Movie Nation

There’s pretty good evidence that famous outlaw Butch Cassidy spent a little time on Brokeback Mountain. Contemporaries spoke of his sharing-the-blanket days on the trail, in prison and what-not.

And heaven knows he spent an inordinate amount of space in his letters that survive — talking up his whore-housing good times — “overcompensating,” one might say. This has been “out there” in outlaw lore for decades. So make what you will of Paul Newman’s casting in the iconic role in the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

Sundance and Butch did overdo the dynamite thing when they blew up safes on railcars, and yes, they ran into the same UP rail clerk, E.C. Woodcock, guarding the darned things on more than one robbery. Just as you see in the movie.

They didn’t head straight to “Bolivia” after their “last job” (one of many “one last score” robberies). No, they spent years ranching and failing at it in Argentina first.

The movie, like much of the “legend” around the duo? Let’s just say that the great “Nobody knows anything” screenwriter William Goldman wasn’t big on “research” and “historical accuracy.”

Actually, let’s let Charles Leerhsen say it, which he does in an amusingly flip and snarky new Butch bio out this year. A onetime Sports Illustrated and then People mag editor who wrote a pretty good book on Ty Cobb and books on the Indy 500 and famous horses and ghost-wrote one for a famous jackass (“Trump: Surviving at the Top”) turns his attention to reexamining the historic “Butch Cassidy” for his latest, “The True Story of an American Outlaw.”

Leehrsen paints vivid portraits of Butch, born Robert Leroy Parker, to a Mormon family in rural Utah, and New Yorker Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, who earned his “Sundance Kid” moniker in a one-horse town of that name that came along long before Robert Redford slapped that label on a film festival, a TV channel and the like.

Butch had a colorful career that included rustling and horse thievery, but was every bit the well-read “gentleman bandit” of lore and the George Roy Hill (script by Goldman) movie. His “Wild Bunch” or “Hole in the Wall Gang” didn’t kill victims (leaving witnesses), didn’t rob ordinary folk — just railroads, banks and once or twice, a general store.

Sundance was the “sullen” tougher one. Butch was “the charmer,” albeit one who kept the company of rougher types, bad influences who drew the law to him, all his relatively short life.

In the parlance of our times, not his, Butch wasn’t particularly “binary” in his sexuality. The whole “love triangle” with the mysterious Ethel or Etta “Place” has maybe a hint that Etta wasn’t who he wanted on his handlebars. Place is a Longabaugh forebear’s surname, because she married The Kid, by the way.

Leerhsen punctures a few of the storied names in the Outlaw Scholarship industry, visits a LOT of the places named in the newspaper accounts and later eyewitness histories (the reliable ones) and paints a richer portrait than the 1969 movie, which stands the test of time, despite inaccuracies and filmmaking blunders (see “Thomas, B.J.”).

“To feel just how soft and find the atmosphere is above your head, feel it with both hands at once” isn’t as pithy as “REACH for the SKY!” But apparently, our colorful caperers were given to waxing a tad poetic on the “stick’em up” basics.

Leerhsen paints a picture of a scene that seems worth a movie all on its own, an Outlaw Thanksgiving in which the duo served as waiters and cooks for a feast for their fellow highwaymen, surely a raucous affair if anybody’s account is to be believed.

It’s been over 50 years since the movie that defined them, and while nobody much makes Westerns these days and few would dare tackle remaking a classic, there’s plenty of stuff in this brief and breezy biography that suggests an altogether different spin on the story than the Newman/Redford one many of us know and love could be filmed.

Anybody option “Butch Cassidy” yet?

“Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw,” by Charles Leerhsen, Simon & Schuster, 253 pages. $7.99 and up (eBay, Amazon) hardcover

Cineworld doesn’t the largest share of Regal locations in the US, but the UK and Ireland are about to have something like a complete cinema shutdown. Again.

The content isn’t being released and theaters aren’t regarded as safe. So this might be a sign of a complete shutdown here as well. Idiot governors be damned. People who aren’t Republicans know better.

https://variety.com/2020/film/global/cineworld-close-us-regal-uk-cinemas-no-time-to-die-james-bond-1234791728/

The 1970s singer-songwriter Harry Chapin won awards, more after he died in 1981 than while he was alive. Now, there are awards named for him — songwriting and humanitarian honors coveted by generations of performers who have followed.

A montage of movie and TV sitcom scenes in the moving new documentary about him makes the case that this “storyteller” cast a giant shadow across the culture, creating a kind of shorthand for poignant memories of roads not traveled, personal compromises made and absentee parenting.

