Yet another asshole chef on view in Jesse Zigelstein's Canadian meller, NOSE TO TAIL

For proof of the little phrase Nothing lasts, you needn't turn to the likes of Shelley's Ozymandias. Just consider the restaurant industry in most western culture, where even the best examples have but a limited life span. The 2018 Canadian melodrama NOSE TO TAIL (just arriving on digital streaming in North America), rather than describing your dog's special ability, instead I believe refers to the philosophy of using every part of the animal in food preparation, letting nothing go to waste.

TrustMovies is not certain why the film's writer and director Jesse Zigelstein (shown left), whose first full-length film this is, decided on that as his title -- unless he means it ironically -- since our restaurant's chef and leading character in the film, Daniel (played exceedingly well by Aaron Abrams, above and below), seems bent on wasting if not downright destroying everything and everyone around him.

While giving one's lead character a problem or two to surmount is how drama takes shape, you may question just why Mr. Zigelstein had to load them on to this extent. Daniel has money problems, staffing problems, health problems and love/relationship problems. So by the time his family (ex-wife and child) problems surface, you're ready to cry uncle times ten.

Plus, Daniel handles each one of his problems in the worst possible way, over and over again. Which brings up some simple questions of logic and credibility: Given who this guy is, how could he ever possibly have succeeded (or even imagined success)? Worse, how can literally everyone around him not know by now that his restaurant is failing, bigtime?

Mr. Abrams' committed, stops-out performance does help matters considerably. Every performance is first-rate here -- that's Lara Jean Chorostecki, as Daniel's employee/lover, above, and Ennis Esmer as his maybe business partner, below -- so Zigelstein clearly knows how to get the best from his actors. But by piling on misery to the max the filmmaker very nearly approaches black comedy, if not outright camp. By the time we meet Dan's family, "Oh, come on now!" is likely to be your initial response.

All we are ever given as the reason for our chef's quest is, as the film's IMDB description explains, "to serve excellent food without compromising."  From what we see (not that much), the meals look OK (their presentation, at least), and folk describe them as tasting very, very good. Yet given Daniel's terrible predicament and asshole attitude, every meal served here becomes at best a kind of pyrrhic victory. Perhaps that is the filmmaker's point. Does no compromise insure no success?

From 1091 and running a relatively quick 82 minutes, Nose to Tail hits digital streaming and VOD tomorrow, Tuesday, July 28 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Sweet, smart, feel-good fun: Jeremy LaLonde/ Jonas Chernick's JAMES VS HIS FUTURE SELF

Can a sci-fi premise, already a tad unbelievable simply by virtue of its being science-fiction, succeed via the strength, intensity and just-plain-earnestness of its performances? Yes: If it has all that plus some very good writing and direction. JAMES VS HIS FUTURE SELF -- a smart, sweet, witty combo of sci-fi, rom-com and important life lessons -- is on my best-of-year list already. It left me in tears, not of sadness but outright delight, due to how well-handled, in every way, it so thoroughly is. Movies that succeed this beautifully often get that reaction from me, and this one managed it in spades.

Sci-fi films, historically, have been replete with life lessons -- though many of the bigger would-be-blockbusters tend to offer those of the apocalyptic, end-of-humanity-in-one-way-or-another sort. The absolute joy of James Vs His Future Self comes via its small-scale, just-one-guy-and-his-problems premise: the eponymous James, played by the film's co-writer and co-star, Jonas Chernick (below, left of another marvelous Canadian movie, My Awkward Sexual Adventure). Oh, the film does have humanity headed for a not-so-nice time, but this is used predominantly for toss-away humor (oh, god -- the end of tomatoes!). What Chernick and director and co-writer Jeremy LeLonde (shown above) make certain we care about most is James and those very few but vital folk who surround him.

These would include BFF and maybe more, played with complete, fall-in-love-with-her charm, sex appeal and beauty by Cleopatra Coleman (above, right) and an actor we just don't see enough of anymore, Daniel Stern (below).

