends. Mud, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, is the latest in McConaughey’s campaign for re-consideration as a great American actor. He plays full burnout, a starving fugitive hiding out on a small island in the Mississippi. When discovered by a pair of likable local kids, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), McConaughey lays out the backstory you might wish was more original. There’s a woman he’s waiting for, a crime of chivalrous passion, the usual thugs out to get him. Will the kids keep his secret—and even help him get where he’s going? The mode here is boys’ adventure, Twain and Great Expectations mixed up with rural naturalism. The boys talk about “titties” and wear camo pants; early on we see them pilot a small boat down the tributary they live on and into the great Mississippi itself, a rousing sequence that suggests the danger and wildness of the adulthood they’re surging toward. At moments like this, Mud is honest and involving, touched with life as it’s actually lived. Too bad it settles into melodrama. The climax feels copy-pasted from episodes of Justified, the action comically out of proportion to the small story preceding it. « Less

(1:00 PM), (4:00 PM), 7:00 PM, 9:55 PM

(12:00 PM), 9:55 PM

Turn on your spaceships and fire up the jukebox. In writer-director Paul Bunnell's supremely ridiculous tale, 1950s-style rebel Johnny X (Will Keenan) and his coed gang of dropouts, the Ghastly Ones, are exiled to Earth from their faraway planet.... More »

Turn on your spaceships and fire up the jukebox. In writer-director Paul Bunnell's supremely ridiculous tale, 1950s-style rebel Johnny X (Will Keenan) and his coed gang of dropouts, the Ghastly Ones, are exiled to Earth from their faraway planet. Their crime, it seems, is performing selfish deeds involving a powerful device called the Resurrection Suit (guess what it does). One year later, at a desert diner, they meet an opportunistic concert promoter who knows the whereabouts of a man Johnny has been seeking: aging rock 'n' roll singer Mickey Flynn (Creed Bratton, having a ball). Meanwhile, Johnny’s ex-girlfriend joins forces with a nebbishy soda jerk to keep Johnny from reuniting with the Resurrection Suit once and for all. Musical numbers add sass to the proceedings, but Grease this ain’t, and the lackluster songs and questionable singing abilities of the cast makes this at times feel like a high school theater production. The movie works in fleeting moments when it eases its death grip on eye-rollingly obvious homages to sci-fi B-movies and clichéd 1950s teen-speak (think "Daddy-o"s and finger-snapping) and embraces its own brand of irreverent weirdness. The script, while as uneven as the dusty desert roads the characters cruise in their Thunderbirds, offers up a few funny one-liners and sight gags. Who knows; The Ghastly Love of Johnny X could be another so-bad-it's-passable-entertainment cult hit Gen Y never knew it wanted. « Less

9:55 PM

Coming fast on the heels of revelations confirming that the CIA indeed had a hand in shaping the script for Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, here’s documentarian Michael Singh's examination of the ways U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East is... More »

Coming fast on the heels of revelations confirming that the CIA indeed had a hand in shaping the script for Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, here’s documentarian Michael Singh's examination of the ways U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East is tightly tied to the images of Arabs and Muslims that appear in American and European media. A crash course in history, politics, and social science, Valentino's Ghost is both sobering and illuminating, and its execution is thrilling. Singh deftly weaves newspaper articles, interviews with academics (Harvard's Niall Ferguson, George Washington University’s Melani McAlister), and archival newscasts, with clips from films including Rudolph Valentino's silent classic The Sheik, Otto Preminger's Exodus, and 2000's Rules of Engagement, among others. Singh tracks the evolution of America’s relationship to the Middle East from benign indifference to fear and loathing, with a brief stopover in mass-market exoticism. Fueling the shifts have been struggles for control of the region's natural resources, and the plight of the Palestinians, toward whom the film is unabashedly sympathetic. There is also subtlety and drollness on display. Early in Ghost, Singh drops a clip from Rules of Engagement in which a young boy asks his mother (Anne Archer) why the mob of Arabs is protesting outside their hotel. The mother vaguely replies, "They're upset about some things, darling." It's a moment that encapsulates not only the vague grasp many in the West have on the issues, but the way our government and media talk down to us when we do ask questions. « Less

(12:00 PM), (2:10 PM)

"You use big words to say simple things," says Augustine (Soko), an illiterate kitchen maid, to the esteemed doctor treating her for the distinctly female malady "hysteria." This would be a show of boilerplate feistiness in most films, but in... More »