“Friends” to “The Simpsons” to “Shrek the Third” to “Modern Family to “Black-ish” made variations of the same teary-eyed joke about the guilt of knowing you weren’t being there for your kids. Generations of Americans get the “Cats in the Cradle” reference. Still do.

“Taxi,” “WOLD,” “I Want to Learn a Love Song,” we hear how these classics came about, how Chapin hiring a cellist for his band, adding stringed pathos to the music, made him the distinctive “troubadour” of his day.

But “Harry Chapin: When in Doubt, Do Something” is about the man in full, a singer, husband and father, and a performer who dove into human rights the way he threw himself into everything else. Hunger became his issue, and Rick Korn’s film is packed with testimonials about his relentless commitment to this cause, which superseded his career and all but took over his life.

He was on his way to another benefit show when he was killed in a car crash in 1981.

“I want to matter,” he said in interviews, generously sampled here. He lobbied presidents and Congress, and all but turned over his performing life to charity. Half of his concerts in a given year were benefits, often small and intimate even though he was a big star and could have done fewer, bigger shows that drew bigger crowds and raised more money.

“He never said no,” friends and colleagues remember, often to his detriment. But “always for the greater good” was his motto.

“He was like a saint, to the point of being a martyr,” one bandmate recalls. .

Legions of stars and activists give testimonials to how ahead of the curve Chapin was and the example that Chapin set, among them Sir Bob Geldof, recruited to do something about world hunger after Harry’s death.

“What a lovely man,” Geldof remembers. “And how RIGHT was he?”

Here’s Kenny Rogers, who did his share of fund raising concerts to to end hunger, saying Chapin “may have been the single most unselfish person I’ve ever met in my life.”

Bruce Springsteen tells onstage funny anecdotes about Chapin, a famous talker, working him, inspiring him and eventually compelling him to get behind the same cause.

Billy Joel opened for Chapin at the beginning of his career, and used to have people ask him if “Piano Man” was a Harry Chapin song, and always took it as a compliment.

Joel breaks down “Taxi,” about a cabbie picking up on an old girlfriend the driver realizes gave up her dreams and married money, and the power of the song’s punch-line — “‘Harry, keep the change.’ That’s real life. And that’s such a cool line.”

And intercut through all of the tributes, there’s Chapin singing — in concerts, on TV shows, an infectious smile and sense of drama in his voice, drawing listeners in and later, leading sing-alongs to songs people knew by heart then, and many remember still.

“Harry Chapin: When in Doubt, Do Something” premieres in theaters and online on Oct. 16, World Hunger Day.

MPAA Rating: unrated

Cast: Harry Chapin, Tom Chapin, Pat Benatar, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Harry Belafonte, Sandy Chapin, Bob Geldof, Pete Seeger, Tom Chapin, Robert Lamm, Bruce Springsteen, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Josh Chapin, Michael Moore and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels.

Credits: Directed by Rick Korn. A Greenwich Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:34

Let me tell you about this repellent Mexican comedy titled “Ahí te Encargo (You Got This)” but which should have been called “Two Selfish Jerks and a Baby.”

It’s a romance that tries to flip gender roles in a way Hollywood comedies did back in the ’80s, built around characters no sentient person could tolerate and a baby nobody seems to want to take care of.

It’s a movie that frowns at a young woman (Esmeralda Pimentel) hellbent on following her career wherever it takes her, and about her husband (Mauricio Ochmann), who barks, more than once, “Why won’t you give me what I want –a baby?”

It’s in Spanish with English subtitles, naturally. As if we couldn’t tell otherwise that this shiny, polished rom-com wouldn’t have been made, north of the border, any time after “Baby Boom” (1987).

Alejandro is a graphic designer for an ad agency with babies on the brain. Cecilia is a rising star at a global architectural engineering firm, with a chance to make partner and take over some day.

Events conspire to put a baby in his care “for a few days.” He’s offered a cute waitress and single mom free babysitting as a way of jumpstarting the maternal instincts in Ceci.

Which she plainly doesn’t have, and repeatedly reminds him that this is the case. So it’s no wonder he doesn’t tell her that he’s had the baby imposed on him, and hides the toddler from her.

She, on the other hand, can’t tell him about her possible dream promotion because they’re constantly fighting because “I want to have a baby and you won’t let me.”

Somehow, the bebe doesn’t seem like their biggest problem.

The gags here include Alejandro hiding the baby at work with the aid of his put-upon colleague (Matteo Giannini), both of them desperate to keep their loveless female boss, nicknamed “Mussolini,” from finding out. There’s a diaper disaster, or course.

