Catching up with one of 2017's best films: Cristian Mungiu's quietly riveting GRADUATION

Out now on Blu-ray/DVD from The Criterion Collection and brimming with first-rate Special Edition Features, GRADUATION, the latest film from terrifically talented Romanian writer/director Cristian Mungiu, was first seen theatrically in the USA back in April of 2017. It is by far the best of the four of his films I've so far seen -- which also include Beyond the Hills, Four Months Three Weeks and Two Days, and the smart, ironic and underseen Tales From the Golden Age -- and it is a major leap forward for the amazing Mr. Mungiu, shown below.

Graduation is all about connections and their usage. So many of the movies that have come out of the Eastern Bloc over the past decade -- since the fall of that wall and the splitting off of the Soviet empire -- have dealt with this idea of how all-important were/are  "connections" during and since the end of Communist rule.

Once again the Romanian writer/director bears out this idea in his story of a family soon-to-be in crisis, due to its use of connections, together with a very slippery morality amongst just about everyone involved in this sad, gray tale.

A bricked tossed through an apartment window begins the film. Why? And by whom? We wonder, as does the family at the center of the film: a father (Adrian Ttitieni, above) and mother (Lia Bugnar, below) intent of having their only daughter graduate with honors so that she can attend a university and then a medical school in the west. Present-day Romania, it seems, is nowhere in which you'd want to your beloved offspring to grow into adulthood.

The daughter herself (Maria Dragus, below), as we learn from the outset, seems not so keen on this idea, having grown a little too close to her boyfriend and not wanting to leave behind her other friends. When the girl appears to have been attacked on her way to school and may not be able to take the tests she'll need to graduate, Dad goes into immediate action, using every connection he has and calling in every debt he is owed (or imagines that he is owed) to ensure his daughter's welfare/endeavor.

Then morality of all this is suspect from the outset and simply grows worse as the movie moves along. How everyone involved proves so easily corruptible, together with the lengths to which most of them will go to ensure their own welfare, is handled just about perfectly: neither too heavy-handedly nor too easily. We see each person's problems, as well as the "bigger picture," and so we understand how this is all happening, even as we also wonder how we would react in such a situation.

Mungiu is by now a master at this kind of dark social satire. He is also uber-competent at finding just the right situation -- important yet nothing too awful or life-threatening -- to bring out the kind of behavior he wants to point up. Yet he is also a grand entertainer with an ability, via exceptional casting, writing and directing, to bring out the worst in the best way.

The film fairly drips with irony, though the drips are so light and frequent that you barely notice some of them. Eventually, they're a flood. TrustMovies is sorry he did not see this film sooner, for it would have made his 2017 Best List for certain (he'll place it there now, in any case). From Criterion, in Romanian with English subtitles and running a lengthy but consistently engrossing 127 minutes, it is available now on Blu-ray and DVD.

Among the grand Special Features included on the disc is a terrific new interview with filmmaker Mungiu, and wonderfully informative video of the Cannes Film Festival press conference from 2016 featuring a Q&A with the director and several of his actors, including the very hot-looking young man (Rares Andrici, below) who plays the daughter's interesting but quite unsettling boyfriend.

OPEN ROADS 2018: Crime, the Church and the Mafia in the D'Innocenzo brothers' BOYS CRY and Vincenzo Marra's EQUILIBRIUM

One subject the FSLC annual series, OPEN ROADS, usually includes in its round-up of new Italian films is -- hello -- the Mafia in one ugly iteration or another. This year includes at least two such films (of those I've been able to view). Both are interesting and relatively well-executed, but the more-so of the two proves to be the one that takes the quieter, less-traveled and less-overtly-violent-while-being-even-more awful-to-contemplate route.

In EQUILIBRIUM (L'equilibrio), written and directed by Vincenzo Marra, the first thing we see is the famous Warner Brothers logo (the studio clearly had something to do with funding and/or distribution), which leads you to wonder why Warners never makes American movies that are this timely or important. The film shows us -- slowly, simply, shockingly via life in an Italian suburb -- the intersection of crime, environmental contamination, government failure and The Catholic Church.