Stern plays the other part of the eponymous title, and he plays it so damned well that the fact that he and Chernick possess completely different faces and body types doesn't matter in the slightest. Both actors are so alert, incisive and in the moment that they carry us along like a river run wild.

Time travel is the sci-fi theme here, and the fact that we've seen this more times than can be counted on fingers and toes matters not one whit. The filmmakers bring such spontaneity and wit, along with charm and surprise, to their mix that I suspect, from first scene onward, you'll be hooked.  (That's Frances Conroy, above, who does a bang-up job with her two or three scenes.)

Four of the five leading characters in the film are physicists; only James' sister, played by Tommie-Amber Pirie, above) is not among the uber-intelligentsia, but she's a nice addition, in any case. This is such a genuinely delightful movie, I can fully understand why, as of now, it's at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

From Gravitas Ventures and running just 95 minutes, James Vs His Future Self has been available on VOD since the beginning of the month. Check your local service provide or go to the usual suspect to find it fast.

Thrills, chills and tired tropes abound in Matthew Currie Holmes' halting horror debut, THE CURSE OF BUCKOUT ROAD

Evidently a hit at some of what we might call second-tier film fests -- the Pasadena International Film Festival the Hot Springs Horror Film Festival --  this new-to-cinemas-and-VOD scary movie, THE CURSE OF BUCKOUT ROAD proves an oddball mix, for sure.

The film begins most auspiciously, with moments of impending horror alternating with a college classroom scene in which a professor challenges her students with the question of why we need -- and then need to destroy -- our myths. Soon, the first corpse (of many to follow) appears, and we are off to the races once again.

As directed and co-written by Canadian actor-turned-filmmaker, Matthew Currie Holmes, shown at left, abetted by good cinematography (Rudolf Blahacek) and excellent editing (Lindsay Ljungkull), the movie takes place in the supposedly urban-legends-and-scary-stories capital of the entire USA, where a particular avenue called Buckout Road is clearly the worst place of all.

It sho' nuff' is. As soon as a character gets near the road (or even if they simply dream about it, for goodness sake), you can bet they're about to be dead. You might think that the town's police department would be just a little concerned, but the police chief (the always reliable Henry Czerny, below, right) seems more interested in badgering witnesses than in putting two and two together to arrive at... something supernatural!

Soon the town's eminent psychologist (Danny Glover, below, right) becomes involved, along with his estranged grandson (Evan Ross, below, left) and his about-to-be girlfriend, that police chief's daughter (Dominique Provost-Chalkley, above, left).

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There is also a pair of goofy fraternal twins who dream about Buckout Road (Kyle Mac and Jim Watson, shown seated below, left and right respectively). Mr. Mac gets the movie's funniest low-key line, "They're coming back, right?," more of which would have done a world of good.

The Curse of Buckout Road certainly is not an awful film. It has some decent-if-typical suspense (what's behind that door that just opened by itself?), surprise and shock (a supremely well-edited scene involving an apparition and a bathroom sink, below), clever flashbacks to the 1970s using grainy, handheld footage and, as expected given the cast, some decent performances.

But its insistence on tossing so much into its mix -- witches, albino zombies, and been-there/done-that/would-be scary/creepy things (as below) -- and then returning to each of these again and again eventually wears us viewers down. (Really now, do you have to show us more than once the same set of characters killing themselves?)

The plot, such as it is, does offer one nice surprise toward the end, and young Ross does well in his would-be "hero" role. Mr. Holmes and his movie seem to want to take us back to the former glory days of scary cinema, while using a number of more recent, modern additions to the genre. It works, I guess, off and on, and just might be enough to please horror aficionados.

From Vertical and Trimuse Entertainment, The Curse of Buckout Road opens theatrically this Friday, September 27, in Brooklyn, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Tampa and Riverside, California -- and will simultaneously be available via VOD.