“Yuck! Don’t let him eat it!”

Alejandro takes on a responsibility he’s not as prepared for as he thinks. Vintage VW Beetles with no child seat are no place for a toddler.

And Cecilia is already looking for apartments they can transfer to, in Hong Kong, without having that conversation with her husband.

Can this marriage be saved? Can this movie? Even with a squishy “things get serious” third act?

No. Nothing before that turn towards the darker aspects of life is the least bit funny.

Pharmacists “shaming” Rafa (Giannini) when he buys diapers, colleagues making the toddler their mascot, finding out the boss has found out what everybody calls her?

Not funny, not funny at all and give me a break.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA, profanity, adult situations

Cast: Mauricio Ochmann, Esmeralda Pimentel, Matteo Giannini

Credits: Directed by Salvador Espinosa, script by Tiaré Scanda, Leonardo Zimbrón A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:51

No, “low information voters” won’t see this. But they should if they want to see what a disaster they have put the country through. 10/13 and 10/20 this rolls out.

The Oscar winner Gibney is pretty unimpeachable as a source of fact-based documentaries. Unlike Trump.

Once and always “Black Dynamite” Michael Jai White deserves better than Hollywood ever gave him. Seeing him in a C-movie, still able to do the stunts but with filmmakers unable to hide the fact that much of this looks like fight rehearsals — walk-throughs — proves that.

This slow-footed, jokey, half-assed remake of Jean Claude Van Damme’s “Sudden Death,” is better than it has any right to be, mostly thanks to White. That’s still not very good, alas.

“Welcome to Sudden Death” jokingly references the Ur Text of all such thrillers, “Die Hard,” but it’s no joke. They all lean on that “one man” with “particular skills” who foils a murderous hostages held for ransom tale.

White is Jesse Freeman, who still has flashbacks to his combat exploits in the Middle East. Now, he’s on the security squad for a Phoenix basketball arena that’s attacked an elite squad of killer Bitcoin fans.

Alpha (Michael Eklund) wants to extort digital cash from the arena owner (Sabryn Rock). One novel twist? They smuggle 3D printers in to MAKE guns to use in the attempt.

Jesse stands in their way. And guess what? It’s take your kids to work day. Nothing like a couple of tweens to elevate the level of discourse.

“I can’t wait.” For what? “To watch my Daddy kick your ass!”

The comic-relief sidekick is goofball Gus (Gary Owen), the guy who keeps cracking that he should’ve called in sick, serving set-up lines for the leading man/hero.

Don’t go there, man. It’s suicide!

“Then I’m committing it saving lives!”

When your plot is over-familiar, the way to compensate for that is by sprinting through the action. Writer-director Dallas Jackson ignores that. This picture lacks urgency, with the fights slow and the bits between the fights even slower.

Even working from formula, White (his wife Gillian White plays a murderous minion of Alpha) delivers decent value in a couple of fights — the ones that don’t look like walk-throughs. I had to stop streaming and rewatch his disarming of one bad guy, he does it so fast.

Otherwise, there’s nothing welcoming about this “Sudden Death.”

MPAA Rating: R (Language|Some Bloody Violence)

Cast: Michael Jai White, Michael Eklund, Sabryn Rock, Gillian White, Gary Owen

Credits: Written and directed by Dallas Jackson, based on a script by Gene Quintano. A Universal Home Video/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:20

Sitting on this one seemed unlikely, given the cash flow issues of the distributors and production company. But no sense throwing a $billion away, is there? “No Bond until you get rid of Trump” seems a fair bargain.

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/james-bond-no-time-to-die-release-date-delay-2021-1234790944/

There was this colony of Church of Ireland folk, sort of Irish Amish, eschewing the modern world in dress and farming methods, who migrated to a remote corner of the Canadian northwest back in the 19th century.

They got along well enough until 1956, when an eclipse passed over them, their crops started failing and people started dying. “Cursed,” they thought. Agatha Earnshaw, a “heretic” among them, her crops continued to thrive. Agatha had also secretly given birth.

She is shunned, so keeping the child a secret isn’t a problem. But seventeen years later young Audrey has grown up to be the sort of teen that transfixes men who see her. And she is determined that men see her, just not for the reasons you might expect.

“The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw” is a dark and somewhat pointless Canadian witchcraft thriller. I use the identifier “thriller” more out of a need to categorize what we see in the movie than as an accurate description of what happens.

There’s violence and intimidation. But there’s no suspense, no one to root for. And no slow-withering or firearm-sudden death touches the heart with either compassion or fear.