This quartet of horrors, in which the Church proves the most horrible, has reduced the populace to near-literal slavery and many, many deaths. When a handsome, middle-aged priest (newcomer Mimmo Borrelli, above), trying to avoid a would-be romantic entanglement, requests a transfer from Rome back to his home-town parrish, he is suddenly confronted by all of this -- which understandably takes him some time to comprehend. (Why is the church school's playground closed off to the children so that a pet goat can stay there?)

Our hero, for that is certainly what he is, begins trying to change things. But how does one man, even if he is a priest, go up against this combination of powers? ("That collar," notes one of the crime gang, "is the only only thing keeping you alive, Father.") Filmmaker Marra does a quietly powerful job of making all this seem as believable as it is disgusting, and our priest's (as well as the viewer's) increasing shock at the deep involvement of the Church in abetting and covering up the crime lords' environmental pollution, drug sales, and sex abuse, makes it ever more difficult for him to do the job he believes he must do.

It won't take much pushing to see Equilibrium as a look at where the USA itself is heading under the current control of Republicans and the Trump administration. The only thing missing here is the criminal/Mafia element. But with this administration, Congress and our devolving court system, the criminal element is already built in. And so far as the Catholic Church is concerned, simply replace this priest with a member of a Christian fundamentalist church who just wants that church to get back to the real teachings of Jesus instead of preaching bigotry and hatred, and you'd have a nifty American version.

Meanwhile, Equilibrium, in Italian with English subtitles and running just 90 minutes, will play Open Roads this Sunday, June 3, at 1pm (there will be a Q&A with Vincenzo Marra, shown above, right, following the screening) and Wednesday, June 6, at 4:30pm. Click here for more information and/or tickets.

A new, young Italian filmmaking team of brothers, Damiano D'Innocenzo and Fabio D'Innocenzo, are at the helm, as writers and directors, of BOYS CRY (La terra dell'abbastanza), another gangland-driven drama included in Open Roads. Although flashier, cinematically darker, and considerably more violent and bloody than Equilibrium, TrustMovies found the brothers' movie a little too been there/done that to qualify as anything exactly "new." Still, in terms of pitch dark movies about family, friendship, betrayal, stupidity and greed, this one has got to rank pretty high.

The D'Innocenzo brothers (shown above) have contrived a tale of two "best friends"-- Mirko (newcomer Matteo Olivetti, below, right) and Manolo (Andrea Carpenzano, below, left) who, in terms of honesty, decency and anything approaching actual friendship, have a lot to learn. Instead, thanks to Manolo's dumb dad, the pair becomes involved with the local gang and is soon acting as its go-to hit men.

Everything about the movie seems a tad too "manufactured" in order to demonstrate its themes of betrayal and greed. From the opening car accident to the identity of its victim to the gangland connection right on through to the final, full-circle irony -- which is far too pat to be taken seriously -- everything clicks so nicely into place that the rub-your-face-in-the-dirt reality the brothers so seem to want comes at the expense of some believability.

The look of the film is spectacularly cruddy, intentionally so, I've no doubt. With gangland films set in Sicily, we can usually look forward to some beautiful location cinematography. What you get here is ugly-and-then-some. Performances are as fine all around as they're allowed to be, with barely a chance given to any character except maybe Mirko's mom (Milena Mancini, above) to behave in any way other than badly.

Still, the charisma of the two leads, coupled to their characters' unrelieved stupidity, may rope in the younger set, while providing more mature audiences with yet another chance to ponder raw youth at its least appetizing.

In Italian with English subtitles and running 95 minutes, Boys Cry screens at Open Roads on Sunday, June 3, at 3:30 pm (after which there will be a Q&A with the D'Innocenzo brothers) and Tuesday June 5 at 2:30 pm. Click here to view the entire Open Roads series, and here and here to see my earlier posts on this year's films.