Mads Mikkelsen: on ice in Joe Penna's endurance test, ARCTIC, and prone to more cold weather and murder in Jonas Åkerlund's ugly, envelope-pushing POLAR

Mads Mikkelsen is one of TrustMovies' favorite living actors. We'll watch him in just about anything, and now, after his two current endeavors, we feel that we have. ARCTIC, the better -- if still pretty tiresome to sit through (unless you're a glutton for punishment) -- of the two films finds the actor stranded in that titular locale after a plane crash. Except for its frozen wasteland, the film has oodles in common with the earlier survival-at-sea movie, All Is Lost, which was infinitely easier to sit through because there was so much more going on and we learned more about the film's single character than we ever do here.

As directed and co-written (with Ryan Morrison, who also edited the movie) by Joe Penna (shown at right), what's mostly going on in Arctic is a lot of trekking and trudging across frozen vast white spaces, as our hero hopes to be rescued or reach some kind of civilization.

That's it, plot-wise. To even begin to describe the very few "incidents" that try to enliven that plot would be to give away the minor spoilers the film offers. Best to concentrate on Mr. Mikkelsen, below, who proves, as usual, quite watchable.

The character he plays, Overgård (we know this only from the name on the jacket the man wears), is clearly highly intelligent and resourceful -- de rigueur for this kind of film -- which of course will help him in his quest/journey. Yet the most interesting thing we note about Overgård is his his concern and caring for life -- in whatever form it takes. This is clear early on, as he catches a fish, and later come to further fruition via his treatment of one of the only two other humans we (vaguely) meet in this movie.

If you are a fan of lone survivor movies -- and not those of the horror/thriller/slasher sort -- Arctic may be quite to your taste. I found it slow going, with a finale (spoiler just ahead) that, while welcome on one level, utterly disappoints on another, via its obvious nod to the necessities of feel-good, commercial cinema. Overall, while I admired things about the film, I didn't actually enjoy it much.

From Bleecker Street and running 98 minutes, Arctic opened February 1 on the coasts and will hit South Florida tomorrow, Friday, February 22. In Miami, it will play the AMC's Sunset Place 24 and Aventura 24 and Regal's South Beach 18, in Fort Lauderdale at The Classic Gateway, in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood, in Boynton Beach at the Cinemark, in West Palm Beach at the AMC City Place 20 and Cobb's Downtown at the Mall 16 in Palm Beach Gardens, and in Jupiter at the Cineopolis. Wherever you may live around the USA, click here to find your nearest theater(s).

We get to see lots more of Mr. Mikkelsen in POLAR, the junky, envelope-pushing, let's-out-Tarantino-little-Quentin movie directed by Jonas Åkerlund (shown below), with a  screenplay by Jayson Rothwell, from the graphic novel by Victor Santos.

In the film, Mikkelsen plays Duncan Visla, the world's best assassin-for-hire (a profession that is not exactly "heroic," right?) who, when retirement time comes, is betrayed by his "boss" so that said boss can have what ought to have been Visla's multi-million-dollar retirement bonus.

The boss (played by an over-the-top Matt Lucas, below), by the way, is doing this to all his retirement-age assassins. Perhaps an assassins' union is in order? In any case, this nasty guy has sent out his supposedly best set of young assassins to murder the old ones. But in trying to reach their prey, these "kids" decide to murder a whole bevy of those whom they find "in between."

While watching this increasingly florid crock of shit you can't help wondering: Did the filmmakers somehow imagine that because they've dressed their kids in cutesy costumes and chosen perhaps the weirdest set of victims so far seen -- the most horrible is the character who seems to have stumbled from My 600-Pound Life into his or her (not sure which) 600-Pound Death.

This is envelope-pushing, all right, and it stinks of near complete inhumanity and sleaze. Ooooooh: Let's laugh while we watch these folk being "creatively" murdered. It's not dark, it's dreck. Ah, but there is that attempt at humanity provided by our Duncan's near-constant flashing back to a murder episode that he clearly regrets. Oh, so sad.

In the supporting cast is Vanessa Hudgens as the sweet but clearly unhappy neighbor who lives across from Duncan's hide-out home. Hudgens, above, right, with Mikkelsen, is very good (compare this performance with that of her Maureen in the recent Rent: Live on TV), and so, I suppose, are many others in the large cast. But to what avail?