"You use big words to say simple things," says Augustine (Soko), an illiterate kitchen maid, to the esteemed doctor treating her for the distinctly female malady "hysteria." This would be a show of boilerplate feistiness in most films, but in writer-director Alice Winocour's Augustine, it stands as a subtler, more complex victory. Having been largely silent or monosyllabic for much of the film, subjected to all manner of brutal poking and prodding in the name of science, the fact that she has spoken at all is something of a defiant act, a signal of her emerging sense of self. Augustine was a real life figure, subject of a case-study by Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, a pioneering 19th-century French neurologist who claimed Freud as a student. The doctor (played by Vincent Lindon) was a formidable man, a celebrity who revolutionized the ways patients were diagnosed and treated while also forging breakthroughs in conceptualizing the workings of the brain itself (thus setting the stage for modern neurology). But according to Winocour's film, his bedside manner was often unthinkingly cruel. Charcot's brusque manner, the way he ignores Augustine's questions and callously manhandles her nude body, underscores an imbalance of power that has everything to do with differences in gender and class. He wields that power in an especially punitive way once his sexual attraction to his star patient gets the better of him. Gorgeously shot, lavishly costumed, and well acted, Augustine is something of a paradox, simultaneously passionate and dispassionate, its ending tethered to both bruised triumph and a sense of things falling apart. « Less

(2:10 PM), (4:40 PM), 7:20 PM

Would you sign on for three months in shark-infested waters on a tippy raft under a captain who can't swim? The shrewdest joke in the surefire Kon-Tiki-- a film about Thor Heyerdahl's 4,000-mile South Pacific expedition to prove that ocean-faring... More »

Would you sign on for three months in shark-infested waters on a tippy raft under a captain who can't swim? The shrewdest joke in the surefire Kon-Tiki-- a film about Thor Heyerdahl's 4,000-mile South Pacific expedition to prove that ocean-faring Incans could have settled Tahiti-- is that practically every character Heyerdahl meets can't wait to join his suicide trip. Co-directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg have scared up the kroner to make a handsome Norwegian feature about Heyerdahl's 1947 journey-- and, rather than risk a redubbing, they shot this English-language twin at the same time, with the same actors. As passive drift gives way to seasonal currents, Kon-Tiki works up a nice head of storytelling steam. Still, exciting as they are, we've sailed these sea lanes before. Anybody who owed as much to a loan shark as these filmmakers owe to Steven Spielberg would be dead by now. Tick 'em off as they go by: the shooting star against an inky sky, the claustrophobic shark cage, plus more bristling dorsal fins than your average stegosaurus. Without conspicuously meaning to, Kon-Tiki raises a question that remains ticklish among explorers and filmmakers both: Who, finally, gets the credit? At the climax, the hero galumphs proudly ashore in Polynesia-- with the sailors who risked their lives staggering along behind. Does heroism always have to mean hogging the frame once within reach of the loving cup? As usual, posterity gets the last laugh: Most anthropologists today think Heyerdahl was wrong about the settlement of Polynesia. Won an Oscar, though. « Less

(1:50 PM), (4:50 PM)

Jean-Luc Godard said, "All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun." But really, all you need is a girl, preferably a charismatic one with a secret in her heart. Director and actress Sarah Polley has found that girl: her own mother. Polley's... More »

Jean-Luc Godard said, "All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun." But really, all you need is a girl, preferably a charismatic one with a secret in her heart. Director and actress Sarah Polley has found that girl: her own mother. Polley's documentary, Stories We Tell, attempts to unravel some of the mysteries of her own family's life. This wondrous, absorbing little picture covers a great deal of winding meta-territory, reflecting on the ways in which a single family's story can be told—or maybe, more accurately, examining the idea that there’s no such thing as a "single story." One girl, as Sarah Polley learns, can actually be many girls in one. Polley opens by introducing us to her cast of characters: her father, Michael Polley, an assortment of family friends, and various siblings and stepsiblings, all of whom look a little like Polley-- and yet don't. The director has assembled this tribunal to reassemble the story of her late mother, Diane, a woman we get to know gradually through home-movie footage, re-creations that have the look and feel of that home-movie footage, and recollections from the people who knew and loved her. She shapes the picture into a riddle that keeps us guessing every minute, and what she ends up with is so oddly shaped that it could be categorized an experimental film. But it's too warm to be off-putting. There's no way, Polley concludes, to tell a reliably true tale. But this particular story, which begins and ends with a woman’s face, feels true enough. « Less

(1:50 PM), (4:30 PM), 7:20 PM, 10:00 PM

Until his arrest in 1986, most people believed Richard Kuklinski to be an all-American family man. In reality this suburban New Jersey "banker" made his fortune working as hit man for the Mafia, killing over 100 people and often freezing and... More »