Writer-director Thomas Robert Lee’s crafted a greyish period piece set in 1973, and a world where farming is primitive and Irish accents endure after a century of settlement.

Religious people curse like Samuel L. Jackson, and a the girl, Audrey (Jessica Reynolds) eagerly participates in the blood rituals of her separate community of women, hungry for the chance to avenge the wrongs the starving locals have done to mother Agatha (Catherine Walker).

“I want to help,” she tells mom after yet another confrontation with the men of the larger community. Her goal? “Make him regret it.”

But mother’s gone to great pains to keep Audrey out of their sight and knowledge, locking her in covered crates for wagon journeys, never letting her step out when strangers knock at their door.

“He’s a villain,” she hisses to her child. “He steals girls like you.”

Still, Audrey sets out for her revenge, “bedeviling” this man or that one, twisting the knife in the wounds in families that have suffered loss, taunting men who have been “spreading sweat over fields that’ll never sprout.”

Reynolds gives Audrey a mean girl leer to go with her ballerina pretty looks. But the havoc her character wreaks is pretty tame, or at least over-familiar — livestock atrocities, suicides, problem pregnancies.

The preacher (Sean McGinley) is more sturdy than stirring in the face of this existential threat that only the most manic in the congregation can identify. And the “manic” aren’t as worked up as you might expect, either.

Nobody takes action, decisive or otherwise, against the threat. Congregants just curl up into their family units and debate whether to reach “outside” the community (to the 20th century) and otherwise accept their fate as some sort of supernatural will.

Could it be maybe “Satan” you think? Sure. That word never turns up, nor does “witch” or “coven.”

Lee was aiming for something on the order of “The Witch” — understated, with unsophisticated people dealing with something extraordinary and evil in their midst.

But he wasted all this effort on a prologue (the Church of Ireland, 1873-1973 colony business), made everybody sling an Irish accent after 100 isolated and away from Ireland, and then didn’t make his people of faith being tested all that pious.

The performances are flat, drained of anything you’d call a spark.

So forgive me for going back to the beginning of the review and re-asking the obvious. Is there a point?

MPAA Rating: unrated, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Jessica Reynolds, Catherine Walker, Jared Abrahamson, Sean McGinley, Hannah Emily Anderson.

Credits: Written and directed by Thomas Robert Lee. An Epic release.

Running time: 1:34

A cautionary eco-parable wrapped in a seriously dull and myopic time-travel thriller, “2067” bogs down early on in questions of “fate” and “determinism,” and never tears itself free of that bog.

This Australian tale has maybe the best traveling-through-time sequence the recent cinema has managed, and a tedious talky story on the other side of that jump.

Or in this case, “throw.” That’s how the scientists describe what they want to do with tunnel electrician Ethan Whyte, played in a cadaverous, end-of-days daze by Kodi Smit-McPhee (“Let Me In”).

In 2067, the Earth is literally breathing its last. “The last tree has been logged in the Amazon,” news reports tell us. The planet is gasping, the lights have gone out and only a lone city in Australia flickers on.

Everybody is living off artificial oxygen, and spitting up blood as they get “the sickness,” a worrisome side effect for ChronicCorp.

Kudos to the stoner who got that name in there. Writer-director Seth Larney, was it you?

Ethan, who lost his scientist dad (Aaron Glenane) when he was little, is “humanity’s only chance.” They’ve got this time portal, and a message from the future. “Send Ethan Whyte,” even if the woman in charge of the project (Deborah Mailman of “The Sapphires”) admits, “We don’t know yet how to bring you back.”

As he’s got a dying wife (Sana’a Shaik) and humanity is nearing its bitter end, Ethan lets them “throw” him forward 400 or so years. His workmate Jude (Ryan Kwanten) follows shortly, which really does make that whole “humanity’s last hope” pitch a lie, doesn’t it?

Never mind. The verdant, overgrown world they must make their way through has a reactor that’s going to melt down and a “cure” they need time to find. If only there weren’t these troubling corpses, more troubling holographic messages from the past and a general confusion about what they should do, whether they’ve tried this before and failed, and whether there’s any point to any of it.

I liked the kudzu-covered production design, the glimpses of ruined cities returned to nature that’s been common in sci-fi since “The Time Machine” and “Planet of the Apes” and “Logan’s Run.”

But writer-director Larney’s limited budget didn’t do his “vision” any favors. The settings are few and the scenario is eaten up with Ethan and Jude arguments, time travel paradox discussions and the like.