Mikkelsen himself (above, further above, and torso-wise below) seen mostly in black eye-patch, is reliable as always, and in this film, unlike Arctic, we get to see much more of him -- killing, cracking-wise, fucking in the nude, and so forth. At age 53 he still looks fabulous and seems to grow more versatile, acting-wise, with each new year. He even executive produced this film (he must have been impressed by the success of his envelope-pushing Hannibal TV series). But again, to what avail?

Streaming now via Netflix, Polar runs just under two full hours. The film's finale actually proved a nice surprise (to me, at least; you might have guessed the connection) that even made good sense. But, boy, how I wished there had been a decent movie in front of that interesting ending.

Yan England's GLBT movie -- 1:54 -- explores the question of coming out vs being outed

Yan England's first full-length feature -- the actor-turned-filmmaker, shown below, both wrote and directed 1:54 -- has as its leading character a young fellow who, though cute enough to look at, is anything but an attractive guy personality- or character-wise. Though pretty obviously gay, as an early scene between him and his best friend around an outside fire makes clear, when that friend gets outed at school, our non-hero not only does not take his friend's side but instead renounces him and his gay status.

This very problemed fellow is played by Antoine-Olivier Pilon (shown on poster, above, and below), who made his mark in Xavier Dolan's semi-moving camp fest Mommy and is a good-looking and usually capable performer, but with a perhaps rather limited range. In this film Pilon has either chosen or been directed to remain fairly one-note in terms of facial expression (as the stills here reveal) -- which, while it may very well be the right accompaniment to his closeted, unhappy and severely limited character, still has one wishing for more.

For all the GLBT movies we currently have gracing (or thudding into) our theaters and home video, being gay or lesbian within one's school venue seems not a whole lot easier to deal with now than it was in my day. It is simply more talked about and maybe perceived as somewhat closer to (but still one hell of a long way from) that so-wished-for but probably non-existent condition known as "normal."

In any case, our would-be hero, Tim, enjoys chemistry class and is very good at track, but is still recovering from the untimely death of his mom, as well as constantly struggling with his sexuality. His peers, with the exception of a single friendly girl (Sophie Nélisse, above, left, of the wonderful film, Monsieur Lazhar), are little help and mostly hindrance. His nemesis -- another track team member, played by just the right degree of ferocious stupidty by Lou-Pascal Tremblay, below, right -- makes everything particularly dire and difficult.

And so, as events pile up -- including suicide, pretending to be straight, a return to running for the track team, a drunken sexual encounter, blackmail and a whole lot worse -- the movie, which has been fairly sure-footed for awhile, eventually then all too quickly descends into melodrama, even as our Tim goes from not-so-hot to a whole lot worse.

1:54 (which is the record time that our would-be track star must break) can most easily and understandably be seen as a kind of cautionary tale. I just wish that it had been a better one. In it, family, faculty, administration, coaches, peers all fail our boy. And he himself simply does not have the strength or stamina to see much of anything through on his own, which makes rooting for him a bit difficult. Until he decides to finally do something, which then makes that rooting utterly impossible.

You may be able to manage this move better than did TrustMovies, and you'll have your chance to find out in Los Angeles, when the film -- from Breaking Glass Pictures -- opens theatrically this Friday, March 9, at the Laemmle Music Hall 3. It will then hit home video (via DVD and VOD) the following week on Tuesday, March 13, for purchase or rental.

Vanity, thy name is James Fanizza, who writes, directs and stars in new GLBT film, SEBASTIAN

Yes, SEBASTIAN does indeed smack of what we used to call a "vanity" production -- having been written, directed, starred in and co-produced by one, James Fanizza. Mr. Fanizza (shown on poster at left, top, and at bottom, right) is an attractive blond fellow and not a bad actor if only a so-so writer and director. His co-star, the chunky/hunky Alex House, who plays the eponymous secondary character, comes off a bit better because he has been given less "acting" to do and does what he has with a certain appealing reticence.

