Posts Tagged ‘Austin Butler’
Friday, August 8th, 2025
As some of you are aware I am an avowed triple-A (Ari Aster Appreciator). I loved his two hit horror movies (HEREDITARY and MIDSOMMAR) and then I loved his flop comedy (BEAU IS AFRAID) even more, so obviously I was gonna see his new one EDDINGTON no matter what. When it was announced it was described as a western, which is a stretch – nobody would put this in the westerns section at a video store. But yeah, it has feuds and jurisdictional disagreements between a small town sheriff, the mayor and the Native law enforcement just over the border, trouble in a bar, various groups trying to profit from a big construction project, things devolving into a big shootout. I get it.
Of Aster’s other movies it’s closest to BEAU, but it’s less surreal and, to me at least, not nearly as funny. In fact it might’ve made me laugh less than any of them. But there are certainly some good ones in there and I did laugh just thinking about some of its ideas while discussing it with friends.
What it definitely does achieve is a stressful portrait of what our lives have become in the last half decade. It’s set in May of 2020 and begins with a series of confrontations over mask ordinances. Eddington, New Mexico Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix, U TURN) doesn’t want to wear a mask when officers from the Pueblo tribe insist he follow the law in their jurisdiction. Later he forces a grocery store to allow in a guy who refuses to mask (James Cady, “Train Conductor,” HOSTILES). Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal, THE EQUALIZER 2) happens to be there and tries to calmly reason with Joe, who then goes outside and does a livestream announcing that he’s running against him in the next election. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amelie Hoeferle, Ari Aster, Austin Butler, Cameron Mann, Clifton Collins Jr., Darius Khondji, Deirdre O'Connell, Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Luke Grimes, Matt Gomez Hidaka, Pedro Pascal, William Belleau
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Thriller | 35 Comments »
Wednesday, June 26th, 2024
THE BIKERIDERS is writer/director Jeff Nichols’ (TAKE SHELTER, MUD, LOVING) version of a biker gang movie. It’s loosely adapted from a 1968 book by Danny Lyon, who spent several years riding with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club of Chicago. Nichols incorporated Lyon as a character (played by Mike Faist of WEST SIDE STORY and CHALLENGERS) who’s spending time with the fictional Vandals motorcycle club, taking photos and recording interviews, and if you step back you can picture a version where he’s the lead. We would learn about this world along with him and then it would sort of become his story as he deals with the macho insecurities raised by trying to fit in with these guys. Eventually he realizes it’s bringing out a dark side of him but in the end he learns about himself or some shit. You know the drill. Like a sleeveless version of Matthew Rhys’ character in A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Austin Butler, Beau Knapp, Boyd Holbrook, Damon Herriman, Danny Lyon, Emory Cohen, Happy Anderson, Jeff Nichols, Jodie Comer, Karl Glusman, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, motorcycles, New Journalism, Norman Reedus, Toby Wallace, Tom Hardy, Will Oldham
Posted in Reviews, Crime, Drama | 14 Comments »
Monday, July 4th, 2022
Any musician biopic, pretty much, is gonna be a legend or a tall tale. What’s great about Baz Luhrmann directing one is that his entire style leans into that. Condensing a whole life and career into an entertaining 2 1/2 hours requires shortcuts, cheats and artistic license that prevent it from being literally true, so here we have a director whose work is rarely about the literal truth anyway. It’s more about how something feels and looks and sounds, or making it look and sound like it feels. Biopics depend on montages to move quickly across time, and this guy speaks fluent montage. He’s also a director whose films have generally been on the verge of being jukebox musicals (going all the way in the case of MOULIN ROUGE!). So what could be more perfect for him than an Elvis Presley biopic?
ELVIS is absolutely presented as a legend, one told by Presley’s long time manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks, DRAGNET), who admits “there are some who’d make me out to be the villain of this here story,” and in between his justifications does come off as something of an evil mastermind. He addresses us decades after Elvis has passed, when he’s on his own death bed in a Las Vegas hospital room with a view of Star Trek: The Experience (1998-2008), but in his mind he’s also dragging his I.V. drip around an empty casino. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alton Mason, Austin Butler, Baz Luhrmann, David Wenham, Elvis, Elvis Presley, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Kodi Smit-Mcphee, Las Vegas, Luke Bracey, Mandy Walker, Nelson George, Olivia DeJonge, Shonka Dukureh, Tom Hanks, Xavier Samuel
Posted in Reviews | 50 Comments »
Wednesday, July 31st, 2019
THIS IS A FREE RANGE SPOILER REVIEW. THE SPOILERS ARE NOT KEPT IN CAGES. THEY JUST RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE, INCLUDING THE FIRST COUPLE SENTENCES. SEE THE MOVIE FIRST.
ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD is an odd and beautiful movie from… Quentin Tarantino. It’s undeniably one that only he could or would make – it’s even in his now-trademark ‘wish-fulfilling rewrite of a historical atrocity’ mode – but it’s different. It’s not as mean and angry as the last three, or as carefully plotted as any of them. It’s sort of a hang out movie, a day-in-the-life of two friends, and a gentle tale of surviving a mid-life crisis, wrapped in a love letter to Los Angeles of the late ’60s, and to the then-fading leading men of the ’50s, with a chaser of gruesome violence. The fun kind, though. The cathartic kind.
Throughout his career, Tarantino has shown his affinity for cool shit like spaghetti westerns, blaxploitation movies, kung fu and crime novels. Here’s where he says “Fuck it, I also like old cowboy shows and procedurals and stuff.” When the guy who makes film exhibition and criticism a major element of his WWII epic does one that’s actually about the Hollywood film industry, obviously he’s gonna go buck wild. The amount of detail he puts into the fictional career of TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio, two episodes of The New Lassie) – to the point of needing a narrator to talk us through each entry from his Rome period – reaches the level of sci-fi world building. And of course Tarantino, being Tarantino, gives us a soundtrack that drips the sixties without one whiff of Creedence, Dylan, the Doors or Hendrix. Admittedly “Mrs. Robinson” is in there somewhere, but he leans more Deep Purple, Vanilla Fudge and Paul Revere & the Raiders. One of the few I knew was the Neil Diamond song. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Al Pacino, Austin Butler, Brad Pitt, Bruce, Bruce Dern, Bruce Lee, Dakota Fanning, Damian Lewis, Damon Herriman, Emile Hirsch, Julia Butters, Kurt Russell, Leonardo DiCaprio, Luke Perry, Margaret Qualley, Margot Robbie, Martin Kove, Mike Moh, Mikey Madison, Quentin Tarantino, Rebecca Gayheart, Scoot McNairy, Sharon Tate, Steve McQueen, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Bell
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 205 Comments »