Flashbacks, jumps in point of view back to the hellish Earth they left, don’t change the picture’s limited focus and narrow aims.

Smit-McPhee ratchets up the pathos here and there, but I found the film emotionally barren, repetitive and tedious after a while.

We get the message, that we’re wrecking the planet a lot faster than even the most pessimistic among us ever thought.

The idea that Australia will be the last place to succumb pre-dates “Mad Max.” Think “On the Beach.”

And dangling time travel as the “Hail Mary” that could save us seems as intellectually lazy as complete denial, even if it is slightly more cinematic.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, profanity

Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Ryan Kwanten, Deborah Mailman, Sana’a Shaik, Aaron Glenane, Finn Little and Leeanna Walsman

Credits: Directed by Seth Larney, script by Seth Larney and Dave Paterson. An RLJE release.

Running time: 1:54

I can’t speak for everyone, but the next time I’m on a stakeout, I’m damn sure bringing Bill Murray.

Talk him into driving a 1960 Alfa Romeo Giuletta. Maybe he’ll show up with a gourmet picnic, caviar and a bottle of Gran Cru something-or-other, and a lot of cynical, witty wisdom about love and marriage.

“Women — you can’t live with’em, can’t live without’em. But that doesn’t mean you have to LIVE with them.”

Bill plays a version of the Murray of myth in Sofia Coppola’s best film in years, “On the Rocks.” His art dealer character’s charming and flip, knows every concierge and maitre d’, remembers every name he hears the first time he hears it, can talk has way into a table or out of a traffic ticket (see “Giuletta, Alfa Romeo”). And you never know where he”ll turn up.

That’s the image the Internet has made for Murray.

Seeing him as this touching, tetchy and very funny father trying to help allay daughter Laura’s (Rashida Jones) suspicions about her now always-working husband (Marlon Wayans) by convincing her to spy on him two simple facts become clear.

It’s a shame that he doesn’t get to make every movie with Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation”). And if she’s smart, she’ll never make a movie without him, as long as he’s up to it.

“On the Rocks” is a Manhattan movie that ambles along in Woody-Allen-Without-Many-Laughs fashion for a good half hour before Murray, as dapper, rich and semi-retired Felix Keane turns up and takes over.

That’s easy to do, because everybody seems to take Laura for granted. We see her giddy wedding day, but the married life routine a decade later is drab and and Laura herself is put upon. She’s a novelist with no time or motivation to write. She’s the sort every other mother at school (Jenny Slate, for instance) buttonholes to suck up precious minutes in long, narcissistic monologues.

“Why aren’t males more ornamental? I mean, they’re functional. We NEED them to put furniture together.”

Laura bears all this, and the ways hubby Dean keeps brushing off her plans to get a deposit down on a house and fret over their youngest getting into pre-school. But there are other clues that suggest maybe Dean’s “traveling for work” is a lot less work and a lot more getting around.

Enter Dad, eternal cynic, constant flirt and sage spokesman for The Way Men Are. Endless random observations about “when humans were all fours” and evolution decreed that they’d always “impregnate” every female they could, how “adolescent females” were more desirable because they were easier to catch and “dominate” pepper his half of their conversations about her marriage.

“At some point, we can make a decision about whether to tap his phone.”

Laura, the one daughter who still stays in contact with the father who cheated on their mother, is putty in Felix’s hands as he badgers her into whistling the theme song to the movie “Laura,” which is where he came up with her name. He pushes her to “check his phone,” and eventually, the Alfa Romeo comes out for that stakeout.

Jones, a winsome, vulnerable presence, doesn’t give us a whole long to hang onto here. She may be a woman wronged, but Laura is so buttoned down and unsure of what to do that she could not feel more real.

Yeah, this is the way most of us would react to that suspicion — deflated, confused, lost.

The fact that she and Wayans don’t have much chemistry –his character is thinly developed and blandly-played — leaves the movie in Murray’s hands. And he saves it.

Felix sings “Mexicali Rose,” confidently drops less-than-fluent phrases in Russian (for a ballet dancer waitress) and French, and takes over every room the way Murray dominates every scene.

“It must be great to be you!”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

It’s a seductive, amusing and beguiling turn, with perhaps an Oscar nomination in it. And it’s message is clear, to our director and her muse.

When the persona becomes legend, play the legend.

MPAA Rating: R for some language/sexual references

Cast: Rashida Jones, Bill Murray, Marlon Wayans, Jessica Henwick and Jenny Slate,

Credits: Written and directed by Sofia Coppola. An A24 release, coming to Apple TV.

Running time: 1:37