Adequately shot on video by Kalen Artinian, this Toronto-set tale is basically the same-old/same-old so far as way too many gay movies are concerned. Coincidence-prone and featuring a "hero" who is pretty much a shallow, lying asshole (who seems totally unaware of this fact), the movie does finally provide some sort of an explanation of why this guy is the way he is. Trouble is, that explanation seems every bit as manufactured as the rest of the movie.

In its way, Sebastian represents a side of gay life that's all too present and is, I suppose, a kind of reaction to the past hundred or so years of repression, transgression and adjustment to being "different." Even so, the movie remains a bit of a bore, especially when set against so many other, better GLBT films of recent times. One of its supporting actors is Katya Zamolodchikova (aka Brian McCook, below), who starred as Katya on RuPaul'sDrag Race.

Although there is some witty dialog on display, too much of the talk sounds like it came from a self-help manual. At time the film appears to be counting down every last gay cliché in the book, coupled to a bunch of self-improvement tropes and (as even its own characters point out) a tele-novela -- but without any of the latter's high gloss. Toward the finale, which provides enough angst to fill a dozen films, Fanizza's film descends into full-out melodrama.

At best Sebastian is a adequate time-waster. At worst, it's yet another reason some of us gays often avoid "gay" movies. Oh, yes, and about that quote atop the DVD box art, "And it does get steamy", don't get your hopes up. This one's about as "steamy" as that pasta from yesterday that you've just taken out of the fridge. From Wolfe Video, the movie hits the street on DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, February 6 -- for both purchase and rental.

Stephen Dunn's CLOSET MONSTER: Growing up gay, closeted, and a little crazy in Canada

Gay coming-of-age stories may be rife but it seems there's always room for one more -- if that one is handled with enough creativity and energy to hold our attention. CLOSET MONSTER is just such a film, and if it does occasionally deal in cliché, much of it proves visually interesting and well-acted so that it circumvents mild objections. As written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Stephen Dunn (shown below), the movie should resonate with any viewer who can identify with a child, Oscar, who feels abandoned by one parent and terribly misunderstood by the remaining one, and who, from a young age, tries to come to terms with feeling "different," while seeing in the worst possible way the results of what being different can bring.

Our hero -- played as a child by Jack Fulton and as an young man by Connor Jessup (below) -- has a somewhat less-than-normal grasp on reality, and this takes his character far enough out of cliché to render him not simply unusual but maybe a bit of a problem. Not only does he carry on conversations with his pet hamster, Buffy, she answers him, as well. This might seem unduly fantastical, but since Buffy is voiced by Isabella Rossellini, and what she has to say is often worth hearing, we can put up with this little oddity. (There were times, though, when I wished Buffy's accent was just a bit more understandable.)

It is visually -- with camerawork by Bobby Shore and editing from Bryan Atkinson (of last year's terrifically funny Guidance) -- that the movie makes its finest impression. How Mr. Dunn and his cast and crew weave together past and present, the horrible event that lays waste to our hero's psyche, and how he unfortunately works this into his sexual life and fantasies are handled quite effectively, creating a major hurdle to be leaped before Oscar can really grow up.

Helping or hindering him along the way are his kindly friend, Emma (Sofia Banzhaf, above, left), and his obtuse and mostly nasty father (Aaron Abrams, below, left),

Most helpful of all is his male friend and co-worker, played, by Aliocha Schneider, below, with just the right mixture of easy-going confidence and bi-sex appeal). Oscar's mom (a very good Joanne Kelly), though missing in action for some time, finally proves a decent friend and parent, as well.

But it's Oscar himself, along with the finely-tuned performance of Mr. Jessup, that holds the film together. This kid is creative and a little crazy, and we root for him to work it all out. The film's ending is a kind of beginning: at once sad, funny, moving and as odd as all that has come before. Closet Monster is worth seeing, and maybe more than once.

From Strand Releasing and running just 90 minutes, the movie opens this coming Friday, September 23, in New York City at the IFC Center, and the following Friday, September 30, in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7 and the Sundance Sunset Cinema. To all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here, then click on Screenings in the task bar midway down the page.