The utter hopelessness of today's China: Vivian Qu's noir melodrama ANGELS WEAR WHITE

I'm not sure from where the title of this very dark and unsettling Asian-noir melodrama comes from, but the only even partial white worn in ANGELS WEAR WHITE, the new film from writer/director Vivian Qu (shown below), comes at the film's beginning, as a couple of young schoolgirls check into a seaside hotel, accompanied by an older man who seems just a tad suspicious. After that, we have to wait until the finale of this popular-at-festivals film to finally give us an all-white dress worn by its lead actress, the very good Vicky Chen, who ends this film in an oddball scene that

combines coincidence with a feel-good climax which can be interpreted, I suspect, in several ways: as an escape (but to where?), as the filmmaker's need to give us something positive at last, or perhaps as the old died-and-gone-to-heaven number in which our heroine is now one of those titular "angels."

In any case, how you react to this finale -- which includes, by the way, a marvelous and surprising use of one of Hollywood's most enduring icons -- will probably determine your approval rating for Angels Wear White.

The film tells the tale of the two little girls (above), together with their "keeper," all of whom are checked into that hotel by Mia, an only slightly older girl who, without proper identity papers, is working illegally at the hotel and soon becomes privy to a very bad event that happens there.

The first thing you may notice here, something that continues and only grows worse throughout the movie, is how venal and crooked is almost everyone we see. If Ms Qu is not saying that corruption is a -- probably the -- way of life in China, I'd be very surprised. One can't help but wonder how a film like this got by the Chinese censors. (I'm very glad it did, however.)

As usual, the more powerful are the people shown, the more corrupt and impossible-to-counter they are. This makes cops, top to bottom, the worst of the lot, with the medical profession not too far behind. Women, particularly young girls, are at the bottom of the power chain. Not to say that Ms Qu does not indict women, too. The little girl we get to know best here, Wen, has a mother (below, left) you would gladly rid the girl of, had you the chance.

In the heroics department are just two people, a female lawyer (played by Shi Ke, shown below) who stays on top of the abuse case in the center of the film, along with Wen's up-till-now mostly absentee father, Geng Le (above, right), whom we first imagine to be just another male "rotter" but who slowly takes on surprising depth and emotional strength at the movie moves along.

By the roiling and powerful climax, you'll want to take a semi-automatic to both the police and the hospital doctors. And yet what shortly precedes and then follows this seems sheer folly in terms of filmmaking. When a certain character turns out to be have been badly beaten (instead of being outright murdered, which would make much more sense, given the society we've seen here) and then a short time later appears bruise-free so that she can dress in white (like those titular angels) and give us a feel-good finale, you will wonder if Ms Qu has capitulated to Hollywood -- and not simply because of how she presents that movie-star icon at film's end.

The performances are A-1, especially from the three young girls, as well as that of Ms Shi as the lady lawyer and Mr. Le as Wen's dad. And the director's use of background shots -- as, above, with various wedding photos being taken near the beachside hotel -- speaks volumes about appearance vs reality in Chinese culture. Angels Wear White has much to recommend it. I just wish it had a little more.

From KimStim, in Chinese and with English subtitles and running 107 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, May 4, in New York City at The Metrograph, and on May 18 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall 3.

Forget Islamic terrorism: Egyptian life is plenty awful in Tarik Saleh's NILE HILTON INCIDENT

Corruption is endemic and epidemic, top tier to bottom, in THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT, and if what we see in this dismaying, depressing movie is even halfway true, that corruption is destroying whatever is left of the country of Egypt. All this begins, movie-wise, with the police and a particular cop named Noredin (played by that excellent twin-titled Lebanese-born/Swedish-raised actor, Fares Fares), who not only takes bribes as a matter of course but actually steals a wad of money from the wallet of a recently murdered chanteuse about as easily as you or I would drink our morning coffee.

As written and directed by Tarik Saleh, shown at left, the film is set back a few years, just after a certain student was beaten to death by police, thus giving rise to what was soon to become Egypt's version of Arab Spring and those amazing street protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square. As this incident-filled film proceeds, we meet everyone from high-level police officers and their underlings to some classy prostitutes and their pimps, Sudanese hotel workers, a mammothly wealthy real estate mogul and a very funny taxi driver able to turn his beliefs and allegiances 180 degrees -- at a moment's notice. Trust is nowhere to be found, and when it appears, it's good for maybe five minutes max.

