Architecture, connection and commitment grace Kogonada's masterful debut, COLUMBUS

The perfect antidote to summer's uber-marketed blockbusters and indie rom-com drivel, here's a movie made for intelligent adult audiences who want something original from their cinema and are willing to watch real characters deal quietly but bracingly with important events and themes in an atmosphere of great, if often man-made, beauty.

Architecture has seldom seemed as vital and important to our life as it does in COLUMBUS, the debut film from a fellow named Kogonada, a South Korean-born U.S. immigrant raised in the Mid-west and now living in Nashville. His movie so lives and breathes its architectural wonders that the viewer is able to do this, too -- relishing each new place, and the compositions through which we see those places, in rapt appreciation. (The cinematography here is by Elisha Christian, and the editing by Kogonada himself.)

Visual beauty and the wonders of architecture have been captured elsewhere, as in La Sapienza by Eugène Green, but Kogonada, as writer and director, has also been able to capture character -- succinctly and realistically -- two in particular: Jin (played by a surprising John Cho, below, left), the son of a famous architect whose father in now in hospital in a coma in this architecturally amazing city of Columbus, Indiana; and Casey (the equally fine Haley Lu Richardson, below, right). a young girl with aspirations to architecture stuck here in Columbus taking care of her maybe-still-drug-addicted mother.

How these two people meet, slowly bond, and finally prove important to one another is handled by the filmmaker with such efficiency, honesty and believability that the movie will probably stand as some kind of filmmaker's/screenwriter's manual on how to achieve this sort of thing.

The character-building and theme-revealing is given us via much of the architecture that we, along with our two characters, view, and this is handled equally well. (The movie should make you more fully aware, if not appreciative, of your own surroundings.)

The pacing here is very slow, yet so much is going on that I doubt you will mind. Event-wise, very little happens, yet by the finale immense changes are occurring. And if Kogonada resists not just melodrama but even perhaps the idea of drama itself, he nonetheless brings us to the point of caring a great deal about these two people and their lives.

The movie's single misstep, in my estimation, is the one scene in which, suddenly, and for no good reason I can fathom, the soundtrack goes silent -- just at the point at which our heroine has been prodded to explain her deepest feelings about her love for architecture. Is this just too precious for the likes of our own, culturally-deprived ears? Or was the screenwriter perhaps unable to quite render le mot juste? This would certainly be one question I'd ask Kogonada in a Q&A.

Otherwise, Columbus is a glory of a movie: quiet, commanding, and utterly beautiful to see. Running 104 minutes, it opens this Friday in New York City at the IFC Center, and in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt. (Kogonada is said to be appearing for several Q&A at both the IFC Center and the NuArt during the coming weekend. Click here and here for the schedules. I'm not sure how one man can be in two place at once -- maybe via video? -- and on separate coasts, to boot, but both theaters are claiming to have him.)

Beauty in both despair and rebirth: Julio Quintana's gorgeous THE VESSEL opens

Faith gets a good workout in the new Spanish-language film, THE VESSEL (El navio), from writer/director Julio Quintana, a fellow who was first assistant camera on Paradise Recovered, one of the very few faith-based films TrustMovies has seen that he actually enjoyed and found worth recommending. This new one is also worth recommending, and not only for its immense beauty. It also tells a rather timeless story of despair, faith and rebirth in a manner smart enough intellectually and with frequent eye-popping visuals that make the trip worthwhile.

Starring a quietly impressive actor, Lucas Quintana (shown below, who may or may not be related to the director, Julio, shown at left), as its hero, Leo, the film also offers a better-known American actor, Martin Sheen (seen on poster, top, and further below), in a major supporting role as the town priest. The beautiful little seaside village in which the movie takes place endured a low-level Tsunami some years back in which all the town's school-age children (along with their teacher) were pulled into the ocean to drown.

Since then, the village has lost its "faith." The women are still wearing black; couples don't copulate; children aren't born. Our hero's mom (played by Jacqueline Duprey, below, left), having lost her other son (the one she preferred) has gone a little cuckoo (she wears pink but gets away with it because she's perceived as nuts). Even Leo's love interest (Aris Mejias, below, right) -- who married that drowned school-teacher because our guy was too shy to speak to her -- seem to have remained "stillborn" so far as any real growth is concerned.

The poor, put-upon priest is unable to coerce his flock into anything approaching belief, let alone action. Now, all this might sound like a set-up for the usual faith-in-Christianity film. And it is. Especially given all the religion symbols we observe visually, followed by something seemingly miraculous and Lazarus-like that happens. But the manner in which Quintana works out what follows is not so simple.

Faith is always front and center here but how it is perceived and acted upon by the "flock" is, as ever, more stupid and sheep-like than anything else. Even Leo's quest to build some kind of ship (below) out of the remains of the schoolhouse does not reflect, well, world-class thinking.

In the end, what happens could be said to be due as much to man as to god (even if man is maybe acting out what he imagines that god wants).

What holds this movie afloat, then aloft, is its great beauty. Quintana and his cinematographer (Santiago Benet Mari), together with the Puerto Rican locations they've chosen, conspire to make this one of the most visually splendid films in a long while.

This is not due simply to the gorgeous settings -- the beautifully "distressed" architecture, the ever-present sea, the vast sky, the colors, the verdant foliage -- but as much to the perspective, often odd and just slightly "off," that the movie offers.