Until his arrest in 1986, most people believed Richard Kuklinski to be an all-American family man. In reality this suburban New Jersey "banker" made his fortune working as hit man for the Mafia, killing over 100 people and often freezing and dismembering their bodies to obscure the time of death. Depicted in the tone of a film noir and tinged with the tensions of a horror movie, Ariel Vromen's The Iceman follows this sociopath over the course of his career. Michael Shannon portrays Kuklinski in his dual lives, the highs of success spliced with acts of brutal murder, from the courtship with his wife, Barbara (played by a doe-eyed and anxious Winona Ryder), to his induction into a mob run by Ray Liotta, and a temporary partnership with a bohemian hit man who drives a Mr. Freezy truck (Chris Evans, untamed). Shannon gives an unnerving performance as a man caged in a cruel apathy, maintaining a controlled façade that seems to twitch with barely sublimated distress. Vromen hints at the motivations behind the psyche of a killer-- an abusive father and a Catholic yet godless upbringing (see James Franco cameo)-- and allows fragments of sympathy to slip in for Kuklinski and the fate set out for him from the film's clanking start: a life behind bars. The slasher gore is lightened with moments of humor, like David Schwimmer's handlebar mustache and dopey portrayal as Liotta's right-hand man, which elicits unintentional laughter. Ultimately The Iceman is a blend of Mafia-film cliché and the jarring reality of lives undone by crime. « Less

(4:20 PM), 7:10 PM, 9:45 PM

Some things are charming about European films that ape Hollywood, the same way that seeing yourself reflected through a funhouse mirror can be. The sentiments aren’t quite as saccharine. The obnoxious characters are a touch nastier. Some subplots... More »

Some things are charming about European films that ape Hollywood, the same way that seeing yourself reflected through a funhouse mirror can be. The sentiments aren’t quite as saccharine. The obnoxious characters are a touch nastier. Some subplots aren’t tidily resolved. Yet despite those deviations, the gist is essentially the same. Such is the case with Love Is All You Need, Susanne Bier’s take on a Nancy Meyers rom-com. It’s all here, from the house-porn of Italian seaside villas to the farcical tale of couples forged and dissolved. Philip (Pierce Brosnan) and Ida (Trine Dyrholm) are given a wholly unnecessary meet-cute (she crashes her car into his) on the way from Denmark to Italy, where Philip’s son is marrying Ida’s daughter. As extended family joins, the film veers from the dramatic (Ida has breast cancer and her husband has left her) to the comic (the husband arrives, floozy in tow) to the farcical and back again. Formulaic despite its trespasses, Love Is All You Need leaves the lingering sensation that more fun could have been had if the film cut loose and lived a little, as its central characters ultimately—if unoriginally—learn. Its strongest moments come when Bier exceeds the expectations of the genre, as glimpsed in an incorrigibly narcissistic aunt (Paprika Steen) or a key character’s uncertainty about his sexual orientation. In other moments the viewer may sense the whirring of an assembly line’s gears obediently at work. « Less

(1:20 PM), (4:10 PM), 7:10 PM

A film seemingly produced only because it boasts enough sizable roles to entice multiple stars, Craig Zisk's The English Teacher reveals that a respectable cast and much noisy boisterousness isn't enough to generate a single laugh. Introduced by... More »

A film seemingly produced only because it boasts enough sizable roles to entice multiple stars, Craig Zisk's The English Teacher reveals that a respectable cast and much noisy boisterousness isn't enough to generate a single laugh. Introduced by a stuffy female British narrator as a spinster with no marriage prospects, high school English teacher Linda (Julianne Moore) finds her staid, solitary life upended when former student Jason (Michael Angarano) returns home from New York with an unpublished play that she and drama teacher Carl (Nathan Lane) adore and demand to stage. Close-minded small-town administrators who'd rather put on Our Town soon prove the least of Linda's problems once she sleeps with Jason and-- after he proves to be a two-timing sleazeball—their inappropriate tryst is exposed. The ensuing shame, however, is no worse than the embarrassment caused by watching Moore and company flounder through this quirky indie, which when not dully mocking artistic pretensions or referencing A Tale of Two Cities is busy wasting time shoehorning Greg Kinnear into the action as Jason's supposedly unsupportive dad. It's a cartoony stew of unlikable characters, albeit one whose most repugnant is still easy to identify: He's the loser unironically posting Jack Kerouac quotes on Facebook. « Less

(2:30 PM), (5:00 PM), 7:30 PM

(12:20 PM), 10:00 PM

Special Engagement 7:30 PM