Yes, this film is depressing and distressing, offering not a chance in hell for any kind of justice for just about anyone we meet. Most don't deserve it, this is true, and the few who do are the ones with the least chance of every seeing it in action.

Yet The Nile Hotel Incident moves fast enough to keep us alert and trying to puzzle it all out. And while there is a tad too much coincidence, there is also such a firm capture of time, place and character that it is not difficult to stick with the movie.

In fact, its string of killings, with the murderer's connections kept secret until nearly the finale, is so brutal and unnerving (never shown in close-up, however, so we're spared being voyeurs at a slaughter) that the revelation of the killer's place in the scheme of things so thoroughly implicates the highest levels of power that all hope is immediately abandoned.

The movie's close takes place as the Tahrir Square demonstrations reach their zenith, even as our anti-hero Noredin is beaten to a pulp in the middle of it all. Finally, The Nile Hilton Incident delivers a good, solid peek into why that particular Arab Spring never would or could lead to anything real. After all, when everyone and everything is corrupt, to whom is one supposed to turn for help?

Is the movie simply dealing in cheap cynicism? I suspect not. This is what a country becomes when it has endured decades and decades of dictatorship and corruption. Look at Russia for another example. And Israel as a more recent newcomer to the group. My spouse asked me, as the end credits rolled, "Now, doesn't this make you more grateful for America?" Only marginally. And at the rate we're going, under the sleazy leaders (and their underlings) we keep choosing, it's just a matter of time.

From Strand Releasing and running 107 minutes, the movie opens in New York City tomorrow, August 11, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Quad Cinema, and in the Los Angeles area on Friday, September 1, at Laemmle's Monica Film Center and Playhouse 7. Another 20 or so cities/theaters are in the offing. Click here and scroll down to see them all.

Petar Valchanov & Kristina Grozeva are back--with another dark & winning com-dram, GLORY

Remember The Lesson, that black, bleak Bulgarian film that opened just over two years ago? Memorable and more, that movie prodded me to conclude that we would be seeing more from its fine filmmakers, Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, and sure enough, here they are again, with an even better film, GLORY. The movie begins with the setting of the time on a wrist watch, and the watch ends the film, too, while becoming what is clearly the most important inanimate object in this very lively movie.

The two filmmakers, shown at left, with Mr. Valchanov on the right, have only grown in the two-year interim, now handing us a tale that once again shows their home country to be a place of enormous, endemic corruption, hypocrisy and ugliness, probably not at all far -- simply smaller -- from what the USA, under our current regime, will soon become. Our "hero," Tzanko, played with remarkable skill and a genuineness that scorches by Stefan Denolyubov (below) is a quiet, surprisingly honest -- given the state of Bulgaria -- railroad worker with a speech impediment. As with many movie characters who carry such a burden, this fellow, too, is sad, moving and sometimes difficult to watch as he struggles mightily to make himself understood.

When Tzanko, one day during his rounds checking and tightening the railroad tracks, comes upon a open and spilling-out sackful of money, he turns it in to the police. Due to a just-breaking scandal and a nosy TV reporter, the Transport Minister and his PR staff immediately set about making Tzanko into the public "hero" he would rather not be, and in the process starting a set of actions/reactions that become hugely destructive.

If this sounds like the basis of a great black comedy, it is. But calling this film Capra-esque, as some have done, seems to me a misnomer. Frank Capra would utterly blanch at the horrific outcome here, deserved as it might be. Capra had a great sense of irony and an appreciation of the bleak and black, but this is, well, something else. 

Fortunately the two filmmakers have rounded up another great cast, led by two of the actors who also appeared in The Lesson: Mr. Denolyubov and the leading lady, Margita Gosheva (above), who, once again does an incredible job of placing us in the mind, body and emotions of a "public servant" so wrapped up in her own needs and desires that she, like the boss above her and the underlings below her, have lost way too much of their humanity.

And yet we do identify with this woman, Julia, who, with her significant other, is trying to conceive a child and just wants, don't we all?, to live the good life. To this end, what she does, blithely and finally shockingly, paves the way to endless grief for our hero -- his poor pet rabbits are but the tip of the iceberg -- and finally to something she so completely deserves for which she will never understand the reason behind, so wrapped up in herself and her world is this poor woman.