Shots of water bubbling up unexpectedly; old, thick, hardcover books drying out over a clothes line; stunning faces, seen angry or in repose. All of this combines to keep our eyes glued, even as our minds struggle with the meaning.

There are times here when the townspeople seem so stupid and inhumane that they don't deserve to survive (they may bring to mind our current Trump supporters: ah, humanity!), and if the Jesus symbolism gets a little thick -- dragging that boat as a stand-in for the cross -- nothing lasts long enough to become "overdone."

The movie always bounces back, and its final thought about how we are all connected is expressed verbally with as much beauty and intelligence as Quintana's visuals have offered.

From Outsider Pictures and running a lean 85 minutes, the film opens all across the country this Friday, Sept. 16.

Note: This film is being shown in two versions: one spoken in English, the other in Spanish with English subtitles. Check with the specific theater to learn which version is being shown -- and when.

In New York City, you can see it at the AMC Empire 25; in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Music Hall and Playhouse 7, and at AMC's Rolling Hills 20 and Orange 30 (in Orange Country).

Here in South Florida it will open in Miami at AMC's Aventura Mall 24 (spoken in English only) and Sunset Place 24 (spoken in Spanish with English subtitles); in Coral Gables at the Bill Cosford Cinema, (both English and Spanish versions shown here), and in the Fort Lauderdale area at the Cinema Paradiso, Hollywood (in Spanish with English subtitles).

Personal appearance in South Florida 

by star, Lucas Quintana

Friday, September 16
AMC SUNSET PLACE 24 The Shops at Sunset Place 5701 Sunset Dr #300 South Miami, FL 33143 Introduction & Q/A(s) with Lucas Quintana will take place. The Spanish version of the film will be presented.
Saturday, September 17
AMC AVENTURA 24 Aventura Mall 19501 Biscayne Blvd #3001 Aventura, FL 33180 Introduction and Q&A will take place with Lucas Quintana at 3pm. The English version of the film will be presented.
CINEMA PARADISO-HOLLYWOOD 2008 Hollywood Blvd Hollywood, FL 33020 Introduction & Q/A’s with Lucas Quintana will take place at the 6:30pm and 9:30pm screenings. The Spanish version of the film will be presented. ****A special reception at 8:30pm (between the two shows) will feature a live musical performance by Quintana. The reception is open to ticket holders for either screening. Complimentary Tapas will be served and wine will be available for purchase. For Advance tickets and details visit: www.fliff.com
Sunday, September 19 
BILL COSFORD CINEMA 5030 Brunson Dr Coral Gables, FL 33146 Q/A at 4:00pm with Lucas Quintana. For advance tickets and details visit: www.cosfordcinema.com The Spanish version of the film will be presented. The theater will alternate Spanish and English language versions throughout the engagement.

Click here and then click on IN CINEMAS on the task bar to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and  theaters -- including the forthcoming Q&As.

From South Africa, Oliver Hermanus' ugly BEAUTY indicts a culture and a country....

A few days ago we covered the documentary Beauty Is Embarrassing; today we're doing a movie called simply BEAUTY (Skoon-heid) -- a much darker and troubling affair about how beauty and the craving for it can be lethal -- involving two South African families, the parents and their just-turning-adult children. In the excellent first scene of the film, taking place at a wedding reception, the father of one of those families notices the son of the other (perhaps for the first time as an adult), and the beauty of the young man rivets him. To all outwards appearances, this father is a straight-arrow, macho sort, but it is not long before we view a scene in which, by any standard except that of a supremely deluded mind, the fellow is at very least bi-sexual and most probably gay as a goose. Oh, but he's still super-macho, so that's just A-OK.

With Beauty, Oliver Hermanus (shown at left), the film's director and co-writer (with Didier Costet) indicts the entitled-white-male, post-Apartheid culture of South Africa that seems to dearly long for those days gone by. Our non-hero François van Heerden (memorably played by Deon Lotz, below, left), quickly becomes so obsessed with his friend's son, Christian (played by the very attractive Charlie Keegan, below, right), that he can think about and follow little else. He arranges to visit Christian's family, and begins to follow the young man, soon becoming a kind of hidden stalker, who then discovers a surprising connection between the two families.

What happens from there on in is appalling but quite believable. It might seem surprising that a film this good never got a theatrical release here in the USA. Instead it went straight to video via TLA Releasing, and can now be seen on Netflix streaming.

Well, it's not a happy movie, and its look at homosexuality, in this case, is anything but a healthy or positive one. Instead it shows us what a weirdly closeted man can feel and do, once his deepest needs come surging forth. So it wouldn't pack in the usual gay crowd looking to be entertained and shown in a positive light.

No matter. Beauty is eminently worth seeing and thinking about. Nominated for an Un Certain regard award at the 2011 Cannes Film fest, it won the Queer Palm there that year, as well as Best Film at the Durban International Film Fest.

The acting by all is commendable (Mr. Lotz is unforgettable), the direction sure, and the writing -- subtle and spare -- manages to pack a real punch, while delineating character surprisingly well. Apartheid may have officially ended, but as films like this one and Disgrace clearly show us, its effects are long-term and far-reaching.

Beauty is available now via Netflix, but nowhere else that  I can so far ascertain.