Once again, the no-longer-Communist countries of Eastern Europe -- from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria all the way to Russia itself -- are held up to the greatest ridicule by their own filmmakers. No doubt deservedly, too, with this ironically titled movie taking its place as one of the best yet.

Another auspicious debut from Film Movement, Glory gets its U.S. theatrical premiere this coming Wednesday, April 12, at Film Forum in New York City, and will open here in South Florida at the Tower Theater, Miami, on May 15. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, simply click here and scroll down.

Porn is back at Anthology Film Archives, in the continuing series, IN THE FLESH: PORN NOIR

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Update on BP's gulf oil spill: Joshua & Rebecca Harrell Tickell's investigative doc, THE BIG FIX

A kind of companion piece to Dirty Energy (a little-seen documentary we covered earlier this year), THE BIG FIX indicts oil giant BP for not simply causing the accidental 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill inflicted on the Gulf of Mexico, but for its actions -- as well as those of our own governments, local and national -- ever since. The Big Fix is a worthwhile entry into this growing collection of investigation about BP, big oil and government collusion, though it is not nearly as well done, moving or important as Dirty Energy. See them both, because they complement each other, even to the point of using some of the same people to interview. But whatever you do, don't miss Dirty Energy.

Unfortunately The Big Fix, clearly for purposes of marketing (and perhaps for raising money to complete the movie), inflicts on us a couple "name" actors -- Peter Fonda (above) and Amy Smart -- who happen to care, genuinely I'm sure, about the environment. Fonda says a few words and appears in a couple of scenes and then has to go; Ms Smart does even less. Both are a waste of time here and any moviegoers they might bring in will only be disappointed in how little they see of the two.

The product of husband/wife team -- Joshua Tickell (shown at right) who a few years back gave us an interesting but flawed documentary called Fuel, and Rebecca Harrell Tickell (shown below), who, during the course of this film, seems to become a victim of the very thing to which the Tickells are calling our attention -- the movie starts a little shakily. But hang on. As it continues, the film expands (rather like that initial spill), allowing us to see that the problem here goes much deeper and wider than the spill itself, until it involves big oil, state government, and national government -- all exceedingly dirty. Mr. Tickell has dropped some of the cute and energetic cheerleader pose he used in Fuel. He's older now and has grown up some, it seems.

Together the pair explore a bit of Louisiana history (where Mr. Tickell was raised) and the state's connection to the oil industry; then we learn of BP and its own checkered (putting it mildly) history where safety and reliability are concerned.

We hear about the spill itself, the unhealthy dispersants used to break up that oil so that it will appear to have been cleaned up rather than accumulating beneath the water (as is apparently happening), the effect all this has on sea life and the people living on the shores of the gulf, not to mention the dying fishing industry that has been so devastated by the spill and its even-worse after-effects.

We hear again from marine biologist Riki Ott (above, right) and other scientists, along with fishing families like Kevin and Margaret Curole, though no one comes across as strongly here as he or she does in Dirty Energy -- which was anecdotal, it's true, but thoroughly engaged us both intellectually and emotionally, while presenting its information in a way that seemed genuine and truthful. We also see what the spill has done to sea life/seafood (below), how the FDA has fudged their inspections, and why it might be smart to either give up seafood entirely or make certain you know from where what you're eating originates.

What The Big Fix does have, however, is a wider net. In its second half, it connects the dots that have long seen the oil industry in bed with local and national politicians via campaign contributions, lobbying, and finally even lawmaking. Our current administration is every bit as guilty as have been those of the past. This all comes down once again to money in politics. Until we stop political "contributions" and the purchase of our politicians, we're simply stuck with the sleaze that this money continues to elect. And, yes, I mean you, President Obama.

But that's another day, and another movie -- or 20 of 'em. For now, you can stream The Big Fix via Netflix, but you can only save Dirty Energy to your queue. Let's hope that NF sees the light and either orders DVDs or purchases the streaming rights....